# Triple Drain Pinball Podcast Ep 25: Maybe We Are Making This Too Complex **Source:** Triple Drain Pinball Podcast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2022-11-04 **Duration:** 143m 1s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://zencastr.com/z/JBuwiUg3 --- ## Analysis Triple Drain discusses the competitive pinball season, including Super Series at District 82 (won by Carl D'Angelo), Chicago Pinball Expo (won by Zach McCarthy), and ongoing tournament dynamics. Key topics include exploits in Mandalorian pinball code, the impact of Precision Flip metal flipper systems on gameplay difficulty, and the role of rules knowledge and physical stamina in modern competitive pinball. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Carl D'Angelo won Super Series with 80+ points in every tournament, placing top 10 in all six individual tournaments. — _Joel confirms direct observation via Twitch streaming of IE Pinball, documented live results_ - [HIGH] Mandalorian pinball has an unlimited multiball exploit in the Encounters mode where players can indefinitely add balls via the mini playfield targets. — _Travis provides detailed technical explanation of exploit mechanics; he owned a Mando and confirmed the bug exists_ - [HIGH] Zach McCarthy won Chicago Pinball Expo 2024; Carl D'Angelo had top qualifying scores in 4 of approximately 15 games. — _Tom confirms via streaming; discussed as recent/current event_ - [HIGH] Precision Flip metal flipper systems increase flipper power and consistency through metal bushings, making shots more accessible but potentially unbalancing tournament machines. — _Joel and Travis discuss personal experience; Tom confirms Godzilla at Cincinnati will have them installed; referenced Pinside thread discussion_ - [MEDIUM] Younger competitive players (under 25) dominate Expo partly due to superior reflexes, rules knowledge, and physical stamina compared to older competitors. — _Tom discusses age dynamics; Travis confirms but notes older players (Carlos, Andy Rosa, Trent, Andy Bagwell) still place in top 10_ - [HIGH] Chicago Pinball Expo tournament required rules modifications mid-event: TDs removed post rubbers and deleted ball saves/multiballs to speed up play. — _Tom confirms action taken; Travis confirms he and Josh Sharp initiated changes with event organizers_ ### Notable Quotes > "If you're going to get deep in the games, it's going to be a marathon, but you've got to know how to navigate it in order to not waste your flips, in order to be efficient." > — **Tom**, ~28:00 > _Core insight into modern competitive Expo strategy: rules knowledge and efficiency trump raw skill due to extended game times_ > "Carl did have the top score in qualifying. For like four of them. Yeah, it was ridiculous. He qualified in 12 plays. So you had 15 total and 12 count, and Carl's like, okay, I'll just do 12 and I'm good." > — **Tom**, ~26:00 > _Demonstrates Carl D'Angelo's dominance at Expo; qualified in minimum required plays_ > "There's basically an unlimited multiball kind of exploit... So you just use all five targets up there, that adds a ball, and you can just do that in perpetuity." > — **Travis**, ~35:00 > _Technical explanation of Mandalorian exploit; critical for tournament play understanding_ > "I mean, it would sound like such an old person saying, but this is the truth. My arthritis in my left hand was just so bad that I could barely flip anymore." > — **Tom**, ~51:00 > _Reveals physical toll of extended competitive play; highlights stamina as tournament differentiator_ > "The reason they feel more consistent is the tolerances in the bushing, the metal bushing are way... there's almost no slack." > — **Joel**, ~62:00 > _Technical explanation of metal flipper advantage; differentiates feel/consistency from difficulty impact_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Carl D'Angelo | person | Top competitive pinball player; won Super Series; dominated Chicago Pinball Expo qualifying; operates IE Pinball Twitch channel | | Zach McCarthy | person | Won Chicago Pinball Expo 2024; elite player scoring billions on modern games; head-to-head competitor against Tom | | District 82 | event | Venue hosting Super Series tournament (6 individual tournaments, 600-point scoring system); located in Wisconsin Stevens Point area | | Chicago Pinball Expo | event | Annual multi-day tournament with head-to-head format; stock Stern games; requires rules knowledge and stamina due to extended play times | | Super Series | event | 4-day, 6-tournament competitive event at District 82; point-accumulation format with grand champion scoring up to 600 points | | Precision Flip | product | Metal flipper bushing system by aeronautical engineer John; increases flipper power and consistency; created debate over tournament legitimacy | | Tom | person | Triple Drain co-host; streamed Super Series and Chicago Pinball Expo; competitive player; TD/organizer at District 82 | | Travis | person | Triple Drain co-host; attended Super Series; owns Mandalorian pinball; experienced with metal flipper systems; competitive player | | Joel | person | Triple Drain co-host; podcast host; watched tournaments via stream; recreational pinball player; owns Turtles pinball with metal flippers | | Mandalorian | game | Stern pinball game with Encounters mode exploit allowing unlimited multiball via mini playfield targets; Pro version easier to exploit than Premium/LE | | Deadpool | game | Stern pinball game; has metal flippers installed at Expo; played in tournament with extended times; schnick shot consistency improved with metal flippers | | Godzilla | game | Modern Stern pinball; long gameplay at Expo; location machine near Travis; has metal flippers installed; right ramp easier with metal flippers | | Turtles | game | Pinball game Joel owns; difficult backhanding left ramp; metal flippers improved ramp consistency and playability | | Josh Sharp | person | Elite competitive player at Expo; helped modify tournament settings (deleted ball saves) to speed up games | | Brian Dye | person | Elite competitive player at Expo; advocated for rule changes to accelerate tournament pace | | Rachel | person | Assisted with announcing at Super Series; took over announcing duties from Tom, improving his mood/performance | | Eric Thorne | person | TD at Super Series; also fixing games during event; responsible for putting on Super Series event | | Andy Bagwell | person | Competitive player; top 10 finisher at Expo; known for Mando exploit during tournaments; over 30 years old | | Jared August | person | Elite player; knew about Mando exploit ahead of time; strong Led Zeppelin performance at Expo | | Chuck Wuer | person | Game operator; planning to install metal flippers on Cincinnati Godzilla; concerned about tournament impact | ### Topics - **Primary:** Super Series tournament at District 82, Chicago Pinball Expo 2024 results and gameplay dynamics, Mandalorian pinball Encounters mode exploit, Precision Flip metal flipper systems and tournament implications, Competitive pinball rules knowledge and strategy - **Secondary:** Age and physical stamina in tournament pinball, Tournament streaming and broadcast quality, Game setup and rule modifications during tournaments ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.72) — Hosts express genuine enthusiasm for tournaments, competitive play, and community engagement. Some frustration with physical limitations and game exploits, but balanced by appreciation for player skill and event organization. Collaborative tone celebrating other players' achievements. ### Signals - **[event_signal]** Super Series at District 82 positioned as premier competitive pinball event; 6 tournaments over 4 days with point-accumulation format; strong streaming presence and community attendance. (confidence: high) — Joel describes as 'Super Bowl of pinball'; Tom streamed entire event; Travis attended; Carl D'Angelo dominated (80+ points in all 6 tournaments); early October typical scheduling - **[sentiment_shift]** Strong positive sentiment toward Carl D'Angelo as both elite player and genuinely nice person; community respect for competitive achievement and sportsmanship. (confidence: high) — Tom and Joel praise Carl's skill and demeanor; note he's 'on a different planet'; acknowledge he 'tried to defend honor of senior players' - **[competitive_signal]** Younger players (<25) dominating Expo due to superior reflexes, rules knowledge, and endurance; older players struggling with arthritis and physical fatigue during marathon tournaments. (confidence: high) — Tom notes arthritis flare-ups during extended play; Travis confirms stamina advantage; Tom contrasts top finishers (Zach McCarthy, Carl D'Angelo young; Andy Bagwell, Carlos, Trent over 30 but still competitive) - **[design_philosophy]** Modern Expo games (Godzilla, Star Wars, Mando, Guardians, Jurassic Park, Deadpool) play excessively long even with stock settings, requiring skilled exploit usage to compete within time constraints. (confidence: high) — Tom notes games went 'crazy long'; specific scores mentioned (Zach $1.4B+ Jurassic Park, Travis $600-700M Deadpool still losing by $4B); Travis played 45 minutes on Mando alone using exploit - **[operational_signal]** Metal flipper systems (Precision Flip) gaining adoption; creates debate over tournament legitimacy—enhances accessibility but potentially unbalances games. (confidence: high) — Joel owns set; Travis tested on Deadpool/Godzilla; Pinside thread shows positive reception; Chuck Wuer planning Cincinnati Godzilla installation; Deadpool at Expo had metal flippers installed - **[product_strategy]** Metal flipper systems (Precision Flip) showing strong sales and positive Pinside reception; debate continues over legitimacy in competitive play and home use. (confidence: medium) — Tom notes metal flippers 'selling really well'; Pinside thread shows positive impressions; locations planning installation (Chuck Wuer/Cincinnati Godzilla); no official tournament ban mentioned yet - **[industry_signal]** Mandalorian pinball has confirmed unlimited multiball exploit in Encounters mode; exploit spreads quickly through player observation and streaming. (confidence: high) — Travis provides detailed technical breakdown; confirms exploit used at Expo; notes Jared August and others discovered it via tournament play; exploit made 45-minute game mandatory to compete - **[content_signal]** Streaming competitive pinball is significant labor-intensive work (Tom slept 4-5 days; stayed until 2 AM for women's tournament); community encouraged to support via subs/bits. (confidence: high) — Joel emphasizes streaming as work; Tom slept 4-5 days during Super Series; streams women's tournament at 2 AM; Joel advocates for financial support from viewers - **[competitive_signal]** Chicago Pinball Expo required mid-event rule modifications: post rubbers removed, all ball saves and multiballs deleted to accelerate game times due to extended gameplay. (confidence: high) — Tom and Travis confirm changes made; Josh Sharp and Brian Dye initiated discussion with organizers; specific mention of post rubber removal and multiball deletion on all games - **[venue_signal]** District 82 operates high-volume competitive pinball facility; Eric Thorne balances TD duties, game repair, and son's play during Super Series. (confidence: medium) — Tom notes Eric doing TD, fixing games, managing facility; contrasts with Tom's streaming/playing dual role; characterizes as 'labor of love' --- ## Transcript the pinball network is online launching triple drain pinball podcast i can't i'm so glad we're starting with that sound tom is your gargle are you i mean are you ready get my throat ready for the podcast oh wow okay travis you ready I got to get my beer ready. All right. I'm ready. Was the attempt to that to open it near the mic to, like, make a satisfying sound? No. I had to bring it up to my hand because I didn't want to open it on my crotch. That would have hurt. I had to bring it up because I'm sitting down. You could have had the wet crotch, too. We were having a pre-meeting. I wasn't going to drink during the meeting. Yeah, you could have opened your beer at any moment during that pre-meeting. Why would I drink during the meeting? It's not professional. Yeah, you're celebrating the podcast. Yeah, you're drinking during the podcast. Let's celebrate the intro. Were you recording now? What? Wait, were we recording the whole time? We are. We got you like the talking ball. So we can't put your class on your name. We're going traffic down the talking ball. And we call on our shells. Triple train. Triple train. Triple train. We're triple. Triple train. Triple train. All right, Travis, I see you put your hand up. Yes, we were recording the whole time. Oh, now I'm aware. Thank you. You didn't say action, but I appreciate it. I said, all right, we're going to start. And then look in your upper left corner and you see where it's flashing. I wasn't listening. I was getting my beer ready. Anyways, big shout out to Matt and Dave. They didn't get a shout out last podcast, so I am taking over. I see Tom's face. He's like, what? What's going on? But big shout out to them because I told them they would get a shout out next podcast. There we go. Thanks, Matt and Dave. I handle my business, Joel. That's what I do. I don't. I don't really want to know what they did to deserve the shout out. I'm a little worried at this point. But, yeah, good for you guys. You should know. Yeah, you should know. What do you think they did? I'm not going to go down that route. Just guess. Take one guess. No, not with you. Nope. What was that supposed to be? What do you mean not with me? I'm not turning trips on the side. What are we talking about here? I don't know. You gave him a high five or something. Okay. That's fair. All right. Shout out. There we go. For real, though. we do actually have some shout outs just in a general sense. So for one, Patreon, apparently it's working. People are joining. Thank you so much for the support. Is that, oh, now he's acting surprised. No, that's what we were thanking them for. But there's more than just two people. I know. Are we going to leave them all out? We can't like literally spend every single podcast thinking each individual. We would never get around to it. I mean, you just gave two. Yeah, I gave two. And I'll do two more next week. So that'll do it. Okay. All right. That's all right. Yeah. So, okay. Feel free to join our Patreon. I still love the rest of you. I still love the rest of you. We have to be realistic about this. We can't do like Joel and sit here for an hour listing off every name. No, patreon.com, triple underscore drain. Feel free to join. Apparently, we're going to do two every episode, apparently, the way that Travis is going to handle this. But, no, thank you to all the people that are supporting us there. That is incredibly kind. I mean, we don't deserve it, but thank you very much for that. And also, thank you. People are buying merch. so Jackson Gee made an awesome shirt Travis has a hoodie with one now um I just ordered a hat we don't have those up yet we're waiting to see how those look and then Tom's gonna order something else after we have merch I did get his artwork too I got his artwork and yeah it is badass I can't come out yeah it's definitely awesome yeah I highly recommend it jacksongee.com check him out has some really cool artwork he designed a really cool shirt for us and a new logo so our all that stuff's on Silver Ball Swag. Check that out. But yeah, we've actually sold merch. It's really exciting. I'm very excited. So thank you to everybody. Imagine selling merch. Imagine selling. I know. It's a weird feeling. Imagine starting the podcast and talking about pinball. You started with shout outs and I continued the shout outs. No, no, no. I started not knowing we were recording and I was getting my beer ready and I wasn't aware our conversation was for everybody. I thought we were still in pre-production. Of course our conversation for everybody. That's what the podcast is. Okay. I love you, Tom. I love you too, Travis. Thank you, Tom. Okay. So we actually got a lot. We got a lot to cover. So we're going to try our best to get through it all, but also, I don't know, elaborate as much as we can. So we're going to go back a few weeks. Super Series. Super Series, which is essentially the Super Bowl, it seems like, of pinball. It's what, four days, six tournaments? I mean, it's an insane thing that happens at District 82. Tom, not only are you playing in it, you're streaming the whole thing. I know Travis was there. And what's really cool is it's six individual tournaments. And the way you score, the way you rank in each tournament, that point value, so first place gets 100 points, that point value carries through and you add it all up. You add it all up at the end. And that's so you have six individual winners and then you have the grand champion. I don't know if you have but name that would be a possible 600 points, 600 points. Yes. So you have the number one person when you add it all up and that that's the big guy. And, um, uh, spoiler alert, Carl D'Python Anghelo just crushed it. Carl D'Python Anghelo. I kept checking in. I was on vacation that, or that week. And I just kept pulling up my phone, looking at it. And it was just, he, I don't know. I like, do you, I don't know if you guys know this off the top of your head, but so Carl D'Python Anghelo, IU Pinball, but I think the lowest ranked. Who's Carl? We don't know him. We don't know. The lowest he scored on one tournament. I mean, he was getting 80-plus points in every tournament, maybe 90-plus. 90, Joel. So he was top 10 all six tournaments. That is correct. Just crushed it. Yeah, he got bored one of the tournaments. I think got eighth or something like that. So, I mean, if you guys like watching high end competitive pinball or high end skilled streaming, check out IU Pinball on Twitch. He does these Wizard Mode challenges. I mean, Carl is like he's on a different planet. So this is me just watching and checking in. I'm like, yep, Carl's still crushing it. You guys were there. I mean, what how was it for you guys? How was how was that whole experience? Which part? Super Series or getting our ass kicked by Carl? So if that's, you know, your only memory of it, then sure. Yeah, it was fun, Joel. