# PNP 567- John Wick 5 Rad 1 Bad+ Was Cary Hardy Wrong?+ Maple Pinball **Source:** Poor Man's Pinball Podcast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2024-05-11 **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://poormanspinballpodcast.libsyn.com/pnp-567-john-wick-5-rad-1-bad-was-cary-hardy-wrong-maple-pinball --- ## Analysis Orville Albert from Poor Man's Pinball Podcast reviews John Wick Pinball post-launch, highlighting five positive features including the bash toy car mechanic, Randy Martinez's neon noir artwork, the soundtrack and music integration, and Tim Sexton's rules development. He addresses criticism about the lack of gun toys and discusses whether Cary Hardy's earlier negative stance was justified, while acknowledging a 'soggy' launch but expressing confidence the game will sell well long-term. ### Key Claims - [MEDIUM] John Wick Pinball has more guns and violence on the LCD screen than in most action movies like Rambo or Total Recall — _Orville Albert, addressing criticism about lack of physical gun toys_ - [HIGH] The launch of John Wick Pinball was very poor ('soggier than a floppy fish') — _Orville Albert's direct assessment of the launch quality_ - [HIGH] Tim Sexton is the lead developer on John Wick Pinball rules — _Orville Albert citing information from the live stream presentation_ - [MEDIUM] Randy Martinez's back glass artwork for James Cameron's Avatar is 'probably the most beautiful back glass ever created for pinball' — _Orville Albert's subjective aesthetic opinion_ - [HIGH] Elliot is the designer of John Wick Pinball (his first pinball design) — _Multiple references throughout episode to Elliot's design work_ - [HIGH] George Gomez designed the car toy mechanic for John Wick — _Orville Albert referencing information from live stream_ - [MEDIUM] Keanu Reeves is involved with a comic book property called 'Berserker' — _Orville Albert discussing Keanu Reeves' comic book work_ - [MEDIUM] The bash toy works similarly to a Denesy lock mechanism — _Orville Albert's comparison of the car mechanic to Matt Danesi's design innovation_ ### Notable Quotes > "The randomness of the multi-ball start as opposed to just like bam or like you know balls coming out at a certain cadence that you always know it's very random when they're coming out and I just kind of like that" > — **Orville Albert**, Early in discussion of #1 feature > _Shows appreciation for design choice that adds unpredictability to gameplay_ > "if you're someone who was like really angry there wasn't enough guns and stuff if you're someone who's really upset about that and you decided that's it I hate John Wick I'll never watch a live stream do me a favor you'll get to see a hail like there is more guns on this LCD screen" > — **Orville Albert**, During discussion of artwork and violence content > _Directly addressing the gun toy controversy with counter-argument about on-screen violence_ > "This launch was soggier than, I don't know, a floppy fish, a wet noodle. Imagine something super soggy and soft. And that's how bad this launch was." > — **Orville Albert**, Mid-episode during broader assessment > _Blunt assessment of the launch quality using vivid metaphor_ > "I would buy the soundtrack if there was a vinyl soundtrack of this I'll buy it I'll buy it I'll go see good old Keanu Reeves at a comic con or something and get it signed" > — **Orville Albert**, During discussion of music and soundtrack > _Strong enthusiasm for game's audio design and willingness to collect merchandise_ > "these bad boys are sealed up like the very, very beautifully manicured butthole of the dolphin, okay? They are tight. They are watertight." > — **Orville Albert**, Describing tight shot difficulty > _Colorful description of playfield shot tightness and design precision_ > "Randy Martinez with this art package, you're going to have to start throwing his name up there in one of these top doppelgangers, okay?" > — **Orville Albert**, During art discussion > _Elevating Randy Martinez to tier of top pinball artists_ > "A week ago, if I had said on this show, what are the chances in the next week that a pinball content creator pulls out a gun in a video?... But it happened" > — **Orville Albert**, Referencing Cary Hardy incident > _Reference to controversy about Cary Hardy using real gun in video critical of John Wick's gun toy absence_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Orville Albert | person | Host of Poor Man's Pinball Podcast, Episode 567 | | John Wick Pinball | game | Stern Pinball machine being reviewed; subject of entire episode | | Stern Pinball | company | Manufacturer of John Wick Pinball | | George Gomez | person | Legendary Stern designer; designed the bash toy car mechanic for John Wick | | Tim Sexton | person | Lead developer on John Wick Pinball rules | | Elliot | person | First-time pinball designer for John Wick; mechanical engineer background | | Randy Martinez | person | Artist for John Wick Pinball; created neon noir artwork and back glass | | Jack Danger | person | Noted excellent pinball player; seen in live stream playing John Wick | | Cary Hardy | person | Pinball content creator who criticized lack of gun toy; has since softened stance | | Matt Danesi | person | Legendary designer; invented Denesy lock mechanism referenced in John Wick design | | Keanu Reeves | person | Star of John Wick film; involved with Berserker comic book property | | Charlie Panagiotopoulos | person | Likely composer for John Wick Pinball soundtrack (referenced as 'Charlie from Anthrax and Pantera') | | Maple Pinball | event | Tournament event Orville attended ~10 days before episode; where he contracted illness | | James Cameron's Avatar | game | Stern Pinball machine; Orville compares its back glass favorably to John Wick's | | Stern AC/DC | game | Previous Stern pinball machine; Orville compares art quality and back glass to John Wick | | Metallica | game | Pinball machine referenced for comparison of difficult far-left shot | | Drop Target Danielle | person | Person at recording studio who served Orville iced tea | | Zombie Eddie | person | Top-tier pinball artist; cited as one of the best in modern pinball art | | Christopher Franchi | person | Top-tier pinball artist; cited alongside Zombie Eddie as among the best modern artists | | Greg Ferris | person | Assisted with art direction for John Wick Pinball (mentioned uncertainly by Orville) | ### Topics - **Primary:** John Wick Pinball Design Features, Launch Quality and Marketing, Gun Toy Controversy and Cary Hardy, Artwork and Visual Design, Soundtrack and Audio Design, Mechanical Design and Gameplay Mechanics - **Secondary:** Pinball Designer Credits and Recognition, Maple Pinball Tournament and Community Event ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.72) — Orville is enthusiastic about the game's mechanical and artistic design features, but acknowledges serious flaws with the launch execution. He tempers criticism with long-term optimism about game sales and player acceptance. Critical of launch but not of the machine itself. ### Signals - **[product_launch]** John Wick Pinball had a 'soggy' and poor launch according to Orville; marketing and rollout were problematic (confidence: high) — This launch was soggier than, I don't know, a floppy fish, a wet noodle. There is a lot of negative things that you could say about the launch of this pinball machine. - **[design_innovation]** The bash toy car mechanic is innovative, allowing multi-directional ball interaction and functioning as a pseudo-Denesy lock; designed by George Gomez (confidence: high) — The car works as a Denesy lock once the ball's backed up in there... you can bash like head on like a boom... after a while when you bash it so much... Keanu's pissed so he freaking rips on the e-brake and he 180s out - **[code_update]** Tim Sexton serves as lead developer on John Wick Pinball rules; ranking up system similar to Venom and Star Wars (confidence: high) — Tim Sexton being the lead developer for Rules. The ranking up system kind of similar to Venom and Star Wars - **[design_philosophy]** Two 180-degree ramps leave room for numerous tight shots; multiple challenging shots reminiscent of difficult shots from other games like Metallica (confidence: high) — The two ramps on here are great. They're both 180 ramps. They don't take up a lot of space. They leave a lot of room for more shots, and some of these shots, oh boy, they are tight. - **[sentiment_shift]** Orville's initial skepticism about the Denesy lock (top bumper area) evolved into appreciation after seeing multi-ball start randomness in action (confidence: medium) — At first I wasn't digging on too much, but now that I've seen the multi-ball start... the randomness of the multi-ball start... I didn't think I would like that but the randomness... I just kind of like that - **[industry_signal]** Cary Hardy created controversy by pulling out a real gun in a video criticizing John Wick's lack of gun toy; has since softened his stance (confidence: high) — A week ago, if I had said on this show, what are the chances in the next week that a pinball content creator pulls out a gun in a video? Like, no, not a Nerf gun, not a super soaker, like a real gun... But it happened - **[design_philosophy]** Randy Martinez's neon noir visual package emphasizes on-screen violence and gunplay via LCD artwork rather than physical toys; uses rotating lights to change plastic appearance (confidence: high) — there is more guns on this LCD screen and people being murdered and shot and killed... than there is in like an Arnold Schwarzenegger or like a Rambo movie - **[gameplay_signal]** Multiple tight shots on John Wick present significant difficulty challenge; even expert players like Jack Danger struggle with them during public play (confidence: high) — Jack Danger himself who is an incredible pinball player... was trying to hit it and it was a very very tough shot, reminds me of the fuel shot on Metallica - **[content_signal]** Orville unable to publish his typical rapid multi-article coverage of John Wick launch due to illness contracted at Maple Pinball event (confidence: high) — This week I would put out two, maybe three different podcasts... but I'm not doing that because I wasn't feeling well... strep throat gave it to my whole family then somehow after that some really bad flu - **[personnel_signal]** Elliot (mechanical engineer/first-time pinball designer) collaborated with George Gomez on John Wick; they worked together at another company years prior (confidence: medium) — it seems like him and George Gomez worked together years ago at another place and they've been friends for a very long time - **[market_signal]** Despite poor launch, Orville predicts John Wick will sell approximately the same long-term units as typical major Stern releases (confidence: medium) — in the long run, I think they'll sell probably approximately the same number of pins. I really do... there is going to be that certain base that because of the no gun thing, they're going to stand hard ground to it --- ## Transcript All get around, he's on the rebound Hear the sound of our buddy, oh lordy, it's Orby Pinball now to rejoice He's tugging pinball, craft beer and coffee Miffed with syrup and honey He hopes to laugh with his family in a random tangent Stories of his boys He's on the poor man's pod network We're gonna get more listeners for the Pinball Nerds Podcast. Coming to you from beautiful River Hibbert, Nova Scotia. Welcome back, Pinball Nerds, to episode 567 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name is Orbital Albert, and on today's show we're going to be talking about the five most rad things about John Wick Pinball, the new pinball machine from Stern Pinball. Okay, and we're also going to be talking about that one bad thing. And is it that there's no guns? Or do I think it might be something else? You'll have to, in the illustrious words of my northerly neighbor here, Mr. Craig Bobby, you're going to have to wait and see. The other question I wanted to ask today, is Cary Hardy wrong? Or I guess, was he wrong? Because he softened his stance a little bit. But, you know, Carrie Hardy was very, very, very upset about the fact that, thank you very much, thank you very much, Drop Target Danielle. She just passed me a lovely glass of iced tea here, which I absolutely love, with an extra spoonful even of iced tea. And it's definitely angry alpaca. It's not the cheap Lipton stuff. Come on, guys. There's no way here on the homestead we would be using that giant container of Nesquik. tea, come on, we wouldn't do that. Okay, maybe we do that sometimes too. Maybe we cheat once in a while too and we don't feel like actually steeping tea. I'm not going to lie. But this is not an advertisement, alas, for my awesome coffee and tea company, Angry Alpaca. This is for me to get right to the point, to jump right in and tell you about the top five most rad things. And I'm also going to tell you my thoughts. And this is not a political podcast. I've been drama-free since episode 493. You don't know if I'm left of center, right of center, right in the center. To be honest, I'm not I'm really apolitical at this point in my life. I've chosen just to not really be very involved in politics. I'm sorry. I don't love politics. I don't have a love for it. It's not