# Episode 204 – Proof and Truth **Source:** Slam Tilt Podcast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2023-04-19 **Duration:** 109m 2s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://www.slamtiltpodcast.com/2023/04/18/episode-204-proof-and-truth/ --- ## Analysis Slam Tilt Podcast Episode 204 features guest Dick Hamill, a code modification expert who has created updated rule sets for classic Bally/Stern pinball machines (Stars, Meteor, Silver Ball Mania, Blackjack, Supersonic, and others). Hamill discusses his background in electrical engineering, his Arduino-based modification approach that allows machines to switch between original and new code, and the community of developers contributing to pinballrefresh.com. The hosts also discuss the poorly-received Home Pin Spinal Tap trailer, Pinball Resource's return to email support, and significant changes to the Pintastic Tournament format. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Dick Hamill has created code modifications for Stars, Meteor, Galaxy, Trident, Silver Ball Mania, Blackjack, Centaur, Flash Gordon, Future Spa, and Supersonic — _Dick lists his completed projects explicitly; these are confirmed modifications distributed via pinballrefresh.com_ - [HIGH] The Arduino-based modification board can be built for approximately $20 in parts, with the Arduino being the most expensive component at around $17 — _Dick provides specific pricing and component details during technical discussion_ - [HIGH] Dick Hamill's universal control board works with Bally/Stern, Williams, Atari, and machines using 6800/6802/6808 processors, including Williams System 11 machines — _Dick states this explicitly when discussing the universal board capabilities_ - [HIGH] The Gerber files and schematics for the universal board were released to pinballrefresh.com the night before this episode as a 'Slam Tilt Podcast exclusive' — _Dick announces this directly: 'As of last night, I put all the Gerber files and all the schematics for the Williams, or actually you can call it a universal board... I put those up on Pinball Refresh'_ - [HIGH] Pintastic Tournament is expanding from 24 A-division players to 40 A-division players and adding a B-division — _Bruce reads from Sanctum's Facebook page confirming 40 in A-division with an additional tier_ - [HIGH] Pintastic Tournament finals are changing from best-of-5 to best-of-7, which will significantly extend tournament duration — _Bruce reads directly: 'they're going four out of seven'_ - [HIGH] Home Pin released a trailer for Spinal Tap pinball with poor video quality (described as 480p upscaled to 1080p) and gratuitous imagery — _Ron and Bruce describe watching the Home Pin Spinal Tap trailer and criticize its production quality and content_ - [MEDIUM] Pinball Resource (Steve Young) regained email functionality after being email-only unavailable — _Bruce notes Pinball Resource 'now have email again,' implying they had lost it previously_ ### Notable Quotes > "I stole your line. Well, you know, I've been playing pinball forever. I grew up in the late 70s, early 80s, and that was the best time for pinball." > — **Dick Hamill**, ~10:00 > _Establishes Dick's origin story in pinball during the classic era_ > "How long are you spending commuting down to Portland? I live in Maine. The only place to play was in Portland. And he was like, how long are you spending commuting to Portland just to play pinball? I was like, no more than 20 hours a week." > — **Dick Hamill**, ~12:00 > _Illustrates the extreme dedication required to play pinball before home ownership became feasible_ > "So I plugged into J5 and I said, I'm just going to see if I can control this machine with a $3 Arduino plugged into it. And I could." > — **Dick Hamill**, ~18:00 > _Key moment where Dick discovered the technical approach that led to all his modifications_ > "As of last night, I put all the Gerber files and all the schematics for the Williams, or actually you can call it a universal board because it works with any machine. I put those up on Pinball Refresh, and if you want to grab them, go grab them. It's there until I get C&D'd on it." > — **Dick Hamill**, ~52:00 > _Major announcement of open-sourcing universal board design; shows willingness to share technology_ > "You've had this machine in your house for 40 years. Why not have a different way to enjoy the same machine?" > — **Dick Hamill**, ~42:00 > _Addresses criticism of modifying classic machines; philosophical stance on preservation vs. innovation_ > "I try to have a thick skin. It's difficult for me to understand why. Some people just don't want other people to have fun in a way that they don't approve of." > — **Dick Hamill**, ~45:00 > _Response to community criticism of code modifications; highlights tension between purists and modifiers_ > "It looked like they took a 480p and upscaled it to 1080. It looked like something I would have taken with my first-generation digital camera 10 years ago." > — **Ron Hallett**, ~61:00 > _Critical assessment of Home Pin Spinal Tap trailer production quality_ > "It makes you want to go out and buy this game right away, doesn't it? No. No. No one's going to either." > — **Bruce Nightingale / Ron Hallett**, ~62:00 > _Hosts assess that the Home Pin trailer is counterproductive to