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you, Carl. Did you do well? I mean, were you pleased at all with your performance, Travis? Was Monica proud of you? Yeah, she was pretty proud of me. I mean, my most fun time was after, what was it, the strikes tournament. That's four strikes on a Saturday night. So that's like the party tournament. So we always, like, set up just a little beer area outside in the parking lot, and we all gather around there, and we all have our drinks and come back in. So I was very thankful that people like Carl were playing long games and everything because that gave plenty of time for us between games. So, yeah. It's like, yeah, just hanging out with friends and all that. That's what I enjoy about it. I mean, Super Series is great. It's a lot of fun because it's competitive. You're playing pinball the whole time. You're playing against world-class people. But then at the same time, you're seeing people that you might not see all the time. Of course, there's, you know, Tom can allude to this, that there's plenty of people we see out and about. But then there's sometimes just certain people you don't see until right around that time. You only see them like once or twice a year. So it's nice. It's a lot of fun. Yeah, I was definitely jealous watching. Like, that's one of those, even though I'm not a competitive player, just the people that are there and the overall atmosphere that I was watching. It's like, I think it would be fun to go just to be there. Like, I bet it's a good time. And Tom, I mean, this is on your home turf. This is District 82. You know this place well. You obviously ran the whole stream. I know we, Triple Drain, we were supposed to record a podcast. Yeah, we were supposed to record a podcast after it, and I don't think, Tom, you slept in like four or five days. So you chapped out. I get pretty crabby as the tournaments go on. But honestly, I wasn't as crabby this time around. Oh, Travis agrees. He's in a good mood, but that was because Rachel took over a lot of the announcing, which certainly helps. And there's a lot of people helping out. Yeah. Al was in a great mood. He only tried to quit pinball twice that weekend. So he was pretty stellar. It wasn't that much. Was he due to play or was it due to streaming? Usually play. Usually play, okay. He was modest, but he has a lot going on. When you're doing TD, you're playing, you're streaming, and you're watching your son play. That's a lot going on. There was one point where I got two stuck balls. I was waiting to play my ball. I got two stuck balls just on Stingray alone. TD. Maybe, I mean, maybe next year, maybe not TD or something. You know, like just give yourself a little break. I mean, I could do that, but then things slow down for the play, and I don't want that. I get you. But, yeah, it was quite enjoyable to watch. I would just – I don't know. Anybody that's into competitive pinball probably at this point knows about Super Series. Mark it on your calendar for next year. I mean, they haven't said it yet, but it's normally sometime early October, right? And it just seems like an incredible event. It's so much in such a short period of time, and there's a lot of people that make it out to it. And it's streamed well. It's great to watch. So, I don't know. Big pat on the back, Tom, for being a part of that and doing all the streaming and TDing and all that. And, yeah, Travis, way to be there. Thank you. I worked hard driving there. What's really amazing is Eric Thorne because he's TDing. He's fixing games. I mean, I do the stream, but he's got a lot more going on, and, you know, it's, yeah. It's a whirlwind, yeah. Just him putting on the whole show is pretty amazing. Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, it's clear anybody that owns that many games or operates that many games in such a big facility, I mean, it's a huge labor of love. There's no denying that, and it's awesome. It's awesome for us to just, I mean, I'm just sitting there watching it and enjoying every bit of it. And a high-quality play, high-quality play, too. So very, very cool. But, yeah, you guys did Super Series, and then I know I was on a business trip, and we were going to record, and it didn't happen. And then I was actually in, yeah, I went to the office in Ohio for the first time since COVID. It was insane. But it was a complete waste of time, by the way, going in. I went in for a meeting. All the managers went in for a meeting. situational leadership training and the training was delivered via webinar so we all sat in a room and watched a webinar it was great it was such a great use of travel that sounds like a good time i was about to say who situationally leadered that up well the guy that delivered it apparently last minute couldn't make it so i whatever he just like scheduled it yeah so here we all are in Ohio. This is all you dunces. Yeah. The most rewarding part of it was just team dinners at night and we went to Topgolf one night. That's the mark of a great leader right there, just making all you guys hate his ass. Yeah, it was great. Yeah. So anyways, we were going to record. It didn't happen. I ended up recording a side episode, kind of a pre-Expo episode with Josh from Loser Kid, which was a good time. And then Expo happened, which I also happened to miss. We'll just go ahead. We'll just go ahead and get just straight into Expo. That's a great idea. Let's do it. Yeah. I know, once again, Tom, you streamed the thing. So maybe let's dive into that for a second. Was streaming better this year, worse this year? How did the tournament go? Definitely better. I had some technical issues the year before, but very few and far between this year, which was nice. Nice. But, yeah, the streaming went well. My play wasn't too good. and I did retire from pinball at least six times. This is nodding yes. We threw him a party here on Saturday for a little while. It was a lot of fun. But he keeps coming back. He's like the Tom Brady of pinball. I was pretty exhausted by Sunday. I ended up streaming the women's tournament on Saturday night because I didn't do it the year before. I felt bad. And I was just wiped out. You were just beat, yeah. It didn't get over until like 2. And by the time you get to bed, it's 2.30. It was a long time, Joel. Literally, we got done playing, and we went to the main area. We got drinks. We played. We hung out for like two and a half, three hours. we're deciding whether or not to hang out some more or go back to our hotel room. So we walk back by the tournament area, and we can still hear voices. So we're like, oh, people are still hanging out. We peek in there. They're still playing. I guess the women's pin golf tournament is like 2 in the morning, and Tom's just standing over there just like a zombie just watching, and I'm like, oh, of course. He's a trooper, though. Yeah, Steven Bowden and Jeff Teolis did some announcing, which was great yeah they're great yeah i mean staying up and then steven i i felt bad because he ended up he ended up winning classics the next day but i was just so exhausted i'm like i i cannot i i gotta you know i couldn't do it and then neil ended up taking third place too that's all i wish i wish i would have streamed it but unfortunately my my uh my body and my mine couldn't do it anymore. That happens. All I can say is if anybody listening watches these streams, it doesn't matter whether it's Tom or somebody else streaming it, throw them some bits or sub to the channel or something. This is work. Streaming is work. There's no denying that. It's awesome. It's awesome that we have this high quality pinball play that we can watch. Just tune in whenever we want. It's fantastic. I really like the Expo tournament too because it's just it's really different than anything else i mean you do the the limited qualifying but then it's head to head yeah um it just it just takes a long time that's the only problem and i heard that it was all stock sterns like every every game was like easy not easy but it was just they didn't try to make the games hard so a lot well they did long ball towards the end it was basically Brian Dye, Josh Sharpe, and myself just starting to like, okay, we need to get this moving. And we got basically talked to the event organizers and TDs, and then things went faster. So did you move some posts, or what did you do? Yeah, I removed some post rubbers. Josh went in and basically deleted all ball saves on everything known to man. And multi-balls, you know, you name it, it was gone. Nice. Yeah. That's what I've been told, that there are some games, some head-to-head games where, especially on like Godzilla and some of these other new modern ones that just, people just blew it up. Yeah. I mean, there were, and yeah, Travis is nodding his head. I mean, there were some games that just went crazy long. Escher and Dalton on Godzilla and then Star Wars. And as Travis knows, Jared was destroying Led Zeppelin. Like, it was just, oh, and Mando. Forgot about Mando. There's a fix coming for Mando here. Sorry, Andy. Yeah, sorry, Andy Bagwell. Oh, you were telling me about this. So it's basically there's essentially an unlimited multiball kind of exploit. Yeah, I'll let Travis explain that because he was a master at it. Yeah, that's pretty much the whole thing. So I had a Mando for a little while, and it's something that I knew that was there. There's actually still one more exploit that I'm not sure is there or not because I haven't played in a while. But I knew it was there. It's at the end of Encounters. So if you're listening to this and they haven't updated Mando yet, if you play Encounters and you get all the way to the wizard mode for it, you have basically unlimited add-a-ball up top in the mini play field. So this is a lot easier to do on the Pro than it is the Premium or LE, since obviously that play field moves around at different angles and everything. But on the Pro, it's static because it's level with the play field. So you just use all five targets up there. You hit them all, and that adds a ball. And you can just do that in perpetuity. Or six targets, sorry. Yep. And does the mode end or the wizard mode end when you get down to one ball? Nope. So as soon as you get down to one ball, you just prioritize that and you're back in multiball? Yep. Well, that's the priority the entire time. The key is that you don't go through all the phases and end the mode. You just stay in the mode in perpetuity, keep adding balls, and the score just eventually just keeps going up higher and higher and higher. Wow. I knew that was there ahead of time. And then I know Jared August, he knew about it too, because in qualifying he blew up Mando. And he, I think because we were talking about it, and I think I'm not sure if he told some other people, but other people started figuring it out either way. I mean, you figure something out on the pin. I mean, it'll spread around pretty quick if somebody's watching. So it was just as soon as I got on Mando and I saw I was down by 800 or 900 million or whatever it was going into ball two, I knew that, okay, I'm just going to have to chop a lot of wood. And about 45 minutes later, the wood had been chopped. Yeah, that's why people watch me stream, so they can find the exploits on how to blow up games, clearly. I will say it was not fun to do. I mean, I enjoy playing pinball, but at the same time, it's like, if you're at a Stern Pro Circuit tournament, you paid your money. There's a brand-new pin on the line. There's circuit points. There's prize money. Time to win. Yeah, you got to do what you got to do to win. I mean, that's just the bottom line. It's not something I would do in my own game room, but it's a large part of it. And, of course, we'll talk about this a little bit later. A large part of pinball at that level is knowing the rules and knowing how to use them to your advantage. That's within the rules of IPA. Sure. All right. Well, bear with me here on this transition because it works. But just sticking within the tournament talk. Do you want to talk about who won Expo or do you just want to ignore that? Don't go watch the stream. It's gone up. My camera's off. Gone up. My camera's off. Tom, who did win Expo? Let me think. Oh, yeah. Zach McHearth. Nice. And what was – somebody wrote something on Facebook. What was it? Carl? Did Carl have the top score in every game? He did for qualifying. For like four of them. Yeah, it was ridiculous. He qualified in nine plays. No, in 12 plays. So you had 15 total and 12 count, and Carl's like, okay, I'll just do 12 and I'm good. And he got, yeah. And he had top fours in most of them, yeah. It was ridiculous. It's insane. That guy's really good at pinball. He's also just a genuinely nice guy. It's great. He tried to defend all of our honor, all of us, like, senior division players. He tried. He snuck into the top four, so that's good. So you're talking about how all the top ranked players right now are like under 25? Well, typically at Expo, it's the younger kids that win it because it's tough. It's basically in order to really do well in Expo, you have to know the rules because the games play pretty easy out of box, just like we alluded to before. So you're going to automatically get deep into these games. Well, if you're going to get deep into the games, it's going to be a marathon, but you've got to know how to navigate it in order to not waste your flips, in order to be efficient. So that's really what it boils down to because the tournament lasts all weekend. And even though you're playing heads up, you're waiting around a lot, or you're playing these marathon balls or marathon games where you might be playing a game with somebody in which they get a billion points and you've got to turn around and do the same thing. And so ultimately it makes it really difficult because you know stepping up, you pretty much got to get to the wizard mode or somewhere close to it nearly every single game, no matter what it is. Like I played Zach McCarthy in the winner's bracket on Saturday. I'm sorry. Yeah, I know, right? And he put up something like $1.4 billion on Jurassic Park. I had nearly a billion on Guardians of the Galaxy on Ball 1, and I still lost by over $4 billion. because he, yeah, so, I mean, it's like, yeah, it's like, what can you do? You know, even playing Deadpool, I had like 600 or 700 million, and that still did not feel safe because he could just, I mean, anybody there at that level could pretty much blow up a game, anybody there. So are you saying the young bucks, they just, they have the stamina and know the rules better than the old farts? Is that what I'm hearing? I mean, I would say what helps them a lot, I mean, it is a rules thing, but just like we're going to talk about a little bit later, they're still very skillful with their flipper skills, with nudging, with their accuracy, with their ability to recover. I mean, they have all the intangibles when it comes to that and the reflexes. I mean, let's face facts here. If you're 20, most likely your reflexes are going to be a little bit faster than if you're 40 or 45. That's just biology, unfortunately. And then you add in that we get into the liquid courage and the fire water a little bit, that slows down the reflexes a little bit as well. So, you know, we just got to get some of them over the hump, above 21, and maybe we can level the playing field a little bit. So you just need everybody to start drinking a little bit. I see. It would probably help, yes. I mean, you could stop drinking. That is an option, right? Maybe I got to start drinking. How is that even an option, Joel? What are we talking about right now? Does Carl drink? No, that's probably why he took four. For sure. He took third. I've never seen a very clear, you know. Hey, so if you look at the top ten, I think some of it was people over 30, like Carlos. He's over 30, right? Andy Rosa. Trent. Is Andy Bagwell? He's above 30, right? I think so. So there's no hope for you. And then me. I took fifth, Joel. I was there. That's good. Good. Thank you, Joel. I appreciate it. And then Carl. So that's six. If you wouldn't have drank your half a beer, maybe we would have got fourth. No. No, there was no. It was way more than half a beer. No, I had to play, like, Zach and Jared, and at that point, like, this is going to sound like such an old person saying, but this is the truth. I hate even saying this because I know I'm going to get made fun of. My arthritis in my left hand was just so bad that I could barely flip anymore. No, when I was playing Godzilla, Joel, it literally just started flaring up so bad that I had to just trap up and just sit there for like 30 seconds just shaking my hand. That's what happens. You play that long. It's just injuries. What can you do? God, that can't be a thing. Injuries. You know what? I know you're new to this competitive thing, but it's a real thing, Joel. It's a real thing. All right. You start hurting. You start getting sore. Sure. Sorry. Do you ever get sore playing pinball? Ever? I mean, yeah, I stream. I had to get two hours of playing straight. Two hours? Two whole hours? Wow. I used to be standing on a concrete floor. Luckily, now the basin's finished with carpet. I got my pin mat, but my feet used to get sore, and I had bad form, so I'd lean on the game. So it was hurting my wrists. So you use a mat, which I'm not going to diss on because it's a great mat, but you use a mat for your feet because you stream sometimes for two hours. I mean, there's nothing stopping you from bringing a mat to a tournament. No, I probably should. I even told you that when I was trying it out. I probably should have taken it to Expo. But what I'm pointing out is when you get to, like, the 10th, the 12th, the 16th hour in the day, then you don't have a pin mat. Yeah. You know, it hurts. And we don't have metal flippers either to help us through the day. So, you know. We'll just use it as a transition. But I'm not the one complaining about my pinjuries, okay? So you – If not an excuse, I would have got my ass kicked without it. I mean, the fact is my best cannot compete with Jared's best or Zach McCarthy's best. I get it. I'll say that right now. But it can compete with Joel's best. So I got that going for me. Definitely. You said it, not me. Metal flippers. So metal flippers, here's a – we're just going to talk about this real quick. People are rolling their eyes. And other people are tuning in. They're perking up. So metal flippers, yes, there are. There's a relatively new thing. It's the Precision Flip flipper system. A guy named John made them. He's an aeronautical engineer. The dude's super nice. I don't know. Long story short, I got a set of them. I put them in my game. I really like them. I really like them. People are wondering, but the discussion around them is people are looking at them like a training wheel or like a crutch. So why do I like them? I put them in turtles. One of my issues with turtles was backhanding left ramp. My flippers just didn't quite feel like they had enough power to do those. I put in the metal bushings, which makes the flippers more consistent. I put in the metal flippers. They just seem to have more power. So now I can control the ball more accurately, the bounces are more consistent, and I can hit the ramps consistently because they feel more powerful when I wasn't doing that before. So to me, turtles, I am so far from cowabunga, but now that I have these flippers, I feel that I can get farther or play better. I can play better in the game. Travis, you have tried them. I also have them on Deadpool. You have tried them. And I remember asking you, do you think this has made the game easier? And your answer was, I think you said they feel different, I think was your answer at the time. Yes. Sorry, I thought it was a rhetorical question. Well, nodding your head doesn't work well on a podcast. That's true. I'm drinking my beer. I'd like to talk. Yes. Well, they feel different, but I think overall it does make the games easier just because I think the bounces, it doesn't bounce around as much because there's not as much give, I guess. I really don't know how to explain that part. But at the same time, it makes all the shots in the game very accessible, just like Joel alluded