craft beer. It's not burgers. It's not homesteading. It's not even dogs. These are all the things that I love. Politics just ain't up there anymore. I used to be really very political. I voted on every different side, but I just don't talk about politics anymore on the podcast. And honestly, in real life, I just really prefer not to talk about politics for the most part, because some of the most people far, far, far more intelligent than Orby himself don't agree on which politics are right. And I just, you know, I like some things on the left. I like some things on the right. I'm probably closer to the center now than I would, you know, it's it's all I'm getting old as you get older. Typically, you know, you slowly usually go to the right on average. But the point is here, I am going to, this one time, I'm not going to, because I'm not, I'm apolitical, so I'm going to try to keep it as non-political as you can, talking about something that's politically charged, like guns and gun control and gun rights and yada yada yada. Probably most of you assume which side I would be on on this, and, you know, I think I would, my answers may shock people on both sides. I'll just say that. So less politic talk and more wicking it up with the old Keanu Reeves himself, Mr. John. Wickity, wickity, wickity, wickity, whack. Okay, let's get right into it. Number one on the top five rad. That's right. It's that cool little car, that car that drifts out like, and that sound effect. That sound effect is really good. I like that when it comes out there. They even have it timed, obviously, with the LCD screen. and let me just say this, this isn't even in my top five. I actually wrote this top five two days ago when I still didn't have a voice. Coming all the way back from Maple Pinball, don't worry people who don't love tournament talk. Who the hell are you? Just go play a tournament, it's awesome. But anyways, for those of you who don't go play a tournament, if you don't like tournaments, don't go play a tournament. I'm not going to judge. Everybody's loud here. People who love mods, people who don't love mods. People who buy tons of new in box, people who've never bought one in their life. Tournament players, location players, I love all the pinball nerds. I just nerd out about pinball, so let's go ahead and do that. I love that little car that screeches out. I know it doesn't work as well. I haven't really seen it on the pro, like how far it comes out marginally less, I guess. I have no clue. But I'll tell you this. I just watched Tim Sexton, Jack Danger, George Gomez, Elliot. Ah, I forget Elliot's name, but the designer who's already in the Hall of Fame, as George Gomez mentioned a couple times he's already in the Hall of Fame of pinball for being a mechanical engineer and it sounds like that's a pretty you know pretty regular step up you know when you've been a mechanical engineer for a long time is to actually move into being a pinball designer so obviously he knows the mechs and what makes this mech so cool is you can't just interact with it one way by bashing it in the front when the car is all back it up back it up Terry when that car is all backed up to the very back okay you can you bash it in the front like head on like a boom like just like a bull you know okay grab the bull by the horns you get in there you bash it in the front and then after a while when you bash it so much that's it Keanu's pissed so he freaking rips on the e-brake and he 180s out and the car whips out and all of a sudden now you can bash the side and you're just like you're hitting the passenger side door you're just smashing and bashing in there. But while that's happening, I believe you lock a ball by hitting one of, I think I saw it locked two different ways. I think either the far left orbit now can divert down to there so that you're now bashing the ball and or it can also get locked in from the top or also just to the left of the center shot that kind of orbits around into there. So you know Orbi, of course I love orbits. Orbits are the new ramps, let's be honest, because the two ramps on here are great. They're both 180 ramps. They don't take up a lot of space. They leave a lot of room for more shots, and some of these shots, oh boy, they are tight. They are like a toyga, okay? These bad boys are sealed up like the very, very beautifully manicured butthole of the dolphin, okay? They are tight. They are watertight. There's no extra room. If you are not a good pinball player, no, I'm just kidding, a couple of the shots, I counted three shots the far left shot where I think was the add-a-ball during one of the multi-balls, even Jack Danger himself who is an incredible pinball player, so nice to see Jack playing on the live stream by the way Jack, you know I believe it was the add-a-ball, it was the far left shot, it was on fire, it had all the lights going and I think he was trying to hit it and it was a very very tough shot, reminds me of I think the fuel shot on Metallica or on geez, now that I don't own Guardians. I forget the name of that shop, but that far left shot that, you know, and I do see some Borg in this design, but cheers to you, Elliot, on your first design, because well, let's just, I'm going to get into it in a second, but number one on my list is that Bash toy. I love that Bash toy. It almost kind of works like not like, I guess, kind of like a Denise-y lock, and then there's that other Denise-y lock that's up there with the dance room, which at first I wasn't digging on too much, but now that I've seen the multiball start that happens going up into that the top left that little gated area with the pop bumper and you know when it drops three balls the first ball might come out within two or three seconds the second ball might hang out and bounce around there for four or five and the last ball certainly on the one time that I saw the last ball of the three and it's not always the last ball to go in depending on how long they bounce around in there it could come out 5 10 I would guess sometimes with just randomness even maybe you know 15 20 seconds later right so probably 20 20 seconds probably stretching it but the randomness and I thought I wouldn't like that but the randomness of the multiball start as opposed to just like bam bam bam or like you know balls coming out at a certain cadence that you always know it's very random when they're coming out and I just kind of like that that's kind of neat so there's almost and then the car kind of works as a Denise lock once the ball's backed up in there as well and for those of you who don't know Scott Danesi legendary Scott Danesi his first homebrew his homebrew pinball machine that was picked up and made actually by Spooky Pinball of course TNA, this is kind of reminiscent of that, but the Nisi lock is basically a stand-up target that once you knock it down, you can hit a ball up in there and then it comes back in and it locks the ball, and then that's how you interact with the ball. And of course we have that in front of the, you know, whatever the nightclub or whatever it is on the left there, that little area, I didn't think I would like that. I actually think it's kind of neat in retrospect. I'm not going to say it's like the best use of space on a pinball machine I've ever seen, but I actually think it is kind of cool. It adds more to it than I thought it would, put it that way. It's definitely not going to make Orbeez Top 5, but I'll tell you this, that cool car is. And I guess the car was designed as well by George Gomez, so that's kind of neat that he gets to do that. I know he came from a toy engineering background, I believe, and that's just neat. He obviously made the truck that was in Jurassic Park as well. All right, let's move on to number two, and the number two is Randy Martinez's artwork. And the pictures do not do it justice. if you're someone who was like really angry there wasn't enough guns and stuff if you're someone who's really upset about that and you decided that's it I hate John Wick I'll never watch a live stream do me a favor you'll get to see a hail like there is more guns on this LCD screen and people being murdered and shot and killed okay there is more violence in this and ultra violence in this you know than there is in like an Arnold Schwarzenegger or like a Rambo movie or like a Last Action Hero. I'm trying to think of movies with like a lot of murder death kills. Total Recall. You know what I mean? So there's still lots of guns. There's still lots of violence. You good. You good. I'm going to save that to the end. I'm going to save that to talk about Cary Hardy but I'm just going to say go watch the video and Randy Martinez's vision for the neon noir or the it's kind of like neon Tokyo, you know, like New York City neon, and the blues and the greens and the rotating lights, basically, that are changing how the plastics look, they are incredible. It's given me vibes, it's actually given me vibes of Tron, just because the music's got that, like, and the music is Charlie Panate, I probably, I don't remember his name, but Charlie, I believe he's from Anthrax and Pantera. I can hear that like hard you know that heaviness that would come from metal but there is a solid base to this bitch like it is a I would buy the I said in the chat while watching it I would buy the soundtrack if there was a vinyl soundtrack of this I'll buy it I'll buy it I'll go see good old Keanu Reeves at a comic con or something and get it signed that would be awesome that would be rad if you had a vinyl copy of John Wick's soundtrack by Charlie, and you got it signed by Charlie as well as Keanu, and you had that as a topper? Come on. You put that sucker behind glass, frame it all up, get it up there, stabilize, you know? Oh my god. Anyways, okay. I've gone off topic. What else would you expect here? I do apologize. My voice is not super awesome. You will hear me a couple times. Just pretend you're in an AMSMR podcast. Oh my god, sorry guys. Sinuses are still all clogged up. I'm getting better. I'm getting better. I went to Maple Pinball, I believe, like 10 days ago now. When I first came home, I was up and having to travel for 36 hours straight and ran into some issues, but I may or may not talk about a little bit of that later, but had a wonderful time. Had a great time seeing everybody. However, whenever you're meeting up with like 80 people who many of them traveled on airplanes from across the country and and even several people i think there was like six or seven american uh americans there as well and a lot of these people have traveled in either you know public transit or uh even like i know a whole bunch of people traveled in ottawa i think in a big van or suv together right so like whenever you're traveling in public transportation and a whole bunch of people are in small little confined areas and you have 80 people playing pinball in a small area and then i and again i don't know if it was from maple pinball itself or if it was from being on one of the airplanes or if it was from being one of the air airports for 13 hours straight with like hundreds of people coming and going from lots of different countries and all across you know what I mean Canada uh I don't know how I don't know what but I somehow came with strep throat gave it to my whole family then somehow after that got some really bad flu like I was down with the flu and a fever for like four or five days and then when I got over that I was left with like a really bad sinus and lung infection and I'm feeling like 80 or 90% better now, but I have to blow my nose all the time. My voice basically sucks. This is the best I could do. There's no way I could go. Normally, honestly, for eight to nine years, for those of you who haven't been listening to every single one of my 600 episodes, that's okay, I forgive you. But I have very often and most usually been the very first person to put out a podcast after we see gameplay footage, never mind waiting for it to be streamed. Like usually this week I would put out the week of a big Stern launch, I would put out two, maybe three different podcasts talking about first impressions after seeing pictures, and then first impressions maybe even after seeing the first gameplay video, and then first impressions after seeing the live stream, right? And this week I'm not doing that. I wanted to do that, but I'm not doing that because I wasn't feeling well, and I've, you know, geez, you guys probably get sick of my voice even when I'm feeling great and my voice sounds wonderful, and this is definitely not helping. But Randy Martinez, you killed the artwork. I'm not going to lie, the LE art is by far my favorite, especially that back glass. And I loved that back glass before I even knew what George Gomez was explaining tonight on the live stream. Who's talking to me on Facebook? Don't be talking to me. Don't you know I'm in a podcast? Oh yeah, how would they know that? Here, I'll just turn the volume off so we don't hear those annoying notifications. We'll talk about those later. but the the back glass has like texturized somehow to make it feel touch and look especially I'm sure if you're not straight on it will probably look have that texturized look to it and I just love that Stern did that because they're going to charge you that much extra for