# Episode 236 – Media Day **Source:** Slam Tilt Podcast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2024-09-25 **Duration:** 130m 49s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://www.slamtiltpodcast.com/2024/09/24/episode-236-media-day/ --- ## Analysis Ron and Zach from Slam Tilt Podcast attended Jersey Jack Pinball's Media Day event in Chicago to see the Avatar pinball machine. They toured the factory, discussed production methods and design decisions, and played multiple Avatar machines. Key topics included pricing ($12k LE / $15k CE), playfield manufacturing (Merco vs. Bader), USB communications upgrades, wide body discontinuation, and Avatar's impressive screen quality and early code state. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Jersey Jack moved away from the 'Platinum Edition' model after Elton John and returned to a Limited Edition (5,000 units) for Avatar — _Ron and Zach both recall JJP stating the Platinum model was specific to Elton John due to the 'Platinum Records' branding concept, and the LE cap of 5,000 for Avatar is presented as effectively unlimited given sales projections._ - [HIGH] Merco playfield manufacturer lacks capability to execute three-layer silk-screened special ink process required for Avatar Collector's Edition; Bader is handling that instead — _Direct statement from JJP representatives: 'Merco did not have the skill set to do what they needed for the collector's edition play field' which involves 'one level of that, but not three levels.'_ - [HIGH] Jersey Jack has transitioned from Ethernet cables to USB for playfield board communications, starting with Godfather — _Zach's question about factory communications: 'They're now using USB for intersections of the playfield communications, from the playfield boards to the computer. And did he say they started with Godfather with that? Yeah.'_ - [MEDIUM] Jersey Jack does not manufacture wide body cabinets and has no plans to resume; Eric Minier's comment 'that is the thing we have done' suggested finality — _Zach interprets Eric's response to wide body question as definitively closing that line: 'I'm thinking like, okay, they're not doing any more wide bodies... That is the thing we did. I mean, that's how I took it.'_ - [HIGH] Jersey Jack Guns N' Roses Standard Edition sold approximately 160 units (one of the lowest-performing SKUs) — _Jack Guarneri stated 'they sold like 100, what was it? Yeah, it's like one or 200. Yeah, it was like 160 of them or something.' Described as 'an insultingly small amount.'_ - [HIGH] Avatar Avatar pricing: Limited Edition $12,000; Collector's Edition $15,000 (difference of $2,400-$2,600) — _Zach states: 'It's $12,000 for the Ellie and it's $15,000 for the TV' with subsequent discussion confirming the $2,600 price gap (hosts debate exact math but converge on this delta)._ - [HIGH] Tom Capera moved from Stern to Jersey Jack in a COO role — _Ron's observation: 'Tom Capera, who used to work at Stern and moved to Jersey Jack, and I think the reason why he moved was apparent in his first sentence, which was, hi, I'm Tom Capera, the COO of Jersey Jack Pinball.'_ - [HIGH] Jersey Jack uses custom 3D-printed flipper alignment tools rather than factory-engraved alignment holes on playfields — _Zach's direct question answered by Eric: 'They literally have like a, what do you say, like a 3D-printed tool thing that they just put down, and they align it to that.' This applies to both lower and upper flippers._ - [HIGH] Avatar mini wizard mode (triggered by spelling PANDORA) is not yet coded; Zach reached it in early playtesting and encountered no functionality — _Zach: 'In Zach's second game, he got to the mini wizard mode that's not coded yet. You spell Pandora and you're supposed to get the, what was it called? The mini wizard mode... Nothing happened.'_ - [HIGH] Jersey Jack Avatar machines at media day were set to 'really easy' difficulty, causing extra balls to be dispensed 'like candy' — _Zach: 'It was spitting out extra balls like candy' and 'they had to set up really easy. I don't think I've even played two games.'_ ### Notable Quotes > "Hi, I'm Tom Capera, the COO of Jersey Jack Pinball." > — **Tom Capera**, ~0:28:00 > _Reveals Tom Capera's promotion from Stern to COO role at Jersey Jack, signaling organizational structure change and talent migration._ > "Merco did not have the skill set to do what they needed for the collector's edition play field." > — **Eric Minier (Jersey Jack)**, ~0:42:00 > _Explains manufacturing outsourcing decision: Merco handles LE single-layer, Bader handles CE three-layer silk screen process. Reveals production constraints at specialty vendors._ > "That is the thing we have done. We did that. Like literally like that." > — **Eric Minier**, ~0:44:00 > _Response to wide body cabinet question interpreted as decisive closure on that product line; suggests finality and no future wide body plans._ > "They're now using USB for intersections of the playfield communications, from the playfield boards to the computer." > — **Zach (Slam Tilt)**, ~0:50:00 > _Technology upgrade from Ethernet to USB infrastructure; began with Godfather; indicates modernization of board communication systems._ > "You spell Pandora and you're supposed to get the... The mini wizard mode... Nothing happened. It was the first game." > — **Zach (Slam Tilt)**, ~1:21:00 > _Documents early code state of Avatar; mini wizard mode mechanic (PANDORA spelling) is placeholder/incomplete in early playfield builds._ > "Even the hardest possible setting is... after your third multiple, we start to make it harder." > — **Bill Grupp (Jersey Jack)**, ~1:07:00 > _Explains Crocodile Rock difficulty setting nuance: extra hard only affects third multiball onwards, frustrating players expecting immediate impact._ > "They're clearly just, like, way above Stern and everyone else. And they continue to be. They've been that since day one, though." > — **Zach (Slam Tilt)**, ~1:13:00 > _Assessment of Jersey Jack's screen/graphics quality superiority over competitors; consistent positioning since launch._ > "Yeah, it's like one or 200... It was like 160 of them or something. An insultingly small amount." > — **Jack Guarneri / Zach (Slam Tilt)**, ~1:27:00 > _Guns N' Roses Standard Edition sales volume reveals market rejection of value SKU; justifies discontinuation of stripped-down models._ > "If you play Godzilla and get the... the burning buildings and the bonus... It's like all this pixelization and artifacting everywhere on black and white too." > — **Zach (Slam Tilt)**, ~1:10:00 > _Technical criticism of competing manufacturers' screen quality (specifically Stern/Godzilla); highlights Jersey Jack's comparative visual fidelity advantage._ > "I was hoping you could. Well, actually, I like the setting he said, but I wish extra hard meant that was like the first or second one." > — **Bruce Nightingale (Slam Tilt)**, ~1:06:00 > _User feedback on difficulty setting granularity; desire for more fine-tuned difficulty progression options in modern pinball code._ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Jersey Jack Pinball | company | Boutique pinball manufacturer hosting Media Day event; subject of factory tour; producing Avatar pinball machine. | | Avatar | game | Unreleased Jersey Jack pinball machine featuring Avatar IP, dual playfield manufacturing partners (Merco/Bader), UV paint, hologram topper, advanced LCD screen. LE $12k, CE $15k. | | Ron Hallett | person | Co-host of Slam Tilt Podcast; attended Jersey Jack Media Day; traveled from Albany to Chicago despite short notice and high flight cost ($600). | | Bruce Nightingale | person | Co-host of Slam Tilt Podcast; unable to attend Media Day due to prior ELO concert commitment in Cleveland; contributed to podcast analysis post-event. | | Zach Sharp | person | Third host of Slam Tilt Podcast (non-paid position); attended Jersey Jack Media Day on short notice; primary player of Avatar machines; observed mini wizard mode non-functionality. | | Jack Guarneri | person | Owner/founder of Jersey Jack Pinball; appeared via Zoom at Media Day; discussed Guns N' Roses Standard Edition sales figures and operator economics. | | Tom Capera | person | Former Stern employee; now COO of Jersey Jack Pinball; represented company at Media Day event. | | Brett Abbott | person | Co-owner of Jersey Jack Pinball (son in family investor duo); attended Media Day; family infused capital to save company during Hobbit era financial crisis. | | Eric Minier | person | Jersey Jack Pinball representative; conducted factory tour; answered questions on manufacturing, wide bodies, flipper alignment, and playfield communications technology. | | Keith Johnson | person | Jersey Jack Pinball rules/design team member; presented Avatar rules flowchart (24x36 poster); explained ruleset to media. | | Bill Grupp | person | Jersey Jack Pinball staff member; discussed Elton John Crocodile Rock difficulty settings with Ron; provided technical explanation of multiball tuning. | | Crystal Gemnick | person | Jersey Jack Pinball employee; seated at lunch table during Media Day; interacted with podcast hosts. | | Steve Ritchie | person | Legendary pinball designer; attended Media Day lunch; discussed career transition to/from video games and Devastator project; fist-bumped Zach. | | Slam Tilt Podcast | organization | Upstate New York-based pinball podcast hosted by Ron Hallett and Bruce Nightingale; invited to Jersey Jack Media Day; covering event in Episode 236. | | Merco | company | Playfield manufacturing partner for Avatar Limited Edition; handles single-layer silk screen process; lacks capability for three-layer Collector's Edition spec. | | Bader | company | Playfield manufacturing partner for Avatar Collector's Edition; capable of three-layer silk-screened special ink process with proper alignment. | | Stern Pinball | company | Competitor to Jersey Jack; mentioned for proximity to JJP's Chicago facility (two blocks away); compared unfavorably on screen quality/graphics capabilities vs. Jersey Jack. | | Elton John | game | Previous Jersey Jack release; featured Platinum Edition / Collector's Edition model structure; Platinum model was title-specific marketing approach. | | Guns N' Roses | game | Jersey Jack release featuring Standard Edition SKU that sold approximately 160 units; poor performance justifies discontinuation of value-tier models. | | Godfather | game | Jersey Jack release; first to implement USB playfield board communications (vs. prior Ethernet cable runs). | | Godzilla | game | Competitor pinball machine (implied Stern or third-party); screen quality criticized for pixelization and artifacting; comparative example of visual inferiority vs. Jersey Jack tech. | | Abbas family | organization | Financial backers/investors who infused capital into Jersey Jack Pinball during Hobbit-era financial crisis; co-owners of company. | | Media Day event | event | Jersey Jack Pinball-hosted press event in Chicago; included factory tour, media roundtable discussion, Avatar gameplay, and lunch with company leadership and industry figures. | | Woz | game | First Jersey Jack Pinball LCD machine; referenced as design standard-setter that remains technically ahead of competitors today. | ### Topics - **Primary:** Jersey Jack Media Day factory tour and production capabilities, Avatar pinball machine specs, pricing, and early code state, Playfield manufacturing partners (Merco vs. Bader) and capability gaps, Jersey Jack technology upgrades (USB communications, screen quality) - **Secondary:** Wide body cabinet discontinuation and market feedback, Jersey Jack business model: LE/CE pricing, Standard Edition failure, operator economics, Screen graphics quality comparison: Jersey Jack vs. Stern/competitors - **Mentioned:** Flipper alignment methodology and custom tooling ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.78) — Hosts express genuine appreciation for JJP hospitality and manufacturing quality. Enthusiasm for Avatar's screen tech, design attention to detail (color-coded diagrams, T-nut jigs). Some mild criticism: frustration with incomplete code (mini wizard mode), disappointment with difficulty settings on Elton John, skepticism about pricing and LE caps. Overall tone is fan-friendly, insider-access excitement tempered by constructive technical critique. ### Signals - **[business_signal]** Operator feedback at Media Day suggests Jersey Jack machines lose equivalent resale value proportionally across tiers (LE ~$12k sells for ~$10k, Standard ~$7k sells for ~$5k), questioning financial viability for commercial operators despite lower entry cost. (confidence: medium) — Ron: 'An operator at works with an operator was saying like they imply that like they lose money on Jersey Jacks... you can put out 12 grand or you can put out 7 grand and then when you sell it you'll get 10 grand or 5 grand you're still good at losing them out.' - **[community_signal]** Jersey Jack's factory design emphasizes detailed assembly guidance (color-coded diagrams, custom jigs for T-nuts and flipper alignment) as standard practice, reflecting commitment to operator/owner serviceability post-sale. (confidence: medium) — Zach: 'I thought that was really obvious, in retrospect, cool thing... They have nice color-coded diagrams above each station... they want to make it as easy as possible for everyone to be able to assemble the game.' - **[competitive_signal]** Jersey Jack maintains perceived screen/graphics quality advantage over Stern and competitors; Zach contrasts Godzilla pixelization/artifacting with Avatar's 'crystal clear' LCD quality, citing HD rendering capabilities and particle effects. (confidence: high) — Zach: 'Jersey Jack's at, like, these crazy high def, even just, like, the word high score number four has particle effects... they're clearly just, like, way above Stern and everyone else. And they continue to be. They've been that since day one.' - **[design_philosophy]** Jersey Jack's manufacturing approach emphasizes assembly worker support via color-coded diagrams, custom jigs (T-nut placement, flipper alignment tools), and standardized documentation above each station, contrasting with minimal operator support (no alignment hole markings on playfields). (confidence: high) — Zach: 'They want to make it as easy as possible for everyone to be able to assemble the game... nice color-coded diagrams above each station.' But also: 'the play fields, they don't have any alignment holes for the flippers... they literally have like a 3D-printed tool thing... so they have no idea to align it besides just trying to eyeball it.' - **[licensing_signal]** Avatar features UV paint and black light playfield effects with hologram topper; represents aesthetic differentiation strategy and IP-specific production complexity not standard across JJP lineup. (confidence: high) — Zach: 'The play feels, so for Avatar, they're using UV. They've got, like, UV paint on there. They're using black light. And they have... The topper was basically like the Mando topper with the hologram. But way cranked up because it's Jersey Jack.' - **[market_signal]** Jersey Jack LE cap of 5,000 units for Avatar is presented as effectively unlimited ('which means it's not limited because they're never going to sell that many'), suggesting conservative sales projections despite market recovery. (confidence: medium) — Ron: 'The LE model was buy-buy and it was just going to be... for Avatar, it's back to the LE, which is limited to 5,000, which means it's not limited because they're never going to sell that many.' - **[personnel_signal]** Tom Capera transitioned from Stern to Jersey Jack Pinball as COO, signaling organizational authority shift and talent migration from market leader to boutique competitor. (confidence: high) — Ron's statement: 'Tom Capera, who used to work at Stern and moved to Jersey Jack... I'm Tom Capera, the COO of Jersey Jack Pinball.' Guarneri presence via Zoom and Brett Abbott in-person suggest COO role is newly filled/newly public. - **[product_strategy]** Avatar mini wizard mode (PANDORA spelling trigger) is incomplete/not coded in early production units; Zach reached it during Media Day play and encountered no functionality. (confidence: high) — Zach: 'In Zach's second game, he got to the mini wizard mode that's not coded yet... You spell Pandora and you're supposed to get the... The mini wizard mode... Nothing happened.' - **[product_strategy]** Avatar maintains three-tier model (LE $12k / CE $15k) with differentiated playfield suppliers (Merco vs. Bader) and manufacturing complexity. Merco cannot execute three-layer silk screen process required for CE; Bader handles premium spec. (confidence: high) — JJP statement: 'Merco did not have the skill set to do what they needed for the collector's edition play field. Which is to do like a regular digital print of the whole play field and then three layers of silk screened special ink.' - **[business_signal]** Jersey Jack discontinued Standard Edition SKU across lineup (Guns N' Roses sold only ~160 units) and reversed Elton John's Platinum Edition model, indicating market data drove SKU rationalization to LE/CE only. (confidence: high) — Guarneri: 'They sold like 100, what was it? Yeah, it's like one or 200. Yeah, it was like 160 of them or something' (Guns N' Roses Standard). 