# Episode 8 :: The Electric Bat Cast **Source:** Electric Bat Cast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2023-12-10 **Duration:** 80m 50s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/cale630/episodes/Episode-8--The-Electric-Bat-Cast-e2d23c7 --- ## Analysis Electric Bat Cast Episode 8 features hosts Cale and Rachel discussing November 2023 arcade earnings, celebrating Rachel's birthday, and covering operational updates including Stern Insider Connected badge challenges, Yodeck digital signage software implementation, and the addition of Stargazer and Elton John machines to their arcade. The episode includes a mailbag segment addressing operator questions about machine consolidation strategy and IP value. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Venom was the highest earner at Electric Bat Arcade for November 2023, marking the third consecutive month as top earner — _Cale confirms Venom is November's top earner; only $13 separates positions one through three_ - [HIGH] Stern Insider Connected leaderboard display integration using Yodeck software eliminated need for manual TV management and remote URL manipulation — _Hosts describe implementation of browser-based Yodeck system for tournament display management_ - [HIGH] Cale surpassed Rachel in IFPA tournament rankings by approximately 200 positions following recent league scores — _Rachel announces 'For the first time, Cale has surpassed me in the IFPA rankings' and notes he advanced from 'way below' to '200 places above'_ - [HIGH] Stargazer homebrew machine at Electric Bat had multiple serious electrical and soldering defects including ground-hot reversed wiring and unwrapped wire connections — _Cale describes shock from wall voltage due to miswiring, loose connections, and substandard soldering quality_ - [HIGH] Chewy's end-of-year tournament on December 17th guarantees prizes for first 52 attendees, with top prize being $500 Stern light-up sign from Game Room Goodies — _Rachel describes tournament structure, prize distribution, and specific prize values_ - [HIGH] Elton John pinball machine is arriving at Electric Bat within two to three weeks, purchased by Greg Davis — _Hosts confirm Elton John incoming with 2-3 week timeline, mention Greg playing it at Expo_ - [HIGH] Electric Bat's top-earning Stern games generate more revenue than three System 11 machines combined — _Cale's response to Matt's operator question about IP consolidation strategy_ - [HIGH] Marco Specialties' Pinjack tool enables single-handed machine leveling for operators without significant hand strength — _Rachel demonstrates tool usability with minimal hand strength and confirms one-handed operation effectiveness_ ### Notable Quotes > "There's only $13 that separate the top earner from the third earner. So one, two, and three are basically like a couple of tournament rounds apart." > — **Cale**, early earnings segment > _Illustrates how tight competition is between top-earning machines; indicates balanced venue play_ > "After I was shocked with wall voltage because the hot was wired to ground on the service outlet, and so just touching the bracket that the service outlet was on gave me wall voltage straight to me." > — **Cale**, Stargazer machine discussion > _Dramatic illustration of safety hazards in poorly constructed homebrew machines; indicates quality control issues_ > "For the first time, Cale has surpassed me in the IFPA rankings. And he didn't just surpass me by a little bit. You're like now 200 places above me." > — **Rachel**, IFPA rankings segment > _Marks competitive milestone; suggests Cale's performance improvement and changing arcade skill dynamics_ > "I just I like stopped trying so hard and just let things happen and let the ball come to you let the ball let the machine come to me" > — **Cale**, ranking discussion > _Reveals mental/approach shift contributing to tournament performance improvement_ > "I would lean towards consolidating and getting recognizable IP. And I think you could even pick up, like if you picked up a Jurassic or something used, you know, it doesn't have to be new in box." > — **Cale**, Matt Wagner mailbag segment > _Operator advice on strategy: IP recognition and used game purchasing to balance inventory quality vs. quantity_ > "You picked games you like playing. Yes. Like you put some classic Gottliebs. So you weren't necessarily thinking what's going to make me the most money. You knew your audience and you knew these will make cool tournament games." > — **Rachel**, operator strategy discussion > _Explains Electric Bat's curation philosophy: personal preference + audience knowledge > purely profit-driven selection_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Electric Bat Arcade | organization | Woman-owned pinball and arcade venue in Tempe, Arizona operated by Cale and Rachel; hosts weekly tournaments and testing for new machines | | Cale Hernandez | person | Co-host of Electric Bat Cast podcast; operator at Electric Bat Arcade; recently surpassed Rachel in IFPA tournament rankings | | Rachel | person | Co-host of Electric Bat Cast; co-operator of Electric Bat Arcade; celebrates birthday this episode; ranked lower in IFPA than Cale as of latest scores | | Venom | game | Stern Pinball game; highest earner at Electric Bat for November 2023, marking third consecutive month as top earner | | Stern Insider Connected | product | Stern's digital ecosystem for pinball leaderboards and achievements; Electric Bat uses with badge challenges; integrated via Yodeck display system | | Yodeck | product | Digital signage software and hardware solution recommended by Stern Insider Connected team; free for single-TV use with browser-based management | | Stargazer | game | Homebrew custom-built pinball machine recently added to Electric Bat; had multiple electrical and construction safety issues including ground-hot wiring reversal | | Elton John | game | Steve Ritchie-designed Stern pinball game arriving at Electric Bat within 2-3 weeks; purchased by Greg Davis for arcade use | | Greg Davis | person | Purchased Stargazer homebrew and Elton John machines for placement at Electric Bat Arcade | | Chewy | person | Organizes annual 'Bounty Knockout' tournament at Electric Bat; December 17th holiday edition guarantees prizes for first 52 attendees | | Marco Specialties | company | Pinball parts supplier; manufacturer of Pinjack machine leveling tool; sponsor of Electric Bat Cast | | Pinjack | product | Ergonomic pinball machine leveling tool from Marco Specialties enabling single-handed operation without excessive grip strength | | Game Room Goodies | company | Sponsor of Electric Bat Cast; donated $500 Stern light-up sign prize for Chewy's tournament | | Matt Wagner | person | Pinball operator with three System 11 machines on location; wrote mailbag question about machine consolidation strategy and IP value | | IFPA | organization | International Flipper Pinball Association; maintains tournament rankings (WPPR/Whopper points) referenced for Cale and Rachel's competitive positions | | John Schoppel | person | Assisted with Stargazer machine troubleshooting and safety remediation at Electric Bat | | Scott Solomon | person | Electric Bat listener and podcast fan who recommended Pinjack tool; cited ergonomic benefits for arcade operators | | Seth | person | Listener who reported Godzilla as his top earner in mailbag segment; also noted Star Wars as location earner | | Stranger Things | game | Stern pinball game ranking second in Electric Bat's November 2023 earnings; described as 'always been a favorite' | | Bond 60th | game | Stern pinball game ranking third in November earnings; features badge challenges via Insider Connected | | Godzilla | game | Stern pinball game consistently in Electric Bat top five earnings; reported by listener Seth as top earner in his location | | Batman 66 | game | First Spike 2 release with LCD screen; new entry to Electric Bat's top-five earners for November 2023 | | Pinball Party | organization | Podcast show featuring Jason; Cale and Rachel made appearances; planning additional live episodes with both hosts | ### Topics - **Primary:** Arcade machine earnings and revenue performance, Stern Insider Connected platform and badge system integration, Tournament organization and community engagement, Operator strategy: machine selection, IP value, and ROI - **Secondary:** Homebrew and custom machine construction quality/safety, Digital signage and venue management technology (Yodeck), Ergonomic tools and operator health (Pinjack machine leveler), Competitive pinball rankings and player performance ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.85) — Episode is celebratory (Rachel's birthday), enthusiastic about new machines and tools, supportive community discussion. Only negative element is concern about Stargazer construction quality, but framed as resolved problem and learning opportunity. Hosts express gratitude to sponsors and community multiple times. ### Signals - **[business_signal]** Used/secondary market Stern machines recommended as cost-effective alternative to new purchases for operators managing inventory quality vs. quantity tradeoff (confidence: medium) — Cale suggests Matt could 'pick up a Jurassic or something used, you know, it doesn't have to be new in box' to balance budget constraints - **[community_signal]** Stern Insider Connected's badge challenge system driving significant arcade traffic with players making special trips specifically for badge collection (confidence: high) — Cale and Rachel note 'how many people were making special trips to the arcade just to get these badges' including staff members stopping work to participate - **[event_signal]** Chewy's annual holiday tournament (December 17) draws significant attendance with prize pool including $500+ items, demonstrating sustained tournament community strength (confidence: high) — Rachel describes 'very special holiday edition' with guaranteed prizes for first 52 attendees; notes competitive IFPA point chase with multiple players 'trading places at the 24th slot' - **[community_signal]** Electric Bat actively leveraging sponsor partnerships (Stern, Marco Specialties, Game Room Goodies) to enhance venue operations and community benefits (confidence: high) — Multiple sponsor mentions with gratitude; Yodeck recommendation from Stern team; Marco Pinjack tool distributed via sponsors; prizes donated by Game Room Goodies - **[competitive_signal]** Cale's significant ranking improvement (200+ positions) attributed to mental approach shift emphasizing reactivity over forced effort (confidence: medium) — Cale states 'I just I like stopped trying so hard and just let things happen' and 'let the machine come to me'; Rachel notes improvement from 'way below' to '200 places above' - **[market_signal]** Operator survey indicates recognizable IP (Stern premium games) significantly outearns older/lesser-known IP (Gottlieb System 11 games) (confidence: medium) — Cale advises Matt: 'our best earning sterns earn more than three system 11s put together' and recommends consolidating toward recognized IP like Jurassic Park - **[community_signal]** Greg Davis acquiring and placing premium homebrew and licensed machines (Stargazer, Elton John) at Electric Bat as community contribution (confidence: high) — Hosts repeatedly thank Greg for sight-unseen Stargazer purchase 'from across the country' and Elton John incoming placement - **[product_concern]** Homebrew Stargazer machine exhibited multiple critical safety defects including reversed ground-hot wiring, improper soldering, and loose wire connections (confidence: high) — Cale experienced wall voltage shock from miswired service outlet; describes 'wires just wrapped around coil lugs instead of soldered' and soldering with '200 degree iron'; notes 'rookie moves' and 'below novice moves' - **[technology_signal]** Yodeck digital signage platform adopted by Electric Bat for tournament leaderboard management, replacing manual browser/remote-based TV control (confidence: high) — Hosts describe transition from bit.ly URL entry via remote to browser-based playlist scheduling; free tier availability driving adoption --- ## Transcript All right, ladies and gentlemen, from the low desert of the great American Southwest, we're reporting from Phoenix, Arizona. Live. Live. I'm Cale. I'm Rachel. And we operate the Electric Bat Arcade in Tempe. That's right. Yeah. Today's an exciting show. This is a fan favorite. Yeah. Because we have the earnings report. the world famous earnings report you want to get right into the earnings report no i think we should start off by making note of of how special today is today i had no idea today is your birthday well thank you thank you very much um i know a lot of you have wished me happy birthday on on social media and the rest of you that haven't let's get to text messages and all that good stuff i got flowers yeah i think this is the first time i've received flowers thank you For me. Thank you so much. And we started this podcast on your birthday of this year. That's right. So we decided to have the last episode on my birthday. That's right. Not today. Oh, no, no, no. But in the future, one of my future birthdays, we'll do the last episode. This isn't the last episode. Hope I didn't worry anybody out there. But thank you for the birthday wishes from you and everybody else out there. You're very special. We all appreciate you. You're one of a kind. I appreciate being appreciated. This has been great. So now. Now we can get into it. Now we get into the earnings report. This is a fan favorite. This is something we all look forward to. I look forward to it, too, because I don't even know what it is. That's right. We are doing the highest and lowest earners. Okay. What's your guess for the highest earner of November 2023? Now, this is tricky because things change. That's why it's tricky. I'm going to say top earner, Venom. Did you look at this? Is it Venom? It's Venom. This is the third month in a row? Is that right? I'd have to double check that. I don't remember if this is the third month in a row. Okay. Godzilla may have hopped in there once. But here's what's interesting. There's only $13 that separate the top earner from the third earner. So one, two, and three are basically like a couple of tournament rounds apart. Okay. Number two is Stranger Things. That's always been a favorite. Everybody loves that. Number three is Bond 60th. People love that game. Yes. Yeah. Number four, Godzilla. I know you were waiting for it. It's always in the top five. Still a great earner. Right. Number four. And number five, Batman 66. That's a new entry. It's a new entry. To the top five. It's always in the top ten, but no one has any way of knowing that because we only cover the top five. Yeah, so that's a little surprise. Yeah. You have a, gosh, I mean, that's a four-year-old game, five? I don't know. Oh, I think it's older than that. I'm trying to remember what year it was. It is the first Spike 2 release. First one with an LCD screen. Yeah. And a great game. Great game. Lime and Sheets. Yeah, all of the rest of the games are from the most. Code and Rules. Roughly a year. Very cool. Yeah, so the lowest earners. Do you want to know the very bottom or the fifth from the bottom? How do you want to do this? Well, let's start out at the fifth from the bottom. Fifth from the bottom. Getaway. Getaway. The Getaway is fifth from the bottom. That's a fan favorite. Yeah, people love that game. And a great tournament game. Fantastic tournament game. It's always fun watching the new people. Like when it's shift gears, shift gears. and you want to tell them, like, God, just hit the little thing. Right, right. But you can't because it's a tournament. Second from the fifth from the last is Meteor. Meteor. Meteor. Another fantastic game. Excellent game. Yeah. But there it is. These games really surprise me. I'm sure that they must be surprising the listeners. Jackpot. Okay. It's a nice jackpot. Great. It's a fun game. It's a game. Plays incredibly well. But there it is. And then one that stays near the bottom, whodunit. Well, yeah. Isn't it so weird that there's a game that people love so much that earns so little? Yeah. Maybe this last time we talked about it, it got a little bump. It got a bump. Yeah. But, yeah, that one, if you take it out, people beg you to bring it back. All right. Well, so we might get a bump here. And then the bottom one. And the one that's leaving the arcade. Drum roll, ladies and gentlemen. Paragon. Paragon. It's not really leaving the arcade. If I had my way, though, it might be. Always, always the worst tournament game for me. Yeah. Well, that's why I like it. Because, you know, it shakes things up. Yeah. Well, it does shake things up. It usually shakes things up in a way that puts me at the bottom. Okay. Well, let's practice it. Yeah. Okay. We'll practice it. It's one game we never practice. We go in and we play. Like lately, we've been playing, and I guess this is a good time to bring this up, Stern Insider Connected, one of our great sponsors. Absolutely. We spent all day yesterday getting all these badges. We got a ton of badges. Right. Yes. Bond. We've been focusing on the Bond badges. There are more badges, but right now we're focusing on Bond. And we have like, what, seven days? Yeah, it's seven days. It's yesterday the 7th through the 13th, I think. Yeah. Yeah, 13th. And, you know, this is so much fun because there are like team badges. Like you log in with friends to get a total score. I think it was like 77 million. Everything is focused on sevens. Yeah, the lucky seven. Yeah. For Bond. So what really blew me away was how many people were making special trips to the arcade just to get these badges. Yeah, people that worked there. Yeah. Right. They came in. Including us. Yeah, to get badges. We spent hours talking to people about, why are you guys playing so much? You're usually just fixing machines. Well, we're trying to get these inside of connected badges. Yeah. So that's fun. That's very fun. And I still have a lot more to collect. I think I got four of them last night. I think I got two or maybe three. Okay. I got a good game. We have to go in each of the days. So we may have to go into work on your birthday to play some pinball. Right. If we want to be super sevens. And then what's really exciting, Mike Vinikour will be here soon. Oh, for your birthday. Yeah, he'll be here. He's making a birthday trip out. Sunday. Yeah. He'll be here Sunday, and we can try to get some badges with him. Although he may already have all of them. I don't know how that works. Yeah, I don't. Yeah. Well. He'll help us badge hunt. Yeah. Good deal. You know what? I've got a lot of questions from the very beginning of the podcast in person and through messages on Discord and what have you. And if you want to join our Discord, go to electricbatarcade.com and click the podcast tab and there's a link to join the Discord. They ask if this is a green screen. This room? The bookshelf, the book collection. That would be a bizarre green screen. No, these are books. This is a book. Here's just as an example. We've got some Snow Crash right there. These are real books. This is Rachel's book collection. This is some of it. This isn't even all of it. Yeah. We're big fans of reading, and you should be, too. Go grab yourself a book today at your local public library. Thanks, LeVar. It's free. Next on the docket. Okay. Yo, Dec. Yo, Dec. Okay, so our friends at Stern Insider Connected turned me on to this. Mr. Michael Grant, if I recall correctly. Yeah. And so this is kind of cool. We just received one in the mail. We went with it. So Stern uses Yo! Deck to push all of the data to their monitors at their booth at conventions. And they suggested we give this a try. And there are other arcades that are using it also. So, and I can't remember who it was, like two folks who have been using it offered, you know, if they said we had any issues, just they would help us out with it. I remember that that was very nice, but I also don't remember which folks specifically. Right. But thank you guys. I can't remember who it was, but thank you so much. Love the community. Yeah. Yodeck. Very cool for you arcade owners who are not familiar with Yodeck. um it's a digital