the LE it better damn well be pretty impressive and to be honest if it if just on a camera it looks that incredible can you imagine in person probably how good that back glass looks like I'm not even lying right now I'm not trying to sell extra machines for Stern or anything there's a very good chance that is the most beautiful back glass that's ever been created for pinball I'm sorry I mean first of all the artwork is incredible I love and I wondered this I even said it in the chat I wonder so a lot of you know I'm also a comic book nerd comic book collector comic book dealer all that kind of stuff I actually do have a show in Moncton tomorrow we're D-Up So y'all comic books, sports card nerds, Pokemon peeps, come on down and visit me. I do apologize. It is $5. My buddy Rod there, pinball nerd player, came down. Him and his partner came down to come check out my table, and they had no clue there was a fee. I'm sorry. It is $5 to get in. I'm sorry. But you're going to get to see so much cool stuff there. You get free stuff just for coming through the door, usually, especially for kids. They have free Pokemon packs and free cards. and I'm even working on doing a free comic book day workaround somehow for the next time we do a market close to that. But anyways, come see me tomorrow if you'd like to. I'd love to see you. Come see me. Come hang out. It'll be a good time. We will have fun. But Randy Martinez, take a bow. Wow. Before I saw the live stream, I would have told you that by far my favorite, art package was the Pro, because I love that back glass, but I don't love the cabinet for the LE. I don't know why. It's okay. I really don't like the cab for the Premium that much. It's growing on me a little. At first I was like, no, I don't like John Wick big. But wow, the playfield artwork is incredible. And John Wick is played by Keanu Reeves. And Keanu Reeves just did Berserker. So if you were to spell Berserker with none of the vowels. That's how his comic book, but you can just type Keanu Reeves comic book, Berserker will come up first. I don't know if he wrote it. I don't think he does the artwork for it. I think he either produces it or he directs it or he came up with the idea for it or something, but he has some involvement. He either owns it, and it's really cool. Okay, I read the free comic book day edition one, I believe, or the first one that I got for free somewhere. I didn't go on to read it anymore. I don't read as many comic books as I was like, I'm mostly into it because I freaking love the art. But I do have several variant editions of a couple of the first Berserkers and some really cool stuff. So my thought process is because we all know that Keanu Reeves loves comic. Well, I mean, all the comic book nerds know how much Keanu Reeves loves comic books. I wonder if himself or his team said, hey, can we kind of get like a comic stylized? because this artwork, like especially if you zoom in, Randy Martinez posted, I don't know if it was on Randy Martinez' personal Facebook page, which I have, or his art page, I believe, which I have as well. But on one of them, he posted like a zoomed-in picture of the Keanu Reeves right in the center, like right between the two flippers, just above the in-lane guides. Wow, it's just incredible. The artwork is incredible. How and where all the inserts are put and where the artwork is great. I know some people don't like just the little doggies on the plastics. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the plastics are a bit bare. I get that. This is only like Randy Martinez's second time, and I think he did mention that he had some help with, like, where to put all the stuff by the art director there at Stern. Why is his name? He's worked on so much art, and his name is, well, I probably had too many Pineapple Express vaporizers or peach rings, or my favorite thing to do is actually have a vape on both sides. I do a little peachy, make me peachy keen, and a little tiny bit of the old Pineapple Express on the other side. If you've never had a Peach Pineapple Express Mango Delight Vape, you don't even know. Let's get back on track, though, okay? So number three on this list. Number two is the art packages. I actually really do like the Pro Back Glass. Not as good as the LE, or Trans Light, I guess, in that case, because it's not glass. I do like the cab. My favorite cab is actually the Pro. But I will say this. the neon noir and all that kind of stuff. I didn't really get it until you go see the live stream. And you can see the lights kind of changing over from bluey to greeny. And it looks very neon. And the whole backlit, I didn't know how cool it would look. The entire cityscape that's backlit in that frosty green, it's almost like a Slimer green from Ghostbusters. It looks really cool. And I was going to say I don't necessarily believe the art palette, the colors in the palette are like, they're quite as good as I've seen sometimes. but of course they're not going to be. Like, Zombie Eddie's, like, probably the best in the business, if not him or Franchi, right? Like, him and Franchi are the two best, most well-known, best modern comic book art, comic book, pinball machine artists, I would say, and Randy Martinez with this art package, you're going to have to start throwing his name up there in one of these top doppelgangers, okay? So, Greg Freres, I believe it was Greg Freres who helped do it? I don't know. Anyways, cheers to everybody who helped in the art and design of this because it is incredible. And Elliot! Yes, Elliot. No, we're not talking E.T. here. And then, oh, I have to do another shout-out to another Elliot. Not only did Elliot do a great job on his first pinball design, which, you know, if the guy can engineer that many awesome, incredible rad mechs, of course, designing a pinball machine is not... I mean, it is harder, of course, but it's not... You know, he's worked on so many pinball machines for so long, it's not that much of a stretch, and it seems like him and George Gomez worked together years ago to another place and they've been friends for a very long time. And so I'm sure that this is very heavily influenced by not only George Gomez, but also lead developer on it for, I believe, the first time, Tim Sexton. So huge, massive shout out to Tim Sexton. We're going to talk about some more stuff that Tim Sexton implemented in a second. But I've got to get back on track here. So number three on this list, okay? Number three on the list is not just the hard-hitting soundtrack, but also the music effects and how they're all incorporated together and how well they flow. I love all the sound effects, like the sound of anything that's, like basically any switch hit sound that happens, it sounds incredible. And the other neat thing that Tim Sexton was talking about, right near the end of the live stream, I barely caught it as I was setting up, I wanted to start this podcast like literally right as the live stream ended just so I could have my unadulterated, like I haven't read Pinside, I haven't listened to any other pinball podcasters' thoughts or views on the live stream since it happened. I wanted this to just be my pure... I know I'm quite often more positive than most of the other pinball podcasters out there, which is just crazy to me because I feel like, you know, sometimes I've also been called too negative. So I don't really know which I am. I think I like to try to... I'm trying to, you know, ride that line in between where I'm giving constructive criticism. and there is a lot of negative things that you could say about the launch of this pinball machine. This launch was soggier than, I don't know, a floppy fish, a wet noodle. Imagine something super soggy and soft. And that's how bad this launch was. It wasn't a great launch, let's be honest. but that being said many a great pinball machines have came out of bad launches And overall do we really care how bad the launch is I mean if Stern sells a few less out of the gate do we all really care that much unless we work at Stern I'm sure the marketing department at Stern or whomever helped with the launch, maybe we'll do things slightly differently next time. But in the long run, I think they'll sell probably approximately the same number of pins. I really do. I really do. I mean, there is going to be that certain base that because of the no gun thing, they're going to stand hard ground to it, which is, that's totally their prerogative. I would rather meet someone who stands up for their morals than stands up for nothing, so I'm certainly okay with that. but we will talk about Cary Hardy. Okay, I want to ask you this. A week ago, if I had said on this show, what are the chances in the next week that a pinball content creator pulls out a gun in a video? Like, no, not a Nerf gun, not a super soaker, like a real gun. You know, probably you would have said pretty low, pretty low. But it happened, that happens, and we're going to talk about it. I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid to talk about any topic. No topic is too neon noir for Orby. All right, let's go. Less third persons, my friend. Less third. Okay, Anthrax, Pantera. What do they have in common? The man who did the music. Charlie, thank you for that. This is like, it's music inspired by the music from that, which, you know, I don't even remember. I watched John Wick, I told this story before, I watched John Wick like two or three years ago or something, I don't know, was on for free on somewhere and I started it and I freaking passed out or fell asleep. I'm not saying because the movie was boring, but I will say if a movie does not catch my attention within the first 20 minutes, I'm not a big like just like action movie guy, I was more so when I was younger. nowadays it really has to have a good plot and I couldn't understand what was happening in the plot all I knew is like he used to be like someone killed his dog and then he just gets really mad and does this four-hour scene where he's like got a hammer and he's smashing the floor to get his guns I don't know no it wasn't that I did go back and re-watch most of it this week I think I got there was like 25 minutes left I was like nah yeah yeah yeah nah um oh the one surprising thing I freaking loved more than I should have. I think it's my very favorite sequence. At the end of every Pinball Machine game, of course, you can put in your initials, your high score initials, like type in your name. And in this particular one, oh my gosh, my, my, my, oh, my sizes are getting all clogged up. I apologize, guys. In this particular one, it's an old school typewriter, like ding, diddly, ding, diddly, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. It's got the really cool sound effects. I love that. I never thought I would love like the sequence for, for putting in your high scores, but wow, that is cool. That was well done. Well done. Let me have a sip here for my throat. Let me clear it. Okay, excuse me. That's better. There we go. I got rid of the frog. Had a little sip of my Nestea. Take the plunge. Oh wait, no, I think that was Roberto Alomar with some type of fruit punch. Take the plunge! Alright, number four. Tim Sexton being the lead developer for Rules. The ranking up system kind of similar to Venom and Mandalorian I guess. But what's more impressive is with Tim Sexton doing the rules, not only is he an incredible tournament player, but he's great at doing commentary and explaining the rules. and he used to have a Twitch channel called Timballs where he would like explain like play a game and explain it to you and he was one of the best people on planet earth he's not quite like god level up there like um I can see his name and I can't remember Bowden not Bowden well Steven Bowden is god level for explaining the rules he used to do those like I'm going to explain you the rules of a game in one minute here we go blah blah blah blah blah those were funny too but and then the one year I don't know if you guys remember this the very last year of Pinberg or maybe the second last year of Pinberg Steven Bowden went around in an epic 12 hour stream and played one minute of all like 400 games at Pemburg you heard right there was 400 pinball machines maybe 380 at Pemburg anyways why can I not Bowen Kerins is like he's the master he's the god of explaining rules and stuff like that all of us tournament players know it and a lot of us even who aren't tournament players who just love playing pinball with their friends, family, neighbors, co-workers anyone they can suck into their basement or play with that in arcade, you know that this is the guy. If you're going to go play a new pinball machine for the first time, this is the guy who has the video on Papa to explain to you how to play the rules, right? Well, Tim Sexton could have been the guy if he didn't go to Stern because he was kind of going that route and he was doing great at it. Well, having a guy who knows the rules that well and knows the importance of having different rule sets for newer players, novice players, expert players and knowing that you have to keep the tournament players happy plus the non-tournament nerds, you know what I mean? Like, he gets that and then he builds into it artificial intelligence, which is, is it really AI? I mean, not really. Is it learning