sales_ > "Pinball Resource obviously heard our discussions last episode because they now have email again." > — **Bruce Nightingale**, ~64:00 > _Suggests Slam Tilt Podcast criticism directly impacted a pinball business decision_ > "Oh, it's going to run so much later now. It is. Oh, and this is all just to get the what? 240%. percent whopper stuff." > — **Ron Hallett**, ~78:00 > _Criticism of tournament format expansion for 'whopperfication' (adding complexity/content) at the cost of runtime_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Dick Hamill | person | Electrical engineer and pinball code modification expert who creates updated rule sets for classic Bally/Stern/Williams machines; runs pinballrefresh.com; released universal control board schematics | | Ron Hallett | person | Co-host of Slam Tilt Podcast; based in upstate New York | | Bruce Nightingale | person | Co-host of Slam Tilt Podcast; based in upstate New York; works on Cheetah code modifications | | pinballrefresh.com | product | Website hosting Dick Hamill's code modifications, schematics, and Gerber files; links to GitHub repository and pinballindex.com wiki | | Stars | game | Classic Bally/Stern pinball game; Dick's first modification project; features ball save, multi-level star modes, and wizard mode | | Meteor | game | Classic pinball game with Sean Connery movie theme; Dick's modification includes meteor storm mode and Orpheus meteor mechanic | | Silver Ball Mania | game | Classic pinball; Dick's modification addresses permanent center kicker and adds progressive difficulty to spell modes | | Blackjack | game | Classic pinball; Dick's modification replaces random outcomes with playable blackjack hands using saucer shots | | Supersonic | game | Classic pinball recently modified by Dick for his mother; featured as current project | | Black Knight | game | Classic pinball that Dick plays daily with original code | | Home Pin | company | Pinball manufacturer; released poorly-received trailer for Spinal Tap pinball machine | | Spinal Tap | game | Home Pin pinball machine with Spinal Tap movie theme; trailer criticized for poor video quality and inappropriate imagery | | Pinball Resource | company | Pinball parts supplier run by Steve Young; recently restored email functionality after period without email support | | Pintastic Tournament | event | Major pinball tournament expanding from 24 to 40 A-division players, adding B-division, increasing qualifying rounds, and changing finals from best-of-5 to best-of-7 | | pinballindex.com | product | Wiki documenting code modifications and implementations by Dick Hamill's developer community | | Arduino | product | Microprocessor board used as basis for Dick's pinball code modification system; cost approximately $17 | | Centaur | game | Classic pinball game with code modification created by developer community member (not Dick) | | Flash Gordon | game | Classic pinball game with code modification created by developer community member (not Dick) | | Future Spa | game | Classic pinball game with code modification created by developer community member (not Dick) | | Cheetah | game | Pinball machine being modified by Bruce; had mysterious restart bug fixed by removing restart functionality | ### Topics - **Primary:** Custom code modifications for classic pinball machines, Arduino-based control board design and open-sourcing, Balance between preservation of original code and innovation - **Secondary:** Home Pin Spinal Tap trailer reception and marketing, Pintastic Tournament format expansion and complexity, Tournament play considerations with modified code - **Mentioned:** Pinball Resource customer service ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.72) — Generally enthusiastic discussion of Dick Hamill's technical work and open-source initiative; critical but humorous about Home Pin and Pintastic format changes; positive reception of guest and community-building efforts around code modifications ### Signals - **[business_signal]** Pinball Resource regained email functionality after apparent outage, possibly in response to Slam Tilt Podcast criticism (confidence: medium) — Bruce states: 'Pinball Resource obviously heard our discussions last episode because they now have email again' and jokes about lost West Coast/European orders - **[community_signal]** Criticism exists regarding modifications to classic pinball code; some players view changes as 'sacrilegious'; concerns raised about unknowns in tournament settings (confidence: high) — Dick addresses: 'You must have some people comment about your code, like, oh, you're sacrilegious the original code' and discusses tournament concerns about modified rules - **[community_signal]** Developer community forming around pinball code modifications; wiki at pinballindex.com documents work by 10-20 developers on multiple classic games (confidence: high) — Dick states: 'They've got a wiki out there at pinballindex.com. There's a group of developers that have kind of formed around this project, a bunch of people now, I don't know exactly, more than 10, less than 20 probably' - **[competitive_signal]** Discussion of modified code impacting tournament play strategy; concern that deep rule modifications could undermine spinner-only strategies or require knowledge of undocumented