signage software and browser-based software and hardware um so you you sign up for the service which is absolutely free i love that uh as long as you're just pushing content to one television okay totally free that's awesome and the hardware you can use a raspberry pi so you You can get your own Raspberry Pi and then flash the memory with Yodeck software and use that. Or you can order the Yodeck device. We decided to get the Yodeck device. Yeah, we wanted to just eliminate any possible weirdness. Right. And we wanted to see what their hardware was like. And it's like $70 or $80. And it's a Raspberry Pi in a very cool metal case. It was totally worth it. But what's cool is, so you get this device, and as long as you're pushing it to one television, there's still no subscription fee. So you're not tied to anything. It's a great way to try this thing out. Then, if you do get a subscription, you can run multiple TVs, and they'll even send you some devices for free. Oh, so it's the pay monthly, we'll give you free stuff model or the pay once and you get free stuff. So you have options. I like owning everything outright. So we went with the pay and we just have it up on the one TV in the big room. Sure. And then we're running. Amazon Fire Stick running the Odin browser. In the other room. On the other room. The reason for all this, and we mentioned this in other podcasts, so one television we have that's actually near the bar is a 1080. And so it's running the Odin browser in 1080. We're having no issues with that. It shows the Insider Connected website just fine. And on the 4K TV, we couldn't even open the Odin browser on a Fire Stick. Oh, I'm sorry. It's not a Fire Stick. It's an On device. Oh, yeah. It's an Android device. It's like the Walmart brand or something, right? Right. Exactly. Exactly. And they're very inexpensive. And that's why it's a great thing to try out first. Now, since we couldn't run Odin on the 4K TV, I was like, well, what do I do? and this is when they suggested the Yodeck. Yodeck setup was very easy. There's so much, and now this is all browser-based. Okay. And there are so many variables. This is the kind of software and hardware that restaurants use. Restaurants or bars, or I could even see, like, you know, maybe like stadiums or convention centers using this. Basically anywhere you see a TV that's, like, changing the menu or showing an ad or something, that's probably a Yodeck. pictures, Yodek or something similar. Okay. Yeah, so food shots. So the cool thing about this, if you use this in your bar, your brewery, to show Insider Connected stuff, you can show other things. So what we've done is... This is my favorite part. You do. You love this. You love this. We have... We show... We display the Stern Insider Connected for two minutes. You can set up a playlist on the back end of the Yodek software. So we show the Stern Insider Connected leaderboard for two minutes, and we fade to a commercial I shot. And during one of the tournaments, I just used my phone to shoot some video, overlaid some text, and it's an ad for our Tuesday tournaments. Yeah. So fade to the leaderboard, the Insider Connected leaderboard for another two minutes. And then what? And then it goes to a still of our tournament winner. Yeah, that's so cool. And this is the Tuesday tournament winner who was Mark the Shark. Of course. Mark the Shark Pearson. Yeah. Yeah. And it's good. And that just keeps going. And you can put more stuff in there. Yeah, I'm going to make some weird, creepy commercials. Oh, I bet you are. You'll be able to tell which ones I made and which ones Kale made. The cows will look nice and polished and friendly, and then mine will be kind of gritty, and people will be like, why is this here? Black and white, a little noise. Yeah, it'll be, yeah. You'll know. But it's really cool to go into the arcade, and you see people looking up, oh, there's me, there's me, I'm on the TV. Right, right. It's great. So your deck's been good. Success. Yes. at first I did run into some issues setting it up. Had some type of little glitch. But I just had to fix it. I didn't even get in touch with tech support. I went to their... YoDAC has a great YouTube channel with all kinds of troubleshooting stuff. And I had to pull out the memory. Has a little memory card in there. Delete a preferences folder. Reinstall it. And then set it up again. and everything's been working fine now. Yeah. And you can have it turn off and turn on on its own. So you can have it on a schedule, which is great. Yes. No bartenders have to turn it on or off. Right. And you can change it from home. Right. So if we're on vacation or something like that and you want to show people pictures of you on the beach, we can throw that up in the arcade. I think that's one of the great things because every time we do a tournament, we have to change the television. Yeah. So every Tuesday we have to have the, what is it, match play. Now I can do it from my browser. I used to fidget with a remote and put in a bit.ly link, you know, use some kind of URL shortener and mess around with the remote. Now it's all in the browser. So YoDeck, it's freaking awesome. Thank you for the recommendation, folks at Stern and SATA Connected. Yep. Good deal. Thank you. um yo deck what else we got we have do you know the prizes for a chewy's end of year tournament oh my gosh there are so many things um well first first of all when is the tournament it's sunday december 17th and it starts at noon and chewy does this every year so this is but this is the very special one right so everybody knows about chewy's world famous bounty knockout and this is the very special holiday edition end of the year and the way he does it is he wants to be sure that there are prizes for it used to be prizes for everyone but now we have so many people it's prizes for the first 52 people that show up are guaranteed there may be more prizes beyond 52 but if you show up in the first 52 you get a prize and it's it's he's got a system i think you draw a playing card and that's tied to an envelope and then at the end, it's like this whole, of course Chewy's got a system for how all these things are going to play out. It's a blast. Yeah. And the prices range anywhere from like $10 token bags or something. On that end, there's a lot of like free Wendy's Frosties. That's like a perennial favorite. You get Frosties for a year. They last all year. The little tiny Frosty, which is perfect. Yeah. And you can get like 365 of them. And then on the, I think this year the biggest dollar value prize is one of the Stern light-up signs. So that's like a $500 prize. Courtesy of Game Room Goodies. Yes, thank you, Game Room Goodies. Another sponsor of the show. Thank you so much, Game Room Goodies. They support us to no end. We'll talk more about those guys in a little bit. Yes, we appreciate them very much. Thank you, Game Room Goodies. Yeah. Sponsor of the show. And so Chewy's tournament is when? December 17th. That's a Sunday. At noon. Cool. And not only is it a lot of fun and Chewy gives out a ton of prizes. I don't think there's any tournament that gives out more prizes than this. I mean, a $500 gift. Also, it's your chance to get in some Whopper points before the end of the year. Yes. There are so many people riding that cusp. We've been checking every single day. The scores went in today for your birthday for the last league. And you, this is a big announcement. For the first time, Cale has surpassed me in the IFPA rankings. And he didn't just surpass me by a little bit. You're like now 200 places above me. You went from way below me. You've been performing. Something is up. I don't know what it is. Thank you. We've got to check your diet. Maybe it's all the jiu-jitsu. Maybe it's the cold plunges. I don't know. But you're playing phenomenally. Something's working, huh? So happy birthday. You're better than me. Well, thank you. I don't know if I go that far. But, yeah, I did. Yeah, so this is a chance to get some Whopper points. Yeah, there are so many people trading places at that 24th slot for Arizona State Championships. I wish I could tell you what's going on. You know, Roland is always messaging me going, man, you're getting so much better, you know, proud of you. And I think it's all mental. I just I like stopped trying so hard and just let things happen and let the ball come to you let the ball let the machine come to me yeah yeah that's how that's how you play pinball that's great and thank you so much for the kind words it's been it's been a blast and I love playing with all these folks we have been experimenting with a cool new toy yes we got it in the mail from from Marco Specialties, another friend and sponsor of the show. Yeah, our listener, Scott Solomon, pushed me over the edge. I was on the fence, and he's like, you guys are doing it wrong. You are hurting your backs for no reason. You are way too old to be doing it the way. He didn't say that part, but it's true. We're too old to be turtling games. That's tacit. Yeah, that's, yes. And so we ordered a pin jack from Marco Specialties, and it's very easy to use I'm very small I have very small hands minimal hand strength that not my forte and I can you know lift a free fall with you know one hand right jack it up and then do what I need to do with the leg levelers and then just put it back down I was nervous that the putting it down part was going to result in a machine like just slamming on the floor I didn't know if I'd be able to control that, but I can. Right. I'm small, no hand strength, works great. Completely works. So I would recommend this for everybody. Yes. And so if you haven't seen this thing, go head over to marcospecialties.com. Or Marco Pinball, anything. Yep. Anything related to Marco. And just search Pinjack. It should pop up there. We meant to bring it home. We forgot. Yeah, we were going to show you guys. But go check it out on the Marco site. It is way easier to use than I thought it would be. Yeah. Because you went under a machine, you know, a 250-pound machine, and it doesn't take a lot of grip strength. I thought it would take a lot. Like, I would be doing it