artificially? I guess, so sort of. But basically how he explained it is that if you're shooting really well and you're getting lots of flow shots and you're hitting lots of combos, then the machine will start to play tougher and the shots that you're particularly hitting really easily or really often, it will now take, it's called the, they block the shot, I believe. So like, that your very first shot to that, you're just, you're getting rid of the block, and then you've got to shoot it again to make that happen. Whereas if someone's not as good and they're newer, it may take them less shots, say, to get to a multiball, or a wizard mode, or a mini wizard mode, or to complete a mode. And that is so smart. It doesn't make sense that, I mean, we've been complaining for a long time that some pinball machines, it's just too easy to get to too many multiballs too quickly and the games take too long. Well, this solves that. And so the same way that I have so much respect for, you know, I have so much respect for Venom and Dwight Sullivan and what the whole team did there with like the leveling up and the continuation of the playing like a video game, even though that game has not gone on to be a huge success, obviously it seems like financially and critically, it certainly has a lot of criticism but not much critical acclaim. if you know what I mean. And again, the art package is great. I haven't got to shoot it yet, so I was really shocked between Lumberjack Johnny's, District 82, and all the different pinball places I stopped and played, between London and everywhere else. Nowhere has a Venom yet. So I've got to assume the sales have not been terrific per se, but I will tell you this, and you'll hear it here first on the Pinball Nerds podcast on the Poor Men's Pinball Network. John Wick will sell better and is probably already selling a lot better than Venom. I truly believe that. I don't want to say necessarily the artwork is better, but it's different and it's more comic book-y. Well, that one is as comic book-y as you can get because it's replicating a comic book, but it's realism comic book-y, if that makes sense, whereas Venom is just totally animated. But I think that there's more unique shots on this. I think there's tougher shots on this. I think that there's more interesting mechs on this, to be honest. I think that this will go down, not as a sales juggernaut. It probably will be more like a Deadpool slow burn that over the next six to nine months as people see it and how cool it looks. And, man, there's more animations on this bad boy. They got more video rights than Blockbuster, let's be honest. remember back in the day on a Friday night you'd go with your mom and dad to Blockbuster Video and mom and dad would be telling you to pick out a movie and instead you'd be busy looking at the video games and probably over there at that gumball machine trying to win that free foil so you could get that awesome movie poster to put up of your room probably your favorite girl you had a crush on in a movie back then or guy, or guy I don't want to judge. I know I've got a lot of female listeners on the show. So whoever you're into, that's who you can win. They are showing this back glass right now. I'm watching the live stream on there. Oh, I talked about this before. Another neat thing that Tim Sexton did is they set up so every time the gunfire goes off on the LCD screen, the speakers are programmed to flash with it on the LE. I don't understand how that would work. But that's pretty neat. So I guess there kind of is guns on the machine, not just on the LCD. Kind of, kind of, in a way. At least the muzzle flash is there, right? So, anyways, Tim Sexton, I really, really think he's going to continue to go down. I would never, ever, ever compare anyone to Lyman Sheets, rest in peace. And I don't think anyone could ever be another Lyman Sheets. but I think the things we're seeing from Tim Sexton and the rules we've seen from him in the past and especially what he's really coming into his own here and it sounds like he helped more so with this pin than any other pin I really really think this is interesting I think it's neat, I think it's unique I can't wait to see what Tim Sexton does next and honestly I'm proud of the dude I don't know him personally I did get to meet him at Pemberg, I took this really cool picture with him and Raymond Davidson. Good old Ray Day there. And Pinball Shenanigan or himself, Mike Dimas jumps up in the background and photobombs. That was such a funny picture. I can't wait for the Pinball Nerds Podcast rating cards because that is definitely one of the cards I've designed. Sans Dimas photobombing with and without. I think there's three, even three cards I could get out of that bad boy. But that was so fun. Of course, Tim, at the time, I just knew him as like a Twitch streamer. I knew him from being on Slam Tilt Pinball Podcast with Bruce and Ron several times. And I say again, knew him. I've never talked to him. I've never messaged with him. I think I've maybe chatted in his live stream chats like a couple times. You know what I mean? But anyways, I think Stern picking up Tim Sexton was maybe, you know, I'm not going to say their smartest move ever because that would probably be Elowen. But wow, what a good pickup for them. and I really think he's developed into just this, I mean, he already understood pinball rules great before, but it sounds like, you know, this new group of people working over there, like Elizabeth, like Raymond Davidson, Joshua Henderson, incredible tournament player. He really blew it up. He got the highest score. He got over, I think his highest score was 240 million on John Wick today. Like, he was playing for quite a while. Even Elliott, when he stepped up to play, like the designer, he was like, oh, I could have took a nap over there. while you guys played, because Tim Sexton and him were both on the... Tim is an incredible player. He's not Joshua Henderson-level incredible. Joshua Henderson's, I believe he was a top 250, maybe even top 100 tournament player for a long time there. I don't know if he still travels and plays as much, but probably not. Working for Stern now. But again, another smart pickup from Stern. Okay, I've talked too long, you big windbag. All right, number four on our list here. Oh, number four was Tim. Good, okay, good boy. we talked about that number five number five is important and it's the shots number five is very very important I would never ever say that overall the mechs would be in my top five here I actually really don't love oh there's a car here honey can you bring Luna in there's a car turning around the driveway and she's barking, she's right here babe she's at this door here Sorry, guys. There's like a car pulling around in our driveway. So Luna, Tuna, Elowen, Agar is barking her ears off out there. Okay, so what was I saying? Sorry. Number five is the shots. And the one mech I really don't love, it's that Oathkeeper or whatever, that thing on the left. It reminds me of like, I swear to God, McDonald's made like ten of these over the years. Like when I was a kid. my favorite thing was going to McDonald's and getting the Happy Meal toys sometimes I would like open the Happy Meal toy and play with the toy before even eating the food, you know what I mean? so anyways there would always be these Happy Meal toys that like opened up like a watch like a, what do you call those watch like one of those old watches, anyways it opens up just like that excuse me, and I don't know, I don't like it, it doesn't interact with the ball it has something to do with the the save so i guess i guess in a way it kind of does but like to me i don't know it wasn't it looks i don't know what if it looks hokey or i just don't aesthetically i don't love the look of it but who cares i don't think it ruins the whole thing like thank god it's off to the side but like for instance uh what james bond they had that little guy under the water that the light came on and that guy to me just looks so rad and then this I don't know it's like that it was like in the godfather from Jersey Jack they had that really gaudy tacky like that weird stuff they put on their their le or their ce or whatever their top version is that uh patina friggin uh uh the stuff on the legs that looked just oh my I could oh please let's not go down that road of doing that okay please let's not do that and this to I mean, it's not that bad. It's not that bad, but I just don't love it. And then that case to the right, I guess after watching the live stream and seeing how it works, like three stand-up targets kind of are on the one side of it, and then it goes up. After seeing how it works, I like it better. I still don't love it. It's, I don't know. It's kind of cool. I do like that it does obviously affect the gameplay, because when it lifts up, you can shoot the ball under there for a pretty important shot. so that is kind of cool like the fact that it does move and it does work it is kind of cool but I don't know it's just kind of fat and chonky and I don't know like after seeing like a bash toy like the well walker which is just so funny and hilarious and interactive like you get to shoot the ball at this big freaking lard ass and nail his big pot belly and like smash him in the gut and you just get to like just freaking and he goes it is jello freaking shakes all over the place while the blood drips out. I don't know. It's just so fun. And then this, it's like, you could hit a square box. And if you hit the square box enough, I don't, but wait, that's basically what medieval madness is, right? Or theater of magic. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I like it, but I don't love it, I guess is what I'm saying. What I do love is that car. That car mech makes up for a lot of it. And that's why I'd have to see it on the pro to see if I could get the pro. From an art standpoint, I think like, I think like if I could afford it, I would try to obviously like, I'm half Dutch, come on, I would probably try to buy like a used LE in six months to a year when they're going to probably be most likely a couple grand less. Like, let's be honest, what nine, no, like 10 of the last 11 Stern LEs have dropped significantly in the first year, right? So, like, I believe Godzilla was the only one that, like, held its own for, like, the first year or year and a half. Even now, they're still doing, the Godzilla LEs are doing okay, right? Like, like, deece. Like, in the expected 5% to 10% loss, not the 30% that nobody would want to lose on any large investment on planet Earth, doesn't matter what it is, right? So, yes. Number five, number five, as I said, is the shots. There is three very, count them, very tight shots on this, which will make you a better pinball player. But it appears as if none of those tight shots are absolutely integral or important to starting a mode or getting a multiball, even though they might be important for, say, getting an extra ball or getting an out-of-ball. I believe that the extra ball and out-of-ball shots should be two of the hardest shots on the game, and that's exactly what Elliot it and Tim Sexton and crew over there at Stern have done. So each and every one of you at Stern that had anything to do with this pinball machine, take a frickin' bow, okay? Because you killed it and you knocked it out of the park. But, alas, we have to talk about that one bad thing. And I'm sorry, guys, for me personally, it isn't the lack of guns. I will say this. I wanted to watch John Wick again, and there is a F-ton of guns. Like, in the first 20 minutes, I think, like, you see, like, seven or eight different types of guns. You see, like, 40 or 50 people get killed. Most of them are getting, I know not in the very first scene, but almost every scene past that, they're basically getting killed with guns once he rips up all his guns and everything else, right? Like, most of the movie is people shooting guns. So, from that standpoint, I do agree it is a pretty big fail to not have a single gun on one of the tiers. And what they could have done. Now, if the licensor had said to Stern, look, we want there to be at least, you know, we want there to be a way for someone to buy this with no guns, they could have said, okay, how about this? The pro model that's going to be out in public and going to be at a lot of family entertainment centers and such, because I could see the David Busters of the world, those type of family entertainment centers saying, hey, nowadays we prefer there not to be a ton of guns and blood and shooting on a pinball machine. And what they could have done is said, you know what? the pro one we're not going to have guns on and the premium the le will put freaking guns on it because the movie's mostly about guns and shooting guns and killing people with guns that's what most of the sure he used a pencil once he used a freaking frisbee once there was that one time that he used the yogurt cup right we all know that time i think i was in john wick seven okay so of course he used some random weird wild shit we know that but he mostly just shot the fuck out of people with guns. So put some freaking guns in it. So is that their biggest fail? I don't think so. We're going to talk about that in a second. We'll talk about if Kerry Hardy was