to earlier. So you're able to backhand certain shots. There's some games I don't necessarily like it on. Like, we have a Godzilla that's about 30 minutes away from here on location with him, and I can't find the loop at all. But, hot damn, I can crush the right ramp with the upper flipper like nobody's business. Oh, wow. Yeah, that totally changes things, which it's, you know, I don't know. I don't like that it does that because they have a metal flipper on the upper flipper also. But, you know, certain games I like it better, like Deadpool. I really enjoyed using metal flippers on that just because it made the schnick shot actually go every single time. So that was enjoyable. Turtles, it did make that game a little bit more enjoyable just because it did make the left ramp a little bit easier to hit. So, yeah, I think that there's a place for them at people's homes. I'm curious to see if somebody does put this in a high-level tournament, what would happen. I think that if you're going to do that, make sure you have the ball saves off. Yeah, Chuck Wuer has already said he's going to – apparently the Godzilla at Cincinnati will have these metal flippers. Oh, man. He's already said that. Yeah. It does not make it play more difficult. I'm telling you. It makes it play – it'll make it play a long time unless they just bastardize that pin everywhere else. So, Deadpool, I actually turned down the flipper power. Like, I put these in, and I actually turned down the flipper power. So, I still feel – the reason they feel more consistent is the tolerances in the bushing, the metal bushing are way like, there's almost no slack. If you just grab the flipper and try to move it side to side, there's no wobble. And you get that with the nylon bushings. But I don't know, long story short, they had them at Expo. There was a Deadpool there that had them. So watch, reading the pin site thread, there are a lot of people that were impressed by that. They like the way they feel and they're selling really well. So my overall view is they look great. I I like the way they look. But I also, for me, a home player, they've almost given me more. The guys in chat are having a great time. So Tom just wrote, Joel has a big butt. Sure. Thanks, Tom. So Turtles, it has made the game more fun for me. Turtles is a hard game. Now, being that they're more powerful, the ball actually seems to be moving a lot faster. So when I brick, that ball is coming right back at me. And so it kind of handicaps itself at the same time. But the reason I wanted to bring this up and the reason I'm kind of looping this into tournament talk is there are people on pin side that are like, well, I'm hesitant to put them in my game because I don't want my game to feel super easy at home. And then I go on location or I go to play in a tournament. And now all of a sudden the game feels totally different than what I have at home. And my thought behind that is people change rubbers all the time. People add pin stadiums to their game. People add other things to their game that aren't on location. so your lighting is going to be different the steepness of the game is going to be different they may move posts they're going to have different rubbers like the game's going to be different so my vote is make the game whatever you want it to be at home make sure you're having a good time if adding something to the game means you're getting to the wizard mode every single time maybe take it off or make it a little easier but until that happens like make make your things fun just make sure you're having fun with pinball um i don't know these i just i got yeah short discussion. Apparently this discussion was a little too long. No, you're doing great. We're complimenting you in chat. That was my thought, though. I mean, what are your thoughts on that? I know there's some people that are like, I only want to have stock games because they want to keep their games. Or, like Chuck Word, I remember him saying in the TPN Discord, he makes his games brutally hard at home. So the idea there is, if it's brutal at home, maybe there's a chance the game would even be easier when he plays it in a tournament. So, what's your question on this exactly? Like, tournament set up at home or how to train at home? Yeah, so like Dennis Creasel, he's been giving me a hard time. He's saying the metal flippers are training wheels. I'm putting training wheels on my pen. I mean, he is wrong. I'm making it, yes. So I'm making it easier. But I'm also, I'm confident or I'm comfortable enough in my own ability that I don't have a problem when I have to move the outline post on a game down. Like if I'm just getting destroyed by the outline. Yeah, you've got to set up the game as you want to to have fun. There's nothing wrong with doing that. Yeah. I mean, there's some people out there who set their game at 10 balls. Hell, I've seen some people mod their game like Ninja Turtles and put a freaking rubber band on the outline. Yep. Or even just putting like super lube on a spinner. You know, you're giving yourself more spins. Well, you do that as a competitive player too. Well, I think it's funny though. Everybody loves a juicy spinner. I agree. But like Turtles, we talked about Turtles before I played at Kleepin. and the strategy was all get in a multiball and rip spinner. And then I remember I get there and you're like, oh, yeah, remember that strategy of get in a multiball and rip spinner? It doesn't work on this game because the spinner sucks. Yeah, because that spinner was shit. That's why. So it's like it doesn't – I don't know. I feel like you – I mean, you guys can talk about this more than me, but I just feel like every game, whether it's on location or in a tournament, is going to feel different than your game at home. So, like, I wouldn't worry about that. Like, set the game how you want it to be at home because you're going to have to adapt one way or the other to whatever game you're stepping up to on location. Tom agreed. Travis is shaking his head back and forth in a negative way. Well, it depends. I'll say it depends. But I've talked enough, Tom. Would you like to chime in here? Because you've got tons of games there. So many games. Yeah. No. You're just saying no? No. Okay. He agrees with me. He shook his head yes, but he doesn't want to go into detail. Okay, got it. Well, I'm probably playing worse than Joel lately. I can't find any shots. In the words of Ron, oh, my. Yeah. You might need to get some metal flippers. I'm a lost soul. Yeah. It happens. Well, okay, so here's why I would say you've got to be careful with that. Because if you're wanting to play competitive, it's one thing if you're doing it, like, at your local weekend tournament, with all your friends. That's one thing. But if you're trying to go to a Stern Pro Circuit event against high-level players, you've got to be very careful about that. And I actually just had a conversation with another player about this that we've noticed this through players that have tried to play at a higher-level tournament. And there's nothing wrong with this. Everybody should try to play. Just like we encourage you, Joel, at Cleafon. Hey, get out there and try. It's fun. See what you have. but you do have to be careful that if you have your game set up so easy at home with no tilt, Bob, nothing else, you could get into certain habits. It's going to be awfully hard to dial back once you're, you know, in the shit. Once you get out there at a pro circuit tournament or any high level tournament and the tilts are a little bit tighter, I've seen people just like silverback flip their way to a tilt during a multiball or give the pin a shake and not realize. Isn't that what he does? Well, the difference is Luke can get away with it most of the time. Yeah, Luke can shake the game and not get a tilt. Yeah, like him and Rosa can pick the game up and put it on their backs and walk out of the freaking expo hall, and they won't tilt. It's insane. But that's the difference. They know how to nudge. Steven Bowden is the same way, world-class nudger. There's certain players there that have that touch. That's like the worst habit that I see players get into, that if they have their tilt set super loose or no tilt at all at home, and they get to these tournaments, they get destroyed by that because their recovery skills aren't there. You know, and if you get – even if you don't tilt and you get too dangerous early on, well, then you're playing on pins and needles for the rest of the ball. It affects your accuracy. It affects your recovery. It affects how you're trying to trap up. You might flip away more often than what you would, so your patience goes out the window. I mean, all that really adds up. So I think that one thing you got to be very careful about But I will say though if you not worried about training for a tournament that that high level then yeah for sure Like set your pens up the way I mean even if you used to it set your pens up how you want to play Yeah. And you're going to have fun. I mean, because you've already spent the money for the pens, so you don't have to set it up brutally hard just because that's – you know, you think you have to do that. There's nothing wrong with setting it up with the way that's going to be fun for you. Sure. Sure. And the only reason I brought up the flippers, the precision flip flipper system, the only reason I brought that up is because, yeah, one of our patrons specifically wanted us to talk about it. And then somebody on our Facebook post said the same thing. What are your thoughts on this? And I mean, I just my main thing was if you're going to put PinStadiums in a light and if you're going to put PinStadiums in your game, like I feel like that is almost as advantageous because you can see the ball so much better. Like those aren't going to be there. Like most of the time your competitive lighting sucks. Oh, yeah. As my eyesight goes, I'm getting more and more convinced a headlamp is, like, legitimately would help because there's some games, like at District 82, I'm just like, I don't know where the hell the ball's at. I'm flipping. I'm guessing. I think it's here. But then when Rose there or somebody gets up there with a headlamp, I'm like, oh, there's the ball. And I can see it the whole entire time as I'm watching them play. So, yeah. Is there anything in the rules from keeping you from, like, getting a set of the extremes, the external pins and ends, and, like, slapping them on there before you play every game? No, there's people that have a light that they put on the lock bar. Oh, really? That shines down. Oh, yeah. That's probably what I'm going to start doing in some places. The year that, I'll get Monica behind me with a spotlight or something. That's degrading. She's better than my God. She's got some money in this, too. She wants to help me win money, so, you know. I just hand her a beer. She's fine. She's happy. It's fine. Beer in one hand, light in the other. just try to keep it on the game. Got it. All right. If the metal flippers make you happy, do it. Yeah. There you go. I will say, though, there's certain games I would recommend them on, and certain games I'd be like, okay, you might want to consider your options here. So Deadpool, I love those on Deadpool. Yep. I really enjoy it on Turtles. So, Joel, you have two games that they work very well on. Yep. Godzilla, I didn't like it so much. Okay. I mean, that layout is very accessible for a lot of people already, even with the outlanes open. But now you put those metal flippers on, you're not half-ramping anything ever. Yeah. And you're just ripping shots left and right. Nothing's really ever in danger with it. So that kind of makes me fearful hearing that, you know, those will be on Godzilla at Cincinnati. So I wouldn't necessarily recommend that. There are a lot of people, though, that talk about the fact that you have to turn the flipper power down, which you can do on a modern pin. It's not a big deal. So, like, on Deadpool, I turned the power down. Godzilla, it sounds like if you were to put them on there, you know, make sure they're aligned correctly. They're very easy to adjust, but just get them aligned correctly and then set the flipper power to something reasonable. But, like, Turtles, I didn't lower them because I wanted more power. So there is hesitation. People are like, well, maybe I should put these on Lord of the Rings where that would be really helpful. But anything that, you know, the power is what the power is, there's certain games maybe you shouldn't put them on. I don't have them in TNA because I wanted TNA to feel super snappy you need to put those on TNA and you need to just take the tilt bob off and just go I don't know I think it's a cool system I would say if you're curious give it a shot, it's a fun system to play with and worst case you buy them you put them on, you don't like them, you take them off you're not breaking anything That was a good short discussion We enjoyed that Joel We crushed it We're real good at short discussions here We crushed that Well here's a transition for you So speaking of adding things to your game That bring you joy Tom you are buying the Mando topper God damn that was a good transition Wasn't it good? I think Tom's eyebrows Raised slightly We just Kind of skipped over all the expo stuff Well, here's the deal. I don't number things, so we'll get to it. I got it. I know. It's not an expo. We have not skipped it because it was an expo, and we saw it in person, Tom, so there you go. Let's go. But, Tom, so, okay, the Mando topper comes off, so we'll split this two ways. So, one, as a distributor, Travis, you had no idea it was coming out. It just dropped out of nowhere, and I remember you're like, what is happening? Like, it just kind of rocked your world for a second. So real quick, how was that whirlwind? Because you sold out real quick, too. Yeah. Well, yeah, it was just one of those things that we were waiting. I had a meeting that morning. I was like, yeah, I don't know when this is going to come out. It should be out any time now. And then all of a sudden it's like phone call, text, phone call, phone call, text, email. It's like, okay, what's going on here? And then I look online and then sure as hell, there it is on YouTube, the trailer and all that. But, yeah, we sold out of our allotment in, like, 20 minutes. Yeah. We didn't get on the website. People wanted to. So everybody's saying, oh, it's priced really high, this and that. It's like, no, they're flying at that price. It might actually be underpriced. I know people hate hearing that, but, I mean, they're being sold very quickly. Well, it's funny. I think, I mean, everybody's complaining about price, but yet most things that have a limited number sell out real quick. So apparently that price, like the only example, unfortunately, like TNA. TNA is not sold out yet. And that's something that maybe they've, that's something to learn. You know, the price point that they put TNA at might be right on the cusp or showing it might be a little high. I don't know. I mean, I think they'll sell them eventually. But, like, yeah, Mando Topper just, boom, allotment gone. And I know, like, Zach was talking about, Zach was talking about how they were driving up to Expo. And the same thing. His phone's blowing up. He's having, his wife now is having to drive the van, the flipping out van, while he's trying to do everything he can. I mean, it just sounds like a nightmare for you guys. I don't know what Zach's talking about. We had the webinar that morning, and it was like three hours long. No, it was dropped out of thin air. We had no idea. Yeah. It was exciting. It's an awesome topper. It's really cool. So, Tom, I mean, you're in. You're in. The greatest topper ever made next to the Rush one that's not released. Oh, the Rush. Okay. So this is the number two topper ever made with Rush. Yeah, the unreleased Rush. Got it. Okay. So were you – did you know you were in automatically, or was it something you saw in the trailer? I mean, what made you pull the trigger on this one, Tom? No, it just looked really cool. I didn't know the price point before I pulled the trigger. You're the reason prices keep going up, Tom Graff. That's what everybody's saying right now. I tell you. Thank you. How much? Yeah. Tom's one of those guys, he gets the bill at dinner and he just doesn't even open it. He just hands him the card. I mean, is that the life you live, Tom? Just like, ah. Depends on if it's McDonald's or, you know. Tom just puts it in front of himself and just, like, belly laughs at it and just tosses it behind him. Continues on with his dinner. So the Mando topper, I mean, don't get me wrong. I mean, it looks really cool. It looks awesome. In person, it's impressive. It's one as though most toppers I don't notice at all. Even I've been on record that the Black Knight Topper, multiple pins, I have no idea it's there. You don't notice half a game. You've talked many times before that you didn't know you were playing a premium Stranger Things. Oh, for Stranger Things. Which has a freaking projector in it. And I did that again this past weekend. As a matter of fact, I don't pay attention to the projector. I'm sorry. I just don't. Anyways, that's another discussion, Joel. We need to stay on topic. So I'm going to help you out here. This Mando Topper, it is actually really, really cool. I mean, you notice the hologram on it immediately, and you can see it, you know, moving and everything. You can see the display on it. So I'm actually pretty impressed with what it is, and I can see why it sold out, and I can see why this is going to be a hard product for a lot of people to get. So, like, I know the Elvira topper, I don't remember. I think that was the first topper that was $1,000, or maybe it was slightly more. But, like, the Elvira topper was just kind of a sculpt, and it just kind of was like a lid that went up and down. Like, to me, I remember when I saw the price and saw what was there, I was like, that's, there's not much there. Like, it just, but this, it's like, okay, this price is crazy. What is it, $2,000 or $2,500? It's, I don't remember. $2,000. $2,000. $2,000. But it's like, at least you're getting something. Like, it's sculpted incredibly well. It looks really cool. And then you got the whole screen. And I don't know your thoughts on this, though. It adds modes. There is, I think, two different modes to it. One, it, like, tracks your overall Beskar, and once it reaches a certain limit, then it's like Beskar Mania or something. Like, you get every perk in the game. It's like you went on a shopping spree. And then there's a whole other one. It's some other mode that is a cumulative thing. Like Beskar Madness or something like that? But it's something I – some people are really upset about that. The DLC is essentially like, oh, great. I mean, I know Jurassic Park had something similar and Avengers had something similar, but I think when Insider Connected came out, they basically gave you access to those. so I don't know. You guys, eh. Eh, okay. They'll probably do it again. I absolutely think they'll do it again. Yeah, it's like, well, you guys have played console games, right, or PC games, so, like, I've been doing that for years, and it's the norm to see some type of DLC or some add-on that adds a new mode to the game or a new level or whatever, and so this doesn't bother me at all. Like, I feel like after having a Mandalorian, I still had a complete game. And this just happens to be an add-on after the fact. So, I mean, I can understand. I have empathy for those that are, you know, thinking, oh, I don't have a complete game because I don't have this, I don't have that. But in all reality, I mean, it's two modes. You know, that's not going to make or break your game. So that's the main thing. If we talk about these extra modes, like these challenge modes. I mean, like I know most modern games now have some ability to skip straight to like one of the many wizard modes or something. So it's the modes are there, but the challenge modes are a lot of fun. Turtles has half shell challenge. Half shell challenge is a mode that's completely unique. That's not in the game. It is. You can only get to it by holding the flippers in and going straight to it. It's essentially speed running mode. Like I know as a turtles owner, if they would have put that behind a paywall, I'd pay it. Like I would buy that. Like, just because that mode is so great, but at the same time, as a Turtle owner, I'd probably be frustrated that I have to, like, I've already bought this game. Why am I having to pay for this mode? But that is such a unique experience. And the two modes, I mean, we haven't seen them yet, but the two modes and the way they're talking about them don't really seem crazy, like you're missing out. Maybe, I'm assuming there will be an Insider Connected Achievement. If you're one of those, you know, if you're an achievement hunter and you need to get everyone, then maybe that would be a thing. But I don't know. I'm just – that doesn't bother me. Some people are very upset about it. But, Tom, I'm excited for you. I'm excited that you're getting it. I think it's going to look – you have the LE of Mando. It's already an incredibly good-looking game. And I think that topper is going to look real nice. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful game, yeah. Is it because the LE back glass in Mando has a lot of mirror, and so you just see more of yourself? It has a ton of mirror. A ton of mirror. So more Tom in your back last. More Tom. That's a good-looking game. Everybody needs more Tom. Yeah. Okay. All right. Hey, look, we're still in Mando. Sorry, we're still in Expo. Let's talk about Expo. So let's just go with another, we'll say Vaughn. So Queen, do either of you guys play Queen? Initial thoughts. I know, Travis, we talked about this on TPN After Hours. Are you both? Are you waving Tom or are you playing Queen? I'm just waving to Tom. I did not play Queen, but I saw it there. How did it look? It looked nice. I wanted to play it, but every time Neil and I went up to it, it was either somebody was playing it or it was – we went early in the morning because I had a special pass. But it was unplugged, so I couldn't play it. So I went over and played Weird Al instead. It wasn't turned off. It was unplugged. Nice. It was unplugged. I was going to turn it on, then I saw it was unplugged, and I'm like, I should plug it back in. Well, we'll get to Weird Al because I know this was your first Weird Al experience. But, Travis, so Queen, what were your thoughts? You know, so it was interesting. I really liked how the flippers felt. They were – it was like a – it was in between a Stern Pro or Stern Pro, any Stern, and a JJP. So the flippers weren't quite snappy, but they weren't quite spongy either. But you could tap pass, you could post pass, you could hit shots cleanly. So I really liked how the flippers felt. The layout was okay. I mean, it wasn't anything that was just like industry busting. That's just, oh, my God, this is just the best layout ever. I mean, it was what it was. And so it's just, you know, the artwork was okay. The back glass, it was kind of odd just seeing Freddie Mercury's face. It kind of looked like we talked about this on TPN After Hours to where, to me, it almost looks like he got stung by a bunch of bees because his jaw is just like massive. I don't know. I don't know what happened there. But I do like the fact that they have live music in it because Queen is very much a live band. So I felt like that was a great decision. And it was pretty cool hearing those songs from Queen and getting into it and ripping shots. I really enjoyed that. There goes my camera. So this is a great segue. Anyway, much like my equipment is bugging out, that's what I experienced with the queen, too. It's not bugging out. You don't charge your camera. God. It's not a bug. It's a bug, Joel. Oh, okay. You can talk without looking at yourself, Travis. I know you can do it. What? No, no. Get a dummy battery like the rest of us. Actually, okay, so I'm going to go off on a little tangent here. I do have a dummy battery in there. The problem is I use a Canon M50. So what that requires is an EOS. Well, yeah, evidently it is. It's like 600 piece of shit is what it is. So I have an EOS utility that I'm supposed to put on my browser, right? And then I connect the camera to the utility via wireless. And that's what keeps it on because it's like a fail safe to turn it off. but literally every single time I hook it up to there, it like loses its connection within minutes. So it's going to go off either way. So we all just need to hold hands, take a breath. I'm probably going to disappear in another 20 minutes, but it is what it is. The queen. Hey, listeners, if anybody has a webcam that they're not using, feel free to mail it to Travis because a USB cable stays connected very well. But go ahead. I told you this before, Joel. My professional cameras are only for my OnlyFans. That's the fact. That's how this works. All right, Queen. Queen, yes. Yeah, so is Buggy. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Okay. There's a lot of bugs in the software, but that's what everybody was saying. I was a little concerned by that just because it's been announced for over a year now. Yeah. So I was expecting it to be a lot further along. But, I mean, like I said, the shots were okay. I really liked how the flippers were. I did like how the music was. I could see that there is a pathway to have fun with that pin. They're not quite there yet, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel with it. So I'm not ready to ride it off completely yet because there are elements of fun. And I met somebody there. I think his name was Simon. He was explaining the game to me, and he was very patient. And he obviously knew what was going on since he was associated with the game. But I think that there is a pathway for this game to be successful in the way that it can be. I don't know if at the price points it is. And because of some of the barriers it has to overcome, being overseas and part shortages and all that, I, you know, who knows what's going to happen there. But it's interesting. It's one of those things where I know that there's going to be a lot of people that when they do play this pen, it's almost like, I don't know, I wonder how Queen fans will take it. whether or not that this will be like their mecha pin, that they'll love it, or whether they'll play it and then wish somebody else made it. I'm curious to see that because I'm kind of in between. I enjoyed it for what it was, and I know a little bit of Queen music, and I didn't find myself wishing that some other company made it. I mean, it was what it was. Yeah, Zach Minney, once again, he said this on the pinball show with Dennis, and he basically said he loved it. Like, Zach is a huge Queen fan, so he loved the theme, but he really loved the way it shot. He said he kept coming back to it. He loved the way it felt. He was a big fan. He was a really big fan. If the code can evolve into, you know, something that really pulls him in, I mean, I don't know. Zach was really excited about it, but yet on the TV and After Hours show, I know George Fisher, and he was not in love with it. I know you weren't in love with it, and Craig Bobby was also not in love with it. Craig Bobby was really not in love with it. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I would say right now the pen is okay. It's very hard to judge something where the code is obviously that buggy, where you couldn't really, I mean, like I was scoring a billion points without really doing anything but hit the middle ramp. Yeah, and then sometimes you'd get a ball and try to change songs, and then it would lock up the software. And so it was kind of hard for me to get into the experience that way. So I'm hopeful it'll be at TPF, and they'll be a lot further along. That's what I'm hopeful of. So here's a transition a little bit, but it's Spooky. Spooky just announced that they're hiring a new coder. And the wording was strange, but basically this new coder, his job for the next year is to continue to add. Did they say rewrite or add? But it's to focus on Ultraman and Halloween code. Are you talking about the post where they were talking about the actual Halloween as in the holiday, but yet it came off like they were talking about the game Halloween, and now they were kind of apologizing the code wouldn't be where they wanted it to be? That's what it was, yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, Halloweens are all sold. They're almost all made. They're sold out, but props to Spooky to continue to put energy and effort into this game. I know Zach and Greg with Straight Down the Middle just did a Halloween review. Shocker, B+. It was like Greg, I think it was a B+, Zach was like a B-. But one of the biggest issues that they've both – well, Greg loves the code, but yet there's a lot of people that have complained about the code, especially with animations and other stuff. But what you're saying is like Queen shoots well, but the code is what's holding it back. my experience with Halloween is it doesn't shoot well. You can't code that. You can't fix that. But yet, here they are. They're going to continue to evolve the code. Greg Bone, in his review, made it sound like his game shoots great. So maybe I just haven't shot a very good game. I don't know. I mean, do you guys have any quick thoughts on Halloween? And if they're going to invest a whole dedicated coder to continuing to put energy into coding this game, Do you think are we going to see a big improvement there? Or, I don't know, takeaways on the straight down the middle review at all? Tom, go ahead. Good luck, Spooky. Okay. Travis, what do you got, man? I got nothing. Okay. All right. I don't know. I feel bad. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. So they made a pin. Yep. And it happened to become two pins, right? Yep. And Halloween became Ultraman. they made certain decisions that they wanted to make in terms of how they wanted to code it, who they wanted to code it, how they wanted to do the rules, how they wanted to do the design, so on and so forth. So the bottom line is that it sold out. People bought the game. So that's the most important thing. Regardless of what anybody else thinks, they still made their nut. They sold it. So it is a good thing, of course, that a company is still putting resources into said game because they could very easily just say, you know what, it is what it is. We're going to ride off into the sunset, focus on the next project. But obviously hiring, I think his name is Matt Kemp that they hired. So bringing him in, I don't know who that is, but it's got to be a good thing that you're bringing in some sort of programmer to help. So, you know, I mean, that is something. I would just say that I think of anything, I would fully expect that Spooky has definitely learned from this, and I think that they're going to take the feedback and take it seriously. and hopefully they apply it to whatever next project they have because, you know, I mean, the three of us being pinball fans, we want everybody to be successful. That would be great. I mean, if everybody could keep making just banger of pins, that would be awesome because the more pinball, the better. But, yes, I do agree with you, Joel, though. They do have to work on how they word their Facebook posts because I'm reading it. I'm reading it right now, and this is how it reads. It says, Matt is going to be pouring that passion into the Halloween and Ultraman code over the course of the next year. The update isn't going to quite make Halloween as we wished, but we are working diligently on getting it done as soon as possible. So it's like when you just read it, you're like, wait a second. They're hiring somebody. So Ultraman's going to be better? Yeah. We're not going to be able to – the game's not going to be what we want it to be, but that's what it reads as. That's what it reads as, but I'm pretty sure they just meant the holiday Halloween and it just happened to be. Yeah. So, yeah, just kind of watch your wordplay there, Spooky. And this is coming from Travis, guys. This is coming from Travis. We know how good his wordplay is. But, no, yeah, I just feel it was almost weird feeling almost guilt watching the Straight Down the Middle review because Greg is so passionate. He's like, people that hate this game or that rip on the code or this. I mean, he was, like, mad about it because he loves it. But my view is, like, I can't experience the code. The three games I've played, I just had so many center ramp rejects that I can't, like, how do I get to enjoy a mode if I can't even get into one? And that goes back to, Joel, that on different copies, people are going to have wildly different experiences. I know the first copy I had, I think it was the collector's edition or whatever it was, 12 Halloween. So I played it very early on, and you guys saw the pictures that I sent you of it. I mean, there was, I was getting, yeah, I was getting rejects on ramps. I had no idea why that was happening. And I peeked underneath there and there was a screw hanging up nearly half an inch on the play field, like in just rejecting the ball. And there was things falling apart. So, I mean, obviously that they figured out their QA afterwards, but yeah, it's just that people are going to have different experiences. So I'm sure, obviously, somebody that's playing Halloween today that might have come off the line last month, they might have a very much different experience than somebody that played it a year ago or six months ago or what have you. So, I mean, there's nothing wrong with people changing their minds, and there's nothing wrong with people loving the game as it is. I mean, that's what pinball is all about. People are going to have different opinions, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. And, yeah, that's fine. And the categories that they scored at. Well, like the art, I agree. The art on that game is incredible. You know, the lighting show is really, really good. I mean, there are definitely good things there. It's just geometry-wise, that's where I struggled. And if they release some sort of fixes or talk about ways you can adjust it, I mean, maybe I'll get lucky. Next time I play a Halloween, maybe it'll shoot great, kind of like how Greg says it shoots. Just kind of like in Toy Story, one of my biggest frustrations was the Bo Peep Loops, but I've only played one version of the game. So maybe the next Toy Story I walk up to, the Bo Peep Loops may shoot awesome. And then I can check that box like, oh, it's just my game. I don't know. We'll have to see. But speaking of, so, okay, so once again, Queen shoots well. Code, eh. Halloween, the question is, does it shoot well? I don't know. But the code is. Greg Bone shoots great. Greg Bone shoots great. But Bond. So you both have played Bond. What I've heard, the reason I'm using this as a transition, is it shoots well, but the code is, because there's not, we're at point, I think somebody said they walked up to the game, it was turned off, and instead of, it wasn't unplugged like Tom's, but it was turned off and they just flipped it on, and, you know, when Stern Games boot up, it shows code version. I think they said it was .54 out of 1.0. So it's like they are barely over halfway done with the code. So I know a lot of people are just giving them a pass. Like, I'm not here to judge the code. But yet, what we can go off of is, how did it feel? How did the shots feel? And then on the dead flip stream, Gomez and Mike Vinikour did go into what their plans are with the code. So what you heard from there, I don't know, your thoughts there. Tom, if you want to go first, go for it. I thought it shot pretty good, honestly. I liked the layout, but I only played one game on it. So, you know, I didn't have my, I was probably in the actual hall for about an hour and a half, the entire expo. But I, you know, for what I got to try and everything, I did, I thought the shot, I thought it shot well. So pro or premium? I thought it shot better than I imagined it was going to shoot. Okay. Did you play the pro or premium? I actually played the pro. Okay. And I've heard positive things about the pro. Yeah. So the shots, though, was there any particular shot that kind of, like, surprised you? Like, ooh, like, I like that. Like, I don't know. I feel like on most sterns now or even most modern pins, there's always something that kind of stands out from a kinetic standpoint of, like, I like the way that felt. Was there anything like that? Not particularly, just because I just had one game on it. Okay. All right. Well, cool. But it wasn't a bad. It didn't leave a bad taste in your mouth. No, not at all. All right. What about visually? Art? I mean, how did the art? Do you feel it looked better? Pro, people are like, that's a bright yellow cab. How was it? Do you feel the art was better or worse? I don't know. I thought the art on the play field was fine. Yeah, the cabinet and the backbox just don't really do anything for me. Okay. On the pro version, but the premium looks really nice, though, I thought. Okay. Good. Travis, I'm going to, just as he's swigging his beer, yep. Todd. What's up, Joel? What's going on? What are your, I know we've already had this discussion a little bit, Travis, but I know you came away really liking the pro, really liking the pro. Yeah, I think I like the pro better than the premium, personally, Just because I just feel like the things that were added on in the premium, I mean, I could take it or leave it. It didn't seem like, like, for instance, if I look at Godzilla and I play Godzilla, I have a premium there, right? I feel like I have to have the premium because of the spinner on the right and because of the building. So the same way with Rush, because of the dead end shot, I feel like I got to have that buck and I got to have the ramp that's a little bit wider and moves up and down. Like those two things really make a big difference. with Bond, I just personally, for my game style, I really don't mind not having the ball locks up top with, you know, next to the spaceship, however we want to call it. The rocket? Yeah. Well, I'm going to try to keep this PG-13. Okay. Yeah. There we go. It's out there now. Yeah. So, yeah, you know, you got to be careful with the ball lock by the spaceship dildo. So you got to be careful there. and then Bond on a wand where he just