with two hands. Yeah. It's a one-hand. You even did it with one hand. Yeah, I thought I would be getting vice grips to give myself extra leverage or something like that. It'd be like clipping hedges or something, but it wasn't. So what it does, it cradles the actual leg of the machine, and you squeeze it to jack it up, and then you're able to turn the leg leveler to your desired length or not length, unlength. Height. Yeah, and then you release it. Yeah. Boom. And it releases slow. You can release it. What a great tool. Yeah. I think. So thank you, Scott. Thank you, Marco. Right. If you are old like us or don't enjoy lifting pinball machines on all fours, get one. This is great. It's worth it. Great tool. Thank you, Scott Solomon, right? Didn't he? And like he said, it will pay for itself in one or two chiropractic visits. Oh. I haven't gotten that bad, but hopefully I won't. Yeah, well. Yeah. So what's coming up at the bat? Any new games, tournaments, new games, anything coming to the bat? Elton John. Oh, yes. Elton John. And yes, Elton John is coming. Well, and have we have we talked about the new game? We have not. Did you want to? We can. OK, go. We have a Stargazer. Stargazer. It's beautiful. We've been wanting a Stargazer for years. Yes. I remember years ago I was watching an InDisc stream. I think it was InDisc, and they were playing Stargazer. And I was like, whoa, this is so cool. Why don't we have one? And you were like, it's because they're $10,000. That's why. Right? For $10,000, I need a game that costs more than 50 cents a play to be able to pay for itself. So, yeah. So, our buddy, Greg Davis. picked one up and put it at the bat. Yeah. Thank you, Greg. Thank you, Greg. This is one that somebody built from scratch. So it's not an original Stargazer. It is a new playfield, repro back glass, and all scratch built. It's beautiful. There have been some major issues with how it was put together. Right. And luckily, we're us, and you could troubleshoot a lot of this stuff. How bad was it? After I was shocked with wall voltage because the hot was wired to ground on the service outlet, and so just touching the bracket that the service outlet was on gave me wall voltage straight to me. Woke you up a little bit. Yeah. There was some obscenities. Loud. and then I saw like, oh geez, this person has miswired this. There were several other instances. There are wires that were just kind of wrapped around coil lugs instead of soldered. Everything looks as though it was soldered with a 200 degree iron. Like it's just sort of dropped on there. And I thought this was really weird because somebody who would take on a project like this And he completed it. Yeah. He did some real bonehead, like... Rookie moves. Below novice moves. Like... Very... Things that made it very unsafe. Right. And you may have mentioned this, not even using solder, just wrapping wires around lugs. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I've... I've never seen anything like it. Yeah, I've never seen anything like that. And the list goes on. There's a very long list. Maybe I'll do a write-up at some point, because it's kind of comical at this point. For the blog. Yeah. Yeah, well, and I've gone through it, and John Schoppel has also gone through it, and we've found most of the things, and we've taken away the dangerous stuff. So luckily I was the only one that got shocked. But, yeah, so it's a beautiful machine, and right now it's working. And we're very grateful to Greg, who, you know, he bought it sight unseen. It came from across the country. and uh it it's it's beautiful and it's a lot of fun people are enjoying it um and i i got maybe the shock the voltage maybe gave me amperage maybe it gave me some like in the cartoon powers when you you know when they hit their head yeah they become a different person whoa yeah who are you why am i here okay now and elton john is coming let me yeah i'm gonna take a sip of water here Elton John which is cool our friend Greg's also purchasing that he said he'll throw it in the arcade for everybody to enjoy we played this at Expo and you put on a show for everybody you got up there you put the GC on the game everybody was watching and clapping you had a crowd it was cool I thought it was cool you know I like that kind of stuff I think you can find that somewhere online even it was that was very That was really fun. And as you know, I am not a fan of Elton John, the musician. Right. I am. You are. So I still love this game. Yeah. I think it's going to be a lot of fun to have at the arcade. It's fun to shoot. A Steve Ritchie game. Yeah. You know, it's got all the best shots. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Good deal. And that will be coming within two to three weeks, we're thinking. Yeah, we should have it on the floor soon. Now, we're going on to the mailbag. These are questions, statements from our friends and pinball family from around the world. We do get questions from around the world. Yeah. We are going to start off. This is an email. I haven't read this yet. So let's see what happens. Okay. It's from our friend, Seth. I think you threw this in there, so you read it. I did read this, yeah. It's probably safe to read. Yeah. Yeah, this one is safe. Seth, he says, yo, to answer y'all's question about Godzilla, it is my best overall earner, even beating out games that I've had longer. But Missoula's weird as my, what are you talking about, Missouri? Missoula is Montana. Oh, okay. Montana. I didn't even know that. is weird as my best earnings rented game is Rush and the best location earner is Star Wars. I think that checks out with a lot of, I think, Star Wars. I mean, you know, very recognizable brand. Okay. The people have heard of the Star Wars. Yes. So that was in response to us asking about, is Godzilla just an exceptional earner for us? Do we just have lots of rabid Godzilla fans, or how is it in other people's arcades? So he let us know that great earner for him, too. Right. Top earner. Thank you, Seth, for your comment. Yeah. Yep. And we'd love to hear more feedback from other people with routes and how that stacks up. That's right. What games are top earners for them? now we have a a long question here i think it's a is that matt wagner uh yeah it says matt at the top and then m wagner i figured that was matt hi rachel and kale how's it going matt good to hear from you huge fan of the podcast i always enjoyed when you made appearances on the pinball party pinball party's great yeah i just did a live well a week a week and a half ago we did i did a live one he wants you to come on too yeah we want you to come on not just not just jason but uh stay tuned uh for the pinball party i think we have some more live stuff coming up that's been that's been really great doing a live show with jason because you have the uh the comment section people are tuning in live and asking questions yeah that's fun so you can immediately like answer the questions and and have a little back and forth who doesn't love a little back and forth Yeah. Okay, back to Matt's question. Happy birthday. Loved us on the pinball party. And am thrilled you've started your own. Great insights and tips all around. I started dabbling and operating with one machine about a year and a half ago. I now have three machines at the same location and have added a small change machine as well. Congratulations, Matt. That's how you do it. Yeah. That's basically how you started. Yeah. Just a couple of machines and now you've blown up. Yeah, so strap in, Matt. It's going to be a wild adventure. My question is about quantity versus quality, right? What is better, multiple machines that may have a weak IP or gameplay, example, there's a Gottlieb Diamond Lady for sale by me. I like Diamond Lady. I do, too. I'm not sure how much play that would get from casuals. Right, right. or less machines with stronger IPs, such as Stern Pro. For example, I have three System 11s on location, but often hear how well Sterns do on location. That's true, which are out of his budget. Does it make more sense to consolidate games to upgrade, but then reduce my game count in the process? My pricing is 50 cents a game or three for a dollar. Whoa. Yeah. Well, I can tell you that for us, our best earning sterns earn more than three system 11s put together. But I think it would also depend on your location, because if you're getting primarily casuals, then recognizable IP, I think, is very important. For sure. And if you're marketing more towards tournament or pinball nerds, then you can get away with earning more on F-14s and diners and whatnot. So it's situational. It is situational. But you've – I would lean towards consolidating and getting recognizable IP. And I think you could even pick up, like if you picked up a Jurassic or something used, you know, it doesn't have to be new in box. Sure. I think it would be worth it. You could charge a little bit more. And I think that's what I would do. Yeah. But now what you did, I've seen you build this thing, you picked games you like playing. Yes. Like you put some classic Gottliebs. So you weren't necessarily thinking what's going to make me the most money. You knew your audience and you knew these will make cool tournament games. And we have a unique audience here, especially in the Valley. People appreciate like any game. any machine. They want to play them all. You were finding games you enjoyed playing and most importantly systems that you were used to working on. That's another good point. You stick with similar systems. I don't have any Gottlieb System 80s. I don't want to work on them. It's just because I don't have those parts. I don't want more. So we have WPCs. We love classic ballet and sterns those are easy to find parts and boards for most importantly boards right you can get brand new boards that work very well the the uh ultimate series and then for your got leaves you do the pascal yeah yeah and i i think those i think that's really really important system 11s if that's what you're and that's just an example that he gave but i think it's also great to have a variety because I don't think that you just want