changes (confidence: medium) — Dick discusses tournament implications: 'if I was a tournament person... my spinner rip all day wasn't going to get supplanted by some weird deep rule set' - **[design_philosophy]** Dick intentionally designs code modifications to incentivize previously-underutilized playfield shots (e.g., encouraging drop target play on Stars rather than spinner-only strategy) (confidence: high) — Dick explains Stars modifications: 'I wanted to see if I could give you more of a reason to take the risk of hitting those drops and trying for that left spinner' - **[event_signal]** Pintastic Tournament significantly expanding format with 24→40 A-division, new B-division, longer qualifying rounds, and finals changing from best-of-5 to best-of-7 (confidence: high) — Bruce reads official announcement: '40 and A' with 'four out of seven' finals format; hosts express concerns about extended runtime - **[market_signal]** Home Pin's Spinal Tap trailer received poor community reception due to production quality and marketing approach, with hosts suggesting it will not drive sales (confidence: medium) — Ron criticizes video quality: 'It looked like they took a 480p and upscaled it to 1080' and concludes 'It makes you want to go out and buy this game right away, doesn't it? No' - **[personnel_signal]** Dick Hamill operates independently as code modification expert; initially considered having friend sell boards but declined due to business hassles (confidence: high) — Dick states: 'I figured out that I was not willing to deal with the hassles of trying to sell stuff' and chose to open-source instead - **[product_strategy]** Multiple classic pinball games receiving substantial rule updates and feature additions through Dick Hamill's modification framework, including wizard modes, progressive difficulty, and new shot incentives (confidence: high) — Dick discusses enhancements to Stars (wizard mode, multi-level progression), Meteor (storm mode, Orpheus mechanic), and others - **[technology_signal]** Dick Hamill releases universal control board schematics and Gerber files open-source via pinballrefresh.com, enabling widespread adoption of code modifications across multiple pinball architectures (confidence: high) — Dick announces: 'As of last night, I put all the Gerber files and all the schematics for the Williams... I put those up on Pinball Refresh' and describes the board working with Bally/Stern, Williams, Atari, and System 11 machines --- ## Transcript Look, I understand your last episode has a lot in common with some of the other great final episodes in TV history. Ash, Cheers, Mary Tyler Moore, the entire cast is on hand. Seems from memorable episodes, a warm, cozy feeling of closure. Yeah, it sucks. We had this cast party afterwards, and I got so drunk, even Daria looked good. You know what I'm saying? Believe it or not, you didn't get drunk, and Daria didn't look good, and you're never going to score. Shut up, buddy. Dumbass. Coming to you from beautiful upstate New York, this is the Slamtail Podcast, the show about all things pinball. I'm your host, Ron Hallett, with the other host, Bruce Nightingale. Free! Free! We're free! We're, oh, you're going to start already with that, okay. Oh, fuck yeah. And this is episode 204. And free! Okay, enough of that. We're not alone. We're not. Who do we have, Ron? We have a guest. We sure do. Say hello, everyone, to Dick Dick Hamill. Yeah. Hey, how's it going? Alrighty. Dick is the one who's been doing a lot of new code for our favorite games. Yes. Especially old Stern games, which we all love. He's done stars. He's done meteor, galaxy, trident. Tons of stuff. Too many to name. Too many to name. All of the space-themed one, that's for sure. We love space here at the Slam Phil Podcast. There's a lot of it between your head. And I already, I love, Dick was on ten minutes early. We are starting at nine o'clock sharp. Sharp. Amazing. This is better than we have with our normal guests. Like Zach. Yeah, like Zach. Or not our third hosts, if you will. Co-hosts. Co-hosts. Yeah, he's a co-host. Oh, God. Are we good, Bruce, with the whole other hosting? Are we all set? I think I should be first. B does become before R. So in alphabetical order? Yeah. Okay. It's the Bruce and Ron show. Okay. So, Dick, how did you get started into this wonderful thing we call pinball? See, Bruce, I stole your line. Well, you know, I've been playing pinball forever. I grew up in the late 70s, early 80s, and that was the best time for pinball. You know, when the machines would come out in the arcades, everybody else was rushing to play, you know, Pac-Man or Defender or whatever. But I was always on the back wall playing pinball. and I never, I don't know why, I never thought it was like a thing to have a pinball machine in your house. You know, that was a huge leap to me. And then a few years ago, my brother was like, you know, how long are you spending commuting down to Portland? I live in Maine. The only place to play was in Portland. And he was like, how long are you spending commuting to Portland just to play pinball? I was like, no more than, you know, 20 hours a week, you know? And he's like, why don't you have one at your house? I was like, well, because I'm on Pinside, and this was years ago, and people