kind of like poops out the ball. It just, that doesn't do anything for me yet. Just because like we talked about, there's no way to control Bond and release him, release him down onto that target or release the ball onto the target. But if that was already there, or if you had various spots to release the ball, then I'd probably be saying something different. And that would be something unique that would be worth looking at. But as of right now, it's not there. so I can't really comment on that but I felt like the Pro just it just felt better overall to me sure when playing it so you know on the right side I love the right side of the play field like I love how you know the ramp splits I love the shot in between the ramp that feels really good I love how fast it goes between the ramps and then comes around to the upper flipper and then you can rip a shot there that I really enjoy I really do like the left orbit of the game that's a fun shot to do that you hit it and it comes back around to your left flipper. So a lot of flow there, a lot of combo potential there. What I wasn't really keen on was just the eject or the scoop, whatever you want to call it, that's on the left-hand side. That seemed to really slow down the gameplay a lot. And then it just kind of like just sent the ball out of control every single time. And it didn't really feel like a shot you could hit on purpose either, really, on any of the copies. It just seemed like most of the time a shot would go there just because it had It just happened to go there. Yeah, it just happened to go there. Even during a multiball, it's like, okay, the shot went there because it happened to go there. But there was a unique shot, though, and I told you about this, Joel, that we discovered from the left flipper. And this was possible in all the copies we played. We played like two or three different versions of it. From the left flipper, you could hit the side ramp. From the lower left flipper. Lower left flipper. Yeah, of course. Of course, the upper left flipper, you could hit the side ramp. Yeah, that would be way better. But, yeah, the lower left flipper, you could hit the side ramp too. So that was interesting. I mean, it was a tight shot, but it was still there. So it was just, you know, that geometry of the side ramp is interesting too because sometimes the ball would go flying around there, then other times it would, like, get caught up and come back down the right ramp. Okay. And then I guess the only other thing that I was kind of iffy on was every time that the ball got stopped in the right end lane with that post that would come up the stop the ball, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. I forget if we were starting missions or whatever it was that we were starting, but then as soon as that post would go down, the ball more often than not would stay there. Oh, yeah. Well, it's just because if you look at the pictures of it, it's so high up the end lane that sometimes it just kind of gets stuck right on that switch area, like right on the lower part of it. And that happened on different copies. So I'm curious to see if that becomes an issue later on, or maybe it was just the way that the games were set up. I don't know, because I don't remember that happening during the dead flip reveal. Yeah, that'll be interesting to see. I do know one of the things I saw in the dead flip reveal was, at least on the plunge, I know they said they haven't coded in all the super skill shots yet, but on the plunge, it doesn't look like there's an option, or maybe nobody did it, where you hold the left flipper and the ball actually goes all the way around. It looks like it was. It does do that. Okay. It does that. Yep, I did that. Because all of their plunges were sending it up into the pops, but it seems like the way the ball exits out of the pops, at least on the dead flip stream, sends the ball straight over to the top of the left sling, which then makes the ball potentially bounce straight out the left out lane. And I saw multiple people, like, plunge, didn't flip a single thing, ball goes out the left out lane. They plunge, like, I think Mike Vinikour had a ball where it happened, ball save happened, kicked him out of another ball, and it happened again. So I hope some of these layout things, I don't know, are fixed or addressed. Well, that depends on how it's set up, too, because I know the pins that we played on at Expo, for me, every time it came out of pops, it fed the left in lane perfectly every single time. So I think a lot of it just depends on setup overall, too. So that might be variable just according to copy. But, yeah, if you look, do you guys have the play field brought up real quick? No. in front of you? I'm trying to focus on the podcast that we're doing. Oh, you're just, you can just, you're like a savant. You can just talk about the play field without even looking at it. I don't think it's that hard to kind of remember how it looks. Well, I was just going to point out, if you have the play field up, look at where that post is on the right end lane. Yeah, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. All right. Listeners, I'm sorry that Tom and I They're the most prepared ones. I apologize for this. Sorry, I don't know the exact location of where a post is. Joel's worried about my camera. I'm worried about you guys, the listeners, that we can provide you the best information possible and the most accurate. So right now your biggest concern is a visual reference for a podcast. That's your concern. Yeah, you're right. Okay. That makes sense. Okay, so everybody pause this and go look at your Bond play field. Jeez. And then come back here as soon as you get it up on your computers or your phone. The goal is to create a word picture, okay? Okay, welcome back, everybody. So now that you've seen it, awesome. Okay, perfect. Well, okay, so any other thoughts on it? I mean, Lonnie is known for taking a long time on his code. It's just Bond is in a weird spot. I think I read somewhere it's been two months already, like two months since the game was revealed. It's been a hot minute. Two months. We've had one stream. Nobody's had the game yet. I know Zach is trying to get me one to stream, but all he's heard is early November. Well, it hasn't been two months since it's been streamed. I think it's been nearly two months since it's been revealed. But it's just kind of a, I'm not saying it's losing steam, but everybody's just waiting. Like, we're just waiting. I'm glad people have now had a chance to play it. But even code-wise, like, that's one thing I'm a little nervous of is, let's say Zach gets me a game in two, three weeks. Like, I'm going to be streaming a game that's on .5-something code. I mean, I would love to experience – I mean, the joke there, there, I'll take it before Travis, you know, does anybody ever see when I'm streaming, does anybody get past that depth of code? Because I suck at pinball. That's – I don't know. I just – You're doing great. Oh, thanks, Dave. So I don't know. I'm so excited. When did they reveal it? I don't have that date. It hasn't – surely, I think it's probably been a little bit over a month because I think, what, was it the end of September or mid-September? If we're wrong, it was one of the loser kids that said two months now that I think about it. So Josh or Scott. I think it was probably, yeah, it was like mid to end September. So I know it wasn't August. We in a weird spot though because the Bond 60th anniversary could be revealed literally at any moment I don know this week next week but it going to happen soon So now all of a sudden all this fresh conversation is going to be talking about that and then we're just going to have to wait until homeowners get Bond. But really, by the time the code really starts to develop, in my mind, I just feel like they may – Stern may already be on their next cornerstone. You know, J.J.P. still has said two games a year. I mean, is there a chance JGP is going to squeeze one in here in the last two months? I don't know. It's been hinted at. American Pinball, we're waiting. I mean, it's just there's a chance. I don't know. Is there a chance that another game is going to show up between now and the end of the year and just completely take the Thunder from Bond if you were to say there's still Thunder? Probably Stern. I think Stern is going to take their own Thunder, you know? Yeah. Well, yeah, that's the next one that's going to get released is the Bond 60th for sure. But, I mean, here's the reality of it. I mean, LDs are pretty much sold out. There might be a few dealers out there that still have some. I mean, you know, all the allotments have been out there for a little while, for over a month. So this game has been getting sold for a month. You know, even though it's not showing up right now in homes, it's still selling. You know, it may not be as fast as, like, a Godzilla, but nothing's going to be as fast as a Godzilla. That's just the reality of it. But, you know, what a lot of people don't realize, too, these games are still selling. Even though they're not showing up in arcades or they're not showing up at homes, I mean, they're going to be here soon. Yeah, all the dealers and distributors are still selling the game. Nice. Well, I would say, actually, the only other thing I could – Thanksgiving or bust. The only other thing, so expo-wise, Fathom, did either of you guys play or see Fathom there? Yep, Travis did. Thumbs up. I saw it. I didn't play it. Yeah, and I've heard it's gorgeous. I was very impressed. Yeah. Haggis put together a very good package. I thought the game was well put together. It played as expected, like a fathom. It had additional stuff to it. The sound was great. Just the look of it was great. The fill-out was great. I was blown away by that. I was not expecting that at all because I know that we were – obviously, we've talked about this off-podcast before about the delays, and we're wondering when it will all come out. I know that's been widely talked about through various podcasts and forums and everything. But I can tell you, like, the game that they put together, it's the real deal. Now, I have no idea. I know nothing about Haggis and their manufacturing capability, so I don't know how many games they're going to actually be able to get out. Because I think pretty much, if I remember right, it was supposed to be July of last year when they started manufacturing, when they first said that they were going to do it. Yeah, so obviously they've kind of missed that just a little bit in terms of, like, you know, getting the games out. But the game I did play, I was impressed by it. And if they were an American manufacturer, not saying I'm not doing this because they're Australian, but if they were here and the game was just easier to get for us, I could see me wanting to get one or even a future game of whatever else that they could put out. But if they can mass manufacture games, at least at scale for them, it would be hard to say no to future games that they put out. Oh, cool. And then, Tom, I know you mentioned it earlier, but you actually had a chance to play a Weird Al. So Weird Al on the P3 Multimorphic system. Initial impressions or thoughts? Oh, dear God, Tom. Do not piss off the P3 crowd. Dear God. Here's the thing. I really liked it. Okay, cool. Thank God. Tell us more, Tom. Yeah, tell us more, Tom. We want to hear it. I thought the flippers felt great because I've played a P3 before and I was like, man, these flippers do not feel right. Yeah. And I was pleasantly surprised I could make all the shots and everything. You know, I enjoyed the game. I was impressed by how much they have in the back of that game. Oh, yeah. It's pretty amazing, all the shots. doesn't mean I'm going to run out and buy one but I enjoyed it a lot that's all I'm going to say Joel no I think that's there's a lot of P3 owners that are going yes we got one we pissed off somebody when he said I'm not going to go out and buy one somebody is mad right now Well, I'm not going to go out and buy one because I'd probably have to wait a year to get one. Yeah. Because there's so many that have been sold. They are, yeah. That's right. That's why, yeah. That's right. But my friend Chris is getting one, and I'm going to play his. There we go. Is he getting one pretty soon? Before Christmas? I don't know. He ordered one a while back, but he also ordered, I believe, Heist and another. I forget what other game. So he went like all in. He's like all about it. He's got like the whole cart. That's the nice thing about that system. You can put in those other modules. So that's funny. That's why my wife, she went to go play it and she came away very impressed by it. And she usually doesn't come over and tell me about pinball machines. She's just like, hey, you know, I lost my beard. Do you have another one? That's usually what I hear from her at pinball shows. Where do I hold the light? Yeah, exactly. But she came over, and she was just raving about it. She said that she really enjoyed it. So, of course, I was like, okay, well, you know, are you saying, like, it's like an $8,000 to $10,000 enjoyment? Because she had no idea what the price was, and she's like, well, you know, it's like a – It's a toy story. Is it a $3,000 or $4,000 enjoyment? That's the way she feels about it. But that makes sense because she's basically saying if we had the module already, that she would be wanting to get that. So that made sense to me. But, yeah, that's what I told her, Joel. I was like, okay, well, tell Toy Story and we can fund it. And she's like, whoa, whoa, calm down. So that's still where I'm at with P3. I still think it's an awesome – I think it's really a very innovative and very cool, unique device. It's just like Weird Al to me is not a theme that I really care too much about. so if the next game or one of these modules ends up being a theme or ends up being something that does push me over the the edge to actually buy the system then yeah i would absolutely buy it like i i would buy weird al for three grand or thirty five hundred dollars whatever it is for the module i i that makes sense yeah but i mean for a whole that's a whole new game for that for that relatively small amount of money, but it's just not at a spot for me to commit fully to the system yet. I will say I didn't get a chance to play it, but I was standing and watching other people play it because I just wanted to hear the sounds and everything, and it was much different than TPF. Like TPF, you could barely even hear it, but here at Expo, you could hear it clear as day, and, I mean, the sound on it was actually pretty impressive. I was impressed by that overall package, and it actually, for a music pen, it. Yeah, for a music pin, it sounded great. I think people that buy this pin, they'll be happy with it. I don't think they'll be disappointed with it. I can't really speak on how it shot, since I didn't actually shoot it, but it looked interesting in person. I mean, I'm still not a big fan of the play field being so far back and everything being back there, but I will say though, seeing the animations in person, it makes sense for what the theme is and what the animations are, that they're not quite, you know, just over the top, just like super sharp or anything like that. I think it makes sense for what the theme is. Yeah. I don't know. I still, I think it's really cool. I do really do think it's cool. I think if, I mean, if you're a collector and you have a large collection, like get in on that. I mean, I think it's a cool system. Like Tom Graff. Tom, I think between the three of us, I think Tom might get one. If his buddy really enjoys his. If he, if he moves that Paragon and I'm not going to name his other games, So if he moves like the other 30 games behind him, he's got an area right there in front of the Led Zeppelin naked guy that's on the wall. You know, that's like the perfect spot out there. I would block two games. Oh, okay. That's true. What games would that block? I can't tell. It looks like ACDC. X-Men and Star Trek. Oh, okay. Yeah. X-Men, just like ACDC, obviously. Yeah. No, I think it's cool. I'm glad, Tom, you had a chance to play one there. Travis's light. Don't say a word. No, it's not. Another thing which is hysterical is literally two minutes before he started recording, he records in a closet, and his overhead light went out. Like his house lights don't even work. This guy just – it's just a struggle daily. I just discovered electricity two years ago. I think you're forgetting about it. It's a great concept. It's probably going to go away in a few years. All right. So any other wrap-ups with Expo or any other thoughts there? Did I miss any other games that you played or things that, I don't know, I don't want to, I think we're good. I think we're good. Tom, was there anything else at Expo? Really? All Tom did was stream. There were some of the homebrews. Like I played the Dukes of Hazzard. That was the. That one was pretty cool. Yeah. It was Paragon, basically, you know. Yeah. And then, I don't know how to pronounce it. It was the one Rob Anderson. Deja, Deja. Deja. Yeah. Deja, Deja. But it was basically like it had the layout. It had the layout of different, like, older games. Like, it had the spinner and nine ball. Single level game, yeah. And it had the, you know, stars, targets, and another spinner. It had three spinners, Joel. and then it had the Spanish eyes bottom with the flippers out to the sides it's shot pretty cool and I know a lot of couple people that really enjoyed it well I've heard the same thing I've heard that that game is really unique so I don't I actually went on pin side trying to find if the guy had like a build thread I couldn't find anything about the game and the only videos I've seen are a few that people uploaded that they took at expo so So if that guy's listening, upload more stuff or start a thread or something, because there's definitely interest in your game, and I hope he brings it to TPF, because I know just the videos I saw, it's such a unique-looking layout that I know I want to try it. By the way, I think we're all going to TPF. As of right now, that is my plan. That is my plan. This is my first TPF. Oh, well. Is it really? Am I the only one here? No, Joel, you've been to both Expo and TPF. Oh, yeah. All right. So, Joel, I'm going to put you on the spot. You can't fence it. You can't do it. Which one do you like better, TPF or Expo? No, last year I absolutely enjoyed TPF, Texas Pinball Festival. I enjoyed that more. But what I've heard is everybody is raving about how great Chicago Pinball Expo was this year. Like, apparently it's way improved. So I'm very excited to experience that next year. but from my own experience i would say tpf was better what did you like about tpf better well it was all the complaints about expo previously where it was like very segregate you know you had like your free play area and then all the distributor area like that that's where all the vendor area like that's where all the fun was but they closed it down early and the free play area just kind of sucked like there really wasn't anything there while what i like the tpx is tpf It was all mixed together. It was all open the whole time. It just, I mean, one of my main