to have stern, stern, stern, stern. As much as we love sterns, we love playing sterns. Right. It's always nice to have a classic or an earlier game to kind of bounce back and forth between. They're different experiences. They suit different moods, different people. You want that variety. So I would say if you have room for three to five games, consolidate some of those. get a new Stern, new-ish Stern, something Spike 2, and then keep maybe one of those System 11s, maybe get an early classic game, something you enjoy. Right. Because these are your games. For sure. Don't try and just guess what other people will like. 100%. That's something that we've always done is like, do I like this? Yes. Okay, then we'll get it. Right. if I don't like it, then, you know, there's plenty of games that we do like. I probably wouldn't, we wouldn't buy it. Right. Unless you bought it. Right. And we have gambled with games like Escape from Lost World. Yeah, that was cool and weird. Very cool game. But more of a game we maybe think was like cool at home and not at the arcade. It's hard to keep running. It's terrible for tournaments. Yeah. But it was fun. It was a fun experiment. Yeah. And, you know, we've found a great home for it. Yeah. Somebody who appreciates it. Yeah, totally appreciates it. I will say, if you set up a bunch of sterns, get those in line. Even if you just have one. Yeah, hook them up to inside or connected. We have a new spot that just opened up not far from the house. Yeah. And they got like eight brand new sterns. Maybe more. And they're not even connected. And that was the first comment. That we heard. And we haven't heard anybody since then. Nobody's gone. The comments were, I went there and the machines were not connected. Or updated. Or updated. Right. Or even updated. Man, it does not cost anything to hook these things up on Wi-Fi. Yeah. And like I've said before, this is not the best. I mean, just get a TV mounted. I don't know. I mean, if you own the bar, that would be easy. If you're just routing in the bar, talk the owner into letting you throw a television up there with a Yodek or some type of device. This will get people more interested in gaming. Even if it's like a goodwill, like tiny TV. Computer monitor. It's just something that shows a leaderboard. Competition makes everything so much more fun. Right. And even if it's asynchronous competition, like the leaderboard. Get it connected. that that dude do it yes listen to what kale says it's his birthday and he's right you gotta get these things hooked up it's built in why not do it um okay so we have another question um did that come in the email it's just text that is an email okay this is from email our friend pat marino yeah good question hi i would think you would ruin the play field cleaning it with novus 2 all the time being an abrasive. Novus 2 is abrasive. I use it only for ball trails. Used to tell Kyle, I guess he's, oh, he is talking about our friend Kyle. Yeah. Kyle Spiteri. Now at Stern. Yep. He used to be at Marco, now he's at Stern doing customer service there. Yeah. Give Kyle a call if you have any kind of issue. Used to tell Kyle all the time at Marco, he could never explain why he used it and not wax. Well, they're two different things. Can you answer the question? I wipe it clean first with Novus One to get off surface dirt and wax with Blitz or SP100, no dust. In between waxing, I use Wizard's Mist, which is recommended by JJP. Love your podcast. Very informative. Keep it up. I don't know what Wizard's Mist is, but I'm going to look into it. It kind of sounds cool. I don't know what Blitz is. You may just use it at home. Wizard's Mist. Have you ever heard of Blitz? I have heard of it, but I don't know what it is. And the SP100, is that Wildcat? I think, is that like CP100, which is naphtha-based? I'm assuming that all of those products are naphtha. In between waxing, okay. So here, to answer the question, we don't use Novus 2 all the time on everything. Because with the amount of play we get, you know, that would, it would not be great for the play field to do it all the time. We use Novus 1 for most stuff, and then all trails, we use Novus 2. Places that get very dirty, we use Novus 2. There are times where we do have to pull out the Novus 2. Never Novus 3. Don't ever, ever use Novus 3 on your play field, any play field. And we don't use Novus on classics. Not, well, not every once in a while you will if something gets. But if we've done a play field swap and we have a clear, we sometimes will. Classics don't really get as dirty. There's not as many things that create that dust, so we don't need to. And we do wax those. We don't wax our sterns very often, although John Schapel does. So I guess they are getting waxed now. So that's, I guess, and some people do use naphtha as just their cleaner. Well, yeah, and... I don't like the way it smells. That's really honestly why I don't use naphtha more, because the smell bothers me. Right, but Pat, what you're doing seems fine. It looks like you're cleaning it very well and then putting a wax on it. Wizard's Mist, huh? We need some Wizard's Mist. I've got to find that. Yeah, I mean, people just, and you'll see through this industry, and I'm sure it's similar to automotive or any kind of hobby where you're dealing with machinery. There are different ways to do things. I haven't noticed any, I think the playing, the amount of plays these machines get at the bat are going to do more harm to them than Novus II. Yeah. Yeah Do things and I haven I noticed wear from just the playing Sure But not necessarily I mean when these get tens of thousands of plays it a big old steel ball But yeah, and we wouldn't recommend anybody use Novus II all the time. Right. Because it is an abrasive. You want to use it when you need it. Save it for when you need it. For sure. For sure. Novus I in microfibers. The real test will be, what, like 10 to 15 years from now when we tell people how Iron Maiden looks? Yeah. Because Iron Maiden was the first modern stern in the arcade. Yes. And that play field still looks great. Yeah. That game's got, I'm not sure how many. Like a million. Well, it's got a lot of plays on it. It's got a million plays. One million. Thank you so much for your question, Pat. I wish we had a solid answer for you. I think we do. Yeah. That is a solid answer. Don't use it all the time. Yeah. Use it when you need it. Okay. And that's also what he does. So he just uses wizard tools. Yeah. But I am excited to look into this wizard's mist. That sounds cool. We have some CP-100 sitting in the office. That's like a solvent, right? Yeah, but I think it's naphtha. That's heavy-duty stuff. You can't even sell that in California. You can't sell anything in California. I'll tell you what. We accidentally took some. I probably shouldn't be saying this. I'll probably get fined. We took some to California. We're selling it. You're like, don't talk about it. It's a statute of limitations. All the California people were like, you have CP-100? Yeah, they were buying, and I had to open up boxes and put it back on the shelf. That was a good time. It was a long time ago. With our pinball cleaning contraband. Yeah, well, South Carolina has no regulations, and California has all the regulations, so you didn't know. That was good times. Let's move on. We have another question for the Bat Peeps. That's us. How are you? Man, I'll tell you what. I'm doing very well. I'm doing really well, and you know why? Why? We forgot to talk about this, but Bat Peeps reminded me that me and you and the entire Bat Squad and the community at Electric Bat Arcade won a major award this week. What did we win? The Best of Phoenix. Oh. We forgot to get that issue yesterday. Once again. Yeah. Best Arcade in Phoenix. Best Arcade in the Valley. Yeah. I mean, that means the whole... Five times in a row. Is that right? Yeah. One year it might have been like Best Pinball Arcade. Like it may have been more specific. I don't know. We get awards every year, and congratulations to you for doing this thing. Well, I mean, congratulations to everybody that makes it such a cool place to be. And all the peeps. Right. That's the bat peeps. The bat peeps. Yeah. Congratulations. And thank you. A few times. If you hang out at the bat and make this place a wonderful place that it is, that award's for you, too. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Bat peeps, how are you? We're doing well today, especially. it's my birthday don't know if we're living it up we're living it up um wanted to ask you a few questions for your show the program the program yep number one heard your take on galactic tank force so i haven't read it i haven't read this yet so hold on let me get through this one let me get some water it's gonna be a good one galactic tank force what a game huh i've always wanted one but now because of what you said i don't that's good uh but my question is if they are so bad and unreliable how have ap managed to attend so many shows with multiple machines and had them running 24 7 well that's actually not the case uh with no issues is this just yours what are you doing about it we're doing we we have some new news we have new news okay Who goes first? Well, we'll address the first part. They've made the supposition that Galactic Tank Force, because it is at shows, that it's running well and consistently at those shows. That is not true. We've been to these shows and we've seen them down. And there's lots of other, not just us. We've seen a lot of people online saying that they had wanted to play one, but it was down. so first part of that they hadn't been up right second part of that what are we doing about it we first we retired the game yeah the game's been in our office for a while they David Fix very friendly fellow right he sent us some beta code to try and fix a potential solution. Now, this is after he thought it was the trough switch. I think he's doing a podcast tour right now telling everybody that it doesn't take a rocket science just to figure out the issue with our game. It was a trough switch, which that's just not accurate. It's not the trough