on Pinside just said, you can't buy a pinball machine anymore. They're just too expensive. And he was right, and I was wrong. You could buy a pinball machine. So he found me some down in New Hampshire, and my first machine was SARS. My first machine at home was SARS. A very good choice. Yeah, yeah. 400 bucks. Couldn't beat it. Didn't work at all. I mean, like nothing. So it was perfect. And then that's when I discovered that as much as I like to play, fixing them and getting in there, figuring out what's wrong, that was really where my passion was. I couldn't get enough of getting broken stuff. I would just ask friends for broken boards and just sit in my office and just fix them. So that's what I wanted to do. And the easiest way to fix them, I found, was to jump on that J5 connector and start interrogating it with a little microprocessor, and so that led to everything else. Okay. Is that what you, have you done electronics? Is that kind of what you, or is that just like a hobby? Oh, yeah. So my initial career was, if you can call it that, was electrical engineering. So that's what I studied, and I used to work for Digital Equipment Corporation back when there was a Digital Equipment Corporation. Deck. Yes. Yep. You know, you get a turkey every Thanksgiving from the founder. And then went into software from there. So it's been years since I did any of that professionally, but, yeah, it came back naturally. I mean, the machines that I was working on were the machines that I studied in college, or the architectures I studied in college, so it all made sense, you know. Nice. So what was the first game you modified? Stars, of course, stars. And what kind of modification? Like, what's required to make the stars the new stars? So the original idea was, you know, just to see if I could, you know, diagnose MPU problems, problems with the PIA. And specifically, that one had a bad socket that was shorting address lines. So as you know, you know, those old sockets, what were they, scan Bs or something? They would always go bad, and they would always short. And so I tried Leon's ROM, but Leon's ROM won't work if you've got socket shorted. So next step was jump on J5. I'm kind of telling the long version of the story. So to shorten it, I plugged into J5 and I said, I'm just going to see if I can control this machine with a $3 Arduino plugged into it. And I could. So my very first revision was just reproduce the rules of stars, but with an Arduino. so that I could add things like ball save and, you know, in case you've got kids around or whatever, you need to have a ball save. There is something that helps a lot with novice players. And then I wanted to see if I could, like, you hit all the stars once and that light's a special, but there's a second level of stars where they flash and then a third level of stars. And then I was like, well, maybe I should make a wizard mode where if you get to all five stars three times, You get into a switch frenzy or something like that. So it was really just a simple reimplementation of the rules with a couple new features when I first did STARS. And then after that, people started saying, why don't you add digital sounds, this and that and the other. And so I've got those things as optional. But the root of the project is a different way to play the same machine without destroying the machine that you had. So there's always a switch on the machine that you can flip and you can play original rules, or you switch it and you can flip and play, you know, new rules. So it's just a small upgrade, you know, or, you know, increase in functionality as opposed to, like, a super modification, you know, homebrew type thing. Nice. Very nice. And it hooks up very easily, too. That's the good thing about the board. And it can be taken off very easily also. Yeah, Ballystern, you just plug it to J5. If you're DIY and you want to do it yourself, the whole thing you can build for $20 because the Arduino that runs it is, you know, the most expensive one you're going to get is going to be $17. And then the rest you could, you know, just build from scrap wire and connectors that you have around your shop. And if you want to get fancy, there's people who have made kits or have made, you know, PCBs that you can buy from them off of Pinside. I don't make any money off of that stuff, and, you know, I recommend one or two of them, but that's, you know, that's something separate from me. I just do it for the fun of it. Looking at the game list here, so for Meteor, what are the Meteor upgrades? Well, Meteor, I went a little. So a friend of mine had Meteor. He brought it over for four months, and I just went a little nutty with it. The first thing I did was I went and grabbed a bunch of sounds from the movie with Sean Connery. So that kind of brings you into the meteor realm. And then I made it so that there's a meteor storm mode, and there's Orpheus, which was the name of the giant meteor that was coming towards Earth. It basically sets it up so that when you complete the meteor drops up top, which you never want to do in the original if you're playing for spinner rips. When you complete those, it starts a meteor storm, and they come in on your bonus lights in the center of the playfield, and you see them descending, and then you have to hit either the one, the two, or the three bank of drop targets to launch a missile up at those incoming meteors to knock them down for bonus before they get to the one level. It has all kinds of call-outs and music and sound effects, and that's a fun one. Is there any James Bond class? Because it's Sean Connery. Yes, money penny. You can shoot my missile any day. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Well, I'm looking here. Silver Ball Mania. What could you do to fix that turret? What could you do? That's one of the first ones I looked at. Like, okay, what can we do for that one? Well, you know, the big thing with that one was turning it off so that the center kicker was not permanent. It's a timed center kicker now. So I think if you do the horseshoe, you get the center kicker for like a second and a half or something like that. And then if you use it once, then you get it for much less time. So I kind of neutralized that whole, you know, permanent ball save thing that everybody was going for. The second thing was, I think the first time you spell Silver Ball Mania, it's just hit the targets or inlanes. The second time, you have to spell all of silver before you can spell all of ball, before you can spell all of mania. And the third time, you have to spot the letters in order, or else you lose them after a certain amount of time. So if you get the L, but you don't have the S in the I, you have to get the S in the I within X number of seconds, or else you lose the L, that kind of thing. So just make everything harder to get is the approach there. So make it harder with software as opposed to when people try to close up the horseshoe or make it as narrow as possible. You can fix it from the code end. I see Blackjack on here, another favorite of the Slam Tilt Podcast. Great game, yeah. Yeah, so for that one, I talked to, you guys are familiar with Robert's code, where you lose if you hit the saucer and your hand is losing, you lose points? Yes. Yeah, I've heard, yeah. Never used it, but know about it. Yeah, I looked at that approach. I wasn't 100% keen on the idea of losing points, but I figured you could wager your bonus. So in my version of Blackjack, it actually puts the hands of Blackjack up in the score display. So if you hit the saucer, you wager whatever bonus you've got so far, and then it deals out cards and shows you your hand, I think, in the player one and two, and it shows you the dealer's hands in three and four, something like that. It doesn't show you the dealer's bottom card. But then you have to either get a hit by hitting, I think, maybe the red stand-up or something like that, or you can reveal the dealer's card by hitting the yellow stand-up. And then the next time you hit the saucer, you either win or lose your bonus based on, you know, whether or not you're winning and losing your hand. So it's just instead of making it random, you know, dealer gets this, player gets that, you're actually playing a hand of blackjack. And you can set it up so that all four players get the same deck or all four players get the play from the same deck so that you have to, you know, kind of card count to know where you're at. I don't think many people have downloaded that one, but the guy who owns it now just loves it. That's all he wants to play. So, you know, it works for some people. It's a little more complicated than I think that game wants. You know what I mean? So if you wanted to download any of these, where are they? I've got everything on GitHub. To make it easier, I've got a website set up called pinballrefresh.com, and that's got links to, you know, the GitHub, where the GitHub's the code repository where all the code lives. You can also get the schematics and the Gerber files if you want to build a board there. And Pinball Refresh also points to a wiki. There's a group of developers that have kind of formed around this project, a bunch of people now, I don't know exactly, more than 10, less than 20 probably, who are doing different games. Somebody did Centaur, Flash Gordon, Future Spa, a whole bunch of games. And so they've got a wiki out there at pinballindex.com. So if you go to pinballrefresh.com, that will point you to everywhere else and kind of gives a sense of what I'm working on now. I just finished Supersonic for my mom a couple months ago. She loves that game. And so that's the one I've got up as my featured game rewrite now. Yeah, I see that. Yep. Is the right flipper used now? You have to use the whole play field. That's one of the things that I try to do when I implement a game is I give you reasons to, Like with stars, I love stars, but how often do you shoot for the drops? I usually try to get the double bonus. Okay. Quick throw, yeah. Bruce is more of a stars all day guy. Yeah, I can do either or. It all depends on if I'm playing in four people groups, how they're attacking the game, and then I'll adjust on the fly if I need to. But my normal thing is just go for the stars and rip the spinner. Wow, you have strategy? You think? I think once in a while. Wow. So one thing that I like to do is, like, at Original Stars, you could do your bonus up to 19K, right? You could, you know, get up to 10 and then build back up to 9. And 19K times 3 was the max bonus. So to incentivize the bonus a