enjoyments is just seeing people talk to people. I mean, it was, it felt more crowded, but it also, I don't know, there was more people there. But, no, I think what I've heard with Chicago Pinball Expo now is they've mixed it all together. The hours have way changed. You don't have to pay for the seminars. Like, it sounds like they improved everything that everybody complained about. Yeah, that was a plus. And the hotel they had it at was very nice as well. I really like the venue. Oh, yeah. You didn't go last year. Yeah, you didn't go last year. I didn't. I went this year, though. So I can compare this year to TPF. I would say, so going to both, I would say the one thing that I hope TPF takes a page out of that Expo did this year was not having curtains up everywhere. Yeah. Like, I really liked how open it felt that all the vendors didn't have things, like, up all around them, unless it was part of their booth, like the flipping out area that had their giant sign that Zach put up. Like, that was pretty dope. Yeah, like, stuff like that is pretty cool to me at a show. That's so much better than just seeing a black curtain that's just up and just kind of blocking stuff off. Like, at TPF, I feel like almost like I'm cattle being herded from section to section, because once you start going down a row, you keep going, but you can't see anywhere but just like right there. So I really do hope that they take a page out of that. I know that there were some TPF people up there at the show, so they're definitely aware of it. So I very much hope, because I love TPF. I've been going there for years now. I hope that they take a page out of that and just let everything just be open. That would just make the show so much better, so much more breathable, I guess. So it doesn't just doesn't feel like you're just like in there with just a bunch of like a sea of people. So that's that'd be my only complaint and my only big comparison. Nice. Very nice, Joel. Well, I'm excited. I'm excited to go. I mean, TPF will be in March, but I absolutely hope that I can make Chicago Pinball Expo next year. So, yeah. So we we're going to transition to our last topic here. And it's kind of a big one. I'm excited to talk about this. Real quick side note, though, just because I thought about it. metal flippers apparently on JJP games are literally like a huge change. There are people that have put them on GNR, and they're like, now I can shoot everything. There are people that have put them on Hobbit, and I just, I don't know. Apparently metal flippers on a JJP game is a game changer. So, all right, big topic. And Travis just remembered what we're talking about. Kind of a two-parter. It's listed. I was looking at the time, and I was like, holy crap. Holy crap, we made it less than an hour and a half. We just got right through that. I'm excited to talk about this, and it's kind of two parts. Okay, yeah. Let's just settle. Let me get another beer, Joel. Go ahead. Okay, so we'll let Tom talk first. But the two parts here is there's an interesting discussion here about complexity. So not only is it a beer, it's out of focus. It's Christmas L, Joel. I'm already drinking Christmas beer. I'm happy for you. Thank you. Merry Christmas. Why are you stopping talking and commenting on my beer? You're making it very apparent you want me to see something. No, I'm just showing it to Tom. A four-year-old does it. No, no, no. A four-year-old does it. I'm letting you talk, Joel. I'm showing it to Tom because Tom appreciates it. He is also a beer connoisseur. So I'm just showing Tom what I have. Yingling's pretty good, but this is like Breckenridge Brewery, which is like a local brewery. Sorry, Joel. Well, now you acknowledge me, so now Tom and I got to talk about it. There are times, Tom, I wish this camera just never worked. You know? Yeah. So it says it's a multi-full-bodied winter warmer. Yeah. Do you like that play of words right there? Multi-full-bodied winter warmer. That's just something you drink in a comfy. A comfy, yeah. That's a great idea. So shout out to Breckenridge Brewery. You guys aren't sponsoring us, but, you know. Yeah, absolutely. You're listening. They're definitely listening. They are. One of them is. Yeah. Hey, if there is anybody that brews any beer of any kind, please email us at tripledrain.gmail.com, and we'll get Mr. Alcoholic over here, Travis, to review your beer. Yeah. Okay. Anyway. I like home brews. Okay, yeah. Just bring it. Don't be picky. If anybody says you beer. No, okay. Wait a second. We're going to go down this road since we've got a few minutes to spare. Joel, when I came over to your house, what did you offer me? Pumpkin beer, the stuff my wife likes. Exactly. Yeah. And Tom, when I came over to your house, what did you offer me? I think a spotted cow. Exactly. So what I'm getting at is you two guys are cool. You guys are offering beer. So, yeah, that's why I'm having a beer here, even though I'm drinking by myself. So it is what it is. Got it, got it, got it. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure there's somebody listening drinking a beer, though. cheers to that guy. And there's probably somebody pissed off that I've totally derailed the conversation too. This is all Joel's fault. I didn't drink beer too, Joel. I said guys and girls. The only complaint that we get consistently Women, Joel. Women. All of everybody. The only complaints we get is apparently people get frustrated that we interrupt each other. They're like, can you guys just let each other talk? And that's literally what we do the whole time. but um okay they need they need to sit in on our pre-production meetings if you guys want to hear guys so i forgot who it was but somebody told me like they empathized with me at expo they were like you know what we're on your side travis we know joel bullies the shit out of you before you guys go live we can tell it was you talking to yourself in the mirror pumping yourself up. I had countless people, I mean, tons of people come up to me about the podcast. And I was like, oh, you're talking about the stream I'm doing here, right? And they're like, no, the podcast. I'm like, does anybody watch the stream? So many people watch the stream. They love the stream, Tom. But what we're saying is we appreciate it. Thank you, everybody out there. That's Team Travis. And acknowledge that Joel bullies me before we go live. It's true. I was there. And Tom was there. He was fully on Travis' side. Fully. He's a saint. It's very easy to support you, Travis, when you show up on time and your technology works. But your camera's gone out four times while we've recorded. You know what? And your overhead light in your closet doesn't even work. This is your fault. You do this to yourself. Those two points are very fair. Those are very fair points. But. Okay. Rebuttal. Somebody told me earlier that this is a podcast, and it doesn't matter that it's on video. So it's like people are listening. So we should be grateful, Tom, that his mic works. Okay, yeah. Well, you don't have to be grateful, but at least my mic does kind of work. I mean, I'm here. You're probably pissed off my mic works half the time, but it's okay. So to our Patreon supporters, you know, we said the first bill that we're going to use that to pay for the artwork, I feel like I need to buy Travis a light bulb, okay? Just, you know, we'll work on this. Okay. Or we'll get a webcam. We're going to – here we go. Here we are. We're actually going to get to the main topic. I'm going to mute my mic. Woo! All right. So, Tom, I want to start with you. But the deal is – the question is complexity, and we're going to talk about complexity on a play field and complexity of code. But let's start first with the complexity of a play field. There are – when you read a lot of these owner threads, you know, like Godzilla, a lot of the owner threads, people are like, how do I handle, like, the building, the Vox not, like, registering? Or there'll be the actual, the right spinner, the Mechagodzilla mech is turning or there'll be a ball hung up or something like that. Or you look at the turtle's thread and people are having trouble with their gliders. Is that what you're talking about code, Jill? No, we're going to start with mechanical. Oh, okay. We're going to start with mechanical. Okay, gotcha. But there's, people have issues, I mean, it's a mechanical machine, so people have issues with it. But at the same time, there are people arguing that games today don't have enough mechanical magic. They don't have the mechs of the past, you know. And I don't know, when you guys look at new games like Bond, some people are complaining that they felt Bond looked like scarce or the pro. There's like there's nothing in it. But I don't know, like how much do mechanical mechs play into your view of a game? I mean, I know I personally understand mechanical mechs. That's what's going to draw a novice person into playing the game because they want to hit that or they want to see what that mech does. But besides that, I mean, I don't know. Do you guys have any thoughts there on do you feel like games today don't have the mechanical magic of the past? And is that okay? I don't know. Tom, your thoughts. I don't know. I mean, yes. Perfect. Perfect. Oh, God. That's the best soundbite ever right there. Thank you, Tom Graff. So it's funny because I don't think that all the games need big mechanical toys. Like take Magic Girl, for instance. I mean, that game's loaded with a bunch of junk, right? Yeah. Right? Oh, yeah, we forgot to talk about that. Yeah, it's just a plastic heap. Yeah, that's our report from Expo. Okay, go ahead, Tom. Go right. But, you know, you take a game like Deadpool. I mean, you don't have a lot of mechanisms in Deadpool, but it shoots freaking amazing. The rules are great. Two rams, a bunch of drop targets. so much. I mean, you have the premium, right? I do. Yeah. So you have a lot of drop targets. All the drop targets, yeah. But what I'm saying is you don't necessarily need all the Macs to have a great game. No. That's my opinion. But we can go even one step further, right? So right now you can buy a TNA collector's addiction. addition it's an addiction it's an addiction i am addicted to dna i'll give you that so there's also rumors that the next um what is it the next chicago gaming pin is going to be pulp fiction and there's rumors that that's going to be a single level game stern has already said bond 60th anniversary is a single level game so that mech right there we just pulled out all the ramps but like is that does that bother either of you like is that a knowing that these games have technically less mechs, does that... I don't know. Like, there's so many people that are like, I'm not going to pay that money because it doesn't have anything in it. But what are you... I don't know. Is that what you need in a pinball machine then? I mean, if we're talking... A ramp, I guess he is, but... Oh, yeah. I mean, that's going to be... $80,000. Yeah. Whatever. Yeah. But take a game like TNA, you know... No, I mean, you don't need... You don't need a ton of mechs all the time, and you can have a street-level game that's great. My argument would be, though, you know, price-wise, you know, I think if you're going to pour a bunch of mechs in the games, then yes, the price can be higher. But if you're taking a bunch of stuff out, I mean, it should be more like a certain pro price kind of thing. Well, let's talk about Beatles. Beatles, another street-level game, single-level game. Like, that had a spinner. That had a lot of drop targets. But there are a lot of people who are like, I'm not paying. What was the cheapest one? It was like, what, $8,000 or something? Like, whatever it was, people were like, I'm not going to pay $8,000. Like, there's no ramps. There's no this. It's like, sure, but obviously you're paying for the license. Right. I understand it's a lot easier to justify a high bill when there's a ton of crap in it, you know, that you can see. There's a custom sculpt. There's a custom mech. There's these – look at these wire forms. Look at this. Look at that. I don't know. I just don't – I think people are just still arguing that about this lack of mechanical magic today. But yet, I don't know. I'm really enjoying these games. I don't and I don't necessarily know if adding more mechs would make them more enjoyable. Every time you add a mech, it's going to, you know, people's complaints right now with Godzilla is the building. The animation of it collapsing slows the game down. You know, it's like every time you add mechs, you're adding something that's going to slow the game down. And some people always prefer the pros because they like the speed and how fast the game shoots. I don't know. I mean, Travis, I don't know personally or even from a distributor standpoint. do you feel, I mean, I don't know, what are your thoughts? On which part? From a distributor standpoint? I said or, either or, either or. From a distributor standpoint, like, do you feel that mechs are needed to sell games? I mean, I know your clientele. No, a thousand percent no. Okay. Themes sell. I mean, that's just the reality. So I know that there's a lot of people, obviously, that are in pinball that enjoy online content, listen to this podcast, but I'm here to tell everybody here, the pinball industry, the pinball buyer base is much larger than what people realize. I know that everybody listens to all kinds of different podcasts. You hear all kinds of different opinions. I'm here to tell you because I live it every single day from 8 a.m. till sometimes 10 a.m. Now, I work longer than that, but there are people that can't find the power button on the game, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm telling you, the buyer base for pinball is so much larger than what people that are on pin side, that listen to podcasts, that are on Facebook forums, and what they realize. It is so much larger. And themes are keen. That's just the reality of it. And a lot of people that want to buy pins, they're very specific. If they see, I mean, we talk about this all the time, and I'm sure other people listening to this podcast, I sound like a broken record at this point. If somebody is brand new to pinball, every single theme is the first time that they've seen it, even if it's been made five, six, seven years ago. And that's what makes Stern so awesome, because they have all these games that are still currently in production. So even, for instance, Iron Maiden came out a few years ago at this point. What, like four or five years ago? It was four games ago for Keith Elwin, soon to be five games ago. So something like that, people that are just now discovering pinball that are Iron Maiden fans, it's as if they're discovering a brand new game. And a lot of people, they do not care about the mechs that are in it. They don't. And here's the reality of it. When you're dealing with people that are collectors, I'm sorry, but the vast majority of them don't care overall about the games, whether or not they have mechs in them or not. You don't need mechs to have fun. You don't. Maybe you just brought up a good point right there. I mean, Iron Maiden Pro, there's not a ton of mechs in that game. I mean, there's no special toy. Exactly. You've got the target in the back, but that's the closest thing to, like, an actual toy in that game. But that game is amazing. Right. And the vast majority of people prefer the Pro over the Premium and LD. I mean, just boots on the ground. That's just the fact of it. I mean, you look right behind you, Joel, TNA. Not like that game has a ton of mechs on it. Yet, a lot of people very much enjoy that game. So there's just been this notion that's kind of hit pinball in terms of the podcast, in terms of pin side that, oh, we've got to have this coil count. We've got to have this many mechs. We've got to have magic under glasses and that. You know, I mean, if our standard is legitimately just for pinball, just to make some great mech that just makes the ball do something without any regard to anything else that goes in with that, without having shots be actually kinetic together, without having a rule set that makes sense, without having a sound package that actually sounds great, without having art that's there. I mean, if you don't take all those things into consideration and you just want a mech that just does something, I mean, that just would not be fun to me. That's not to say that mechs can't be fun, but I'm just telling you, like, mechs do not sell pinball. I promise you it doesn't, regardless of what you think or what you've heard. Mechs do not sell pinball. I will say, though, I have seen a direct correlation to a cool mech versus, like, my friends and family enjoying the game. Like Stranger Things, huge hit. You know, ramp, bash it in the face, get them in the mouth. I'm an example. Did Stranger Things sell great when it first came out? No. No, but yet it has a mech. True. But that's what I mean. Like everybody thinks that just the one mech sells it, and it's not. It's the full package. Now, it's not to say that the mech isn't fun or that the mech can't be great if it's coded in properly to the game with the sounds, with the score, with the lights, with everything coming together, and that's what's needed. That's what makes the mech great. You know, if you take people that really enjoy pinball that play at a high level in tournaments, like you take those types of people, you put them on a whitewood, they'll have fun. Yeah. You know what I mean? That's the difference. Right, exactly. So, you know, I think that that's what a lot of people need to take into consideration when you're talking about mechs. You're just talking about how large the pinball hobby is. The vast majority are not competitive players. Exactly. I know when I look at the games that were. And they like teams, Joel. They like teams. And I know the games that were a hit here at my house were like Toy Story, that boat. The only thing people wanted to do was hit the Duke Caboom ramp. I mean, that's a cool mech. Simpsons, when I had Simpsons, once they saw the upper play field, how do I get up there? How do I get on the couch? Shadow, which isn't a good theme, but they saw the upper play field. They saw the battlefield. How do I get up there? How do I experience that? I mean, these are the games. Luckily, like, Turtles, what they like about that is when they get into the spinning disc with the pizza multiball or Deadpool, they just like the katana ramp, even though that's not a physically moving ramp of mech. It's a fun experience. There's a difference, though. Friends and family, are they coming over to your house to play or are they trying to buy a game? Well, yeah. Because if we're talking about trying to buy a game, I'm telling you, like a mech does help a little bit. It helps, okay. But theme is king. And I'm not going to argue that. Theme is a thousand percent king. And a lot of people just need to wrap their head around that when they talk about, you know, quote, unquote, world under glass. I mean, it's just these pens that people have a hard time keeping them in stock. There's a reason why Stern is producing more games than they ever have before. There's a reason why practice keeps going up. Yeah, because the themes