switch. We thoroughly tested the trough switch. Trough switch. Amazingly enough, the trough switch is fine. Perfect. That is the best trough switch. That's the only thing they nailed. Yeah. And the art. Franchi killed the art. Trough switch works fine. So the rocket science needs to be used elsewhere to diagnose all of the issues with this game. So they sent us an email saying, here's some beta code. Full disclosure, though, we don't really know what's wrong with your machine, so we're not sure how to address it with this code. And, you know, because we were, the main problem was that our galactic tank force was ending, losing track of balls and just doing weird things, freezing, not moving on to the next ball. And after we installed that beta code, it no longer did any of those things. In fact, it no longer did anything at all because it put it in a boot loop. Wow. So it bricked the game. The new code bricked the game. Completely bricked the game. And then we thought, well, let's give it another shot. Reinstall this new code. Right, because sometimes there's, you know, that can happen. So I reinstalled it. This is 18 gigs. Yeah. It's huge. Huge download. Huge amount of code. Reinstalled it, same thing. So the code, you know, I don't know what's in the code, but it didn't work. Right, right. Long story short, this game is going back to American. And? They are sending us a brand new, fresh off the line, thoroughly inspected Galactic Tank Force Deluxe Edition. Right. I have my doubts. Yes, they are going to send us a brand new machine. Which I'm really grateful for. That's a very nice gesture, right? That's sort of unheard of in the pinball world. So I appreciate that very much. It seems like they're trying. Yes, I do feel like this is going back to that old American pinball customer service from the old days. We'll see. Yet to be determined how this works. We will report back. Either it will be great or it will be horrible or somewhere in between, and we'll let you know. So, yeah, we're shipping them back this one, and they're shipping us a new one. And we hope that it is great. Yeah. And now to answer part of his question, is it just yours? No. No, it's not just ours. We have talked to many people with machines that are having the exact same issue. It's obviously a software issue. Rachel has found a way to spoof the machine to recreate the issue over and over again. She's tried to tell American. I don't think they're listening. But it's not just our machine. Our buddy with the local arcade just ordered the flagship model. The fancy one. The fancy one. It looks like a tank. Opened it up. Doesn't work out of the box. An American has said it looks like they shipped it with a faulty power supply, so they're going to send them another one. Which is really weird. They should have known that before it left the factory. If the game doesn't work from initial turn on, why? Yeah. Why? Yeah. Still, and we're not, we actually, another friend of ours who has an arcade, not in this state, had the same issue. The Galactic Tame Force wouldn't work. They took it back and shipped them a brand new one. Same thing happened. And so, I mean, I don't have much trust in that this is a fix. I don't think this is not a David fix. Yeah. But I will say David fix is very pleasant to talk to. He's very pleasant to talk to. But when it comes to like running a company, it's sort of mids. Like, I mean, he's got a huge task at hand here. It's a big ask. And I think maybe there's not the resources. And I don't run a pinball. Well, I do run a pinball company. It really takes somebody truly extraordinary to turn around a company like this, like real leadership. And what they have is moderate at best right now. I am hoping for the best. I'm so positive today. Yeah, it's been an experience. Would I recommend that somebody buy a Galactic Tank Force? At this time, I would not recommend it because I don't have any experience telling me that it's a good idea. It's a beautiful game. Right. The sad part is you'd think we'd be very happy. Oh, they're going to send us a brand new game. But even when this game is working properly, it's got shit flippers. Remember, even when it was working properly, they would fail. which was the same thing but Hot Wheels I think there's just something up with their software and operating system but if it gets better we will let you know like Spooky that's our well if you if you go if you go from Halloween to Scooby-Doo man they've they've learned some stuff and while we're on the topic of Spooky we're getting Looney Tunes yeah you would think we'd be getting Texas Chainsaw Massacre given given our proclivities however Whatever. Looney Tunes. Mark Pearson is bringing, gracing us with Looney Tunes. Number 10. We'll have it shortly. Yep. We'll have one of the first ones off the line. We're excited about it. The video looked cool. Yeah. The shots look interesting. This is cool. I mean, hopefully these kids are getting better at what they're doing. They're learning something. We are always willing to give people more chances. Absolutely. If they prove that they're doing something. So once we resolved that Scooby-Doo shooter thing, which involved, I don't even remember at this point. You did a lot of work on it. People are still having issues with that. They've been messaging me even recently, like, how do you keep your Scooby running? The best solution, I believe, is to install a Bally Williams shooter assembly. You can do that? I mean, you're going to have to probably drill some things. Yes, people have done that with success. Because that way you've got a backup. You've got a physical plunger. Oh, they're actually drilling through? Yeah. Wow. I mean, that's what we were about to do until you did some mechanical magic and made it work. But that game has been holding up very well. We had a coin door pop open by surprise. And we had to replace the boards. They replaced the boards, yeah. But Halloween caught on fire. Scooby-Doo, you couldn't get the ball on the play field and the boards melted. But after we resolve those, we haven't had to open that game up, knock on this, for a while. And so I'm hopeful that Looney Tunes will be even better. I think it's going to be cool. Either way, owning a spooky game is always an adventure, especially when you're trying to operate it. And I'm looking forward to it. Yep, looking forward to it. Okay. And this is also from, I haven't said, who is this? Oh, Steve London. And Steve London is in the UK. I wonder if he's in London. His last name is really London? That's what it says. Steve London. Wow. Didn't you put this here? Yeah, I don't, you know, I don't, I didn't notice that. Okay, here's the second question. They named a city after him. I hope we answered all your questions about Galactic Tank Force. If not, just send us more. Yeah, send us more questions. We'll keep you posted. We'll keep you posted. Maybe the new one is going to be the best thing ever. We'll find out. But I really can't wait to get it back on the floor. Yeah. Because it earned. It earned. It earned. It just didn't play. It earned. Yeah. People enjoy it. But what's funny is. It's a fun game. Recently, one of our players, Matt, he used to love playing it. And he didn't mind putting a buck in the machine, even though he knew it would end up screwing him. Just because it was such a weird game. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So. Okay. So next question from Steve, London. I'm in the UK. Games are much more expensive here. Blood Red, which is the Elvira, is $20,000. I wonder how much the Bond 60th was for him. Yeah. Tell us how much Bond 60th was. Here, Elvira was $13,000. Something like that. It was actually reasonable. Yeah. It wasn't crazy. Didn't they try to sell one for like $30,000 or something? So my friend did an in-depth video about balls. Stern balls are awful straight out of the box. Check out his channel. He put a link in here. Okay. What feedback do you guys give your manufacturers about this? Why are there consistently so many awful parts used that could be so easily fixed but aren't, like balls and noisy fans? What parts do you think each manufacturer should be upgrading urgently and switch out? Go through each manufacturer. What brand pinballs do you recommend for magnet games and non-magnet games? Wow, this could be like a whole episode. Right. And we do have some insight on this. Yeah, we know a lot about this. So the very interesting stuff about the balls. Yeah. So I think I can talk about this now. I don't know. We'll find out. Right? One way or another, we'll find out. Because the industry has changed and people are getting balls from other places. But the funny thing was, back in the day... Actually, I want to stop you right there before you get to it to say that I have not experienced that stern balls are bad out of the box. No. But I do know that you get shipments and then you get a different shipment and then you get a different shipment. So it may be that there was one shipment that I didn't watch this video, so I don't know, that was less good than other ones. But I just would like to say that that has not been our experience writ large. Really, the biggest thing you need to watch out for when you buy a ball is pitting. Yes. When they go through the lapping process, there could be some impurities in the steel. And the reason we know a lot about this is because Marco Specialties used to import like every single ball that was in any machine. I think it was 100% at one point. Yes, yeah. It is, and what I mean by pitting, you can see this with your eyes. You don't need a magnifying glass or anything. There'll be dark spots. Yeah, dark spots in the balls. As long as you don't have that, I mean, they're fine. They're just steel ball bearings. I mean, people act like these are like precious things. These are just steel ball bearings from China. The reason they're from China is because that's the cheapest source. We used to try to get balls made in the States, and the price was astronomical, and the quality wasn't that much better. It would end up, just for reference, the cost, I believe it was more than 10 times as