little bit, I made it so you can build up all your numbers so you can go up to 55. Like, you can light the 10, light the 9, light the 8, et cetera. So there's more reason to collect bonus if you've got 55 on the table. But also, make the drop so that you can go 2x, 3x, but then after that, flash the 2x so you get 4x and then 5x, 6x. So you can go up higher on the bonus multiplier, and that gives you more of an incentive. And then I also put a hurry up on the right in-lane left spinner, so that's an extra reward if you do that combo. and then a spinner combo thing where if you do any in-lane left spinner, right spinner within a certain amount of time that you start a spinner frenzy. So that, you know, again, just try to, like, give you more reason. Because I was a stars all day, spinner all day guy, but I wanted to see if I could give you more of a reason to take the risk of hitting those drops and trying for that, you know, left spinner. I saw you also stream. I have. Yeah, I've had upwards of two people in the stream at the same time. Woo! Yeah, that's better than one person. Yes, it is. Unless the one person was you. It was. Oh, no. It was, yeah. I had the stream open in another window. No, I mean, I've had some okay streams, you know, where some friends dropped by. I wasn't doing a whole lot of that, and I haven't streamed in maybe a month or so. So it was turning out to be just me just live coding, and I can't imagine anybody wants to watch that. But, you know, you see a bug, and I had all the computers hooked up, so I would just be like, well, I just thought of a feature. I'm going to put it in. Nobody's here anyway. So that's what I was doing. I was just, you know, live coding, and I wasn't really playing very much. So I don't know. I haven't figured out if the stream's a good idea or not. I mean, who knows? Well, what's the channel? I think it's just Dick Dick Hamill. I do everything under my own name, Dick Dick Hamill, which was a major shock to me when I found out nobody else did. Or that it was free. Like, I think even if I tried to use my name, it probably wouldn't be free. Nobody calls themselves Dick anymore. That's just because my grandfather was Dick and I'm Dick. And, you know, it's a family name, but, I mean, there's only like six of us left, so. Six of us left in the whole world. So you must have some people comment about your code, like, oh, you're sacrilegious the original code or that kind of stuff. What are your thoughts on that? You know, I know you're doing it, so I know your thoughts. But what are your thoughts on the term sacrilegious, which I don't think is an actual word. Sacrilegious, how's that? You know, it was really rude of me to apparently go to people's houses and make them play my code. How dare you? What the F? I do get that sentiment sometimes. You know, honestly, the very first time I implemented Starz, you had to pop out the CPU so that you could run my stuff. But ever since then, you know, somebody suggested, hey, just hook up to the IRQ this way, and then you could have a dual boot. So, like I said, you can always flip the switch and switch back. and nobody's forcing you to play my new code. It is a different way to enjoy a machine you already have, and if that's not something you can live with, you don't have to do it. Who cares? I like the old machines. That's why I have them. I like original code just as much. The machine I'm playing almost every day right now is Black Knight, and I play original code because I love it. But, you know, why not have a different way? You've had this machine in your house for 40 years. Why not have a different way to enjoy the same machine? Oh, I understand your reasoning behind it. And the good thing about it, you want to change it up a little bit. It's for some people. Some people are going to disagree with it. But I just wanted to see how you reacted to it. I try to have a thick skin. It's difficult for me to understand why. Some people just don't want other people to have fun in a way that they don't approve of. And that's a weird sentiment to me. You know, just let everybody do what they're going to do, you know. I feel in the tournament setting, people would get more upset. Oh, yeah, I guarantee it. Because it's like, no one knows how to play this game, this code, et cetera. Yeah, when we modified the cheetah code, people were like, huh? I'm like, well, it's really written on the playfields. And guess what? We're actually following what they originally wanted to do. Yeah, I get that. I've seen my code in a couple of tournament streams, and, you know, honestly, if you're – yeah, I get that. I understand that sentiment. I'm not a tournament person, but I think if I was, I might want to know that my spinner rip all day wasn't going to get supplanted by some weird deep rule set. I always think about that when you're watching Elwin play. Does he have some secret combo that nobody else knows about? Because he might. I mean, he's real good, but he might have secret combos. He might. He might. But, yeah, we actually put it on at the RPC. We put where your instructions are. We actually state, here's the changes. So people know, you know, they can't complain too fast. Well, the thing is, and heaven help you if it locks up or has an issue. Oh, gosh. And then it's