wrong or not as well. I'm not afraid of the hard questions. We're going to talk about them right here on the Pinball Nerds Podcast. But my biggest failure is what a lot of people are saying is one of the coolest things in the game is what they call the contracts. They sound cool, right? Oh, we send out a thousand limited edition contracts and the first 1,000 people to get the pop-up notification pushed to their phone and run there and complete the mission, you will get it. So you think, oh, well, that's so cool. I love that. Yeah, hypothetically, it sounds great. But then you're having your anniversary with your wife or your husband, or you're at graduation for one of your kids, or you're in the middle of like some meeting at work and get the notification. And what's on your mind the whole time. It's not how much you love your wife. It's not how proud you are of your kid. It's not about getting that raise at work or, you know, whatever project you're working on. It's about, I don't care what words are coming out of your mouth, person's talking to me. I got to get to a pinball machine right now. And that's all you're freaking thinking at the time. And honestly, which one of you out there, be honest with yourselves right now, which one of you said this morning, oh, I hope I get more notifications pushed to my phone. I certainly love it when my phone never stops going off. Said no one ever. Like I was a driving instructor for many years. Let me have a little sip sip here. Okay. We have a little sip of the old iced tea for the old throat. Okay. I was a driving instructor for many years and I swear to God to my wife, my wonderful patient drop target Danielle wife would get frustrated because in the period of us just going grocery shopping for maybe an hour 45 minutes whatever running chores I would get between I'll say I'll say depending on what it was between about 5 and 9 p.m. and I somehow wasn't in the car doing a driver instruction I would be getting between 30 to 50 texts and notifications to my phone just constantly. Some people preferred to communicate through email, other people through Facebook, other people, believe it or not, younger people through other social media apps. So I had to have all these different apps to be able to talk to people. And I was getting text messages all the time. It was mostly text messaging and a little bit of Facebook Messenger, but it was just all the time. It was just all the time. It didn't matter. It was like, I would start getting messages at 5.30 AM. It would go all the way to 1.30 AM. some weeks I'd look back I would be at the average week I'd be at 300 to 400 texts kids either canceling or asking questions or not sure about this or you know help me book this test or my mom said this or my dad said uh oh when I'm doing a parallel park I gotta look at the moon and wink twice and I'm like no just do parallel park how I taught you your dad doesn't know what he's talking about okay um anyways I've gone off topic here the point is is that none of us want more push notifications none of our families want more push notifications i get in theory you could go into the insider app and turn off push notifications whenever you're not playing pinball and then whenever you go to play pinball you can turn them on but then when you turn them on and you see by 15 minutes you missed getting that badge that thought you're they're gonna stern's gonna fomo us these freaking badges so freaking hardcore that i just i don't know where we're going with this. I don't want it to be the year 2030 and like just you're walking around at like Pinball Expo or you're walking around instead of talking to your friends that are right there. You're just on your phone all the time. And a lot of people on Facebook Messenger would be like, how come it took Albert 12, 14, 16, 24 hours to get back to me? It's because I don't have any push notification set up for anything. Yes, I do allow a text sound on my phone. That way if a friend or family member has an emergency, but I don't text with friends about anything that's not really like relevant. I tell them if it's just like poo-poo or just like whatever, they want to talk to me about just what's going on, send me a messenger message because then I can get it the next time I am able to talk to people. Out here, in fact, most of the time I don't have enough bars to even get push notifications And if I did get a push notification for John Wick it would be a seven hour round trip for me to get to Halifax to play it most likely because that where 90 of the new pinball machines are in my area However I do get that a lot of people are going to like this I'm afraid of it. I don't like it. Good friend of the show, Tim the Lion Man Lee, just wrote on the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast Facebook page that that was his favorite part. It is interesting, and it is different. I'm afraid that the devil's in the details. I'm afraid of where it's going to go, and I'm afraid that John Wick may be the start of the end of us all not just getting notifications all the time. There could be a world in where there are people who are such hardcore pinball nerds, and I'm talking about even, yes, some of you tournament players, that will never turn off your push notifications, and in five to ten years from now, we could have a dozen different machines sending out push notifications for different badges, for different leagues, for different scores, for setting, like, the first whatever of the day, And there could be people that just will not sleep without their phone beside their thing. And at 3, 4, 5 a.m. they get a push notification. They run down to their arcade and start playing. Like it could get that bad. Or good, depending on if you think that's great. I mean, some of us need more challenges in life. So cool. But I don't want more push notifications, nor do I think it's great for the industry. And please, Stern, if you're listening. Stern, are you listening? I just had to throw a little Drew there for y'all, okay? All the tribe members, throw a little Drew here. Don't worry, I'm not going to start inducting tribe members. However, I have decided that I am going to have my own nerd herd. I don't think Ian and Drew would mind me doing this. They don't really induct people into the old tribe very often anymore. And, well, to be honest, it's going to be a totally different group of people and have different credentials and that sort of thing. So hopefully next show I'll be ready to announce my very first nerd herd. My number one nerd, as it would be. All right, I think I've decided on it, but I'm not 100% sure. so alas my least favorite thing although the high price of the le would be close to being up there i know friend of the show don of don's pinball podcast of course uh has stated that he loved the le he'd be totally in it like 10k i think he said 9500 or something like that but there's no way at 13 i get you don but guess what don you don't have to buy every new pinball machine the first day it comes out you're actually you're actually allowed to not do that for once i know you bought looney tune you're the only person on planet earth that bought looney tunes and texas chainsaw massacre which have the exact same layout but uh uh i love you don and remember guys don can get that machine for probably 9 500 or even maybe a little bit closer to 10 in like six to nine months from now now of course if everybody has that thought and everybody waits six to nine months to get the le then there won't be enough le's for the price to get lowered so of course we do need some people buying some brand new le's but it doesn't necessarily have to be done He has helped the bankroll of Stern enough for one year. What a good guy. I did want to remind y'all that Don, as well as Ryan Barry of Phantom Tilt Pinball Podcast, we will be starting our own, I don't want to say our own version of Triple Drain, because it'll be nothing like that. First of all, none of us are nearly the tournament players that Travis Murray and Tom Graff are. And also, let's be honest, none of us are probably as good at interviewing and doing a show as Joel. like Joel is like a godsend for us pinball creators here between everything he does with flipping out with friends and, you know, live streaming all the new pins and just doing a great job kind of, you know, he's kind of, I would say he's kind of the main host on Triple Drain. And again, I've said this many times, but Triple Drain is definitely up there in my top five. Like no matter what I'm doing, I could be like, it doesn't even matter. I could be like, I could be midstream of taking a pee and I hear a new Triple Drain pinball podcast is out. I just go watch it right away. That's what I do. That's what I do. I could be mid-bite of a juicy cheeseburger, okay, even with, you know, applewood smoked gouda on it, okay, and I would still stop and just go listen to Triple Drain. I would let that burger get cold. Okay, maybe not quite that. That's sacrilegious. That's burger religious. I did want to talk about the Kerry Hardy issue for a second. And I don't know if I should go too harsh or not. This has kind of been a fun episode. I don't want to bring it down too much. I guess what I'll say is, I'll start by saying this. Do I think that Kerry Hardy was wrong? No, I don't think he was wrong. Do I think it's okay that he was frustrated and upset because he felt like something political that he stands up for and his family and that he truly believes in, which is guns and the Second Amendment, of course, in the U.S. to a lot of Americans. That's as important as maple syrup is to Canadians. Guns are to Americans. We get that. It's part of your culture. I want to say this. I'm not necessarily anti-gun. Certainly while I was in the States for the Nationals and Pingolf, I did see a lot of people with guns and talking about guns. I have a very, very healthy respect for guns. without going into too many details because I want to keep this jeez, I don't even know how to say this right okay, if you are sensitive speed up 30 seconds because I'm not going to spend much time talking about this, but unfortunately while I was growing up if you have young children in the room just move them immediately because this is not a good story probably for anyone who's sensitive to that type of stuff our neighbor was very good friends with my father and he borrowed his gun for hunting and they went hunting all the time together and unfortunately he found out that his girlfriend was cheating on him and the first gun that he was able to grab was the gun he was returning to my dad which happened to be in his trunk and he murdered himself, the other guy, and her. And it was only the second ever triple murder-suicide to happen in my hometown of London, Ontario. And so since then I've personally never shot a gun. I don't own a gun. I don't want to own a gun. I actually do kind of like BB guns, and those are kind of like, you know, you can only do so much damage with a BB gun. So I like those. I like pellet guns. I do own a crossbow. I do also own a compound bow, and I do also own a longbow. And I did actually shoot to kill with my longbow last week. There is a pheasant, which is legal to shoot here on your own property, even this time of year in Nova Scotia. Don't worry, I wasn't breaking any laws. there was a pheasant that keeps stealing all the food and scaring off my chickens and the chickens get scared off and they run down into my garden and when they're down in the garden a i can't see them and b the foxes from the woods can see them and they become very high risk and i've seen the foxes sniffing around and i've realized that when this one pheasant comes in and scares off all the chickens not only does he steal all their food but he puts their lives at risk and the four young chickens, the brand new ones especially, they're not as smart as Betsy. They're not four years old like her. They don't really... She knows when and how to run back very quickly. The new rooster is just way too cocky and I don't want him to die because you do need one rooster to help for protection. And doing the cock-a-doo cock-a-doo-a-doo! That stuff in the morning does really help. So I really want him to be alive and be around. And of the other three, of course, if we lose them, we don't get food. And that's part of my job is not just being a pinball podcasting nerd, but it's also my homesteading here. And the thing that's made us the most money or saved us the most money has actually been our eggs. We've only sold maybe, I don't know, 20 dozen of our eggs over the years. So we haven't made that much money. We made a couple hundred bucks from that. Where we've made most of our money is every time that we go to markets for the last five years, we can tell people all the baked goods that we do between the muffins, the cookies, the croissants, the, what was the one thing that you did always there for years babe oh the scones yeah danielle's uh danielle's delicious scones the most delicious scones if you ever want to have if you're ever out here visiting me and hanging out i'll get her to whip up some of her blueberry lemon scones they're incredible um we also have tried savory scones well they always were made with our own in-house eggs and to be able to say that when you're