are great. People keep buying them. I mean, that's the way that this is going. I mean, people think that the market is softening, and I'm telling you right now, it's really not. It's really not. I think I would. I mean, I'll agree. I don't think, like, my brother-in-law, he loves Medieval Madness, and I think some people argue the Medieval Madness castle is, like, one of the best mechs ever in pinball, and I get that. And don't get me wrong. I mean, I think we're all for having good mechs in a game, but I don't think you have to have a good mech to make a good game. It's not everything. It's not everything. It can be something, but it's not everything. And if prices are going up, we want to see more. We want to make sure we feel the value is there, and it's a lot easier to justify value when we see mechanical things. Case in point, people are saying that when they played Bond at Expo, So apparently on a premium, it looks like the two pop bumpers are linked together with one driver. So what that means is if one pop is detected, it pops both of them. And that's exactly what they do on home pins to avoid needing another node board. So there are people already having that conversation of, like, are you serious? Or is the premium and the LE, like, is Stern saving money by instead of putting in another node board and making those independent? you know are they counting coils you know and but apparently that's not the case on the pro but the pro doesn't have the up post for the bond on the wand the pro i mean doesn't have the there's another um diverter that's on the premium i mean it's so they could spare the coil count i i don't know but that's that's the one thing if prices are going to go up we want to make sure it's easy to justify that like well i can see it i can see it but um i don't know i mean tom i mean the thing is too, Joel, is that there's a lot of people in pinball that haven't necessarily experienced the DMDs either. True. The vast majority of pinball, what they understand is the LCDs. So knowing that, that's why I want to preface this because Tom, more than anybody, he has more experience in the pinball hobby than probably 95% of people that are currently in the hobby. Yeah. And so he knows the solid states, he knows the EMs, he knows the DMDs all the way up to the LCDs. So Tom, for you, knowing that information, I mean, what's the major differences that you really see between like an LCD that's coming out currently from, from Stern or from Jersey Jack or even Spooky since they got, you know, their LCD screen on there. What's really the difference between that and the DMDs that used to be? Like what's, do you see value in that in terms of how it brings out a theme and information and everything? Oh, the LCD, absolutely. I mean, that's, you got so much more information on LCD to DMD. It's crazy. And, you know, that brings into coding and the game rules and everything. I mean, it's just a big change from, you know, hit these three shots and you're done to, exploring a game now, it's crazy. There's definitely a bigger complexity to the rules these last five, ten years than there was before. And Tom, that's an incredible transition that I am going to ignore because I'm not done talking about Max. But all I wanted to say is a lot of people that complain about Max, It always comes back to John Papadiuk. Like, John Papadiuk's games have crazy ramps in them. They have a bunch of... Lots of magnets, a lot of unique mechs. A lot of people are like, why can we get Tales of the Arabian Nights mechs Why can we not get Magic Girl Why can we not get you know Circus Voltaire Like I don know And it just I get it I agree when I shoot a J-pop game, like, the ramps feel awesome. I can't argue that. But at the same time, I don't know. The mechs, in my mind, like Medieval Madness, I don't want to own Medieval Madness because once I've experienced that castle go down a few times. I'm good. And the code isn't enough for me to want to keep playing it. But yet I say that somewhat hypocritically, like I'm buying Godzilla Premium because of the mechs. I know the code's amazing. I know it shoots amazing. But as somebody who's had the pro in his house, I know I'm missing the building going down. I know I'm missing the turntable mecha Godzilla. I know I'm missing bridge multiball, like the bridge mech. Like, and you guys both have an LE and a premium. So. Right. So if you knew that the code was just complete trash, like, let's just pretend that there's some reality out there where Keith somehow just screwed up a Godzilla. Right. Sorry, Keith. But I'm saying they're like in the multiverse, like somewhere out there, the code's just not up to snuff. Would you still get it just because you see a building going up and down? Good point. Exactly. Even though it's the whole package. Yeah. The whole package. Yeah. Well, okay. So let's say I use Tom's amazing transition. You said something, blah, blah, blah, complex code. Okay, great transition, Tom. You're welcome. Yeah. I want to go to bed. What? Tom Kraft, we're still going. This is where he's going to really perk up here. So complex code, there was a YouTube video, and I'm sorry I don't remember who exactly made it, but this has been a discussion. I'll look it up, Joel. It's somewhere. Thank you. I'll look it up. I'll be the prepared one. posts as well on basically people are saying, is code too complex today? Is code too complex today? And basically what they're complaining about is on these older games. Go ahead, Travis. Okay. I want to give proper credit. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Joel, for finishing my thought because I wasn't going to get to that word. It is pinball help on YouTube. I think that's the video you're alluding to. Yes. It's our pinball rules becoming too complicated pinball philosophy. Yes, and I understand. Previously, you could walk up into a game, and basically the inserts would kind of tell you what to do, or the rule card, the lower left rule card. And there are some people who are like, if you can't explain a whole game on a rule card in the lower left, then it's too complex. I mean, that's people's views. And that's fine. If people like that, if they like the simplicity of just being able to walk up or discover a game. I know some people are like that. Like, I don't want to watch a tutorial. I want to figure out the game on my own. Okay. But, yes, there's no doubt in my mind the games in the last few years, the complexity of them is so much more than a rule card and so much more than the inserts. Like, there's nobody can argue that. But I will say, and camera's out. Thank you, Travis. There it goes again. Give me $20 more, Joel. It comes back on. So this is where I want to start this conversation. Tom, and I know our TPN Discord is supposed to be a private thing, which it is, but there was an interesting discussion about Rush. There was an interesting discussion about Rush. There are people, I mean, you two. I like how you say this is private, and then you're just like, okay, I'm just going to put it all out there. I'm not going to say who. I'm not going to say who. I'm just saying there was a. TPN people. I had nothing to do with this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't fire Travis and I. Yeah, kick Joel off TPN. Let's say I hypothetically was talking about that. But the conversation was it came down to Rush, and there are some people, you two, freaking love the game. You guys think the game shoots amazing. You think the code's amazing. You love the game. And then there's other people that they're like, I don't like it at all because I have no idea what I'm doing. And that brings up code. It's like you guys see what Ray Day and Timmy have done and the depth of that code and the ways you can tackle it. I mean, your brains fully understand it and comprehend it and love every second of it. But there's other people that have walked up to the game many times, whether a competitive player or a novice, and they're just like, I literally have no idea what I'm doing and are completely turned off by the game. So, Tom, like when you first stepped up to Rush, were you overwhelmed or you just, I mean? No, because it was Rush. He was overwhelmed because it was Rush. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When he picked himself up and browned and wiped his tears off his face. He hit the start button, and he wasn't using his hands. Let me just say that. All right, yeah, apparently that one landed well. There we go. Don't lean in too much. Don't ruin it, Joel. It was a good joke. Okay. But complexity, I mean, Rush I think is a perfect example. And some people are arguing Godzilla as well. I mean, what are we thinking with Rush on? Like, how do you explain Rush to a novice? Or how do we expect somebody to understand Rush if you don't have somebody standing there telling you what to do? I mean. You're asking me to explain it to everybody? No, I just do think, like, do you think that's too complex or even? I think some of the games for the average person are maybe a little too difficult. Okay. Rules-wise, you know. Okay. But I like it. Yeah, okay. That's a great, I agree. I think when I look at Deadpool. When I look at Deadpool. Talk to me like I'm five, Joel. One thing that I really like about Deadpool is the scoop is lit from the start. And it's in the middle. So anybody that just walks into the game, it's lit. It's glowing red. The chance of somebody getting a ball in that scoop are pretty high. And then what does it do? It stops you and it makes you pick a battle. And then once you pick your battle, the only lights on the play field that are flashing are shots that work towards that battle. Not to mention it's telling you this. It says it on the screen and it's verbally telling you this. I think that is extremely user-friendly to communicate what is going on without reading anything. Like, it really holds your hand. And then Deadpool also happens to have extreme depth in other ways. You know, there's a lot of other things that you're not going to know unless you know them, you know, about collecting weapons and all this stuff. But for a novice, there's plenty there for a novice to just kind of fall into. And that's something that, like Godzilla, some people are like, a novice may never hit the left ramp. So if they never hit the left ramp, then are they ever going to get into a battle? No. But yet there's stuff on Godzilla for a novice to enjoy. Like just bash Mecha Godzilla and you'll be in a multiball. Just bash the building and you'll be in a multiball. I don't know, Travis. But all they have to do is actually just read the play field or read what's out there. Or it says shoot the lamps. Right. Like certain games are very good at letting you know what you need to do. Now, obviously, when we're talking about like an extreme competitive, you're just going to play 4D chess things, stack everything up. Yeah, the game's not going to hold your hand to that. But no game has ever done that. I mean, there's certain things you can do on volley, which is an EM, which is like a very specific plunge in a very specific way that you need to hit the targets at a certain angle because if you hit two targets, it only counts as one. So it's been like that all the time. But when you're looking at a Stern pinball machine or any pinball machine, really, the mark of a great machine is the play field letting you know what you need to do, the inserts letting you know what you need to do. Look at the LCD screen. It'll let you know what you need to do. You know, even Godzilla, if you look on the upper part of the ramps, it has lights above the ramps with literally spelled out for you that you can hit this ramp to light a battle. I mean, it's all out there. So I've always been confused in terms of people just not understanding that. And I understand if somebody's brand new to pinball and they don't play, that they can't figure that out. What I can't figure out is how people that play pinball, that go on location specifically to play pinball or play at people's homes or play in tournaments, why they can't wrap their minds around that. Literally, if you just look at the play field, it will tell you what to do. If you read the rule card, it'll give you enough information that you will be able to do the basics of it. And the same thing for Rush. Like, literally on the rule card, it tells you that you need to hit the time machine. You look at the play field, there's a giant insert right in front of it that says Time Machine. I mean, the thing has years on it. I don't know what else anybody could do. I don't know what Tim or Ray or John Borg or anybody at Stern could do to make that any more clear. So it's all there, and including Godzilla. I don't know what else they all could do to make it any more clear. Yeah, I don't know what else they could do to make it any more clear. I really don't. So one thing, props to J.J.P. J.J.P. on their last few games, they have that second display, and that secondary display is almost dedicated entirely into communicating what you need to do. And I know that's something my dad, when he was over here playing G&R, as soon as I pointed that out, I'm like, if you need to know, look right there. And he's like, that's awesome. Like, that is awesome. And I mean, I would love for Stern, throw me a little mini display in the apron that does the same thing. Like, that would be huge. I think that would be awesome, but that's wishful thinking. But props to JDP for doing that. He just increased the bomb by like 300 bucks. 300 bucks well spent, yeah. But I think people like Ray Day have a tough job because they want to put complexity in the game. They don't want people to just fall into modes mistakenly. But at the same time, how do you communicate and keep things complex for advanced players? So you had said it's on the play field. Here's your hint for rush. There are three bulbs on top of the time machine. One's red, one's green, and one's yellow. Those bulbs actually communicate a lot, like a lot. And people don't realize that. And that's something that wasn't my head wrapped around that. People are like, well, I never know when to hit the time machine. If it's red, it means your mode's ready. If it's green, it means your multiball's ready. And if it's yellow, it means you can complete a combo. That's it. Like, those are three little bulbs that Ray and Timmy communicate really well with. That's not exactly true. Okay, please correct me. Well, no, the multiball is lit green, but I think it flashes when it's, like, actually ready for the multiball. So not only that, you could trap up and look at that LCD screen and just read. But you know a novice can't trap up, though. Even if a novice, okay, if you're listening to this podcast and you're a novice and you're not sure where you're at, just keep chimp flipping and eventually you'll get there. If you can't trap up, just keep hitting something. You'll get there. But, hey, if you get trapped up and you're not sure where you're at, just get trapped up and read the LCD screen. A lot of these pens, a lot of these modern pens, and I'm hitting my mic. A lot of these modern pens let you know where you're at in the game. It's there to give you the information. Yeah, and a lot of people just, they psych themselves out on these codes to where they think it's too complicated. And yes, they are in-depth if you let it get in-depth. But if you just treat it like just surface level, you'll be fine. Just know how to start your modes, right? Play your mode. Have fun. Know how to start your multiball. play your multiple have fun yeah that's that's all you have to do i mean if when in doubt at least like turn wise hit ramp out yeah hit both ramps and then hit a scoop like i mean that's mando that's turtles that's godzilla um what else it's like qualify it goes to qualifies a mode i i mean rush i will say people get a little confused with the records because the records are a whole bunch different colors and they don't know what's going on there it says in the upper left of the lcd i I think it's what, collect two records? I mean, that's all. So just all you have to do is hit two shots. It doesn't matter the color. Just two. Just two shots. And then, boom, your mode's ready right there at the time machine. You'll see a red flashing bulb. It's a little more – it's not as obvious on a pro because the ramp doesn't go up and down. But, like, on a premium or LE, you know something's qualified because the ramp's up for you to actually hit the shot. So I don't know. I just – it's a weird thing. I think it's that people are complaining about complexity this way. And I don't envy the coders because they're doing their best to satisfy everybody. Why would they care, though? If you're a modern-day coder, why would you care if somebody's saying, well, this is too confusing? Because the reality is is pinball is no longer in the platformer part of its existence, right? This is like we're talking about Super Mario Brothers from the Nintendo days, right? Like right now, pinball is in its full sandbox to where you can discover the game. And if people are going to spend $7,000 to $15,000 to get these games into their homes, why would they want the most shallow rule set possible? I mean, look what happened with Toy Story. That's exactly what hurt it. That, you know, people were getting through the game. There wasn't too much to do. And that's what hurt it. And so these games, they have to have some depth to it. And I know that people have convinced themselves that this is like rocket science, but it's honestly, it's really not. It's not. Like, I'm dumb as a box of rocks, and I can figure it out. I agree. But I also, I know, like, I love turtles. But, like, Dwight's really good with, well, he likes his hurry-ups. So it's like if you're trying to tell somebody, if they're trying to focus on, like, all I'm going to do is hit the turtle van three times just because I want to experience a multiball. well now all of a sudden that ball rolls down the 1-2-3 in lane and now the game's freaking out and the music's changed and the lights are going it's like what's going on well this is 1-2-3 you know it's like these some of these side modes can be distracting or they don't know like they don't know what to do with them or let's see let's lean into that what does the game tell you to do what tells you i mean it tells you what to do it literally tells you what to do it flashes and lets you know and that's what a lot of these games do now it's understandable if there's like a full-on light show going and you're in the middle of playing you don't know what to shoot but it's not like it does that the whole entire time it just does that through that particular instance of that light show well what about something that you guys hinted at earlier which is like why are these young bucks killing it in tournaments and it's because they know the games they know the in and outs and i think that's something people are complaining about that they're like i'm doing what i'm told but yet my score is no i like my score is one tenth what everybody else has so i'm I will tell everybody out there right now, if you're looking at getting into competitive pinball, you're not losing to Escher Lefkoff simply because he knows the game better than