just like, proof you can't use this. See, this is bad. What are you doing? How's that cheetah code going, Bruce? It's been modified again. Oh, it's been modified. We've had several people ask. Yes, we modified it so you can't restart a game until it's ended. Now, that was the one that was mysteriously restarting a four-player game, right? Yes. Yeah, that's a curious one. And it would reset after ball one. So ball one, you couldn't restart it after you have four people started. But as soon as you go to ball two or ball three, a combination of switches just would, bink, reset it. and we placed all the diodes on both the row and the column that are attached to the start button. The fact that it would restart it with the same number of players is the part that... Well, we never try. We don't usually have three-player, you know. No, but you were saying, like, you have a four-player game, it would restart, and it would restart as the four-player game. As the four-player game. So it wasn't even like you hit start. It was like you hit start four times. Times. I know. Really weird. That's bizarre. I know. So I'm going to put the code probably on the cheetah downstairs next and see if it does it there. So basically, really couldn't figure out what it was, so he just removed the restart card. Yep. Okay. He can't restart at all. If it does it again, then we know it's definitely something. And it's a different CPU, different power board. So what else could it be? It's got to be the code somewhere. It is weird because it's in mine. I know. And it was in mine for Stomp. I know. And it was played. What's Stomp? That would be the Slam Till Old My Pinball Tournament. Yes. Which we never say what that actually stands for. That's what it stands for. Yes. Oh, my. Oh, my. Most of these are Ballystern, but I did see you streaming a Scorpion. So you got into the Williams code. And you mentioned Black Knight. Yeah. What are the differences if you want to do that as opposed to the Ballystern? Or is it pretty much the same thing? It's a tiny bit harder. So, you know, as Bruce was saying, it's super easy to put on the Ballystern because you just plug in the J5. They've got that service connector that Stern used for audio but nobody else used. On Williams, there's no J5. So you pull out the processor, which, you know, some people are going to mess up, but, you know, a lot of people have pulled out processors before. You pull out the processor and you plug in a board into that, and then the original processor goes on the board that I developed. So it, like, sits in between the processor socket and your original processor. And then that gives it the ability to take over conditionally. So on the Williams machines and on the new software, you have the ability to, like, instead of having to mount another switch where you can switch between old code and new code, you just hold down the credit reset button when you power it on, and that will boot to original code or new code depending on how you have it configured. So that required a different board that I developed. For a while, I had the idea that maybe I would let a friend of mine sell it, the new board that does. Because that does everything. It does Ballystern, Williams, Atari, anything that uses a 6800, it can do. Or 6802, 6808, even up to Williams System 11 machines. I've got one running on a high speed. But I figured out that I was not willing to deal with the hassles of trying to sell stuff. So this is a Slam Tilt Podcast exclusive. As of last night, I put all the Gerber files and all the schematics for the Williams, or actually you can call it a universal board because it works with any machine. I put those up on Pinball Refresh, and if you want to grab them, go grab them. You know, knock yourself out. I just, you know, opened it up. It's free for everybody. You've heard it here, folks. First time. Go to pinballrefresh.com right now, and you can make your own boards. You can make that Atari Superman do what you want it to do. Besides burning up. Oh. That's like the best Atari. It is the best Atari. They still burn up. How about it's make your Hercules do what you want. Burn, burn, burn. What would I change with Hercules? Now you can do it. You can have the rarest Hercules ever. I'm sorry. Wow. Wow. What could possibly be the issue of mounting your MPU board horizontally right underneath all of the falling debris, screws, whatever? With no shield of any kind. Wasn't there originally a plastic shield that everybody threw away? Yes, it was a little plastic folding shield that had two screws on one side and three screws on the other. So you can take the two screws out, fold it over, but the problem was it would always flip back. So the operator said, fuck this, I'm going to remove it. Oh, so it was the operator's fault. No. It's just bad design overall because if it bounced and then it rolled back and forth, it was pretty bad. Oh. Oh, yeah. Okay. So go to Pinball Refresh right now. Check all that stuff out. It's there until I get C&D'd on it. If you know what that means, then I feel for you. I don't know. I mean, it's custom. I don't know how you would get C&D'd on that one. Well, you're not No We're going to find out together We'll have Dick back If it gets to you indeed So we can all complain about you