'We tested the market and the market said no.' - **[technology_signal]** Jersey Jack shifted from Ethernet cable infrastructure to USB for playfield board communications starting with Godfather, improving cable management complexity and presumably maintainability. (confidence: high) — Zach: 'Previously they were using, you know, like, Ethernet cables... there's just giant runs of Ethernet everywhere. But apparently now they've swapped to USB' starting with Godfather. --- ## Transcript When is Thanksgiving? I think it's like the 3rd November of the year or something. Remember that time your mom tried to have Thanksgiving? Cause like, she had that boyfriend for like a week. Lots of dudes are thankful for your mom, Beavis. Coming to you from beautiful upstate New York, this is the Slamtail Podcast, a show about all things pinball. I'm your host, Ron Hallett, here with the other host, Bruce Nightingale. Who's tired. He's tired. And we're also with our third host, our co-host, Isaac. I'm not co-host yet. I'm not getting paid. We're not getting paid either. I want my dividends. Dividends of what? We don't even have a swag store or anything. Yeah, we have nothing. I need 20% of all the stocks when you go public. I can get more than $60 from X-Men. For your X-Men? Wait, you actually... Well, you got a whole $60. Yeah, you got $60? Yes. Someone gave you money to get X-Men? Five people gave me money. Holy shit. So five divided into 60 is like an average of $12. Wow. I mean, I offered to buy you out of Scooby, and you didn't take it up, so... No, you said at the end. If you need to push over, you said. Oh, yeah. Well, $60 is not a big push towards it. You mean, if such a seven now puts her a six, that's pretty good. Yeah. You're just two digits off. Yeah, exactly. The hardest two. And this is episode 236. Is it? Yes, it is. Okay. And we're trying to get this in before Ron goes to Robert Englunds. Don't forget, you bloody old chaps. Give him a big, luscious hug. And a kiss on each cheek, right? On each cheek. Just grab him. Which cheeks? It's your choice. And that would be Italy, Zach. You know, the kiss of death and all that stuff. Yeah, we're going to have Italian jokes. I'm just going to co-op that for the UK. Hey, what the fuck it up? Jesus. The first thing I have on the docket, I just want to mention, rest in peace. to James Earl Jones, Darth Vader is dead. Luke, I'm your father. No, you're not. He's dead, Jim. No! No! He was old. He was 92, I think. He was in the bonus round. Yes, bonus time. Yeah. But, I mean, one of the greatest voices ever. Yes. Is he any pinball machine? Besides the Star Wars ones? Besides the Star Wars ones, but any custom speech at all? No, I don't think so at all. Oh, such a missed opportunity. We need a hunt for Red October. Wait a minute. He was in that? Was it Sean Connery? Okay, what role did he play in that? I just remember Sean Connery. He was Jack Ryan's boss. Oh, okay. Yes, yes. All right. Yes. Remember when they exploded the torpedo early and he folded the thing over and said, you will not remember this at all. Is that what one of the Baldwin's was in that? Yes. Which Baldwin? It wasn't you. Oh, it was Alec Baldwin. It was Alec Baldwin. All right. Ryan, these bullets don't like in the chubs. I'll take anal bum cover for 100, Alex. I love those. That's one of my favorite things I see is on the SNL skits with Sean Connery. Yes, Sean Connery. I'll take whore ads for $500. I find the funnier part is when he reads it back to him. It's like, it's not whore ads. Who reads? It's not whore ads. The game is afoot, Alex. I'll take anal ads. It's annual. okay has Max seen any of these skits? oh my god holy shit he's seen something they were regularly doing the high school discussion for a few years so let's get to the meat of the matter here I can take a 20 minute siesta yeah you probably could at this point because you weren't there I wasn't there Slamtail Podcast was invited to Media Day at Jersey Jack Pinball first I want to say thank you for inviting me and Ron. Unfortunately, they picked the shitty weekend to do it. They picked a weekend where Bruce was in Cleveland watching ELO. Yep. I had my ELO tickets for six months, and the week before we ate at a concert and their media getup was like, Hey, we'd like to invite you to them. I'm like, I can't go. On very short notice. Not on very short notice like that. And I even asked Kathy, like, Kathy, do you feel like driving four hours and meeting me in Cleveland if I fly from Rochester? She's like, no. Okay. I was going to say, like, you can't really do it on longer notice, but I guess they could have said just, like, hey, do you want to come see Mystery Game on this date? Yeah. Well, didn't we know it was Avatar at that point? Oh, wait, everyone's known it for a while. I mean, it had been leaked, but. No, I thought it was already announced. It was already announced. At this point, they told it to us, but, like, they could have given us a month or two warning of the date. Hey, yeah, like plan your thing ahead. Complaining already. No, I was not complaining. I was very honored. It's constructive criticism. We were very lucky to be invited, and I feel very privileged that we went to Jersey Jack instead of – Sorry. The funny thing is, because it was on short notice, it was like the week before, about a week's notice for the flying out of wonderful Albany International Airport, even though it doesn't go anywhere international and hasn't for years, was guess how much it was? $600. Yeah, from fucking Albany to Chicago. A short, under two-hour flight. When do you plan to advance? Expo is like $350. That's a lot of upcharge then. Yeah. Yeah, and the $3.50 that I got is like the subhuman fare. Oh, nice. Yeah, not even the economy, but the subhuman economy. That's what I always take. He's hanging on the wing. Yeah. He's taping to the wing. Well, I calculated if I got regular economy, it was a certain price. If I got subhuman economy but then picked my seats, which you've got to pay for, it was less. So that's what I did. That's all you care for because you don't have to pack. Yeah, you don't need anything. And my dad does the same thing when we go. We just have backpacks, so it's so much easier. I don't care if there's overhead bin space or anything because we're not using it. It's great. I should get a backpack. And we don't care if we're, like, seating group six or whatever. It doesn't matter. Yeah. But thank you for inviting me. So when they said it to us, I said, well, I can't go, but can we invite somebody else? Our third host, Zach. Our third host. And then ten people down the line, they finally asked me. Yes. 10 people down the line. Very good. Yeah, so he has Zach, and he hemmed and hawed for a while. Wasn't an immediate yes, but... Why do you think he'd off work and stuff? Well, yeah, that's easy for you. It is easy for him. It is easy, but you gotta, like, go through the motions and say, well, let me check. Are you cutting your nails or something? What's with the clicking? Nothing. No. I see you mute. He literally muted, did something, and then turned himself off mute. I was playing with a knife and I accidentally retracted it. Jesus Christ. Wait a minute. What are you, a serial killer? I was playing with a knife thinking, what I can do with this. No, an exacto knife. Oh. Oh, no. I guess a box knife. With a nice Chianti. Thanks. Thanks. So we went to Jersey Jack, and because they would, oh, I won't get too much in this, but they reimbursed up to a certain amount. Yeah. So we calculated, basically, we had to go Friday morning, get in early. Hopefully our room will be ready, which it was, thank God. Luckily. Although it was, like, the very end room on the far end of the whole building, so I think that we just got, like, short-safted with the shittiest thing. Hmm. And, yeah, the air conditioner in our room where it was plugged in, the entire outlet was ripped out. Yeah. Just from the wall. Yeah, just hanging there, like, wow, really nice. the elevator scared me. It did weird things. Not as weird as the one RPC. Oh. Yeah. What's wrong with your elevator? Oh, it's always broken. In new ways. It finds different ways to have problems each time. So, the media event started at 10 a.m. So, we got there, what did we get there? Like 7? Yeah. Something like that. So, we got to hang out for a little while and then we just walked over. Originally, they said it's like the hotel's across the street from Jersey Jack. It wasn't exactly across the street. It's like two blocks. Two blocks. So he had to walk a little bit. And you could see Stern from there. I mean, they are really close. I think, honestly, we were closer to Stern than Jersey Jack in the hotel. And yeah, we got to go to the media event. There were many other media members there from different podcasts, different outlets, different media, whatever. I mean, like Matt Marquet, who we rip off all the time. He was there. Triple Drain was there. Joel, just one member. Loser Kid was there. I think it was just Scott. Josh wasn't there. But, you know, there was all kinds of different media personnel there, and we got to talk about Avatar and Jersey Jack in general. The first person that spoke, they put us in. We went to, like, a meeting room. We got little name tags. Did the meeting room have different titles? Like, was it, like, Stern? You had stars and you had – If there was, I didn't see anything on the door. I don't remember. I'm just wondering. That's, you know. Yeah. I mean, it's smaller than Stern. I mean, it definitely had a smaller feel. Let's put it that way. It was a very standard business conference room. Yes, very standard. Okay. Jack, Jersey Jack, Jack Guarnieri himself was there via Zoom, and we had – Well, Tom Capera, who used to work at Stern and moved to Jersey Jack, and I think the reason why he moved was apparent in his first sentence, which was, hi, I'm Tom Capera, the COO of Jersey Jack Pinball. Oh, okay. That would make sense why he moved then, because he was not COO of Stern. We had the president there. We had Biden there? No. Oh, God. So Jersey Jack, as most, well, in case you don't know the story, During Hobbit, they were running out of money. They were possibly going to go out of business. And a billionaire father and son team came in to infuse some new cash into this venture. So they are the owners, the co-owners. I think the last name is Abbott. I think I got that right. It was Brett Abbott. Brett Abbott. The son was there. I'm old now, so everyone looks young to me, but he looked young. How young would he think he is, Zach? Is he younger than you at this point? Potentially. Yeah. I'm an old man now, so. Yeah. Most people are younger than me. 30-year-old Zach. Super enthusiastic crew. We talked about Avatar. They brought out this rule sheet thing. How big was that thing? It was like a full 24 by 36 poster board. Yeah. And they put on the table, like, here's the flow chart of the rules of Avatar. and Keith P. Johnson's like, he's sitting right behind me and he starts going over the rules and I'm trying to find what he's talking about like on this little chart and I got lost within the first 10 seconds and then I was just like, okay. I got lost a lot but mostly because they kept using avatar words. Oh, yeah, I didn't understand any of that because I haven't – Oh, yeah, the blah, blah, blah modes and the blah, blah, blah multiball and I'm like – Oh, there it is. Then they took us out for a tour of the factory. I learned the cage is super important where they keep all their parts. It has all these things on there like, no unauthorized entry. You guys could have had a cage match in there. Yeah. If they let us in, we weren't authorized to. Yeah, I saw the cage at Stern. I was like, I wonder what that thing is. And then no one talked about it. So it's just like, oh. Oh, must be just as important at Stern. No, it's a secret at Stern. They don't want you to know about it. That's all they want you to know about it. Now, the play feels, so for Avatar, they're using UV. They've got, like, UV paint on there. They're using black light. And they have two different models of Avatar. That was the other thing that changed. When they did Elton John, they had the Platinum Edition and the Collector's Edition. And I was under the impression, at least I thought they said, that going forward, you know, the LE model was buy-buy and it was just going to be, you know, the Platinum, which was unlimited, and the Collector's Edition. But for Avatar, it's back to the LE, which is limited to 5,000, which means it's not limited because they're never going to sell that many, and the Collector's Edition. And they said the whole Platinum thing was just specific to Elton John because, you know, Platinum Records, Platinum, get it? I didn't remember it that way, but I guess I'm old, so maybe I misremembered. I remember the same thing, Ron. So I'm guessing that something that they saw from doing that did not go how they wanted, and they walked it back. Okay. All right. I wasn't the only one to remember that, because I was at Expo when they unveiled this, and they had the new wording and all that stuff. Well, they unveiled the game, but they announced it previously. I think they just did it because PE edition sounds stupid. Okay. Like, I see that on Pinterest. I'm just like, the what? Every time. So these playfields, they are Mirco. Is it Mirco or Mirco? How do you say it? Shitco. Oh, God. Come on, Bruce. Break the tie. Is it Mirco or Mirco? I call it Mirco. Mirco. Okay. So the limited edition playfields are being done by Mirco. The collector's edition playfields are being done by Bader. Have you heard of that before? I've heard that name before, but I don't know where. Master. Master. Oh, God. Stop. No. I'm sorry, but that's all the first thing. Okay, Bruce, I was waiting for this recording because I figured you would have heard this before. Nope, never heard of Bader. Really? Because I know I've heard that name before. I know I've heard that in pinball circles somewhere. They said that Mirco did not have the skill set to do what they needed for the collector's edition play field. Which is to do like a regular digital print of the whole play field and then three layers of Marc Silk screened special ink and then clear coat all aligned properly. It is hard. It sounds hard. Pinball's hard. So Mirko can apparently handle one level of that, but not three levels. Yeah, they did not have the skill set. I think that is something along the lines of the wording that was used. Well, someone asked about wide bodies, any wide bodies in the future. and Eric Minier, he was doing the tour and he was like, that is the thing we have done. We did that. Like literally like that. He specifically did that. Yeah. So I'm thinking like, okay, they're not doing any more wide bodies. I mean, that's how I took it. That is the thing we did. I mean, before the flippers were so bad that they couldn't hit any shots on the far side anyway. So you really don't want a wide body, I feel like. But now with the new flippers. You'd think it would be a bit better with the new flippers, yeah. But did you see something with their back boxes? Oh, yeah. Well, at least I saw a picture of a Wonka backbox, and it has holes for the hinges in the bottom of the backbox in two places so they can use the same head on a wide body or an air body cabinet, which is cool. I should look at my own John to see if they're still doing that or not. But the impression I got from what Eric was saying was like, yeah, we can do it if someone wants to do it, but no one has wanted to do it. Yeah, it just really sounded like, that is a thing we have done, and that was it. If I was a designer, I would be doing wide body every single time. Well, that's you, Zach. Yeah, you'd have like six levels, ten flippers, and wide bodies. I'm curious what thing in the business money make up of all that makes it so that wide bodies are so bad. I get like they're hard to do if you're blind and set up for doing that, and you only set up for doing normal stuff like Stern is, but, like, they can't seem like they should be that much more expensive just to make it a wider body that the business should be, like, shutting you down or anything on it. Hmm. Any other interesting things about the factory tour that you can think of? I learned that they're now using USB for intersections of the playfield communications, from the playfield boards to the computer. Which, did he say they started with Godfather with that? Yeah. And previously they were using, you know, like, Ethernet cables just, like, starting to end up spooky used between all the boards. And, like, there's just giant runs of Ethernet everywhere. But apparently now they've swapped to USB, which I find very interesting. But I can't articulate why. There's no good reason here. I liked that they had, like, certain parts they work on, they have to solder stuff on. And to keep it still, they make all these custom, like, holders. Jigs. so they could just put the thing on it and solder it and move it off. And I thought that was pretty cool. You could see them all over the place. We saw a bunch of Elton John parts, so in case they wanted to start that lineup again. It was just Avatar on the line. It was just one line. They also had a special jig for putting T-nuts in, where just like a thin board with holes where each T-nut should be. They just lay it on top of the play field and lock in place, and they could just stick a T-nut in really easy and just hammer them down without damaging the wood or anything. I thought that was a really obvious, in retrospect, cool thing that I've never seen before anywhere. I don't think Stern used it from what I could see either. They want to make it as easy as possible for everyone to be able to assemble the game and do their jobs. They have nice color-coded diagrams above each station. It felt sort of like when you take a Premiere game of all the printing on the bottom so they could tell the line workers where to put stuff that way. This was like not doing that but trying to go as close as possible without actually being on a physical play field. There's lots of little instructions and everything everywhere, so they can just go, done. And I got to ask my question that I always wondered about Jersey Jack. If you look at a Jersey Jack game, the playfields, they don't have any alignment holes for the flippers, either at the end or like Williams did them below. So I always wondered, like, well, how are they aligning the flippers? Are they just doing it to the in lane? You know what I mean? because that's the only thing I can think of if