high. Yes. Source. So that just so you know, right. When we say astronomical, it was at least 10 times higher. Sure. Sure. But back in the day, like all the balls were coming from Marco specialties. They were they were imported. As you can imagine, it is very expensive to get pallets of pinballs shipped to the states. Tons. Right. So not many companies were willing to put down that kind of capital to make that happen. Marco was and there was everybody so we we used to laugh our ass off when everybody was arguing about who had the best balls and they were saying this one is better than this one right there was like the balls that come with this machine from this very big manufacturer are garbage throw them out as soon as you get them and put Marco balls in there people didn't realize they were putting the same damn balls in the machine so it's like uh people just aren't uh um aware of what they're they're talking about uh these are all and and we were selling balls to other companies to resell them and they were arguing about x company has a better ball than this company so get them back from marco it was it was all a big crazy mess and it was a lot of fun to see people arguing about it on Pennside and we would never get it in there to set the story straight because why just yeah just enjoy the show just enjoy the show um things have changed there's a lot of stuff in the industry that's like that I think over the years of this podcast people would be surprised we've been privy to a lot of fun stuff right there's a lot of stuff out there that you know people just the insiders don't talk about and just let people argue about it on Pennside um there's no kind of like weird ball conspiracy i mean they're just steel ball bearings they're all the same except for you have your you know your chrome steel balls which would uh marco brands those as silver jets silver jets are the like the fancy machine and they're um they're super hardened all the way correct like if if you if you were to take a standard steel ball bearing your standard pinball and cut it in half you're going to have like this crust the outside layer which is somewhat shiny and then the middle is like all all black and and what you would see if there was pitting in the ball right um if you take like a silver jet and cut it in half it is it looks the same all the way through it's it is uh denser you're not going to get as many divots and scratches over the years and it will magnetize easier that's that's the main issue you're you're probably not going to want to put this in a dialed in or a silver jet in a in a dialed in you're going to want to use a standard ball those are your two major differences in in in balls and there are other other companies have their their own brands of chrome steel balls and they may be getting them from various like we said we haven't been on the manufacturing side of this for some time now and i suspect i have heard that people are maybe getting different sources for things. But there are two basic things, and they're going to manufacture them under their fancy premium ball or their standard ball. And we always put the fancy premium. We use silver jets in every game that we have that does not have a lot of magnets in it For sure and they stay shiny longer and they they real pretty in a classic ballet uh and then we use the standard balls in which is just a standard marco pinball pb116 right um yeah in all in our magnet games and to continue with that um he wants us to go through each manufacturer and what we think um but you know that would take for a long time but let's just say um there are pinball manufacturers that have certain parts that seem to consistently break um whether it be a coil stop or screw what what what happens here is in in the supply chain and manufacturing chain a a large company is going to order a ton of one part i mean i'm not going to just order 24 coil stops at once or or try to get a quote on 25 springs right so they'll buy a you know 10 000 to 100 000 of a certain part and and they they might go use these parts for for many years um if they find out there's there's a slight issue for They're not going to just chunk them and then have, you know, there's no telling how much this all cost them. So they would have to slowly change that out once they got rid of all these parts. So that's what you see. You know, these manufacturers are not using, you know, less than quality parts, you know, because they want to. No, it's just one of those things like, man, it didn't turn up in the last batch. And then for some reason, this batch is this way. Right. But I have, you know, 144,000. Sure. Landed. Yeah. What do I do? And we would see that happen at Marco's Specialties. But, you know, we might be dealing with, you know, like 10 parts. And we're like, hey, this is not the same stuff you sent us last time. Oh, well, we changed to this. and then we decide, okay, well, we're going to send this back. Can you give us a better quality? But when you're talking about thousands and thousands of parts, it is harder to change those quickly. And I think that people assume nefariousness or chintziness where it is not there. Like we've really truly been on all corners of this industry, and we haven't ever come across anybody that I can think of off the top of my head that was intentionally trying to screw someone over. It was people doing the best they could with what they had, but supply chain is weird. It's really weird, especially if you're dealing with overseas stuff. That, I mean, it's very unpredictable and very difficult. Right, right. I mean, just a case in point, I remember when we were at Marco's Specialties, we got like a pallet of defective balls. Now, we were just stuck with these. What do you do with them? You know, so you kind of have to, you're eating thousands and thousands of dollars. Spending a lot of time on the phone. Until you find somebody with an art project or something. Yeah, eBay. So there you go. I hope we answered your question. And we're sorry you're having to spend so much money, $20,000 for a blood red Elvira. It's really cool looking though. Okay. This is another question from the email from Pinball Windfall. Is that from email? Pinball Windfall. No, that's from Discord. Oh, Discord. Pinball Windfall on Discord. If you want to chat with him and all of us on Discord, you can find the link on our website under the podcast tab. Interested to know the bat perspective on operating a few three to five machines and bars. Would you rely on just using the CoinMex, add a bill acceptor, or e-payment system that would allow payment by phone, credit card, or other? My thoughts are people don't carry much change anymore, not enough games to warrant tokens or a change machine, and I don't want patrons to bother the bar staff to make change or break larger bills. What would you do? I would add a bill acceptor. Three to five machines in a bar. Bill acceptor. Bill acceptor. I would look into some sort of credit card payment because we heard about some that could potentially work for small scale things like this. But I think the first thing I would do would be a bill acceptor. Can you put those in classic games? Might be a sticking point there. Yeah, I don't know how that would go. Okay. I think bill acceptor and the ones that do accept bill acceptors and it may be one of those tiny like tabletop yeah because you can buy those inexpensively right change machine yeah that just hold like a hundred dollars in quarters or something right yeah yep that's what I would do cool simple but you would stay away from swipe or credit card systems um I would wait to do those until the Machines have proven themselves at the location, which is a little bit of a chicken and egg, right? Right. But also – That's a very big investment. You have to worry about a payment portal taking 10% to 20% of whatever you're making off of three to five machines. That's a big dent. I'm just not that person. I just like – we've talked about it ad nauseum. So bill acceptor is – bill acceptor and a small change machine, a small inexpensive. Change machine. Next question. All righty. Gutter Ghoul. I thought we went over... Did we not go over this one? Dream lineup? That's new. Is that new? That was... I thought... I didn't think we covered that before. Okay. We'll do it again if we did. This is from Gutter Ghoul. Our buddy Gutter Ghoul. Yeah. What's your dream lineup for five rounds of group match play? Either five machines where you know you'll mow everybody down. I'm never sure I'm going to mow everybody down. The people at the bat are too damn good. Or five machines where you'll have the most fun competing. Classics. See, I was about to say classics. Like five machines. I would rather play classics. Because I think it, well, against some people. Because like recently in the finals, I played Adam Horton. and he picked The Bank with Stars, and he's good at classics. He's great. Yeah, I don't want to go against him. It does. I'm never going to beat Adam at a classics game. So there's – I think I would do like three classics and then – Like a WPC? A WPC and then a Stern. Yeah. Yeah. And the Sterns that I happen to know best would be like Jurassic Park or – probably Jurassic Park is the Stern that I know the best. 007 right now. Oh, yeah. You've been practicing that game. Yeah. Yeah, that's a lot of fun. Yeah, so that's a little mix, but a mix, but heavy on the classics. Yeah. Yeah, classic ballet, classic Gottlieb. You know, we haven't seen the Gottliebs in a while. I know, I know. The Gottliebs actually used to, the grandsons. Of the Gottlieb. Mr. Gottlieb. They used to play with us, but I think they moved to like Hawaii or something. Every time I see them, they've taken photos in this tropical location, which looks really nice. Wow. Yeah. We miss those boys. Okay, so moving on. Jardcade. Jardcade. Jardcade. Sorry. Jard. Our buddy Jard. Our buddy Jard. He goes by Jardcade. It's like his little pinball business. Yep. He's running tournaments now. Starting next week. Yeah, this is going to be cool. We love that. for the next pod what are some tips you'd give someone on their