at a farmer's market look hey i didn't grow the flower in here I didn't do it, but I did, at the very least, I frickin' the eggs are, you know, organic free-range eggs from our homestead, right? Okay, so there we go. Anyways, tons of my friends that are down here are into hunting. I am 100% for hunting guns. Am I against, like, automatic guns that have no use in hunting? Yeah, a little bit. Not for, like, not for, like, army and, like, police, but no, I don't like illegal guns, I'll tell you that. Now, do I think that maybe there's just a few too many guns in America and the place would actually be safer with less guns? That is a loaded question. Not trying to be punny. And I don't think this is a left or right thing. I think there's people on both the left and the right that are... It is somewhat. But there are people on both sides that are for and against guns. Again, I'm not that educated on the topic, so I don't want to sit here and pretend that I am. What I will say is this, in doing a little bit of research, one thing that did scare me is that there is more guns in the United States than people. That's a little bit weird. That's a little bit crazy to me personally. Just being a Canadian, I'm sorry. Like we're not used to that. From what I checked, like in Canada, it's like one in seven or something like that. And the other stat that kind of freaked me out in 2022 or 2023, I'd have to double check. There was like 750 murders across Canada and Chicago, which has one of the highest rates of guns per capita. just Chicago itself there was 708 murders in either the year just before or after like 2021 or 2023 so like in all of Canada now is that 100% just because we have 10 times or 20 times less guns than you guys and certainly about 30 times less like guns that are used mostly for killing I'm sorry like we have more hunting rifles per capita or per person I think here or like equal to the US the point is that I don't really know I'm sure it's not just the number of guns out there. And honestly, like, even just listening to Cary Hardy, if I lived where Cary lived, like, I think such a high percentage of people are just, everyone's just walking around with guns everywhere all the time. Yeah, I'd probably get a fucking gun. I'd get one out of fear. I'd get one because, like, people break into houses there more, people break into cars there more. I know that, like, the thefts in big cities of cars in the United States has just gone insane. Like, people are starting to leave their cars unlocked so people can just steal shit out of their car. because there's so many smash and grabs happening in a lot of the big cities. So, you know what, I get that. I happen to be lucky enough to live in a place, like in my entire province of a million people, there's very few murders per year, like very, very, very few, and even less of them are with gun violence. So at the same time, at the same time, we did have that crazy guy who went nuts with a gun and dressed up like a cop and actually had a car that looked identical to a cop car and had a cop uniform, and he shot 22 or 23 people. Well, the one baby was unborn, unfortunately. So, I mean, it's a tough topic. I don't know. I don't know if more gun control or less control is the answer. I just don't know and I don't want to try to know. But I will say this. Kerry Hardy is a man of values and he felt like his values were being taken advantage of or disagreed upon. And I will say this. that, okay, he even admitted in a follow-up video, go watch the follow-up video, did he need to take the guns out in the video? Probably not. Probably not. That was a little jarring for some of us. However, I think he was trying to make a point, and the point is valid, that yes, there should be guns in some of the artwork, at least one of the artwork. I think we can all agree, like just maybe the LE, okay, the LE is probably not never going on location anywhere. Most likely very few LEs make it on location, and if someone could choose to, you know, however George Gomez did come out and as soon as as soon as Kerry heard that George Gomez said that it was a licensor thing he stopped taking Stern to task so he at least fixed it now should Kerry Hardy with how long he's been in pinball content Kerry don't come at me I'm sorry um Kerry's gonna unstop patron uh patreoning me no I'm just kidding I don't have a patreon I'm like the only pinball podcast without patreon kind of like it that way um I'd like to be a little different here a little unique, unique. Rachel Risto, I love you. She just put up a post today saying, whenever people call you weird, take it as a compliment, something like that. And I said, you know what? I prefer the term unique. Every time someone says, Albert, you're a weirdo, or whatever you do is weird, you dress as weird, or things you say are weird, I say, what you're meaning to say is, I'm unique, or my clothing is unique. Unique, unork. Unork, unique. Anyways, I do want to talk a little bit about Maple Pinball, but I also want to say, if you're someone who unsubscribed to Cary Hardy or like stopped being part of his Patreon because he got emotional about something that he believes is important to his family, consider resubscribing. That's a little bit lame. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You're, you're possibly a little overwoke. Okay. Like take her easy. Take her easy there, bub. At the same time, if you say that's it, I'll never buy another stirred pinball machine. Jack Danger you're dead to me Tim Sexton you're dead to me Stern Pinball I hope every member of your family all of them has a bad day and you got bad karma just because you didn't put more guns on them that's silly that's also silly and I know it's so boring to be a fence sitter like I'm gonna get rips in all my freaking crotches of all my pants or something from sitting on a fence so much but like I think when Carrie came back Kerry Hardy came back and he did a more controlled, he explained, you know what, with him being a content creator this long, he should have known to like reach out to Stern first and be like, yo, I'm pretty pissed that there's no guns on this. But before I go off on a live stream, I just want to know, was this y'all's choice or was this a licensor? Because there's a big difference. I'll tell you right now, if it comes out that this was not the licensor, if someone from the licensor office, like if Keanu himself hears about this and is like, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, we were totally okay with them using guns. they chose not to, then CERN's going to get some blowback. I'll tell you that. They're going to get shot in the fucking head by social media. That's what's going to happen. They will. They will. They'll be dunded, gamed over. That will happen. So, alas, I've talked too long. It is the Friday of Mother's Day weekend. I do want to spend... I'm going to try to spend a very, very, very short... Oh, my God. We hit one hour. I'm going to spend a very, very, very short amount of time talking about Maple Pinball and my trip back there. In fact, I'm going to try to do seven days in seven minutes or less. I think I can do it. But you know what? You are dismissed. This is your Professor Orby speaking. You are dismissed. If you'd like to go home, here's the sound of the bell. There you go. There's the sound of the bell. Y'all can get out of here. If you hate tournament pinball, you hate people talking about trips and family and friends and craft beer and having an awesome time, it's your signal to leave. see you later, Franchi. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. No, I'm just kidding. I love you, Christopher Franchi. I've got a message, Franchi. I haven't heard from him in a while. Hopefully he's doing well. I'm sure he's doing well. He's working on like, I think he has 12 or is it 12 or 13 pinball machines he's working on at once. I'm not sure. He's, no, he's very, he's a busy boy. He's a busy boy. But I hope Franchi, you're doing well. Yeah, hopefully, hopefully, I don't know what the name of the podcast is going to be. Hopefully you'll hear from Ryan Berry. Again, Ryan Berry was a major sponsor. Before I talk about this trip, I've got to talk about my last trip that Ryan Berry and Kimba over there. Hopefully you guys are enjoying your new Ninja Turts game. Make sure you go check out Phantom Tim... Phantom Timball. I'm looking at Tim Sexton on my big screen thinking about his Timballs. No, Timballs was his name before. Get your mind out of the gutter. I'm thinking about Timballs over there. But no, go check out Ryan and Kimba on the good old Phantom Tilt Twitch channel because they've been doing some live streaming, which is great. I tend to miss it because of, you know, in Australia, it's kind of the other side of the world, so it's a totally different time that they're live streaming. But go check them out, and make sure you go listen to the podcast. I almost got caught up, and they just released a new one the other day. So I'm almost caught up. I'm really enjoying it, and I really enjoyed having them on the show. That was such a fun show. Go listen to that show. We have a great time. You know, when I got to interview Zyron, that was great. Zyron Silvers, what an awesome dude, he rapped on my show, that was so fun, and Elliot Keith, when I got to have him on the show, that was so great, but I didn't really know them that well, whereas like Ryan and I have been shooting the chats now for a couple months, so that, it felt more like, it probably was, it felt a little more natural for you, the listener out there, had a great time with them, sent him off all his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle VHSs, and some cool Angrel Pack of Schwag, and all that kind of stuff, but I also wanted to, at the same time thank Aaron over there at Fast Pinball. It was really good to hear. I had heard so many great things about Fast Pinball from so many other homebrewers and everyone else who's worked with Fast Pinball. I only heard great things. And then Bruce, who I trust Bruce with my heart, with my soul. I mean, I'd let him babysit my kids. I think, actually, I checked the document. Bruce Nightingale might actually be the godfather of both of my children as well as Luna, Tuna, Elowen, Agar and Draco Malfoy over here. Okay? It could be possible. So I trust this guy with my life. And when he said he was having issues with Fast Bim, I was like, huh? You know, I did like a Tim the Tool Man, like, what? Double take? Okay? And then when I actually heard the update in the airport, I remember where I was. That's how monumental this was. I was in the airport traveling back to Nova Scotia, coming from the old, well, I was going to say GTA, but I don't know if the Americans and Australians would know. basically the greater Toronto area. We'll just say Toronto. It's Mississauga. I called it the saga when I was there the whole time. The cool kids got what I was talking about. Everyone else was like, what the frick? Go back to Nova Scotia, weirdo. I said, I'm not a weirdo. I'm just unique. I'm from the Scotia, and we're here in the saga. We're hitting up the saga to hit the maple pinball. And wow, wow. I actually just want to stop and just give a huge thanks to Jeff Teolis and Shane Jackson. Jeff Teolis ran the tournament, was the head tournament director, had a lot of help. Thanks to all the volunteers. Thanks to even the Joe Cherviernau. Joe C. of the Pinball Degenerates, the Doge himself. Thank you to Joe. People like him, you know, he wasn't the tournament director or anything, but he would, whenever he had a chance, he would step in, throw on the little construction vest and become a scorekeeper and help out. And so thanks so much, Joe, for that. You know, thanks to Mike Castleman and Carter and just everyone who stepped into the booth and helped do if you go watch Pinballers on YouTube, you can actually go I played like, I blew up this awesome game on kind of like 5.7 million. I know that's not really blowing it up on Whirlwind, but for me that was a very good game. Especially on one that tight with that many good players. I was playing against Mike Savage, the guy, just like his name would suggest, is a freaking savage, and came back on the last ball and beat me by 100,000, and to my chagrin, I haven't been able to find it on Maple Pinball, even though the live stream was going, you know, I know that people were watching, but anyways, I haven't found it yet, I'm still looking for it, I'll try to find that. There is another time I'm playing Hot Doggin', I believe, on the live stream, and I have like one good ball and two garbage balls. That was during the Classics match to play. But anyways, none of this matters. The tournament was set up great. It was a little bit tight in there and there was not a lot of chairs. So the one day I calculated I was standing for all but one hour of 15 and a half hours. We were at Maple Pin Mall. It was nuts. Well, that's not true. We left our hotel room at like 7.30 and we didn't get back to like 1.30. But wow, my best friend Melvis and I, we killed it. We drank more beer than I thought possible on the Saturday. and if you want to see if you want to see what it looks like when I start drinking at noon and I drink I believe and this is not me bragging this is actually