it's not marked. And Eric said that that's what they do. They literally have like a, what do you say, like a 3D-printed tool thing that they just put down, and they align it to that. To be fair, you can make a 3D-printed tool thing to align flopped flippers to just fine. That's true. I feel like it's still a bit of an oversight on their part. Like, oh, yeah, we have a little tool for that in the factory. Good luck for your users. You don't include the tool with the machine or anything, so they have no idea to align it besides just trying to eyeball it to the guide They're making their own tool to use. Like, just put their little dots in. Come on. Yeah, and they said it's for the upper flippers, too. It's the same thing. Yeah. So flop flippers are just not a thing. Well, one out of ten people. One out of ten people what? But there's help now, Bruce. Don't worry. Exactly. A little blue pill. See? Zach picked right up on it, and you did not. And he's the young one here. You should be used to the ED pills. Do you ever think I do pick up on stuff that I want you to explain as part of the joke, Bruce? It's great. It's even better when I explain it. I do some explainings. Yeah. That's why he's the straight man. Yes. I'm the straight man, Bruce. Yeah, he's the straight man. And remember, the straight man always makes more money. So remember that. I'm Abbott. You're Costello. Hey, Abbott. Let's see. What else from the factory tour? Well, then we had lunch. Ooh, what'd you have? Jimmy John's. Nice. And, like, the brownie things there, which were nice. I like that. Chocolate is good. Oh, Crystal was there. Crystal? Hi, Crystal. Hi, Crystal. Crystal Gemnick. We're sitting at the lunch table. We've got Crystal and Steve Ritchie sitting directly across from us, and we just chat with Crystal. Yeah. Well, I said... Yeah, you talk to Steve Ritchie some, but, like, I found it funny. Oh, Crystal. Yeah. Oh, Steve Ritchie. We see you all the time. Yes. Steve Ritchie, he, like, fist bumps Zach. Does he even know Zach? Of course he knows me. I guess so. He's the guy that runs that Slamdell podcast. Someone's got to keep this place going. I'm Steve Ritchie. No, I just talked to Steve Ritchie about Devastator, of all things. Devastator. Devastator was the video game he was working on. The first 68,000 video game. Yeah, between Hyperball and getting back into pinball. And basically he said, you know, they're working on the game, and then he gets a call from Mike Stroll who says, yeah, we just lost, what was it, $17 million on this Laserdisc game that we're doing, so we're kind of killing your project. Would you like to go back to pinball? And that's where we ended up. It seems strange that he left pinball. Hey, here's the thing that you were really successful at. Let's move you to video. Video games were taking over, though. You got to think of the market at the time. Yep, they were. But then if the market was bad for video games and they lost money, then they decided, let's go make more pinball machines. Yeah, I think his timing was just bad. He could have been the next Miyamoto if he'd only had one more year. One more year. Then he said when he came back to the factory, it was almost deserted. Like, it was bad there. Yeah, that probably would have been around 83, 84. So then I got pulled over by the cops and, well, then the rest is history. You know, high speed, et cetera. And then I saved pinball on Steve Ritchie. Forget about Space Shuttle. It was me, Steve Ritchie. What else did he say? He always goes off about, he's talking about World Poker Tour. I didn't want to do that game. I don't care about poker. He's like, now I can say numbers, and I'm going to. Hear that, Gary? Oh, yeah. What did he say? How many they actually sold? It was how much? He said it before. It was like under 2,000. Yeah. Yeah. Plus, you also said now he's in a better place, you said? Yes, yes. I'm in the right place for me right now. He's got all the lines down. Jersey Jack taught him well. Who else did I talk to? I don't know. Who else did you talk to? Bill Grupp? Oh, yeah. You exchanged complaints about Elton John. Complaints? I didn't complain. I asked him what. That was not the complaint. I didn't. I said, what's the Crocodile Rock? Crocodile Rock multiball difficulty setting do? I set it to extra hard, and it literally made no difference. And I guess you have to get to the third Crocodile Rock multiball before you notice the difference. He could see a look of disappointment on your face after he explained it to you. Yeah, I was disappointed. I was hoping you could. Well, actually, I like the setting he said, but I wish extra hard meant that was like the first or second one. Yeah, it seems true that even the hardest possible setting is. after your third multiple, we start to make it harder. What the difficulty setting is, is when you hit the Tiny Dancer target, which lights the crocodile lock to lock a ball, the third time through, if you have it set to extra hard, then when you hit the target, you have a, it's timed. You have to hit the lock in a certain amount of time or it goes out. It always seems strange to me that, like, even back in, like, System 3 Alphanumeric, They had, like, you could select difficulty levels for things, but there's also a separate, like, fine-tune. You could go into more settings and, you know, adjust everything how you want. They're like, why don't they have, like, Crocodile Rock, easy, medium, hard, custom, and then it, like, expands down to, like, multiballs before timer it starts. How long is timer? How many hits to light lock? You know, like, just put all those details in. You've got this giant screen, this super detailed menu system, but, like, you've got one setting for an entire multiball. Let's see. Then we played some Avatar. Yeah, we did. So what did you think? They had, what was it, four of them? I think it was four. Yep. Four lined up. They didn't have collector's edition playfields there, so we didn't get to see that whole, like the whole three different colors or three different UV strings. But they had regular LE playfields in collector's edition cabinets, and they had the topper there. The topper was basically like the Mando topper with the hologram. But way cranked up because it's Jersey Jack. Way cranked up. So much wording. How much? The text was so small I couldn't read. Yeah, I couldn't read it either. Look at how it said. It was like a giant screen going on up there, like showing stuff. It looked really cool, but I could not tell what was going on. But I didn't play that one that actually had it on it. Yeah, and I played it. Well, Zach played it, and I'm looking at the screen. I'm liking their new interface, at least the interface they used for this game, where it's not symmetrical, and they got the score is, like, big, so you can actually see your score easily. An inch tall text. Yes. And the video is just so much better than Zac Stark. I mean, everything on their screens is, like, way better than everyone else. Yes. Yes, but it's like – But don't forget they have a bigger screen also to use. Yeah, but it's not just that. If you play Godzilla and get the – what is it? The burning buildings and the bonus. Yes. It's like all this pixelization and artifacting everywhere on black and white too. Yes, when you change cities and you get the carnage bonus screen, it looks terrible. Artifacting everywhere and bonus screen in the black and white, it looks terrible. It's so compressed. It's just, ugh. Then you have this screen, and you just put your face right up to it, and it's just crystal clear. It looks beautiful. Yeah, they sold a shitload of those Godzilla, so I don't think they really care about that part of it. I'm being honest. That's the Jersey Jack difference. Yeah, that's the Jersey Jack difference. They do care. Okay, now how much is it between one to the others? How much what? Is a Avatar, which is going to be the premium, the LE to the LE. The Ellie The Ellie $15,000 to $12,000 or $13,000? It's $12,000 for the Ellie and it's $15,000 for the TV So $15,000 compared to $13,000 is like $97,000 Well that's the premium For premium But that's the equivalent of their Ellie Yeah So you're paying an extra $2,500 $3,500 $2,500 $2,500 $2,600 $2,400 $2,600 Math is hard Math is hard $2,400 $2,600 you know, not 25, though. Nope, not 25. It was 96.99. Stern puts, like, seemingly puts a lot of effort in, but they still put out, basically, like, flash animations. I mean, while Joliet Jack's at, like, these crazy high def, even just, like, the word high score number four has particle effects going on and, like, animated words going across. It's clearly done in, like, Super HD or something. Like, they're clearly just, like, way above Stern and everyone else. And they continue to be. They've been that since day one, though. That's been their whole goal. Yeah. They made the very first LCD game on Woz, and they were already ahead of what Stern is managing today. Today. And they hammered home, you know, this is the Jersey Jack way with the quality, et cetera, et cetera. Especially when people complained about the price. Yeah. While they also said in the meeting questions were asked about the other versions, the stripped-down versions. and they said, how many, what is it called, standard edition? How many standard edition Guns N' Roses did he, I think Jack himself said they sold like 100, what was it? Yeah, it's like one or 200. Yeah, it was like 160 of them or something. An insultingly small amount. Yeah, it's just like, well, there you go. That's why they're not going to do those anymore. I mean, they basically, yeah. We tested the market and the market said no. No. It's not asking for it. No one wants these. So don't expect to see any of that anymore. he also had an interesting note of like one person was like an operator at works with an operator was saying like they imply that like they lose money on Jersey Jacks or something and then the question about standard editions came up and Jack basically said like yeah they're cheaper but they lose the same amount of value over time if you're reselling them as the other editions so like as an operator you can put out 12 grand or you can put out 7 grand and then when you sell it you'll get 10 grand or 5 grand you're still good at losing them out, but you can have a nicer machine on location in the meantime. It all depends on the game, too, though. Because I don't think you're going to have to say Hobbit and some others in there, you know, don't help like Godfather. But it's not like a sturd where the pro maybe loses $500, $1,000 of value, and then the premium drops to grand. Yeah. It's a very interesting way of looking at stuff. But assuming that you are going to sell the game eventually is the thing. To get the next Jersey Jack. What do you think of the gameplay of Avatar? Because you played it way longer because you played it way better than I did. I think in Zach's... It was spitting out extra balls like candy. In Zach's second game, he got to the mini wizard mode that's not coded yet. You spell Pandora and you're supposed to get the, what was it called? The mini wizard mode. It's on that blow chart thing. Yeah. Nothing happened. It was the first game. I thought it was the second game. No, I'm pretty sure it was the first game. I'm pretty sure it was the second game you spelled it. You said, like, I want to see the call-outs from this multiball. And, like, ball one, we'd be able to get to both multi-balls because they had to set up really easy. I don't think I've even played two games. The call-out, I couldn't hear him that well with the games going on. But I've watched some subsequent streams. And I was excited when I heard that the Colonel dude from the first movie was going to do it. They said they did over 400. Dude, jackpot. Yeah, dude, jackpot. They said they recorded over 400 lines with him. So I was like, okay. To me, that was probably the best part of the first Avatar game was the callouts. And I hardly heard him at all. I didn't hear him that much. They have two other people who are like the main narrators that tell you what to do. And it just, it wasn't exciting. I would hope that maybe they just haven't coded all his callouts yet. But I do feel like, and I almost think it's got to be intentional at this point, like every Jersey Jack game sort of like lacks any sort of bombast to it. They're all a bit laid back and like, do-do-do, do-do-do, you know, like. Yeah, I would say that. I mean, I think Elton has a little more excitement. There's actual some inflection on some of them. But most of the time it's just like giving instructions. Shoot the left ramp. Shoot the whatever. It's nowhere, like, picture any call-out on Metallica compared to this. Like no Jizzy Jack could come close But I saw some of the comparative like most sterns like you couldn really have them in like your living room or your playroom you know with your family around If a stern game is in a room, everyone in the room has to be, like, paying attention to the sound because it's trying to, like, blast you with all this, like, stuff constantly. But then a Jersey Jack is very, like, sort of background-y, light sound. It's probably not as annoying to be hearing in another house. That's a weird way to go, just because they want to be Williams. They use all the Williams mechs. They call, like, the pop-uppers Jets. They do a lot of the Williams stuff. Only Lawler did that. They were Jets before Lawler was there. In Hobbit, they were Jets? Weren't they Jets? I could have swore they were Jets. Yeah. Who wants to play Hobbit to find out? Ah, good, good question. but yeah I wish they had just a little more oomph because a lot of times it's just they're just giving you direction I want somebody you know to me World Cup soccer guy Tim Kitts Rowe that's where it's at like he does pretty much all the calls on that game and it's just like yeah alright go it's so obvious that they're not doing that that it must be on purpose yeah it must be on purpose and again like pretty much anytime anyone insulted them or critique them within the questions. They're just like, well, yeah, well, this is the way we do things for our market, our level of quality. You know, we're not aiming for the other thing. And I'm like, I mean, sure, fine, I guess. It makes us sad as people who do like those things, though. Yes, but to be fair, Zach, there's a certain homebrew that you did. You specifically didn't want me doing any excited call-outs. You wanted me to do like Jersey Jack call-outs where I'm just instructing. I would say that your call-outs like for the bigger things are still more exciting than Jersey Jack games in poker. And I was told to tone it down. Yeah, you would not be able to fit on Jersey Jack game. They could not contain you. Yeah, I would be. Come on. Double the soup on a jackpot. I mean, come on. I mean, come on. Excitement. You try out for them, and within one word, they kick you out. Too exciting. Calm down. The call-out should be felt, not heard. Well, what do you think of the game? What do you think of those lower playfields? Sadly to say, I mean, like, the main lower playfield is basically the same exact thing as the ACDC lower playfield. Which is smaller. Which is basically the same thing as the Munsters lower playfield, which is basically the same thing as the Spirits lower playfield. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's wrong. Like, it's got two flippers, the thing in the middle that kicks the ball out. It's got the orbit around the middle and some things in the middle to bash. I guess Munsters and Stewie's just have a ramp on them. Yes. But, like, overall, just, like, two flippers. orbit, like the most basic, simple, tiny pinball, and I'm like, really? Again? I feel like if you're going to bother putting up a lower playfield at least be creative with it. I thought they were creative because you got the two playfields and you go into the first one, which is actually just a pop-up run, that hits targets and you move the targets. The whites in front of the targets. That one's way more creative. And then if you hit enough of them when the ball goes off, it actually goes into the subway or holding area and sits there. and it fires the ball out in the second mini play field, which is smaller. Was it three quarters? Three quarters of an inch instead of inch and a sixteenth. And it literally is a smaller version of the ACDC play field with the orbit and the target in the middle, which they kept calling it a bash toy. But you don't hit it. It doesn't move. You just hit the target below it. Yeah, they had multiples of those on the play field too, like a target, like a stand-up target, with a toy mounted above it, and then you shoot the targets, but the toy isn't, like, attached to the targets or anything, but they call it a bash toy. Yeah, they keep calling it a bash toy. To me, bash toy is something on the play field that you actually hit, in my terminology. So I don't consider those bash toys. They're just – Or at least, like, have a little mechanism that makes it, like, move around when you hit it, you know? Well, they do. For the amp suit guy, it's got the little rod attached to his one arm. For the amp suit one, but not the other two. Even like on Star Wars, the TIE Fighter isn't actually attached to the stand-up targets above. You hit the stand-up target and then the dedicated soldier that shakes the TIE Fighter makes it look like it was hit, you know? So that still feels like a bash toy somewhat when you do it, even though it's not directly being bashed. I thought the most interesting part of the game was that back section. All those shots back there and the habit trails. The upper playfield is actually very creative. Yeah, that was really interesting. The lower play field is not creative and the upper play field is creative. Yeah, I mean, that's where I had the most fun. I thought it was the most interesting, all the stuff the ball would do. Because I like – I think I said this on the show before. I like the Rube Goldberg device stuff where, you know, stuff happens and then other things happen. That's why it was like prospector, you go into a saucer, it ejects it out, it goes over to like another saucer that ejects it out in another direction and it goes down here and then it fires it up again. All this stuff going on with the ball that you're not – you haven't even hit it yet. I mean, definitely the coolest thing is like the reverse scram. Yeah, they have the thing. It's a ramp and a scoop. So they call it a scram. And that's actually how you get to the lower play field. You hit the scram when it's a ramp. No, you go under the scram when it's a ramp. Oh, okay. Under the scram when it's a ramp, and then it becomes a scoop, and then you hit scoop. Yeah, but if it's up and you hit it from the back, it's a ramp. It's a reverse ramp. that goes up the play field and then turns around and have a trail and then comes back down that you hit from the upper side flipper. It's got to go to 720 degrees plus of movement during that. And it just looks so cool. Yeah, and it's got a lot of habit trails. The ball's doing a lot of stuff there. To me, that was the coolest part of the game. And the kickback too, right? Oh, yes. And on Hell and John, the kickback doesn't always work right. But I don't think that's going to be an issue on Avatar because what they did on Avatar, they took the standard kickback. It's the same Mac they've always used, but with software, when you trip the switch, instead of just firing, it slowly comes up and stops and just holds the ball. The ball sits on the kickback. And it captures the animations and stuff. It's like a ball capture device just by being a kickback. Then it fires it, and it comes up, and it feeds the upper left flipper. Very nice. I like that. I hope they incorporate that in future games, because most of the time their games do have kickbacks, and they're always like a physical kickback. That's another thing I'm sure they'd say, like Stern doesn't have physical kickbacks like we do. That upper left flipper's got to have like six or seven shots in that little area up there. That passes the sack test, definitely. Like it's a crazy pack. Like you can't hit them all from the upper flipper. Some are hit from the lower flipper, but there's just like this little compact area with the upper flipper, like just a ton of different shots in there. And then they have this shot that can give you a fuck ton of points, the Eclipse shot. The jump ramp spinner. Which is the super steep ramp that looks like something from like a mid-'80s Gottlieb that you'd have trouble hitting up. And this similarity had similarly seemed to have issues hitting it up. At least the one we were playing, it was not going up with that much power, that ramp. I felt the one that we played later at Interium was actually stronger flippers than this one. Although they both, like, they didn't feel nearly as strong as Elton John flippers. No, they didn't. It was weird. And I was too, I forgot to look at the actual flipper, the coil number. Oh, yeah. You should have asked them to, like, go in the settings, too, and look at the numbers. Oh, yeah. I probably have a picture of that coil still, because I took a picture of the bottom of the playfield. Yeah, I'd be curious, because the ones at Elton John are the ones that are, like, in every 90s Williams game. like their standard one. They were standard on Guns N' Roses too and it didn't have good flippers. Yeah, that was the old way. Before they did the Fix. The Fix and Godfather. But it's a very narrow, steep ramp that you hit to hit the spinner like it jumps over and then hits the spinner which is an opto-spinner. In mid-air. In mid-air. It's an opto-spinner but most of the times I've seen it hit it does not spin a lot of times. Which may be sad. The bottom flipper coils are 11-6-29. They're what there? 11-6-29, the blue standard strong wind. Okay, that's what's on John. So they definitely, like, maybe he started developing the play field before they developed the new flippers, and it wasn't, like, working well with them for some reason, but I don't know. We should have asked about that, too. We did not ask enough questions, Ron. We did not ask enough questions. We failed. I'm sorry. Yeah, but that ramp feels like it would be really good if the flipper was stronger. stronger, but it is way in the back right, and it is steep. Yep, it's narrow. Yeah, narrow metal ramp. But, I mean, in a way, some of the totals you'd get if you actually hit it, it probably should be a hard shot. It definitely is a really hard shot, but the software knows it's a hard shot, which is good. It makes it valuable when you hit it. Now, it did seem to play pretty long. I mean, they had the outlines all the way shut, and it was at like six degrees. Yes. To be fair. Yes. And it gave after balls like crazy. That's true. Our game at Anterior did not go very long. That's true also. So, yeah, so after we're done, and I think, well, we were in a meeting, and then we played the game, and then we went back into the meeting. They gave us banners. Thank you, Jersey Jack. We've now been paid off. I got a nice big avatar banner. I mean, even with our banners, it's much wider and longer than the Stern banners. It's like, even our banners are bigger. I can't imagine that's a complete coincidence. No, no way. No, it was J.J.P.'s Guns N' Roses was bigger. So, ha-ha. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure they looked at what Stern was doing with the banners. They're like, yeah, we need a bigger banner. We need bigger, better, stronger. Bigger, stronger, longer. Wider. Sorry. Then we went, yeah, and then after all that was done, did I get everything there? Zach, am I missing anything else at the factory? Not the factory. I wanted to say about, like, you were talking about, like, the big points on the spinner ramp thing. Mm-hmm. Which is also tied into, you start, like, an eclipse, and the playfield slowly darkens, and the UV lights come on, which is, like, the main time where we, like, immediately, like, showcase the UV. Yeah. I didn't actually notice, like, the actual UV, like, ink that much, but it was, you could clearly tell, like, it was very visible. You could still play despite the play field being dark, but you could still tell the play field was dark. So it just, like, looked, like, coolly weird, but not in, like, a specific way to me. Yeah, there was not any time where I ever lost the ball. Did you, like, actually notice the UV ink on the play field when I was in the process? No. I noticed it more at the very end when we went back into the meeting room. They had a prototype, and it's like, don't release these pictures of this play field. It's a prototype collector's edition play field with all the different UV inks on it. And then they had, like, they're shining the light on it. And that did look cool. I mean, from everything I've seen of the game, the collector's edition definitely looks like the way to go. I mean, the cabinet artwork. Better side art. Yeah, it was better. Cooler backrest. It's got the topper. It's going to have the play field with all the extra UV strings. It just looked like the way to go. They had, like, a multi-printed different opacity back glass to, like, make the eyes look like they're glowing and stuff. Yeah. Which is apparently because the licensor said they're not allowed to have a beard back glass because there is no metal on Pandora, which is crazy. Don't you love that? Yeah. Don't you love licensors? So, yeah, I mean, they definitely went all out with the experience. Like, if you are some kind of Avatar fanatic, then this is going to be for you. I mean, especially with all the weird Avatar terminology that I have no clue what any of it means. It's just so weird. Although it wouldn't be any weirder if you thought, if there was a Beavis and Butthead game and they had, like, Corholio mode. I mean, unless you watched the show, you wouldn't know what the fuck that means. At least you can pronounce it, though. That's true. They all have, like, the, you know, symbols in them, and they just look weird. I love, like, uh, uh, uh. Yeah. I still can't say that. Battle in Nagata to be the baby or something. I think it's called. In Nagata to be the baby. Don't you know that I love you? Then we went to, well, we went back to the hotel. And what else did I want to say? Then we went to Interium. There's something I wanted to bring up about that. Oh, Ken Cromwell, thanks for the ride. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he drove us back to the hotel and then drove us to Interium where they had the party set up. They had our own section, and they had all the Jersey Jack games except for, what was it, Wizard of Oz and Hobbit weren't there. And Pirates. And Pirates. Sadly. I would like to play some more Pirates. I miss it. And, whoa. Really? I like bashing the action button a whole bunch, and it has a lot of that, you know. Hmm. When I hear it features, we need to bring it back to games. Although, I think Avatar has that, but I could not understand why I was doing. There's a thing of, like, you can collect arrows for, like, a playthrough multiplier, then during a mode, every flip you hit an arrow. It takes away an arrow. You can then bash the action button to replenish your arrow. Yeah, I didn't get that. Like, it sounded really cool, but during gameplay I could not actually get it to do what I was hearing, so I was confused there, but it sounds cool. And it had some... Oh, the other thing I want to mention, they had some younger people on their staff, which was nice to see. They said, like, it was almost all, like, a new team on this game, right? Like, new artist, new sound person, new designer, Keith. Yeah, Keith P. Johnson had a couple of understudies, and the one guy looked like he was 16 years old. He looked younger than Zach did years ago before he got old. I mean, it definitely feels like they're trying to just basically ramp up a second dev team to presumably put out games faster. Yep. It's not like the same team that's working on everything else, but instead Mark is designing. It's like this is a whole separate team of people. But, yeah, we were at Annotarium. They had sliders, pizza. It was nice. And I thought that was good. And then they brought out dessert items. Oh, God. They had, like, brownie cookie. Oh, not good for me. But good. They had that waka. It played really nice. It played so nice that it frequently got a ball stuck to the air balls. Yeah. Like, the flippers were really strong in that thing. Yeah, that's the way you want flippers to work. Like, holy crap. They felt, like, comparable to your Elton John, which was weird. Yeah. Yeah, the Elton John there played faster than mine. Yeah, that Elton John played crazy, too. The dialed-in played good. I'm sure Zach would agree. This is when the Jersey Jack actually can go in and, like, tweak the game. Tweak the game, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was a fun time. Yeah. I would totally do that again for any manufacturer that wants to, you know, pay to have us out there. Yeah, any manufacturer, just saying. As long as we don't have to sign an NDA because we don't do that. Okay, so I got questions for you two, guys. Okay, okay, now it's time for Bruce's questions. Would you buy it? Avatar, no, I have no interest. Yeah, I don't like the theme at all. Okay. I've never watched the movies. I watched the first movie. I thought it sucked shit. Whoa. Well, Avatar has one of those weird things where no one seems to be like, I don't know anyone who's like psycho Avatar fan, yet then you look and the movie made billions of dollars. as soon as it got out that I was at the place trying it, I got these three people messaging me like, hey, how was it? I like Avatar. I want to buy it. Those people do exist. They just don't talk in public. Yeah, it's weird. The second one, when it came out, it's like, oh, the first one was just a fluke, and this one's going to die, and it came out, and that made billions of dollars. What the fuck? Okay, James Cameron's got this shit figured out. But yeah, Yeah, it's, theme-wise, it's just. Hey, Ron. Ron, don't forget. Now it's under Disney. Yeah. Yeah, I know. I know. Fuck Disney. God, I hate Disney. Well, speaking of Disney. Uh-oh. Well, we'll get off of that, but that was a great experience. Definitely would do it again. Just maybe a little more lead time, so my tickets were $600. But I can go. It does suck. And Bruce. Well, it doesn't happen to you. They're $600, Ron. It's all in Jersey Jack's time. Yeah. And they've got that CE money. The CE money. Then after we came back from Jersey Jack, I immediately, like, we came back, or I came back Saturday morning. I get off the plane, get in my car, and I drive down. Well, actually, I won't say where it is. Catskills. Catskills. I drive down to the Catskills for Howard's Catskill Classic. Yes, see? where I was trying to win the Angry Indonesian Bowling Pin of Doom. Yes, I love his. He has the best trophy. The Hulk head is secondary. That is the coolest. Oh, you like the mean-looking pin? Yes, I do. Yep. That's fucking awesome. I had my earplugs in because he always gets the jukebox on and it's loud. Yes, it does. It's loud there. And, yeah, I actually played pretty good. I made it to the Final Four and I finished fourth. So typical. You got to the highest plateau you can and then you failed You are so mean Make it to the final four is great I like that Exactly Zach you at least got second on your final four I mean honestly even when I get fourth in the final four which I do a lot if it's a big tournament I'm like yeah that's pretty good Yeah if it's a big tournament you know What do you guys consider a big tournament? Is it over 48? Consider it a big tournament? No, I'd say 47, Bruce. Okay, because 48 is the goal I was trying for. The winner was Gina Colicchia. She's played at level zero before, and I'm butchering her last name. Probably her. And it's Italian, too. I was just going to say, it's Italian. What the fuck, Iran? What the fuck? Okay, if I talk it like that, Gina Colicchia. Gina Colicchia. There you go. You nailed it. There you go. Your tie-in came right out. Okay. But Disney, they own Marvel, which is Stern's latest game, X-Men. Yeah. That's all news. Well, no. We haven't talked about the stream. The stream? They did a stream from the factory where they played it for like an hour. The one where they're in costumes? The one where they're in costumes. Yep. So they had, I think Jack Danger was Cyclops. Zach Sharp was, was he Wolverine? Wolverine, yes. And then Waston Chang was himself. He was not a costume. Maybe he was Mystique and you didn't know it. Okay. Yeah, and the thing about that stream is the music was so weird on that game. especially when you it's like the drummer from was it anthrax it's like really it just didn't fit yeah and the animations it just reminded me of avengers yeah it did very much so i thought they were better than i think they were better they're better than avengers but not as good as foo fighters but the same style just the static panels with some movement did you guys see it no yeah i didn't listen to it at all. I wasn't going to mute anything, but I did not notice any crazy weirdness with the music or the voices. I just didn't pay attention to them. The call-outs. Yeah, they're kind of cringy. They gave me a higher than the old X-Men vibe. I'm starved. There are three steps. There's old X-Men, there's Avengers, and then there's this. Yeah, so it's in between old X-Men and below Avengers. Do you think it's worse than Avengers? Yes. Wow. Wow. I didn't think they were that bad. I thought it was. The thing is, it's very obvious that they're stuck with the supplied voice talent again because they had to do that with Avengers. They have to use Marvel, Disney, whatever. How did Deadpool happen? Was that just an abomination somehow? How did they get good call-outs there? Because they got the guys from the animations. The guys from the animations? You know, who does the animations, does like three or four of the voices for the Deadpool animation. And that's what it's based off of, you know. I thought it was the guy that was in the video game. No, it's the guy who, he's a famous actor, too. He's got a bald head. He's got a big humongous beard. He's like 350 pounds. I can't remember his freaking name now. Okay. I've got to look it up. Not the Deadpool guy, the other, like other voices you're talking about? He does multiple. But not Deadpool himself. But I'm like, how did that happen? Because with all these other Marvel games, they've had to use the Marvel supply of voice actors, and it just has not been stellar. As opposed to Deadpool, where the call-outs are awesome, the music's, like, insane. What happened there? How did that get – it's like it's in a different dimension. Did Disney not totally own everything yet at that point? I don't know. I don't understand. But, yeah, I've listened to the call-outs. It's just like, yeah, this is like Avengers. I'm Iron Man and all that. I was like, no, you're not. I'm Iron Man. I mean, what do you think of the shots? How did it look like it shot? Okay. The thing is, you couldn't see. They have this. It's supposed to be with Days of Future Past. And they have. So there's a part where you go into the future. Yes. And when you go into the future, shit changes on the game. But it's like the lights they were using to light the playfield for the stream are so bright. I couldn't really tell. I think it did a different GI string or something, but I really couldn't tell. But I think something changed on it because they were alluding to that. Like, oh, look, look, something's changing, you know, when it happened. And it's like, what, a different GI string? That's really all I saw. You'd have to look at it in person, I guess. I think it would be more