first time td-ing this is this is important because this is a scary thing yeah it's intimidating to yeah to get into td-ing you're always afraid that other people know more than you or you're going to screw something up first i'll start off by saying jard is having his uh christmas tournament which is his foray into running tournaments next Thursday, which is the 14th at 6.30 p.m. And there's a lot of prizes, cash prizes, and I think raffle-y prizes, cool stuff. He's a great guy. And this is going to be, as far as I know, his very first time being a TD. The number one thing I would do would be read the IFPA rule sheet. It's like six pages or something. It's not very long. Read it thoroughly. Read it a couple of times, and then ask questions of more experienced TDs if there are things that are not clear. And the other main thing that I would recommend is to be consistent. Yeah. Because even if you do make a mistake, you're making the same mistake across the board, and nobody feels... Slided. Slided. Yeah. I will say that TDing gets much, much easier as you do it. This last tournament that we had that was the league finals, I had to make some very difficult calls. Right, heartbreaking. Yeah. Some critical things that mattered. Did it help? This is not a stab at your playing ability. You weren't in the finals. but did it did that help that you weren't playing in the finals 100 right right because i'm only thinking about you know i'm able to keep my eye on what's what's going on and i'm not distracted um but i mean i td and play all the time so i don't think it would have been a huge a huge deal but all of the other tds were in the finals so yeah yeah um one thing i would tell jarred cade is that do not let players push you around and they they will try they are 100 going to try the even not intentionally right not intentionally emotional they don't want to get a dq or they don't you know for whatever whatever may happen right they want they're they're emotionally invested and some of that's just going to come out sure you you are the judge and jury you make the this you know you have to make a important decisions here um the the worst thing the the thing that i uh have have had to deal with when making decisions is that the the players will explain what happened and then how they want to proceed if they try to do that just say hey slow down all i need to know are the facts i don't need to know how the players would like to proceed when there was an infraction. Right. Because it's not up to them. And they think it is. They're like, well, all of us agreed. Yeah. It doesn't matter. We really like player three, and we don't want him or her to be DQ'd. Right. Well, you know, that's great. But things need to be consistent across the board. 100%. And you don't even know. One of the things I like to encourage is tell me what happened, you know, using player two, player four. I don't want to know the names because it makes it easier for everybody if you can see that I'm making an objective decision. This isn't based on whether or not so-and-so brought cookies that night or something. Certainly. So that's what both of us would say. Consistency and be familiar with the rules. And then you first go out like Jard is going to be TDing next Thursday. But I'll be there. You'll be there. And if you have a question, ask someone with more experience. He's going to have plenty of help. You're going to be a junior TD before you're a senior TD. And also, I would recommend joining the IFPA Discord. Yes. And going, like, I mean, you could do it every day if you had the time. But at least every week, look at the recent discussions. because that will get you into the mentality of how to deal with... They post some weird situations there. But remember, the ultimate ruling is with you. So just be confident. And you know what? If you make a mistake, you'll learn from it and you'll be able to adjust for other tournaments you run. Cool. Thank you so much, Jard Cade. jarred for the question. Now, we have a good one here from Coinslot Scott. Coinslot Scott. He, his question is, a possible bat cast debate. Should auxiliary lighting of games be allowed in tournaments? So, we think this, I think this came up because the photo that you posted of Mark winning the last one, he's wearing a headlamp. Right. Mark does not wear a headlamp when he plays. You just happened to catch him, you know, hey, let me take your picture while he was working on a machine. Yeah. So he turned around and he had the headlamp on and that sparked this whole, what do you, can you wear a headlamp? The debate. The debate. But not just headlamps, any auxiliary lighting. Auxiliary lighting. Yeah. And we have players that use a variety of auxiliary lighting. Right. And there have been some, some in real life debates about this recently, But there is no rule against it. Right. So I will make no rule against it. Yeah. Does it give an unfair advantage, do you think? It can. On certain situations, especially when a mode has a strobing effect. Or a darkening effect. Or a darkening effect. But what comes to mind is Attack from Mars. I think it's called Strobe Multiball, right? It is, in fact, called Strobe Multiball. I think you're obviously going to have an advantage if you have a bright light on the play field, which is going to eliminate the strobing. Also, Venom has a strobing mode. Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones. Lots of games have seizure-inducing lights. There is an argument there. you're you're you're changing the way the game was designed to be played and then the other side of the argument will just bring your own headlamp if you have a hard if you've got a problem with someone else using a light if you think that makes it easier for them bring your own right that's my the the lighting doesn't bother me but i can see where some players are like that's unfair There also may be players with some type of visual disability that they need extra lighting. Or maybe they'll have a seizure. Wow. That does happen. Yeah, I mean, it hasn't happened. They'll start stimming in the corner. No, that did happen. We had a girl have a seizure. Oh, we did. Yes, I forgot about her. Yeah, that's been many years. I wonder where she's been. She may have moved. We haven't seen her in a long time. But she had had, on more than one occasion, had seizures playing pinball. If I remember, it wasn't a game with what we were talking about as a strobing effect. It was just a general... Well, all the flashing. Right. Yeah, and she just passed out and fell back. I am. And luckily she was okay. She got right back up and was like, what happened? Yeah, but it's scary. Yeah, it's a real thing. So, in conclusion, use a light if you want to. That is what we think about all that. Is all this old? Everything else is, yeah. So we're at the end. We are at the end. That was it. That was it. What are we at? Hour 17? Man, time flies when you are having fun on your birthday. Wow. So what's going on? Do we need to update people on any news? We kind of went over tournaments. We're having Chewy's. Okay. Well, Jard's is next Thursday, the 14th of December at 6.30 p.m. 6.30. And Chewy's, end of the year, Holiday Bash is Sunday the 17th at noon. Good deal. Both tournaments where you can get your end of year Whopper points, which are very important for some people, teetering on that top 24 line. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're within shooting distance with a couple of these. I don't know about this year. Maybe next year if I can keep this streak up and keep playing like the champ that I am. Yes, you are the champ. Wonderful. Right on. So I don't have any more news or anything like that. If you have any questions for us and the Bat Squad. Or Mike Vinikour, who will be joining us in our next podcast. That is very important. So, yes, all of your Mike, especially Mike questions, because it's a special treat to have him here with us next week. In the studio. In the studio, live in person, Mike Vinikour. So send us your questions to electricbatarcade at gmail or join our Discord, which you can reach on our website. Yes, on the podcast tab on our website, go in there. There's links to all kinds of different ways you can watch and listen to this podcast. And there's a link to the Discord. You can also send questions to electricbatarcade at gmail.com. And then thanks to our sponsors, too. Game Room Goodies, real fantastic people in the business. Marco Specialties, Stern, Insider Connected. Yep. And we eat our own dog food. We use all of these companies' products and services. And that's why we want them to be a part of this great thing. Yep. We're all in it together. Right on. Another cool thing is since Mike Vinikour will be in town, he's going to play in the tournament with us on Tuesday. Yeah. So if you're local. This coming Tuesday, if you want to play with somebody who actually is a part of the team that brings these wonderful machines to life, he loves talking about them, and he's going to bring some cool Stern goodies to give out at the tournament. So join us there, Tuesday, 630. Start of a new series. Oh, it's a brand new series. and this will be for next year right? yes these whoppers will not go in until January because this series will end in January fantastic yeah this is going to be fun well thank you for joining me I'm glad you could come into the studio we love chatting with you and getting a little insight on running an arcade thank you for inviting me thank you for the flowers I think this is the first time anybody's given me flowers this is really exciting I teared up a little bit when you gave them to me You're special and you deserve it. Thank you so much. Okay, thank you for joining us. Send us any questions or any topics you want us to go over for the next episode with Mike Vinikour. Bats are out. And right now the bats are out. We're going to do the super secret bat handshake. All right, hope you all have the best day. Thank you for joining us. _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v4)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 4ad36b90-493a-4afa-96b2-96f2c91eaa90*