you. I promise you that. I promise you that. Now, of course, all top-level players know the game. You know the reason why we have to know the game, Joel? It's because a lot of our skill sets are pretty much equal to each other. So you have to be able to get far in the game. You have to know how to stack certain things up. That's what it boils down to. So it's been one of those things that I've talked to a lot of tournament players over the years, and I've heard this excuse a lot that I would do so much better if I only knew the rules to the game. And it's like, okay, that's literally what competitive pinball is, is knowing how to play the game. I mean, everybody can have flipper skills. That's fine and dandy and all, but if you don't know how to play the game, if you don't know where the skill shot is, you don't know how to start the mode, well, then what are you going to do? Your efficiency level just goes way down, and that doesn't make any sense. Like, it blows my mind how often I hear people say that. Like, I just don't know the game, or I just don't want to learn it, or it's just not fun learning it. It's like, okay, you know, if you just enjoy flipping a game, I guess go play a solid state or an EM. I don't know what else to tell them. We love ****. But I remember at Cleapin I said something because I had played Turtles, and I was like, hey, you play Turtles yet? He goes, no, and I won't. And I was like, why not? He goes, I don't know it, and I don't like it. And it's just like that was his just stance on it. And it's like, oh, okay. And there's players out there. You know what? He doesn't make any excuses for losing on a game. Yeah, he's fine with that. It's the people out there that make excuses for losing. It's like I promise you, if I would bet the farm, I would bet my whole entire collection and Tom's collection that I could get Eric Stone, right, to play something to which he's never played it before, and he'll figure out how to beat you. Yeah. I mean, that's like the God's honest truth. I mean, I get it. It was intimidating when I was at Cleveland that some of these games, I'm like, I don't even know. I have no idea where to start. And just asking that of, like, what, you know. And they're like, well, just focus on doing this. You know, give me a simple task kind of thing. But that's one thing to, like, try to qualify or try to put any score up. But I understand what you're saying with these high-level competitive players that do know the game in and out. It's going to be hard to compete with them if you don't, if you don't also know the game in and out. But for a whole year. You can know the game 1,000%. You're not going to beat Escher Lefkoff and Jared August and Dalton. You're not going to beat them one game. Neil Graff. You're just not going to. That's just, I mean, I just got to have a come to Jesus meet, you know, with some of the players out there that haven't played at some of these high-level tournaments like that. It's just, it's not going to happen. And that's because they're so good at what they do. I have the secret. Oh, let's hear it. Do you ever watch wrestling, Joel? No. My brother loves wrestling, but I've not been into wrestling. They've got to throw salt in their eyes before they go up to the games. It's the only way. I know. Pocket sand from King of the Hill. Or green mist. Just, okay. It's the only way you're going to win. And Tom's right. So, Joel, think of this. You've watched Carl play enough, right, on his streams and everything. So, do you think if you take, you know, Joe Schmoe that's ranked 1,000 somewhere and he's going against Carl heads up, and Joe Schmo knows this Stern game inside and out. He knows everything. Who are you putting your money on to win? And it's Carl's first time to ever play it. Well, never mind. I would put my money on Carl because a lot of people don't realize this. He'll figure it out in three seconds. Yeah, you're watching somebody play it. You see what's going on. I mean, that's the thing. These games, they may seem complicated, But the reality is, is a lot of stuff just carries over. I mean, if you've played enough, it's intuitive. You figure out how the modes start. You figure out how the multiballs start. You play patient. You find your shots. You know the flow of the game. I mean, that's a lot of that goes into it. And people don't realize that from high level players. They look at the geometry. They look at the balance. They look at how fast the game is playing. They look at the pitch of the game. They figure out the tilt. There's all these other aspects. So the whole notion of, like, pay to play and pay to win and all this and that, like, no. I'm sorry. I would bet my whole entire collection and Tom's collection that most of the top 25 would smoke a lot of people out there without them knowing how to play a modern game. They would figure it out. I don't think the guy that recorded the Pinball Help video was only talking about competitive pinball. No, it's just not him. I heard that from a lot of different people. I've been told personally, if I only knew the games better, I would be able to beat you. I'm like, okay, so if you actually studied a rule set or you figured it out, you would have a better chance? It's like, yeah, that makes so much sense. And competitive pinball, if you knew the rules, you'd do better. It has nothing to do with you hitting all the shots. It's zero. Yeah. I can debunk that myth, by the way. Hitting shots is important. Well, that's why when I streamed Rush and Ray Day was on my stream telling me what to do, it was awesome. I mean, some of the best games I've ever had. Joel, hit this. Hit this. And the problem is I couldn't hit it. You've got to hit it. I couldn't hit it, Joel. Yeah. But I streamed Avengers for a while, and I had Travis actually on stream with me once, and I know Nick Pinsoniac did it with me once. And, like, those are some of my best games because all I had to do was focus on hitting shots, and somebody that really knew the rules was able to see it was like, hey you actually want to hit this shot now because that's going to prepare this and boom now your super jackpot is lit it's like I get it there's an importance there but I think the guy that made that video and the argument here is is there a chance that and some people are like I don't want to buy any of these modern games because they're too complex they're too I can't I don't know and it's I do know that like Reyes said that they purposely put in a home mode or an easy mode like they have versions of the code where they try to make things simpler or easier for you if that's a complaint of yours. But I think the three of us are all in agreement. Like, don't make games easier. Don't strip things out. Like, we want – keep them deep. Keep them complex. Keep us coming back for more. And I don't know what to say. If you want it simple, go play Yahtzee. Roll some dice. That's an easy game to figure out. Go play Yahtzee. Yeah. I mean, because pinball and all reality, I think, honestly, Joel, people just psych themselves out. Yeah. They have themselves convinced that the rule sets are just so ultra hard that they can't figure it out. Honestly, here, everybody, all the listeners, I'll give everybody homework. Here we go. Thought experiment. All right. We can say Godzilla or Rush or whatever game you want to pick. Like, literally just go on Tilt Forums or find the Stern PDF. If you look up a game, Stern puts out a lot of different PDFs. Just read on how to start the modes. And then all you got to do is just spend two to five minutes, and that's it. and then go play the game. Or there's a lot of good streams. There's a lot of good streams or YouTube videos with basic, I mean, Propster Raider, he has some crazy tutorial videos on the games that he made, like coded, explaining all the ins and outs. And, I mean, if you don't have the attention span to, like, focus while he's telling you how to do it, then I can't help you. But, I mean, I get, for anybody that's active in pinball or if you're a fan or you bought the game, then, yeah, it's probably worth your time to spend 20 minutes really learning it. But if you're a novice, I get it. I get the complaint of if I just had my wife walk up to a pinball machine and just assume she'd magically know what to do, that's hard. All we can encourage them to do, though, is read the inserts, read the LCD, and read the card. I mean, that's – It's just like chess, though. Like, you understand the bare basics of chess, right? Yeah. Are you going to go beat a grandmaster? Fuck no. No. I'm sorry. because they know all the strategy, the tactics, all the ins and outs. And it's the same way for pinball. I mean, there's nothing. You don't have to know every single detail. I mean, the thing is with elite players, not everybody knows what everything does. We share information. If you don't know, just ask. People will tell you. And you don't have to know what everything does exactly. You don't have to know what everything scores exactly. All you've got to figure out is your pathway to what you want to do. I mean, you already said that with the Mando exploit. Like, you knew it, and Jared knew it, and then it spreads. Yeah, you could ignore the whole entire game and just do that for now until they change it around. But, yeah, that's the reality of it. There's a lot of these games that you could pick a path and just take it. I mean, take, like, Elder Ring or whatever that game's called. Elden Ring? Elden Ring, yes, Elden Ring. So you could have, like, what, 10, 12 different builds or whatever? do you have to know every single build to enjoy the game? No, but the game, it's a video game, but the game has a tutorial. That's the thing about video games. All these games have PDFs or tutorials. We have the internet. Imagine somebody trying to figure out Taxi back in the 80s, early 90s before the internet. Yeah, you got Marilyn yelling at you, hello, Taxi. Yeah, exactly. Because there was games starting in the late 70s or early 80s, they went above and beyond the index card showing the rules. Oh, okay. I don't know. Any other, I mean, I don't know. Tom, do you have anything else? Complexity of rules. Do you sympathize with the guy? Do you have any ideas on how, do we fix it? Do we change anything or what do we do? No, I don't think you change anything. I mean, the rules are a little more complicated than they used to be. But, yeah, I mean, it's like Travis was saying, and you just got to be intuitive and learn things. Yeah. Well, I do think it is funny that, to wrap it up, like people complained about Avengers and the gyms. They're like, what are they, why do I care, and where am I supposed to put them? So many people were so caught up with that. And even when I interviewed Keith Owen, he was surprised. He's like, so many people were caught up about where to put the gyms, and the truth is it doesn't matter. Like, if you just want to play the game, just put it. It doesn't matter, but people struggle with that. People struggle with the idea of I'm making a choice, but I actually have no idea why I'm making that. And there are other people that complained about like J.J.P. Pirates because at the very beginning they have to make a choice on what character they're going to play, but they don't really understand why you pick one character over the other and are always like, am I dooming myself from the very beginning? I mean, Turtles, you have to make a choice on your character? Well, what should I, who do I, you know, like, What do I do? It's like just calm down. You know, like it'll be okay. And I don't know. It's just have fun. Yeah, if you care enough, you'll figure it out. If you just want to have fun, just pick something and just flip. Yeah, don't overthink it. Yeah, don't overthink it. And if you're interested in it further, guess what? You can spend two minutes and you could learn about it pretty quick. I mean, it's like anything else. You get a board game, what do you got to do? Are you just going to start playing or are you going to read instruction manual? Yeah. Well, if only we had like a segment in a podcast where we explained a game kind of in three different manners, you know, with complexity. But I don't know. Somebody should do that sometime. But that's it. I know I was driving the bus. I know I had a list of items here, and I did not go in that order whatsoever. But, hey, we hit them all. We hit them all. We hit them all and we killed it. Was there anything else, guys? Was there anything else you wanted to discuss? Yeah, I want to discuss Tom Talks Okay, here we go then Let's hit that Tom Talks He's got nothing to say, Tom Talks He's got nothing to say, Tom Talks Tom Talks I got nothing Go ahead, Travis Tom, I don't have a question I just wanted to tell you how great you are and how excellent you did at the Expo and Super Series and all that and how we all appreciate you putting pinball out to everybody. So I want to give my applause to you. Thank you. I want to acknowledge that. So I will give you a question then, Tom, which is what is something about pinball streaming that the viewer probably doesn't know about, like a challenge or something? Like what do you think some of the viewers don't realize is actually happening while you're streaming a tournament? Like behind the scenes? Sure. Yeah, Travis gives you a good example there in chat. Like what do you think people don't realize or recognize or know about streaming? Oh, my God. Yeah, the actual setup is in takedown. It's, you know, just the planning beforehand and then getting there, setting everything up. I mean, Neil helps me a little bit, but I'm pretty much a one-man show. So, yeah, it takes a lot to get everything set up. But kind of a funny story. There was a guy at Expo. I was talking to Jeff Teola, so he'll remember this if he's listening. And he wanted to announce, and he's not really a pinball guy, but he was at the show. And he said he does announcing for like Street Fighter or something like that. And he wanted, first of all, he said he wanted to get in touch with the Fox Cities Pinball team. And I just kind of looked at Teolis and he looked at me and he's like, well, he's the team. Yeah. Like he's the one man show. Well, anyways, the guy's like, I really, I really want to announce it. And I was kind of, you know, how can I help out? And Jeff goes, well, you know, Tom needs some people to help him break down afterwards. Are you going to be around? All of a sudden, the guy's just attitude just went 180. And he's like, well, you know, I'm kind of busy right now. And then he, like, took off. And we were just sitting there laughing. But, yeah, it takes a lot of work to get things going. Yeah, it's clearly a labor of love. Like, you have an incredible setup. You have an impressive setup. I know just a random – like, George Fisher did the whole flipping the script. Oh, yeah. It's just, like, seeing his setup. That's the one thing that – It was awesome. Anybody that's streaming, the amount of effort that's put into actually, like, technically doing it. And then the mental capacity that you have to stay focused, you're trying to compete, you're trying to be a TD, and you're trying to make sure the stream is just working and being entertaining. And you have to fight Internet. You have to fight the wireless signals of these transmitters. I mean, there's batteries. That's one thing we know Travis has no concept of, is trying to stay on top of batteries, staying charged and working. Hey, this camera works enough to flip me off. Thank you. But, yeah, no, props to you, Tom. Oh, great. Here comes the hate mail. Thanks to you guys. I really, really appreciate that. Well, I'll say this for Tom, too, that literally he's too humble. Like, the amount of work I've seen in person, the amount of work that he puts in, it's extraordinary. And whenever anybody watches pinball on Twitch, if you're watching a tournament stream, whether it's Tom or anybody else, just know that the person behind that stream has put in a lot of high-level effort to get it to that point, to be able to put it out there for the players to be able to see themselves and for you to be able to enjoy it out there on the interweb. So, Tom, thank you, and thank you to everybody else. You're welcome. There we go. Probably the best Tom Talks we've ever had. I got it. I got it. Perfect. So this is probably a great transition into, uh, we'll wrap it up with some plugs. Uh, Tom, go for it, man. I said, he's pinball and Twitch and YouTube, Facebook, uh, Instagram, not Tik TOK. They suck. Yes, definitely check them out. Um, and you've been posting some videos too on YouTube of some of the past tournaments and everything. I mean, it's, there's, there's a lot of high quality competitive content there. So, Tom, keep doing what you're doing, man. It's fantastic. Thanks. Yeah. Travis, have you got anything? You got anything? I do. Oh, here we go. Ron and Bruce. Ron and Bruce for Twippy Hosts 2023. Oh, yeah. I don't care. I'm still pushing for it. Everybody out there. Yes. There you go. That's who we're pushing for host this year. They need to host the Twippies. Ron and Bruce, Twippies 2023 at DPF. Okay. Yeah. great is that it is that all what about you yeah I can't follow that up with anything else Joel that's tell us about your 10 things oh here we go yeah no yes I stream every Wednesday night on TPN the pinball network feel free to check that out we've had some fun after hours streams those are all on YouTube and then I stream for flipping out every other Thursday which is a great time and then obviously Triple Drain podcast check out our merch Silver Ball Swag truly it's very cool the visual picture for you is imagine some really cool custom artwork it's a three headed hydra design it's pretty sick but yeah the feedback on those have been really really good with people that have owned them and what not Travis got the hoodie he said it's a warm hoodie so if you're looking for like a warm hoodie that's the way to go and then Patreon Patreon thank you for the people that apparently enjoy this podcast and are happy to throw us a few bucks to do it So, yes. Thank you to those. So, feel free to check us out on Patreon. And, yeah, we'll keep doing what we're doing. But I think that's it. I think that's it for plugs. Travis, you're fed. You're good. You good? You're good. No, I just want to say thank you to everybody that's gotten the merch. I am very humbled by that, as I'm sure Tom is. I don't know about Joel. No. No, Tom is. Anybody that's supporting us, either Patreon with just money or actually buying merch and and wearing it like outdoors is, is it? No, definitely. Like anybody that gets the merch tumbling, anybody that comes up to us, that shows introduces themselves and talks pinball. Very humbling. Just want to say, we very much appreciate it. We do not take that for granted. And we do appreciate you guys taking time out of your day to listen to this, this podcast. Same with Facebook messages or even posts on our Facebook or emails. Triple drain at gmail.com. I mean, all feedback is appreciated. So thank you. Thank you so much for listening and for the support. But yeah, Tom, like always, you have the last words. We love you. _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 7255c6cd-6c63-4bf9-a915-116f3118d5de*