obvious. But, I mean, the rules, like, hit, what is it, three shots? It's always three shots. Hit three shots. Yeah, it's always three shots. So start a mode, play a mode. Drain immediately. Bash the sentinel head enough times for a multiball. Basic stuff. The art. There's so much art in it. It's like, where are the shots? There's so much art. Oh, everything's a safe shot, don't forget. Well. Almost everything. I don't know if it was their costumes or whatever, but they didn't play it well in the stream. No. They were kicking their ass. Like, damn. That actually made it more interesting to me. Like, oh, okay. But I guess they have since put another stream out where they play much better on it. Did you watch that one? I haven't watched that yet. I just literally saw that that happened. I guess it kind of came out of the blue like it wasn't announced, and then they just, it's out there now. That was the oh shit stream. Yeah, I think after that stream, it's like everyone hated the music, people didn't like the call-outs, by people I mean Pinside. And now Gareth's turned to the change of the music, right? Well, I have that for the Gary Stern interview that occurred. But, yes, that's one of the things he said, that they're going to be changing the music. So anything else about X-Men? Thank you for the $60, everyone. I need a lot more. Thank you very much. Well, you don't care about that now. You want an Elton John now. Oh, I would love to have an Elton. Guess what? Here we go. Well, I'm sure if you say you want Elton John instead, the money will come rolling in. Bruce came over for Stomp, which we'll talk about. But he came over Friday, and he kept playing Elton John over and over. I had to play at least 40 times. Oh, I couldn't believe this. I haven't seen this. I'm not used to this. I'm used to Bruce just hating everything. I thoroughly enjoyed it to the point where I was like, how the fuck can I get this game? So I'm going to sell a kidney. Well, it's funny. Jerry, Jerry Bernard, was playing in the tournament. He's a classic specialist. And he generally, the newer games, he destroys them, but not because he knows what he's doing. Just because he's an awesome player. And he usually doesn't like any new games. Elton John, he's like, I like Elton John. That game is fun. And I'd say it was the hit of the show. Everyone was playing that thing. That thing was being played constantly. Someone even cranked the sound up a little bit at some point. I noticed all of a sudden, like, whoa, Elton got louder. Oh, I enjoyed it very much. If I could, like, I would even sell, like, not that, but I wouldn't sell Medieval Madness, but I would sell something like that, you know. Huh? I would sell Batman. Oh, Batman 66, you would sell for that? Yes. Damn it. You love that game. I love Batman, but that fucking Elton John, the shots are buttery, except for the rejects. Yeah, rejects on the left ramp. And the rejects on the left kick out. That one, I think, would be corrected with maybe some different kind of foam or something to kill it. The left ramp I don't think is going to be fixable because I've noticed it's like that on every – I've played like four or five different copies and they've all been like that. If you don't hit the left ramp perfect, it can do some rattle and just reject. Come on, Steve. I want you to hit the shot right. Make shots better. Aim better, asshole. King of flow, except when you miss. Yeah. To the right by one nominator. Or left. Yes. Yeah, I couldn't believe Bruce actually likes the game. It's amazing. Yeah, I was very happy with that. Yeah. Everyone liked it. I mean, you make it fun. That's the word that kept coming up. This game is fun. Oh, I was having a ball. It's just fun. Just make fun games, people. That's all you need to do. It's just these fun shots that are fun to hit, make the theme that's fun, and the music was awesome. You know, the music really ties in with it. Well, I think that the sound effects were better. It doesn't sound like a slot machine. No, it does not sound. The call-outs were good. they actually have strong emotion in them. It's not just monotone giving instructions. Yeah. Do that again, please. I walked away from Avatar cautiously impressed with it, and then I went and saw your Elton John again, and I'm like, this makes Avatar look a bit worse. Sound quality, the build quality, just the way that the lights are used, despite Avatar having the UV light and everything, Elton John just has such much lighting in it, and on the piano and all that crap. It is. It's really good. I enjoy that game. If you put those side by side, people are going to think Elton John looks more impressive. But Avatar is bluer. It's much bluer. That's true. I do like blue. Blue. Let's see. Ending with the new games. I got a note here. Blues Brothers. Dun, dun, dun, dun. It's a terrible dun, dun, dun. I guess it was at, what, Pinfest in Australia. So someone actually got some video of it. They also said, yeah, we have two licensed songs in it now. Do you hear what they are? No. Okay. One, at least, was in the movie. It's the Ray Charles number. Remember that one when they're in the music store? So they had that one. Like, okay, okay. What's the second one? It's fucking Peter Gunn. Dun, dun, dun, dun. Which is not licensed game. It's not licensed either, Peter Gunn theme. I think it's licensed, but it's not. No, I think it's gone now. Really? Yes. Because I know back when you couldn't get the theme you wanted, you got Peter Gunn. It's in Spy Hunter because they couldn't get the Bond theme. It's in whodunit. It's got to be super cheap. Yeah, it's got to be super fucking cheap because everyone gets that one. It's so much crap. Is that even in Blues Brothers? Yes. It's in the movie. It's in the movie. It is in the movie. For a brief period, they play it for maybe a minute. Oh, they play it three times. Two or three times. Oh, okay. Yeah. Sorry. They do. Wow. I have to watch my Blues Brothers again. Yes, I live for Blues Brothers. I live for Blues Brothers. Oh, so this game must disappoint you, but elate you at the same time, because it is Stars. It is. Mostly Stars. Monkey Paul, like, they're going to remake Stars, and it's Blues Brothers, Monkey Paul Curls, and it's Home Pin. And then Bruce just instantly closes the browser tab. Yeah. Just imagine if you were like the biggest Blues Brothers fan and you said, they're going to make a Blues Brothers pinball machine. Oh, yeah. And then it's home pin. Oh, fuck. It sounded like it was an absolute rights nightmare anyway, so it would never happen anyway. So they just did it. This is the best you can have. This is the best you're going to get anyway. Until a homebrewer does it. I wonder what the market would be for like just building one-off, illegally licensed, unlicensed homebrew machines and just selling them for like stupid cash. I like the way you said that. Have you seen, like, those Matrix ones? Like, they were trying to sell those for, like, 20 grand or something. They made, like, five. You know, completely unlicensed, of course, but it's actually the Matrix the way you'd want it, basically. Yeah. I saw someone trying to sell a Kill Bill wreath even though they did, like, three of based off World Cup soccer or something. But, again, like, it's a homebrew, so it's already, like, obviously going to be expensive and rare. I almost wonder, like, could you actually, like, go, like, well, I spent a lot of time doing this, but I had fun of it. And I spent like $8,000 in parts, but I can sell to some random Blues Brothers super fan, pinball fan for $20,000 one-off. It's not on Musicbed. Musicbed is where you can actually go buy songs for rights of stuff. Oh. The list. Oh, you're looking at Peter Gunn. Yeah, I'm still looking at Peter Gunn. Who actually did that? Is that Henry Mancini? Henry Mancini. It is. I just, because it sounds, yeah, it sounds Pink Panther-ish. Yes. So, Papa21. Yes. It happened. It did happen. Very good. I tried to get the results, but when you actually go to it on Neverdrainz, you get an unable to connect to database, please try again later error. Yeah, there's been a problem. But just for that tournament. Well, apparently it's running in, like, safety backup mode right now. Oh. There was some issues with the servers. Yes. Well, it happened. Well. It was a success, I guess, by all accounts. Yes. The classics finished ridiculously late. I think they finished 2 in the morning. Oof. And I think Tarek Thompson won that. Someone can correct me. But I can't look it up because it's lights down. But I think that's who won it. The women's tournament, I think, was Stephanie Traub, I think. I think so, yes. Main tournament. Did finish at a reasonable time on Sunday, which surprised me, because they did the thing where, was it top 40 make finals or something? No, top 72. God, top 72. And they started early in the morning, and I figured, oh, they're going to be going until the next day. I am so glad I'm retired. But, no, they actually got through it, and I'd say they finished at a reasonable time on Sunday. I was surprised. I was surprised. But the winner of Papa 21 major, pinball major, was Raymond Davidson. That guy, he's still going to play after being, what, 30? He's in his 30s. I don't know how this happened. I know. Maybe he's bucking the trend? No. No? No? Let's see. What other tournaments we got here? Then the next weekend, Cleveland happened. And I'm looking at that right now, and I thought they had a Classics division, but I don't see it never drains. They did. Okay. If it's not Neverdrains, I'm not looking around for it. I'm sorry. I do have the finals here. The winner was Alexander Kismarchik Not Amy Davidson No he was in second Fail And you had Gregory Kennedy in third and John Inman in fourth That was Klee Penn. And then what just finished today was another major, the European Pinball Championships that were happening in Poland. Ooh. And I don't know, Zach, Have you seen any of the Discord discussion over this event? Oh, my God. All I know is that all the results are stored on an Excel file on a single computer somewhere in Poland that's not on the internet. Yes. And when we were doing Stop, which we'll get to next, I thought we were pretty much screwed with the stream because I figured, okay, EPC, they're in Poland, so they're going to be streaming. It's going to be earlier, right? And then I know Pinball at the Lake, which is still going on right now. Pinball at the Lab. Pinball at the Lab. I get those confused. Is that a different thing? It is a different thing. It's just different locations of where it is. Pinball at the Lab is a California tournament, but it's being streamed by IE Pinball, Carl D'Python Anghelo, who is a Twitch partner. Whenever he starts streaming, all the other pinball streams, they just lose everyone in June. They flock to that. So I figured we're going to be screwed in the beginning of the tournament and the end. But EPC didn't stream at all. There was no stream. Yeah, I've heard there's been a lot of issues with that tournament. I saw a couple of videos. I heard complaints from, well, I saw a couple of videos of how there was no tilts at all. Or I saw one where you plunged the Metallica and took your hands off and it did warning, warning, tilt. Warning, warning, tilt. Yeah, I saw lots of complaints. I mean, at first they're all Americans complaining, which is just like, Americans bitch constantly, as we know. But then I saw Europeans actually saying, oh, yeah, this is really bad. They're like, oh, okay. So I guess stuff like nine hours late getting finals started and things like that, people are sleeping under games just waiting for stuff to start, that kind of stuff. It sounded interesting. It was bad. But it ended, and I believe Escher won. Escher left off one, and I believe he said for high scores, he put USA for every high score he got. Nice. America. Yeah. So that was the European Pinball Championship, so that means Escher wins another major. And now the most important tournament of all, the best one, clearly better than any world championship in any major, is Stomp. I mean, the games just end up better than one of them, at least. Mostly. Mostly. I was about to say dick. I was waiting for that. If somebody had chosen properly, this would have never happened. No, not the game I chose. I had problems. Whatever. Stomp. We had Stomp this weekend. Stomp 6. Stomp 6. And with the exception of Zach, everyone said how great the game's played. Yes, they played awesome, I thought. I've said that sometimes. Probably on any game you used to own. Johnny Demonic's playing really well, yes. It's really good. I did play Johnny. That was the only game I owned that was there. I was also getting super thrown off because we do have a lot of overlap between Rochester and your place now. Yeah. And all the games play way differently between the two places. Yeah, like Spanishize, it wasn't even a play badge. It plays different. It's just like throwing me off. It's like, well, you know, the involvement just plays different. Your Rush was doing it. Your Star Wars was doing it to me. The Black Rose was doing it to me. The Alien Star was doing it to me. The Proc Factor was doing it to me. Wow. I could go on the alien attack from Mars doing it to me. Meanwhile, I go to Zach's house and just blow up Demoman every time and don't have a problem. I don't understand. Well, that's because my flippers are twice as strong as yours. Oh, God. Wow. Wow. Literally every single person in the finals was like, the flippers can't make the ramps. Well, you weren't hitting them right. That left one, everyone was hitting them incorrectly. Oh, okay. Sorry. Yeah. On mine, you hit it anyway and it goes up. What's this now? The left ramp that was rejecting constantly. Oh, God. It's just on and on and on. Why wasn't this game taken out? Why didn't somebody alert me why this game was still in there if it was that bad? Oh, God. I mean, we tried to tell you about dialed in. It wasn't done either. Oh, no. Dialed in. Oh, God. With the exception of one player, we had no issues. Except for the part that broke off during the middle of the game. We had no issues. Still worked. Oh, yeah. That worked fine. We only had issues with one player. Unfortunately, he was one of the tournament officials, but, you know, that's how it goes. At least he didn't put it through the wall. Or pull the plug out of the wall. Or pull the plug out of the wall. Yeah, all the other players who hit it just gave up and they didn't bother tilting. Except for the one who loved it and then the other guy who played it and won it. Yeah, yeah, folks, just to give you some background since you have no idea what we're talking about. When we get to the final four. Okay, so the final four is Damon. Okay, let's try that again. It's Dante. Dante, sorry. Dante, Mike, who is a 5-1-8-er, fellow 5-1-8-er, Jerry Bernard, and Mr. Complainer, Zach. Mr. Complainer. You say Mr. Complainer like Dante and Jerry didn't also complain about it constantly. Oh, they did. Well, they hate, well, they complain about dialing in. Everyone hates dialed in. We know that. Except for the person who picked it. Well, that was the thing. So Dante was the top, wasn't he the top seed? Yeah, he was the top seed. Top seed. So he defers. He defers to Zach. So Zach for the first game is like, Spanishize. Okay, so he played Spanishize. All right. And I forgot that when you defer, you have to play first. And play first on Spanishize was an awful idea. That didn't go very well for me. No, it didn't. You finished last. Yeah. Like I said, not very good. So then the next game, Dante, he defers again. So Zach looks around, looks around. You know, all these games he could pick, and it's like, they all scare me. I'm deferring. Yeah, I didn't want to go first again. So he defers, and it goes to Mike. I'm like, there's all these games here. They all scare me a bit, but, I mean, most of them are still pretty good. You know, what's the worst that could happen? Well, what Zach didn't know is Mike is in the same league, Excelsior League, that I am. And for two years, we had a dialed in in our league. And he played it a ton and liked it. So I'm sure he's figuring, like, hey, that in the nose. I'll go for it. Maybe he heard you bitching about it all day like you always do, and maybe he said, oh, I know that Zach guy doesn't like that game, so perfect. Dialed in. I'm sure I was definitely the one he was trying to snipe after I already had a zero. And there's two other really good players there. And I'm all excited. I'm setting up the race. Yes, yes. And then I'm thinking in the back of my mind, you know, Zach is just going to bitch about this for the whole fucking game. And when is the big move going to come where he tips up on the side or does something? Probably ball three when he's having a shit game and he's going to lose anyway. That's what I'm thinking. Well, it was actually ball two and ball three. But he didn't tilt, so I guess it's fine. Somehow dialed in is actually it's moved in. Like it's forward. I don't even know how that's possible. It's like, did you pull it towards yourself? I don't know what happened there. As far as I know, I only moved it to the right, so I don't know what happened either. But they played down in, and I had to just listen to Zach Mitch for 10 minutes straight. 