unfortunate especially because craft beer is so expensive I believe I had 15 tall cans so at 1.5 per can that's around 22 beers that's too many beers and I was trying to be smart about it I was doing beer, water, food beer, water, food beer, water, food beer, water, food all day which allowed me to even have 22 beers and be even able to stand slightly, of course. However, Mike Dynas of the, and I love you, Dynas, of the Pinball Shenanigans. Make sure you go, yes, I'm a hardcore shenanigander, as well as being part of the nerd herd, of course, here. That might be a hint for the future. But Mike Dynas goes, hey, how would you like to take the camera and you do a walk around for once, instead of it being me doing the tour? I said, he said this off camera, and I said, dude, I've had a lot of beers. He goes, that's fine. I'm like, okay, let's go. So if you go watch Pinball Shenanigans on YouTube, the Maple Pinball one, it's a really cool video. He goes and picks up a pinball machine at the start. So for you non-pinball people who just love watching pinball pickups, you can watch that at the start. Mike is kind of like me. He's, well, not kind of like me. He's definitely my pinball mentor, but he's like me in that he's interested in not just buying pinball machines and selling them, but playing in tournaments as well as all that kind of stuff in between. he's much better at fixing machines and modding them and uh repairing them that sort of thing so he if you like anything to do with that go watch his channel but you'll see he passes me that and the boston bruins happen to be playing the toronto maple leafs and about halfway through the when i'm doing the tour we block them as we're going outside we block all the hardcore uh maple leaf fans that are watching the game and i turn i go go bruins go and literally i saw some daggers come out. Like, I really thought, if I wasn't holding a camera in that exact moment, like, I would have been told. I mean, they're Canadian, so they're polite to a degree, but if you make fun of the Blue Jays or the Leafs in Toronto, like, you could get in a physical altercation. I think they knew I was just joking, considering I was there with my best friend, Melvis, who was wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs hat and jersey Like obviously he is a major Maple Leafs fan I cannot be a Maple Leafs fan because my dad and my best friend are Maple Leafs fans There a rule in Canada if your dad and your best friend love a team you have to hate them And growing up I was an Edmonton Oilers fan because I'm a massive fan, of course, of Wayne Gretzky, and I'm back to being an Edmonton Oilers fan. In fact, they are playing tonight. The last game was heartbreaking. They lost 5-4. I have no freaking clue how they lost from being up 4-1 going into the third period, but I will be watching them tonight, maybe having a beer or two, not too many, because I'm still fighting this cold a little bit, as you can hear, but if you have not been to Maple Pinball, they do it once in the fall, and once in the spring, please, if you live anywhere, anywhere in, like, you know, Buffalo, New York State, Maine, Ohio, Cincinnati Chicago, Minneapolis maybe not Minneapolis, I've gone too far now even up there, I'm talking about all my friends up there in Wisconsin yes you, Rachel, come on all my pinball tourney nerd friends up there come down and go to the fall Maple pinball tournament, make sure you follow Maple Pinball on Facebook or have Jeff Teolis, I guess, Adam I guess is a friend, I'm not sure how to find out about that Or just look on IFPA, that's probably easier. You'll see like four or five tournaments are coming out at once. Or even message me and I can send you a link to it. I don't think the details are all out for the fall one. But once, or sorry, twice a year, Maple Pinball, Jeff Teoles runs it. And they have like a big pump and dump that's worth a ton of points. They also have like a Classics match play, which I loved Classics match play. But it was head-to-head match play with just two player, 20 rounds. I went 10 and 10 in that. Like 20 or 21 of the top 24 players in Ontario were there. Laser Los was there, number 8 in the world. I think he's maybe like number 10 now, but he's incredible. Carlos Del Cerda, awesome dude. Got to speak with Carlos about just, you know, his streaming channel and just talked to him about competitive pinball. And it was his first time in Canada. That was pretty interesting. So that was really cool getting just to chat with him when I played in a group with him. I think I beat him on one game. I think I beat him on EM, I believe. It was really, really good. You know, Ian Hare, we're a friend of the show. Ian Hare was actually my very first interview I ever did on the show. He had heard that I never got to play Total Nuclear Annihilation, and I said on the Pinball Nerds podcast, like, geez, six, seven, eight years ago, I said, if someone listening has TNA, let me know. I'd love to come to your house and play it, and even, you know, maybe live stream it with you, possibly. I think I just even said play it. And Ian Hare wrote me right away, and he said, I have it. Would you like to come on a live stream and play it with me, and I'll teach it to you? and so my very first time ever on a live stream was with Ian Harwer my very first time playing TNA was with him and then I went on to interview him like six or seven times on the show as many of you know or I would say he was more like a co-host of the show and we had a bit of a falling out I think it was something to do with Alien Pinball for the love of god as stupid as that sounds but we had a bit of a falling out and it was really really nice he's also a fellow tribe member of course here on the poor man's uh pinball tribe right so it was really really nice to talk to him and catch up with him. That was so cool. We didn't have time at all. We were so busy talking about the tournament. He's a great tournament director. Say what you will about Ian and he might be a little bit over analytical or a little bit over picky about the pinball machines working perfectly before he plays them at a tournament. I've heard that complaint before, maybe even from myself or someone else, but Ian is, if nothing else, a very good tournament director. very fair and he knows the rules and he does do it by the book but he knows the rules he knows the rules very well I don't think he's like necessarily like I don't know Adam Becker level or something like that but I can tell you this that Jeff Teolis also knows the rules very well he's an incredible tournament director but without Ian there like I think it wouldn't have ran nearly as smooth so thank you so much to Ian and there's lots of other good tournament directors there who are helping out with decisions and repairs and stuff like that but Ian could kind of do it all, and this man was the hardest working man there. He never stopped. I mean, him or Teolis, I'm not really sure. Or maybe John Cotterman, who put like 300 plays. He came to this, and he decided not to play in the Classics Tournament, not to play in the 20-round Match Play Tournament with four players, including Modern Pins on the Saturday. He only played in the main Pump and Dump, and he did like 300 games at $2 a pop. So that's like $600 he spent in the Pump and Dump. I think I probably spent the second most amount. I did $88 into the Pump and Dump. So that was so fun. It was just so fun. And here's the crazy part. When you go play in four big tournaments like this, you're going to be exhausted. You're probably going to get, what do they call it, like the tournament crud or the expo crud. Yeah, you might get a cold or a flu or something like that. You'll get over that. You could get that shit from just like grocery shopping or like getting gas or just like fucking whatever. Like, you know, going to your buddy's house and smoking cigars on a Friday night, right? So it's like, you know, you could get sick from any of those things. If you're going to get sick, you might as well be doing it from going to play awesome, incredible pinball machines with a whole bunch of really cool friends there. And I don't want to name drop too much or anything like that, but it was really, really nice to see. It was really nice to see Joe Cervino. Why can't I remember how to pronounce your last name, Joe? It was really nice to see Joe. He actually brought the meats, the famous meats y'all have seen on Facebook. he brought this sausage that was so incredible I think it was venison sausage, I believe incredible it was like, maybe, maybe, maybe even for me, a little bit saltier than I like but it was just, it was incredible it was so good, he was so kind, he's so nice, he's so funny I got to catch up with Duncan I got to catch up with Paul I got to catch up with Julie Dorsers, also a friend of the show my old tournament director at Monday Night Pinball It was nice to chat with her for a bit. You know, and I got to apologize to her for getting mad about something I don't even remember about from five years ago. So that was nice. And Julie, I know you don't listen to my show, but Julie didn't grammar police me even once. So that was nice. Because normally Julie's like, she's like, she's got more guns than the Chon Wick LCD. Like, boo, boo, boo. Like, grammatically telling me when I'm wrong about stuff. Which is a lot. I know, I don't have good, I don't have good speeching, Julie, I know. me no me no speech good but you know I'm getting better I'm trying to get better we're all trying we're all trying oh my god are you okay what happened oh my god are you okay alright Danielle may or may not have spilt I don't know what happened she set the drink down and the ice cube shot up in the air and landed her in her lap but anyways that was wild that was cool so overall I think that the launch of John Wick by the marketing department at Stern and whoever else wasn't done great the other part that I do want to save for my hopefully triple pinball podcast called Potentially Triple Vuck or we might even let all of the listeners over there make sure you like and follow Don's pinball podcast as well because he is definitely going to he is definitely going to be the one that's putting up our podcast so I really want to wait to save talking about how the two or three main influencers that got to be able to video and shoot and talk to Stern about John Wick were all non-pinball influencers so I'm going to save talking about that for later. As far as the guns go I'm not anti-gun. I get why some people are uncomfortable with guns. Do I think it was a mess to not put guns on at least one of these artwork packages? Yeah. Do I also think it was a mess for them not to get ahead of this and like talk about it ahead of time like they did with Stern with the fin? Like Stern with the fin not being shaped like a fin in Jaws? They should have talked about that before everyone locked their shit. Same thing with this. If they had came right out and said look, we wanted to put guns everywhere on this. We didn't even want pictures of Keanu Reeves. We just wanted guns everywhere. Just every type of gun. everywhere, just blood everywhere, dripping. That's what we wanted to do, but the licensors said we couldn't have any guns. So they put an F-ton of other weapons. Like, there's every weapon on planet Earth on this frickin' bimbo machine. But I get it. I get it. Now that I watch the movie, it's not like a gun only comes out once or twice, and he's using other weapons 90% of the time. It's like, no, 90% of the time he's using a gun, and 10% of the time. So I get it. It was a miss that it's not on any of the three of them, but is it so big of a miss that if you loved John Wick that you couldn't get away with just seeing the hundreds of gunshots you're going to see every game on the LCD? I don't think so for me personally, but I don't know. Let me know. Write me at pinballnerds at gmail.com. Send me your hate. I'll maybe even consider reading it on air if it at least has some good critical criticism to it. Tell me why I'm wrong and why Stern is the worst company ever because they didn't put enough guns on it. And tell me why I'm wrong that I shouldn't be uncomfortable with guns even though I've unfortunately had to watch family friends and members get killed and murdered with guns so I don't know like I don't know like I I think guns for hunting are great I think guns for protection are fine even though I mean I've got more weapons in my house than you know obviously if I lived in an area like Detroit or like I don't know Harlem or even Philadelphia or like if I lived in one of the top 10 worst neighborhoods in the United States yeah I'd probably get a small gun for protection. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. I'm already pretty good with numgex. I thankfully have been trained now in two different martial arts. I didn't quite make it to the black belt. I didn't even get the brown belt, but I was, I think it was like to blue or freaking orange in Aikido or whatever the one type of karate I was taking. This is grade six, guys. I don't remember much from back then. The point is, is that I got more weapons than Dwight Schrute, so I don't really feel like I need to have guns where I live, thankfully. However, I'm sure that, like, I could be proven wrong, and I don't want to be, but if you have guns for hunting, totally cool with that. If you have a gun for protection, and you're mentally stable enough to own a gun, and you, you know, you make sure you lock it away where, like, young children can't get to it, and that sort of thing. Like, as long as you're doing everything legal and legit, I really don't care. if you're in a freaking gun and you're using a gun for illegal crimes probably that gun is not my friend i guess is what i'm saying but alas i don't want to talk about politics ever again on the show i apologize for even doing it here i feel like i did a pretty good job being apolitical but again if i was wrong write me at pinball nerds at gmail.com and tell me why i was wrong if it's at least an entertaining email i'll probably read it go ahead you guys if you always thought i want to roast Orby, go ahead. Tell me why my show sucks. Lots of people certainly have recently, I'll tell you that. None of them good enough to read. None of them good enough to read. But I have got, this is the first time in my life, I have got more hate mail than love mail. It's mostly about that stupid three hour pod of 360. I get it was a bad one, guys. I get it. But while I am alas talking about 360, before I hang up the mic here, so to speak, okay, before I put her back in the holster, don't want to get too punny for you, let me just again thank fast pinball because they were one of my major sponsors for my last trip and on this trip i did give the opportunity for y'all to donate some money to me towards my trip by by making a purchase from angry alpaca coffee hitting the shop now button on our facebook page really simple to find us on facebook but you can also just type it into google we are the top link if you type Angry Alpaca Coffee or Angry Alpaca Tea, we are the top link. If you click on the one that's our Squarespace store or Shopify? Square, right? Yeah, our Square store. You can just hit the Shop Now button. Don't just look at the featured front page. Click on the coffee if you're a coffee nerd. Click on the tea if you're a tea nerd. And make sure you look at both if not. We have tons in stock right now, which I won't be able to say for much longer because we start in eight days on March 18th. Next Saturday will be our first Pugwash Market. Keeping up with inventory pass then gets crazy all the way to Christmas. So if you're like Jason Forbes, who just recently ordered, thank you so much, Jason Forbes. Huge order from him after last show. Thank you for that. Help give me a little bit of extra money for the trip. As well as Dan the Man and Rachel, tribe members and tribe adjacencers at leasters. Well, Dan is a tribe member. Ah, screw it. I'd say Rachel's pretty damn close to being tribe adjacent as well, right? So they put in a large order as well. I did not get any donos though, which is totally fine, but I will put a shout out there again. If you'd like to make a donation, you want to keep Orby's show Patreon free. You want to make it so I don't ask for stars, so I don't ask for Patreon. I don't sell any t-shirts. I don't make any mechs. Okay. I don't make any mods. I don't, I don't. The only two ways that you can support my show financially is to either buy some coffee your tea, which we have lots of right now, which is great, or send me a donation to angryalpacatea at gmail.com to just thank me for the show and keep it sponsor free. I don't want to have to take like fast pinball sponsorship will be soon running out by the end of next month. And same with Phantom Tilt. And then at that point, basically the show is sponsor free again. And I'd like to actually keep it that way for a while. I kind of want to be like the PBS. I don't want to be affiliated. I have had offers for sponsorships. I don't want to be affiliated with a distro so I can say whatever I want unfiltered whenever I want. I don't want to be affiliated with a pinball company for the exact same reason. I don't want to be affiliated with a mod creator for the exact same reason. And that is why if y'all want to keep this show ad free, which I know you want it to be, either buy some coffee, buy some tea, or hook a brother up and shoot me a small dono, okay? Enough for me to get a burger and fries at the Tide and Boar at Moncton. That's all I'm asking. Tomorrow afternoon I'm going to Moncton, going to the Tide and Boar, going with my wonderful wife for possibly a little bit of the old, it's the day before Mother's Day, so we'll take the whole family out, but just her and I might go for a lovely meal. I would love to be able to say that you pinball nerds that listen to the show, donate that money so my wonderful wife can get herself a nice drink and a nice meal and a nice dessert and let me be the DD. I'll be the designated driver so she can have a couple drinks. She's giving me the thumbs up right now over there. She's over there painting a beautiful looking donut and I would love to be able to just tell her that 100% of whatever money that I get in the next 72 hours between now and even Monday or the day past Mother's Day, that's going to go to her. First of all, she'll probably use it to buy some awesome donuts at Halo Donuts. Second of all, she might get her own cell a little treat or something fun that she wouldn't normally get herself when we go to Costco tomorrow afternoon. And third of all, at the very least, if she gets any money Sunday or Monday, I think that she might even be able to use it to go to her favorite spa in the other month in her Amherst, go get a nice massage, get her hair did. Look at that. She's raising the roof over there. I've never seen Drop Target get so excited. Look at that. She wants to get her hair. We don't have lots of extra spending cash, so I will say this. All the donuts that I didn't get from the last show, we're going to go to the boys. So the donuts I do get from this one are the donuts are going to go to donuts. That works, right? Donuts to donuts. There you go. I even got a laugh from her. It's hard to make her laugh some days. So this is great. This is wonderful. It's been a fun show. It was so nice to meet up with everybody back in Ontario. Thank you to my sisters. Both of them let me stay at their house, paid for all my food, fed me beers. I had a great time with them. It was really nice to see my dad. He picked up the bell when we went out and he got me a really cool nice belt and a couple other things so thanks dad for that huge thank you to Matthew McGoffin he booked the hotel let me just pay him the other half differential um he drove me there he drove me to the airport after that he also uh shout out to his wife Lisa Cheers she lent me her car and let me take it to go visit my sister so I didn't have to spend like 200 bucks on a freaking train or another hundred on a bus there and back and Ubers and everything. So that was incredible. I had a great time seeing everybody. I probably won't be back for a couple months because I'll be up and running the markets for the next five or six months. And I will say this, I will say this, if y'all can come together and just give me even a couple donos, I don't care if it's 5, 10, 15, 20 bucks. If I get at least a few, I'll say at least three or four decent donos that tally up to, let's give you a goal of 100 bucks total. If I get $100 in Dono's total between now and Monday for my rad wife for Mother's Day, who's done an awesome job as a mom, but also does an awesome job as a substitute teacher helping with all these other awesome kids, so she deserves like double, quadruple, triple Mother's Day, I will come back and I'll do old school Orby and I will do two shows a week for the next month after that. So from like the whatever, May 12th to June 12th, because I haven't been doing many shows. I can see that in the past like three months. I've only done like five shows. So I do apologize. I have been busy. I have been traveling. I am going to get really busy in June and July, but it's going to be a busy month for pinball. I'll make sure I do two shows a month. If not, I might just take a month off. I might really do it, guys. I might do it. I might just go chill, enjoy life. I'm not blackmailing you because I'll tell you this right now. This is white mailing, okay? because, no, I'm not blackmailing you because I'm saying if news happens, I'll be back. But I'm not going to force it, and I'm not going to make myself. But if I can get even $100 in donos between now and Monday for Drop Target Danielle so that I can give her at least enough to go get a nice massage or go get her nails did or something like that, if I can let her contribute, for me taking up all of her time on a Friday night, first of all, she had to watch John Wick for two hours, then she had to listen to me do this podcast for the next hour. If I can give her back something, for doing this podcast, then I can make excuses, and I can actually justify in my own head to myself, there's a good reason for me to come back, minimum twice a week for the entire month. It'll be like old school Orby, it'll be great. All right, Pinball Nerds, thank you so much for listening. I love you, I'm in love with you, in the illustrious words of Jack Danger. If you haven't gone and watched the John Wick livestream, try not to think about the lack of guns, okay? I'm half Dutch and half Texan, so I do love I do I I do have a love for guns and like I said uh if I lived in most places in the states I probably would in some places in Canada there's lots of places in Toronto Vancouver Montreal where probably I would feel safer with a gun I'm not gonna lie so I I don't want people to think I'm anti-gun I do think maybe Kerry went a wee bit overboard and uh his emotions might have the best of them a little bit uh I don't know in what type of world that I'm more emotionally controlled talking about a politically charged topic than Kerry Hardy, but who knows? Roles reverse and change from time to time, and this might have been one of those cases where I had the most balanced approach. And I'll be the first one to say it here. John Wick looks incredible, sounds incredible, shoots incredible, and has, for .08 code, is already an incredible pin. It will not be the stinker that Led Zeppelin was, or the dud, as I famously called it, okay? It will also go down as being a better sales juggernaut than Venom. And I'd frankly be shocked if a year from now that we are not talking about this pin much more highly than we even do James Bond 007 now. this will be a sleeper hit like Deadpool, like Guardians of the Galaxy that is what's going to happen I was the first pinball podcaster to tell you that not only is Elton John the most beautiful pinball machine on planet earth but it shoots better than any JJP and when people start playing this it will be a hit when other pinball podcasters were saying negative being a little bit of a negative Nancy or Debbie Downer about Elton John I was saying how incredible it was and how incredible that Elton John piano toy is and how incredible, you know, maybe, maybe, maybe the only thing that can make it better would be more glitter. Obviously, there's just not enough glitter. Am I right? But it is definitely the most beautiful pin. It's the best JJP shooter. The code is like more multiball balanced than any of the last few have been. And it sounds like the code is more code complete than any of the other JJPs have been recently. So it's like, I was the first one to tell you how good that pin is. Six, seven, eight months later, other pinball podcasters came around, kind of like me and have said, wow, it's incredible. And I will be the first pinball podcaster here to tell you how incredible, not how incredible the launch was with marketing, but how incredible John Wick is. It has every single solitary scene from the movie you'd want to see in the LCD. It has the one dude you'd want to have other than Keanu Reeves doing the call-outs. And there even is some Keanu yelling stuff at you at different parts, Tim Sexton said. Obviously, I assume it's linking up with the LCD. I'm not sure, but it also has really good scoring. It has good rules. You know, it is a complete package, and I want you to really think about this. Outside of Stern and maybe JJP, think of every other pinball company out there. Okay, maybe not the Big Lebowski, but almost every other machine that's not JJP, the Big Lebowski, or Stern, John Wick, I'm sorry, is clearly better than every other pinball machine. I'm sorry, it just is. I'm sorry, American Pinball. I'm sorry it's better than Barry O's it's better than Galactic Tank Force it's better than any pinball machine that's ever came out from Haggis or American Pinball or I'm sorry Spooky I think this will go down as having a better more complicated yet fun rule set than any Spooky game ever I also think it has better shots and more flow I also think that no is it lit as well as a JJP of course not but now I'm just rambling let's end the show have a good night, Pitbull Nerds. I missed you and I'll be back sooner rather than later this time. Sorry I talked so long. Have a wonderful day. You get a gold star for sticking into the end. Until next time, Pitbull Nerds, remember to eat, sleep, and breathe. John Wicker. Cheers. _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 6703011f-6171-4ebc-9eb0-99b1d76db14c*