10? Or 15 minutes. And more. It's like Steph, the pinball princess, is somewhat vertically challenged, wouldn't you say? And she gets a lot of little one-offs about that. But it'd be like if I just went to her and just went at it with those one-offs for 15 minutes straight to her face nonstop. at a certain point you'd be like, okay. Okay enough. I get it. I get it. Alright. Okay. Yeah, I gotcha. I gotcha. And this is kind of like, yes, you hate this game. I get it. I get it. I hate every aspect of it. Uniquely and independently. I can play the game. I just don't enjoy it. I can play it pretty good too. No, you didn't play it very good. He got second. He got second. I know, but he only got 100,000 points on it. All his pitching, he got second. I mean, I won it during the tournament in qualifying. But Dante got first. Just like he got first on Spanish High. So it was one of those deals where it was already over. It was already over. 6-2-2-2 going into the final. Which is funny, after all the arguments about 4-2-1 versus 3-2-1-0 earlier, we still got fucked in the third game. Yeah, I hate when that happens. But guess what? But Dante came through. Yeah, 3-2-1-0 is a better chance than 4-2-1-0. Yeah, it's still better, but it still happened right after all the talk about it. Yeah. But, you know, that's why I don't like 4210. And then they played Demoman to finish up, and Dante did the hot hat trick, actually. He won that, too. Yes, he did. He got the nine. And then Zach, after all his complaining on Demoman, also, he took second. So Dante took home the belt. Demoman's awesome. And also, I was the only one who realized that the flippers are stronger if you use the triggers. So that's why I could still make a bet with him. So you're saying that he has bad contacts on it. Yeah, do I have bad optos or something? Yeah. They're not helping either, no. Oh. Unless, like, using triggers magically makes me shoot with a different timing that makes the ramp hit right. Probably. You're putting more force into the machine. But you could see, like, while I was playing, I was literally, like, whenever I had to do ramp shots, I would go to the triggers. And whenever I had to do, like, orbit shots, I would go to the flippers, like, constantly back and forth to make the ramps work. So your game sucks, Ron. That's all we've just figured out from that. My game sucks, yes. Yes. I've been spoiled by the Rochester Pinball Collective. Yes, I will play Zach in it any day and beat him. A couple games broke down, too. You know, that's bad, too. You know, what the fuck? What the fuck, man? Wow, we had Stargazer went down. And Scars. It didn't really go down, though. Well, what? Scars got turned off. No, Scars kept on rebooting also. Oh. Oh, I didn't know that. I just heard a display was fuzzy and was turned off. That's what I heard. No, it powered on because I went back to it. It powered it on, and it booted up. And I was like, okay, cool. Starz has done that before. Starz, it's fine for like the first seven hours or so. And then it starts having issues. What driver board does it have? That's a good question. I mean, I know we've gone through this all on Stargazer like five times. But Starz is new. Yeah, I didn't know it was rebooting. I know it's old now. Yeah, it rebooted twice, and I was like, I'm done. Stargazer, I saw it rebooting, and I asked the guys that were playing it, Like, hey, is this just rebooting? Like, yep, and it just kept rebooting, rebooting. So it turned that off. Yep, and that happened last year too. I like how they just say don't report things like that sometimes. Oh, yeah, they were just playing it as it kept rebooting on them, and then they just went to another game. Yeah, we'll just keep flipping. Is that rebooting? And then actually my most disappointing thing was Prospector because proactively this year we always have the right spinner where it comes off of the switch underneath the play field. It somehow comes out of the hole of the switch, the lead switch. The clipper's just too strong. Yeah, yeah, or whatever, or spins too fast. And it's like, okay, I'm going to beat this this year. I'm rotating it 180 degrees. It's going to face the exact opposite direction. And it was way harder to get in the switch, too, and I figured that means it's going to be harder to come out of the switch. It was harder to get in the bracket on top, too. I remember that sucking. And I was completely wrong as it fell out three times. It's out right now. So I got to figure out a better solution somehow to stop it from falling through the hole over and over. It's annoying. That just bucks the shit out of me. That when Alien Star, the right flipper is weird, which I did witness. So that's got to look at that. And lethal weapon, the kick out randomly starts putting it down the middle. Is that it? Random idea for the prospector. You know those little plastic washers you put on the top to hold the water in place? Yeah. Stick one on the bottom under the blade? That's exactly what I was thinking. The plastic washers you put on the spinner part, I got some of those. Yeah, stick it on there. Maybe it won't, but I have visions of it. It just pops that off instead, and I lose it in the cabinet. That's what I'm thinking is going to happen. And it gets grind up into the score motor. Yeah. Yeah, one little disc goes in, and somehow it just somehow screws everything up, this tiny little plastic thing. But my luck. So when we were setting up ACDC upstairs, we get it set up, and I'm like, where are the balls at? I'm looking all over for them, and I was like, wait a minute. I just hit the start button. Boom, ball comes out. Like, oh, God, never took the balls out. How did that not fall out? They didn't. Convenience. Convenience. Thanks to everyone who came. Yes, thank you, everyone who came out. I think it went fairly smooth. I'm finished later than I would like, but as far as tournaments where you have 20 people making the finals, I guess finishing at 11 is not that bad. No, it wasn't really. Because you get the deal where it kind of thins out, and then you'll have the people who are still around because they're driving in with some of the people who are still in the finals, that kind of thing. But, yeah. Oh, and special thanks to Nicole, a fellow 518-er. She comes up to me at one point. She saw the banners, like the Godzilla banner that I have and the Avatar banner. Thank you, JJP. And she's like, oh, you like banners? Would you like an Elton John banner? Oh, yes. No hesitation. She leaves, comes back. Here's an Elton John banner. Like, fuck yeah. She had that in her car. Because I kind of went, we got the Avatar banner. I mean, don't get me wrong. It looks great. But I was like, oh, man, I wish I had an Elton John banner. And now I do. That made it all worth it. So if anybody wants a Batman. Batman. And the guys that came up to me like, he's the best playing games I've ever played. I just wanted to let you know. It's like, that makes it all worthwhile. It does. It does. After I heard it too, you know. So I did nothing and I heard it and I felt good about it. That was the best playing doubt I've ever played, Ron. But I don't know. The one in Anterion played pretty good. I thought. I didn't play that one. Yeah, it actually played pretty good. But, man, there was so much garbage after this one. More than any other stop. I don't understand. Even more than when we had 48 people. Did I leave the sheets there on the thing? A vapor? I don't think so. Okay. I left them on the stool. I know. And they were not there when I went down. Okay. I might have put them in my suitcase. I think they're in the suitcase. I'm doing the stuff right now for IFPS. Yes, for the top 20, we couldn't use match play because it won't do 20. 20. They won't do 20 the way that I've ever seen 20 done. Yeah, it's weird. It'll do 20 where it gives the top two a double buy, and then the three and four a single buy, which I don't know why you'd want that. I don't know why. So we had to do the first one on paper, and then we went to match play. And top 16 won money. The stream, we got it up to like over 50? Yeah, 55. And then it started to drop down into the 30s, and I'm like, oh, pinball at the lab has started. And I looked like, yep, there it is. He went live. Damn it. Oh, well. The Carl D'Python Anghelo effect. Yes. But we had it up to, I don't know, like 20 or 30 for the finals. Yeah, for the finals it was 30. I'll take it. I'll take it. They all came for Spanish eyes. Thank you for everyone coming on. After some initial issues with the Playfield camera transmitter, it was a little wonky, so I just reset it so it would get on another channel, and then it was fine. It was fine the rest of the day. Batteries lasted 11 hours. on the same as no issues whatsoever. I cannot complain. Good job, Reg. All right. Just a couple more news items. These are all ripped off of NAP Arcade. NAP Arcade, yes. NAP Corner segment. Looks like Christopher Franchi is going to be exclusive to Spooky. What? Yeah. After he finishes up the other three or four games he currently has in development, he will be exclusive to Spooky, which tells me they probably have a bunch of themes he really wants to do. Yeah. Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice. Well, he was wearing a Beetlejuice shirt on that stream. He loves Beetlejuice. He does. He does. Let's see. He said they had Dunhart. He had, what is it, three games in the pipeline already, but really two and a half games because one is kind of questionable. So that's interesting. Supposedly he's doing the Back to the Future for Dutch. Let's see. Spooky has him working on three games right now. Good Lord. Then I saw this part that I figured Zach would like. Spooky's next game is multi-level and has four flippers. Only four? Oh, okay. Still not good enough for you. I want at least three per level. The lower portion of the play field in the next game contains something that has never been done before. I sure hope so. I hope it's good. Imagine advertising this play-through as nothing that hasn't been done before Yeah, that's how I'm plugging everything And the first show that will have Spooky's next game, whenever it's announced, will be Pinball at the Beach Wherever that is What the fuck's that? I don't know It'll take place between Is that also run by Carl D'Python Anghelo? I don't know Oh, God February 7th to 9th, 2025 Pinball at the I'm going to look this up now because I really need to know I've never heard of Pinball Wait, so remember like Spooky used to be getting themes from the guy who's now doing Labyrinth? Yes. So, and he said they had like four themes by him still or something before they would run out of those? No, I thought the Spooky, no, let me try again. I thought Looney Tunes and those were the last ones. That's like Christmas. Were those the last one or is there two more coming? I thought those were the last ones, but he might still be helping them. They still have some kind of relationship, I still think. And certain stuff that will fit for them is probably not going to fit for Barrels of Fun. Yeah, that's true. It's not really a complete competition. No, it's not. Although it might be the same audience of buyers sometimes. Because when we were at Interium, there were certain plays there by the end. Yeah. You know, guys that we know. And I guess after we left, I don't know if you saw this, Zach, I guess Jack Danger stopped by. Yep, I saw that. it was playing avatar with everybody. So they took like a picture together, smiling. Yep. Let's see. Um, I also have this new interview with Stern pinballs, George Gomez from a Chris, the podcaster hell has frozen over. Chris, the podcaster gets to interview George Gomez, the same guy got an argument with during a, uh, seminar TPF that I attended. Isn't it the one where he got tons of things wrong? Um, so, well, let's, I'm just using some, So all I'm saying is, are you sure that wasn't an AI recreation with George Gomez? It could have been, and that's why it's all wrong. And Chris didn't know any better, so he just went, okay, I'm just going to put it on. So you think they fooled him with AI? Let's see. George Gomez says he heard through the grapevine that one of Stern's pinball competitors has a DC Comics deal. I'm Batman. Yes, that's right. More Batman. Wait, another game that's going to be reproduced. Superman. Superman. Let's see. At least that one's been a while. A game ran into delays, so they moved up X-Men from the normal 16-month design period to 12 months. So what game would run into delays? I don't know, but it had to have been... Because it's supposed to be Metallica. After Metallica. And then everyone's saying Dungeons & Dragons for the other one. So what one ran into delays? Wait, who's doing Dungeons & Dragons? Dungeons & Dragons is supposed to be Brian, Eddie, and Dwight. Well, the Borg game. The Borg, we were just talking about this yesterday. Where did Borg been? I got this from NAP Arcade. It says it's supposed to be based on the board game, not the movie. No, Borg. Oh, Borg. Borg? I made the same mistake. The last game he did was a long time ago. It was Metallica, and supposedly the other rumor was he was going to be doing, was it Indiana Jones, but it got canceled. Yeah. And he was telling people at one of the shows that the game he was working on was canceled. He did say that to someone. Yeah, so. I mean, canceling is a big delay, you could say. Okay. This one, this is the most interesting one to me. Stern Pinball had the license to Back to the Future. Joe Kamikow worked on that. But none of the designers wanted to make the game, so it was passed up. Wow. Joe Kamikow really pushed Stern to make it, but none of the design crews wanted to do it. Why didn't Joe do it? Because who was he going to do it with? Even when it's under his label, it's the Stern person that does it. I know, but he has done the design in the past. Didn't he design like Stingray? Oh, God. Joe Kamikow did Laser War and a couple others, if I remember correctly. This one I don't understand. And this is what he said in the interview, which I then made a correction on Facebook. But then George, like, reiterated some stuff, which was still wrong, but I wasn't going to correct him. I tell you, day-eye. Yeah, maybe just, yeah. That Chrissy guy will never pick up on this thing. I'm going to write out some things. Crazy story. George Gomez, when he was a contract designer for Stern Pinball, he had just finished designing The Dark Knight, and he told Gary Stern that he wanted to design the Matrix next, and Gary had him create Lord of the Rings instead, which makes no sense because Dark Knight was like five years after Lord of the Rings. Yeah, it was probably Playboy, which it was. So I posted that, and then George posted how he did his games in order. He said, if memory serves me correctly, I did Playboy, Sopranos, Lord of the Rings, and Dark Knight. And I'm like, no, you did Lord of the Rings first, then you did Sopranos. I thought I wasn't going to write that. But he might have made it first. But they might have taken his design. I remember when Sopranos came out, everyone was saying that was a copy of Lord of the Rings. And they were doing the morphing picture thing where you could see it's like the shots. A lot of shots were similar. The Jurassic Park Home Edition is selling well at Costco. Yeah, it's going to be sold out by the end of the year. Yeah, it's going to be sold out by Christmas. Yay. Yay. You said it wasn't going to work, Bruce. Wait a second. We don't know the number of how many it is that is sold out. It could be 100. It could be 100. My Costco doesn't have it. It could be 100 games. Yay, it's a success. Gary Stern gave a presentation at Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown, where he, I guess he lives, he has a place in Colorado, like he goes back between Colorado and Chicago. I didn't know that. Play on Stern Pinball's Insider Connected is up 50% since May. Stern is going to change some of the music in X-Men based off public feedback on the gameplay stream. Yeah, I think. 70% of Stern games are sold for use in the home, but 70% of the gameplay happens on location. X-Men accessories are scheduled to launch in January 2025. Stern is contracting with a mechanical design group to implement designers' accessory concepts to market faster. I need to. Good idea. Gary thinks that the second Simpsons game was perfection and wouldn't do the license again. I totally agree. I would actually do a different software. I would add more ears to the quotes and that kind of stuff. Yes, that's right. Oh, boy. All new software completed. That'd be good. Yeah. LCD it. That'd be really cool. You can think about 30 years of animation. They are in the process of testing the 2.0 version of Insider Connected, the Insider Connected app, and hoping to begin rolling it out in the next month or so. Pay as you play. Here we come. Stern Pinball has secured Gary Stern dream license. Beavis and Butthead confirmed. Yes. Yes. That has to be his dream license, right? No, it's Faka Aras. He rides motorcycles, doesn't he? He's probably Harley Davidson. Probably Harley Davidson again. I got it for the fourth time. Again. Yes. Home leaderboards are in the works. Nice. Stern bought the Wisconsin company that's been doing its clear coating and are moving their operations into the factory. Yes. Let's see. They're looking at investing into more digital printing. Yes. I knew that would excite Zach. Long live silkscreen. Yes. And George Gomez, man, he's making the rounds. He was also on the Phantom Tilt Pinball podcast, and he talked about why the Venom topper has been delayed. Whatever the first thing they tried with it was, it failed completely. I took it to mean it blew up or caught on fire. We had a moving Venom and it blew up. It's probably like the moving guy with the four legs, but he just went straight into your face and bashed you. You have to physically punch the three targets to get them out of the way. So let's see. I think that's it for that. Let me see. What else do I got here? Yeah, I think it's time for the ball bag. And we do have a bunch of stuff in the ball bag. I got something else before we go into the ball bag. Oh, God. Okay. You never asked what we were going to talk about today to us, right, Zach? Well, no. Why would I? I don't have anything to talk about. I'm in control. Sounds like Fantastic Pinball is going to take a step back and not do playfields. Okay, what's Fantastic Playfield? You ruined it for everyone, Bruce. I did ruin it for everyone. What is that? That's the guy who was doing the Ali playfields, the Alien Star, and the Countdown, and a couple of other. Is these the ones you criticized heavily on a former episode, the both of you? Yes, and then he came back to me saying, well, you know, these were great. And then, yeah, they weren't. So he talked to somebody, and they posted it on Pennside saying, hey, what's your plans for these playfields? And he goes, well, the truth is that play field production isn't as profitable as a standalone business. After years of doing these playfields, the profits are still in the three-digit range. There has been a string of unpleasant interactions and the events that only make this more frustrating. I have other things to do in my life that require my time. I only work on pinball when it works for me. Which is weird, because just like a month ago, he was buying a bigger printer to do podcast for. Thank you. Exactly. He flip-flops so bad. So thanks to Bruce and Zach. Yes. Good job, guys. Well, it's not dead, because guess what? He paid for it. If it's dead, he's really not a good businessman, because he supposedly paid Mondoose to license the playfields for Alien Star. Mondoose? What the hell is that? Mondoose is the company that owns the rights to Gottlieb. Oh, okay. PBR pays a licensing fee to them. Oh, Pitbull Resource. Yes. And so Mondoose is the place that owns the whole Gottlieb rights. Okay. Yeah, and also he won't give out the files for it, even though he claims he's out of it. All right. We'll probably get messages on this now. I guarantee you will. Nothing bothers me. Yeah, nothing bothers you. Nothing bothers me at all. Breaking news. That's Slam Tilt. We cause it, and then we report on it. That's the Slam Tilt way. That's the Slam Tilt way. If you notice, Ron's getting more, like, stressed out and skinnier, and I'm just like, whatever. Stressed out and skinnier. Okay. All right. Going to the ball bag now. Oh, yeah. Did you guys get my message about the tech question? Yeah. Okay. And you saw the video that I sent? I have not watched the video yet. I did watch the video. All right. Watch the video. As I'm saying, this is from Dr. John. We promised we would hold on to this and answer it the next episode. So here we are. We keep our promises here at Slamtail Podcast. It says, or he says, hello again. Could you please help explain this? Stern Support has been very responsive, which I appreciate. I appreciate the reassure me, which I appreciate the reassure me all is normal. Maybe he meant they reassure me all is normal. Damn it. Didn't want to annoy them further, so I chose to annoy you. Okay. Well, thanks. I was checking out my JAWS LE and switch test and noticed that when I press a flipper, the opposite end of stroke switch would show up. I wondered if there was a wiring mix-up. Video of this below. You can describe it for the listener. The video shows the right flipper button being pressed, and you can see the left EOS shows up in the switch test. The explanation from CERN is the left EOS switch would correctly be active when the right flipper button is pressed because the right EOS would be disengaged when the flipper is pressed, so it would not be active. It just sounds odd that a switch not being moved would show up. The same thing happens when I do the other side. It's not consistent, probably around 40% of flips. Makes sense to you? Thanks. Sean. No, it makes no sense to me. What I would check is actually the colors for the wiring. But Stern says it's fine. They say it's normal. Yeah, Stern doesn't make any sense. Yeah, that makes no fucking sense at all. I look at the video, and, like, it shows sometimes both EOS, right and left, show up when he flips one flipper. Yes. I mean, really, you shouldn't be doing this via a flipper. you should just go into the play field in the switch test and then just open and close EOS with your finger to tell you why it's reversed or not. Or just move the flipper. Or just move the flipper. That's what I was going to say. Which I keep forgetting. They have normally closed EOS switches on Snerds. I keep forgetting that. Yes. My bet is that, like, there's a flaky leaf switch, so it's, like, shaking the left one. When you flip the right one, it's losing contact momentarily. But I would move them physically with just, you know, play field down and just move the flipper. If you move them physically and you never get the issue, but you get it when you actually flip them, it's probably a vibration. Yeah. And next thing I would then check is the input wiring for your connectors. For the EOSs, it's CN10 input pin 6 is for the left and 5 is for the right EOS. They could be backwards, too, because it's right next to each other. They could be the connector off backwards. That's what I'm thinking it could be because it's right. If you've got gray-yellow on five and gray-green on six, they're backwards. And that would be on the CN10 for node eight. Node board eight. So a lot of possibilities, but not that Stern is right. Not that Stern is right. That actually scares me that somebody said, no, that's right the way it is. Huh? I mean, I can see what they're trying to say, but it doesn't apply here. It doesn't apply here. And second is, I would actually, I'm going to ask Mark probably tomorrow, since Mark has a... Mark, one of the members of the, one of the owners of the Rochester Pinball Collective. Where is that, Bruce? I don't know. I never heard of that place before in my life. Jesus. Zach, where is it? I've never been to that shit hole either. Wow. I only play at level zero. Oh, God. Level zero, where the best games are in upstate New York. stamp of approval by Zach I'll put that like Zach likes most of these games and that'll be good enough that's like oh my god holy shit we need to go there 78% of these games are approved by Zach normally Zach hates everything this has to be an amazing he hates it hey Zach the third highest Zach approver rating in the world next to his own games yeah next to the places I have my own games. Yes. 349 West Commercial Street in beautiful East Rochester, New York. Suite number 2965. Okay. This next email. Oh by the way you can send your emails to swamptailpodcast at gmail Ooh This is from Kurt And oh I think he might be Australian The subject says, g'day, mates. G'day. Not a big podcast person, but I like your shows a lot, although Bruce is not always right. Okay. That's wrong. That's true. That's wrong. That's true. That's wrong. But we know Zach's never wrong. We're not all duds here down under either. Sorry for Haggis and Dr. John, amongst many others. Oh, man. Maybe something to do with Rangas. I don't know what that means. Let's look it up. It's a link that every time I click on it, nothing happens. So my browser obviously sucks. Is it that woman that's the breakdancer, maybe? No, that's what the fuck's her name? Ray Gunn. Okay. I don't know. Oh, Rangas. Oh, red-haired person. Ah, yes. Oh, they're talking about you. you're a Ranga. Yeah, Ranga, mate. Let's see. I really enjoy the segments, even the tournament talk, which I don't get involved with down here all that much. I know you guys aren't into one-off homebrew re-themed stuff, but maybe after my next one, I can give you a comical lesson on Australian lingo and culinary delights. I've enjoyed making Mad Max and Jaws pins so far. I'd like to see a Mad Max one. So would I. The Ayatollah of rock and roll. Next one should be a cracker, mate. Let's see. Yet to play as stars. Oh, my God. Go see Mr. John. Dr. John. I think he has one. Wait a minute. I've owned a Meteor and Orbiter One. You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have. I miss them both. Oh, yes. Even Orbiter One. More of an early Williams person in that era. Firepower, Blackout, Gorgar, Defender, et cetera. Ooh, Defender. Defender, nice. No mention of Black Knight. Anyway, all the best, and keep up the great work. Always eagerly awaiting your next episode. Send me your postal address so I can send over some Aussie snacks for your review. Ron, you'll have to reply to him. Okay. Because you need to fatten up. Oh, Jesus. Cheers, Kurt. P.S. Pinball is not a sport, ever. Are you fucking kidding me? Harden up, people. Wow. Do you consider breakdancing a sport? It's athletic, but I don't like it's judged, though. I hate stuff that's judged. Even like gymnastics because you've got judges. Gymnastics is not a sport. You heard it here, folks. No, I didn't say that. I didn't say that. That was the line of reasoning you were following. I said I don't like things that are judged. Boxing is judged, too, but I still consider that a sport. Well, Zach was judging your games. You didn't like that at all either. And judging games is definitely not a sport. Oh, wait a minute. He says, who are Beavis and Butthead? I always skip that intro BS. Oh. Yeah. Ron, you have a great voice. Love you to finish the show one day with a song. Oh. Bruce, you need to practice your Aussie voice. It sucks. Good day, mate. I'm the criminal one. Turn down the one kilohertz on your mic or unblock your nose or both. Oh, is he saying you're nasal? I am very nasally, probably. That's right. Yeah, that's right. I'm going to do this. Oh, yeah. Your Dexter is still the best, though. Give me. Space Ace. You are Space Ace. Bruce, you penned the best ever thing in pinball podcast industry, in my opinion. cash grab cash grab love it and lastly pin side isn't that bad once you block all the dickheads great source for info it is a good source for info yeah if you if you block all the dickheads you have 27 people on pin side yeah and i think we 27 yeah oh let's see um strange gotley genesis alt translate. Oh, God, you've got to look at the email, Bruce. It's a visual. Hey, Ron and Bruce. This is from Dave. Hey, Ron and Bruce. I've been enjoying the content. Great work as always, guys. Ron, despite the hate, I enjoyed the episode where you had bingos on your other podcast, the Silver Ball Chronicles on TPN. Silver Ball Chronicles, Silver Ball Chronicles, Silver Ball Chronicles, Silver Ball Chronicles. Just reading it out. He wrote that many times. It's an important part of our hobby's history. And you guys are a history podcast that would be Silver Bowl Chronicles, so I don't know why people get so upset. I was actually shocked to see Bruce so enthusiastic about a new game. It has LEDs in it and doesn't suck. My jaw was on the floor. It's even deeper on the floor after Elton John. Your comment about how Jack Danger must really be a big Gottlieb fan is dead on. It's almost criminal how many people don't realize Gottlieb really championed funky mechs like kicking targets, fairy targets, etc. Credit where credit is due, though. The theme does look great, and it's refreshing to see some non-Italian bottom layouts again. Speaking of funky Gottlieb games, I was inspired by Ron's stunning performance at Pinberg and just procured a Gottlieb Genesis. The Translight looks somehow off. I can't really put my finger on it, though. And it's the Genesis back glass with Bruce's head on the little guy. But the good thing is, if you notice, I have my hand up in the air for the one. Guess where my fist is in the other? Yes, yes. The expression is perfect, too. It is. That's very good, very good. Okay. Let's see. Make it pro number two. Make it pro number two. This is from Tom. this is our segment, or his segment which is now our segment Make It Pro Hello boys, here's your next assignment You give us three more games with a new stipulation You must take at least make at least three changes or more since that seems to be the minimum that Stern does when they downgrade We were listening to this in the car on the way back here and I was thinking like when you look at the pros there's like a maximum amount of mechs that they have on there afterwards. If you're not hitting that number, you're not really doing it properly. Not counting the flippers and the slingshots at the bottom, you've got to have like a maximum of eight or nine mechanisms on the game. All right. Well, Zach, show us how it's done here. Theater of Magic. Well, we already know the first one. Bye-bye trunk. I make the trunk static bash toy. Yep. You just hit it. Bye-bye magnets. Yep, bye-bye magnets on the sides. Third, no more gold trim. That was factory. All silver. Remove the trapdoor thing that comes up. Yep. Remove the subway. You don't need it because the other thing is just a bash toy now, and you can't lock it in the back anyway. We can make it like the alien on Starship Troopers instead. Oh, God. It pops up, you hit that, and then you're done. No subway needed, no nothing. And as I said, no gold. Anything else? Zach, anything? I think that's more than enough. I think that's more than enough, too. We've made it pro. Suit available at a distributor near you. Let's see. Sopranos. Bye-bye safe. Bye-bye spinning girls in the back. Well, safe is just a bad sign. It doesn't open. Yep. Bye-bye fish. Bye-bye fish. Remove the drop target. You just can shoot it up there. Just get rid of the drop target. Over and over and over. Yep. And no more spinning girls up top. Or they're static. Or they're just flat plastics of spinning girls. That's the way you got to do it. Flat plastics. Cheaper. Way cheaper. Yep. And they still spin, but they're also flat. Yes. And the fish is also flat. Yeah. Yeah, the fish is just a plastic. It doesn't do anything. Wow, we really cheapened that out. Yeah. Okay. Scared stiff. God, it's easy. You take all the crap off the ramps, so they're just ramps. Like, it doesn't have any of the bones or anything on it. No, there's like a sticker of bones drawn on the bottom. Yeah, no, it's a sticker underneath. It's a sticker that goes on the bottom of the ramp. Yep. You remove the leafers. You don't need them. Move the crate. The crate is just a bash toy. Or it's just a bash toy. You could probably still get the crate. No, no, no, because that would kick out. Too much money. Too much money. No, but you're already going to remove the lock from the coffin. Yes. You've already got the bar back. Oh, of course, yeah. It's just, you know, it's just a hole. It's just like a hole for, like, a creature. You kick it up there, and then it kicks right back out. Yeah, yeah. Lock one. Lock one, and it kicks it out. Yes. Yep. Not even a kick out. You just shoot right back to the top and it just says lock one while you fall into the deadhead hole. And on the other side, you don't have the ramp that flaps on or anything, so it goes back up into the ramp. You just have a kick out. Just a scoop. Just a scoop. Okay. And no kickback on the left. No kickback at all on the left, yes. Wow, we've made these games suck. Damn. And we get rid of the skull pile on the upper right-hand side. Oh, yeah. We make that plastic. Yeah, it's just a flat plastic. Yep, flat plastic. And maybe we put a spotlight to shine on it. No, no, no. We put the Thanos hand up there because we have so many extra ones from – No, no. It's still a flat pile of plastic that looks like a skull, but it just uses the same board in the back of the LEDs as Thanos' head. There you go. We got it. All right. Let's see. Next one. All right. Let's see. Next, we have Daniel, Freefall, and Allie. What's up, Slam Tilt guys? I finished restoring my meteor, and now I'm dreaming about what my next classic stern should be. Ooh. If only someone was selling one of those games or something. If only one was. But he started with the best one. We got two out of the three people on this call that would agree. Well, obviously, the only place to go from there is Cheetah, but you're going to have a hard time finding one. Bruce is totally on Team Stars. I am totally on Team Stars. I'm not really going for the rarest titles, but more something that is affordable, fun, and will go great next to Meteor, full stars. I mean. Dracula. Oh, God, no. Dracula. Yeah, with your code. Yeah, without even that, it doesn't help. How are you going to get it? Doesn't help it. Just contact me, Dracula, at Zackage.com. Oh, there you go. You got his contact info. Locally, there are two games on the market, Free Fall and Alley. What are your thoughts on these titles? Are there any specific sterns I should look out for? Get the Ali. Don't get free fall. I own both. And honestly, Ali. Ali's okay. It's a good tournament game. I think some people like it. For me, I don't think it's a great tournament game. So what's an affordable, fun stern game? Meteor was one. Of course, Stars is still a great, affordable one. What else you got there? You got, are sea witches affordable? Nope. Nope? God. I don't think so. Sea witches are. They're still, you can get them for $25. I would say stars are affordable now. I haven't seen one under two in a while. I know. Wow. You get a pinball. You get a pinball for $1,000 or $1,200. Well, yeah, they're all pinballs, Bruce. No. Pinball. A pinball game. Oh, yeah, a pinball game. That's what he wants. Yes. The title of the game is pinball, folks, if you don't get it. Yeah. See, when Ron tries to be funny, it's not the same way. It's not the same way. No. Even that doesn't make sense. But okay. You said before you were the straight guy and you tried to be funny there. And you tried to be funny there and it didn't work. No, I waited for the comedian to come through and he didn't. He failed. I came through for everything. Pinball. Game. So what's affordable? Nothing? Wildfire. Wildfire. I know Zach doesn't like Wildfire, but I like Wildfire. Wait, are you seriously shitting on Dracula and then bringing up Wildfire? Oh, no. I like Wildfire better than Dracula. A game with the same bad rules and an even shittier layout. Oh, yes. I like the layout. Oh, no. No. It's better than Stingray. Yeah, that's true. That's true. That's true. Is there any Stern game worse than Stingray? No. Disco. Yeah. Disco is pretty bad. That's a good point It's a stern Does it actually say stern on it? It does say stern on it Yeah I think it does Well Rawhide is bad too then Rawhide's bad too yes But what about Trident? As far as an affordable game I have one I have one Some would say it's better than Stars Yeah some do but they're wrong Someone Someone's wrong Someone who lives in Georgia He may be incorrect Yeah he's totally wrong Yeah those are some games Stars Trident But if you're going to pick out of the two Probably Probably Ali I would pick. Unless you get the free fall really cheap and you can flip it and then get something else. Remember, Ali is the greatest. You could probably pick up the free fall for like $1,000 or $2,000, sell it for $3,000, and then have money towards your Ali and then your next project. There you go. Done. Wow, you got this all figured out, don't you? Or just buy them both. Both are in my basement. They're right behind me. Not all powered up and lit up like all these other guys when they have their podcasts and everything like that. Yeah, because their chains are working and on. Mine are working and on. They're not on. You just said they're not on. I heard them on, but I mean, they're working and they're on, you know, so. But I don't, like, oh, look at my collection behind me. That's the whole point. It's for ambiance. I would do the same thing. I would never do that. Jesus. I didn't like it. I didn't even like it when we were on the video. It felt kind of weird, even though it was nice to see it. So you didn't like the pinball documentary that interviewed you in front of turned-on pinball machines? Yeah, it's distracting somewhat. But I did like that they blurred them out. No, they blurred them out a little bit. That's called focus. That's called focus, Bruce. They blurred them out. Are you pissed like, I wanted a camera on me, motherfucker? No, not at all. Not on me. I'd rather have my voice in there. I'm ugly. So you just want to be on a podcast. Well, then you're all set. I'm all set. See? See? That's why we do what we do. Okay. And you know what we also do? We talk about repairs. We do. Wait, wait. Ron, I got breaking news. Uh-oh. Breaking news? pinball at the lab just ended, and it was not won by a child. A child? What do you consider a child, Zach? It was described as a non-19 to 20-year-old. Okay. So who is it? I don't actually know. That's all I heard. Jesus! It's breaking news. It's not accurate news. Well, no, it's accurate in that what you said is accurate. You just got no information. Yeah, thanks, Zach. Yeah, what is it? 2024. Come on! Never drains. Yes, there it is. Thank you. Division A playoffs. Let's go to finals. This took like two seconds. There we go. The winner was Dustin Goldbarg. Okay. Don't know who that is. Zach McCarthy, there's your kid, in second. Fail. Dustin Goldbarg, age 33. Will McKinney in third, and Carl D'Python Anghelo in fourth. Carl with a total of zero for four games. Oh. Oof-ah. Last place on Surfing, Lost World, Paragon, and Game of Thrones. Yeah, what were we talking about? Repairs. Repairs. I went through all the stuff I got to repair, so I'm empty. I need a new coil for Counterforce. We have the wrong one in it on the lower left-hand side. I have to get that tomorrow from our local parts distributor. So I'm going to grab that. Shout-out to Business Plus. Business Plus, shout-out. It's right in Rochester, local. I can go there. It's five minutes from the RPC. Go there, pay some cash, and grab and go. Nice, nice, nice. We also have a sticky, well, supposedly, I might have to replace the springs. What do you think, Zach, on the drop target for a counterforce? I thought you already did. I swapped them, and it still stayed the same. But you didn't use new ones? I didn't have new ones. Oh. I never ordered them from PBR. Oh, the last email we did, I forgot. There was a final part that Daniel put in. Shout out to a new pinball bar in Bellingham, Washington. Sorry, we only sponsor one pinball place. Only one pinball place? It's called Pin Up. Pin hyphen up. Pin Up. Pin up, now tell me, do you really want to love me forever? Oh, oh, oh. Well, hold on, Zach. You should have been disqualified yesterday. During Lethal Weapon 3. Oh, you picked the wrong songs. You picked the wrong songs. everyone was criticizing you. Yeah, multiple people were picking ZZ Top. That's incorrect. You picked C&C Music Factory. I know the player thumbs up me for choosing that one. Well, they were wrong. They're wrong, totally. They're wrong. And then Tyler walked up and he said, I see you chose ZZ Top, and I'm like, yeah, well, it's not the middle one. He's like, yeah, good job. Fail. Wow. Fail. Anything but the middle one. Wow. That is the wrong answer. We get into that conversation from a Paula Abdul song. Because it was just different music, you know. That's all. Okay. So, what other repairs do we have? We picked up an Iron Man this past week at the RPC. And the paw screws, they go through the link and plunger and everything like that. They were worn to, the threads were gone. It had so much play in it, it was not even funny. So we replaced the screws, replaced the links and the coil stops, and they were all original. Oh, wait a minute. We didn't even mention this. Yeah, the Iron Man that you got. How did you get that Iron Man? You needed extra money. How did you get it? I needed extra money. Was that all the money you needed? No, it was not even close. So you dipped into your X-Men fund? I did dip into the X-Men fund because I want to get Iron Man, so Zach hates it more and more at the RPC. So the Iron Man is partly owned, but people send you that $60? No. I sold the $60 in my PayPal account. Yeah, but where did you get the money you needed for that? I had to sell a game. What did you sell? Some crappy countdown to some loser guy in Albany. I have a countdown now. It's mine. It is the nicest countdown I've ever seen. And it's already been LED'd out. It's all set. He already had it done before I got there. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Ron? Yes, sir. The LED on the upper right lane guide is flickering a whole bunch. It's flickering? It's actually out. It was actually out for me. Okay. I'm glad you noticed every level. Yeah, because LEDs are bad. Yes. LEDs are bad. No, the socket would be bad, Bruce. No, no, no. LEDs are bad. Oh, God. But, yes, so Countdown is now, and we now have an Iron Man, so just to piss off Zach. Because we know Zach loves Iron Man, right? Oh, wait. You hate that, too? Yeah. Why do you hate good games? I want to bring it's less bad when it's set up not so brutal like yours is I find that the way it's used is way too brutal for like how deep the game is okay do you think my Iron Man was too easy it was like the last game one or two yeah two or three times it's a little bit too easy one spot maybe just one spot all the way up no no everyone does that one spot up on the right and then give it a try again yes and then So we have that. Zach stole the Star Race. I never even got to play it. Nope, didn't get to play it. What else are we fixing at the RPC? Oh, we got a Game of Thrones, and that's going on the floor. And we're all yawning at this point. Yeah, I'm exhausted. And what else do we have? I don't think we have anything else for repairs. Some people want me to go to their houses, and I kind of... What do you think of my comment, Zach? We have a Discord, like a mini Discord for just the owners of our PC. A mini Discord. Yeah. Within a bigger Discord. Okay. Yes, we do. Okay. And I said, I really don't want to do any more home repairs. What did you think of that, Zach? I mean, I never want to do them, so. I know. Zach would just show up and tell them how bad their games suck, how their choices are so poor. Oh, God. Ron, I had to go work on The Lord of the Rings. Can you imagine that? Oh, God. You had to go work on a... No, you worked on a Gulfstream, remember? That was even worse. Yeah. And a triple action, too. Don't forget that. Yeah, triple action. That's even worse, too. And a laser war. So there's a lot of bad games out there. But I'm just sick of, you know, if I go there and I can't fix it fully, then you're like, oh, I've got to come back again. Oh, it's just like the never-ending gobstopper. Guess what? If you want to get the game fixed, bring it to me. I'll do it at RPC. I'll do my time. Then we can get it done and get out of there. Back to you. I don't want to go to people's houses. I know. Guess what people say? It's so big and bulky. Well, guess what? You own it. That's what happens. Do you have a mechanic come to your house and replace your engine for you? No. You bring it to the dealership. Pinball famously can move itself on wheels. Yeah, you can kind of easily drive your car there. That is a terrible analogy. No, you can put your wheels on the bottom of it. Oh, my God. You can put wheels on the bottom of it and wheel it around. Does your washer work? Do you have the appliance repairman? Do you send it to them? No, they come to your house and fix it. Yes, and sometimes they don't depart. And then you're going back and forth and back and forth, and it gets very annoying where you've got to take it off two to three times for the guy to come back and forth, back and forth. You know, I once had a Christmas tree that had a light that was out of one side. I offered to take it back to my workshop. I'd fix it there and then bring it back. See? So I picked up a game last weekend. Picked up a Team 1. Team 1? Team 1? The hell is that? It's the edible version of Abracadabra. Oh. Wait a minute. A game you already own. With 50,000 point knocker storing. Okay. Novelty mode. But I picked up from a person's house and they're like, it's on second floor, of course. You know, they're like, okay, you're going to bring like two or three people to help move it, right? And I'm like, no. And they did the thing again with, like, I showed up and took off the hat, and they were just, like, gasping when I took the legs off. You could do that? Yep. So speaking of, like, people are like, oh, I don't want to move it. Like, maybe they just don't know they can take the head off. Yeah, every tired person usually I tell them, like, hey, head comes off. Oh, no, it doesn't. Get to their place, pull off the head. I'm like, there you go. We're done. Yep. Oh, my God. I bought a Strikes and Spares. The guy's like, I said, I'll be there about an hour from now. I got cash, you know. I'll take it out of your basement. He's like, oh, you're going to need at least three or four people. Get there, pull the head off, bring it out. He's like, I brought that all the way down together with four or five guys, and we killed ourselves. Yeah, well. You should learn how to look for bolt heads. Yes. Or ask somebody or look on the Internet. There was no Internet then. No, it was only two years ago or three years ago. Well, how did he – when he got it originally? Maybe he got it in the 70s. No, he said he moved in three years ago and it's been sitting in his basement. Oh. All right. We done with repairs? I think we're done on my side. Zach, you got anything else? You worked there, too. Got a sticky flipper on jackpot to go look at. Oh, yeah, I heard about that. It's weird because they just rebuilt, like, a few months ago. Rebuilt better. Oh, I had an interesting one. On my Spanish eyes. Which one? Number three. Okay. I had it all rebuilt. You know, all the mechs and stuff. But whenever you flip the left flipper like three quarters of the time, it would like stutter a few times before staying up. Yep. Yep. Occasionally I would just keep doing it forever. And I could not figure out what it is. I just did an understroke switch. I cleaned the cabinet switch, this, that. And finally someone said like, oh, there's like a problem with the winding inside the coil. Like it's making partial connection or something. And I'm like, I doubt it. Okay, so I dug through my spare parts and found another coil and fixed the problem completely. So I don't understand why it worked, but it worked. That was Mike Dimas. And I've had that issue on, like, multiple other Williams, always on the left flipper. So I'm very, like, suspicious now. Never that bad, but the same problem. So I guess I know what to do. It's spend $15. Maybe the iffy coils were always put on the left side because they figure most people are right-handed. Ooh. Yeah. It must be, you know, the rotation on the left side is slowly loosening the windings over time. Oh, 50 years will do that to you. Yeah. You'll find out about that, Zach. Yeah. He's been an old man. He is an old man now. Yeah. Speaking of being an old man, you know, that's not going to win any tournaments, I just had my best stomp finish ever, you know. Yeah, you finished second. Congratulations. You're talking to two people who've won it before. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yep. I told Bruce, though, his was more impressive because he wasn't his own games he won on. Yeah. The last time I made the top 16 was in 2017. Wow. Wow, you stuck, dude. You're always a bridesmaid, but never a bride. Now I know why he just hates all my games so much. He's just a hater. But we're not haters here at Slam Cell Podcast. We love everything. We love everything, and thanks again. We love Spooky. We love Stern. To JJP for inviting us. We love Super Bands, and we love Clown Puke. Oh, God, no, we do not. No, we don't. No, fuck you. No. One too far. No. Way too far. Way too far. I think the first one was too far, too. It was spooky. Well, you know, it was funny. We were talking about the non-Italian bottom, and you were like, well, the last one was Wheel of Fortune. And I'm like, wait a minute. Didn't you own a Rick and Morty? Does it have, like, a non-standard bottom? I yelled the same thing at the radio as I heard that. Okay. Yeah, but. Well, I was talking about Sterns. Yeah. Just say that. Just say that, and you're going to be at full. Perfect. I don't think that's what you meant, but yes. Mm-hmm. That's the first one I meant. I don't even consider Rick and Morty. That was terrible, that game. But it was not Italian, that's for sure. I hated it, but then liked it more over time. You did the opposite. Yeah, I still sort of want one now. Yeah, you got it, and then you hated it. You can go buy it from Eric. Eric still has it. I don't want yours. Yours sucked. I want a different one. They all suck. Trust me. I've played two others since then. I've played some that work pretty good. Megaseeds. Megaseeds. Megaseeds. God, Megaseeds. Rick and Morty. Ooh. Can you sell me your living room, six months in my living room? You can sell me your Elton John really cheap, Ron, and you can finance that Rick and Morty. No, Ron's got the money. He's got the money bags. Yeah, sure. Yeah, as soon as I told him the number, he's like, okay, where do you want his money? PayPal? I'll pay him right now. No, no, no. You make it sound so easy. I've had the money in my PayPal for six months. Here's a typical transaction. Here's a typical transaction between me and Bruce. Now, I have kind of a number in my head that I figure I would pay for countdown, like if he just gave me the number. So I'm driving home, and as I actually pull into the driveway, I get a text. It's like, countdown with the dollar amount. And I'm like, okay, that's pretty much the exact dollar amount I was thinking of. Sold. All set. And he immediately comes back, no, no, no, no, you're jumping the gun. I'm not ready yet. I'm trying to work on a deal here. Yes, I was. I was working on a deal. But you write it like it's yours for this. I'm like, yeah, okay. Oh, wait a minute, not yet, not yet. Well, I had to make sure if I was going to buy it again. Okay, I'm not going to hear. Okay, it's going to be a couple days. Literally five minutes later, it's like, okay, it's yours. Yep, well, I had to make sure the other person was still in. And that person's always a little flaky, right? Uh-huh, okay. Uh. Oh. All right, guys. I think we've been on long enough. This has been like two and a half hours. Oh, God. And I've got to get this edited and out before I leave for Robert Englunds on Wednesday. So you've got two days of rest? Yeah. What the fuck? You're going to be sitting around doing nothing. Oh, okay. And I'm going to have a former Pinbird champion is going to be visiting me Monday. Ooh. I know what that is. I know what that is. You'll hear about it in our next episode. I know what that is. It's very short because half of it is Keith Owen. That's true. Statistically speaking, Elwin is the person. No, Elwin's not. All right. This has been Episode 236 of the Slamtail Podcast. You can reach us at slamtailpodcast at gmail.com. Check out our website, slamtailpodcast.com, in the upper right-hand corner. All our links are there, including our YouTube channel, which has the stop finals. We just uploaded today. They're up there in wonderful high def. You can also go to our Twitch channel, which I have archived both the qualifying and finals. Hello to everyone on our Clusterbook. Hi, Pinball Princess. Fun with Bonus. Hi, Zach. Oh, you're here. Hi, Zach. Hello. Hi, Zach. Thanks to everybody. I know this was a long one. There wasn't that much that was filler either, so probably not going to be that much cut out of this. Wow. Yeah. Should I sing? that the one guy wanted me to sing. I don't know what I would sing. Sad songs they say so much. So turn them on. Turn them on. Turn them on. Turn them on. Turn on those sad songs. Sad songs. All hope is gone. So tune in and turn them on. And reach into your room. Well, I just feel the gentle touch. Gentle touch. Which all hope is gone. Sad songs say so much. Ooh, la-la-la-la, ooh. All right, Bruce, you got a name? Of course I have a name. All right. See you, everybody. Until next time, say goodbye, Bruce. Goodbye, Karina Malvern. Thank you. We'll be right back. Oh my. Oh my. Oh my. Oh my. Coming from... Fuck. Screw that up. Coming to you from... Fuck. Coming to you from fuck. Coming to you from fuck, Bill USA! Fuck you, or upstate New York. Fuck you, or... _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 54b41ec1-e803-491b-b60c-6235c82bdb47*