We're good at complaining here At the Slam Pill Podcast Yes we are So you want to help us, Dick, with the rest of our show? I'd love to With our wide variety of topics Which actually we don't have a ton of them We do All those games came out I know. We blew our load all in one freaking week. We did. All right. Thanks, Bruce. Okay. You got it. So who here has seen the Home Pin trailer? Oh, I did. I have not seen it yet. You don't need to. You don't need to. Don't see. Very creepy. So there was a Home Pin trailer for, what's the game again? Say Spinal Tap. Spinal Tap. This is Spinal Tap. I'm sorry. I just forgot the name of the game. That's embarrassing. It was a very interesting, a very cringey type trailer, I would say. Yeah. It had this woman, and it had her, like, boobs on the glass and stuff. Mm. Yeah. Oh, my. But, yeah, I was, look, the video quality was horrible. It looked like they took a 480p and upscaled it to 1080. It looked like something I would have taken with my first-generation digital camera 10 years ago. I mean, just video quality-wise, it looked that bad. I couldn't figure that one out, why it looked that bad. When I first saw it it on YouTube I thought it was like 480 and that it wasn like they didn have a 1080 version And I looked like no I watching the 1080 version And it bad It bad It makes you want to go out and buy this game right away, doesn't it? No. No. No one's going to either. I know. Yeah, I got nothing more on that one. Yeah, it's pretty bad. Pinball Resource obviously heard our discussions last episode because they now have email again. Yes. He probably got all these calls and went, what the hell? I got to work? He probably lost all his West Coast and European orders. Yes. In the course of like two weeks and said, shit, I need to get the emails back. It's difficult to yell at people over email. It is. That's true. That's true. Have we all been yelled at at one point? Oh, yeah. I've been yelled at this month. I was yelled at even with preparation. Agent? Yeah. I had, what was it again? Lane guys. I didn't know if they were measured from end to end or from hole to hole. So I had the dimensions for both ready to go. But then as soon as I said, I didn't know which one. It's like, it's lifted right on the site. I go, okay. Okay. The site you never update. Yes, yes, I got you. Yes. You don't need dimensions. You need part numbers. Part numbers. And then you get yelled at because you ordered two parts that could be similarly used. But which one do you really want? Yeah. Yeah. But on the other hand, you could also have like 10, 15 years ago when I got Terminator 2 and the lane guide plastics, the lane guides, they weren't available. They were NLA, so I called. and he was like, yeah, those are NLA, but you can use these. They'll work. And that's what you're getting with Steve Young at Fembo Resource, the ridiculous knowledge of what will work and what won't. So, yes, email is open again. Bruce just sent me a note about Pintastic Tournament. Yep, they changed the whole Pintastic Tournament. No, they didn't change the whole thing. No, they added all these new things. They did. They added things. Yes, they changed it. A lot of them were to sufficiently whopperfy it. Yes. It's going to be a lot. I don't know if they're even going to finish this program. Oh, God. Well, some things are nice. They added a B division. They did. So now, like before, if you didn't make the top, whatever, was it 24? Yes. 24 now goes to 40. Yeah, yeah, 24 and A, then you're done. But now they're actually going to have a B division. So that's nice. And they're increasing the qualifying. Like, it's longer. It starts earlier. Yes. And that's fine. But wait, wait, wait. Well, wait. The part at the end, though, the finals have always been three out of five. Yes. Three out of five. So it's head to head. Yes. That's three of five. And you always finish relatively on time. Usually by the end of the day, Saturday, when it's closing up, they're done. Yep. Which is what you want. But now we have another round. They're going to go. And we have two. Wait a minute. Another round. Well, you have because it's 40 people. No. Yes. Yeah, but those are beat. They're probably doing them simultaneously. No, I think it's 40 and A. It says 40 and A. So there's another round. 40 and A. Yes, it's 40 and A. It says right on the Sanctum's Facebook page. If Bruce is reading this wrong, you can correct him in the ball bag the next episode, which, by the way, is slantailpodcast at gmail.com. Wow. You like that? Yeah. Yeah. But they're going four out of seven. Yep. So I'm going to read it right. Oh, you're going to read it right from the set? Right from the thing, yep. So, we will now have 40. Oh, sorry, you're right. 24. No, from just. Yes. Yes, so yes. Yes. But it's going to be still a madhouse because now you've got to have less games. For those at home, I was right. It's still. Yeah, for once, Ron was right. Yeah, yes. But it's going to be seven and five. Four out of seven. I know. Oh, it's going to run so much later now. It is. Oh, and this is all just to get the what? 240%. percent whopper stuff. I know. It's getting bad. Yeah, I think sometimes you've got to balance the whopperfication. To the fatigue. Yes, because I love the Fantastic Tournament. I do, too. I won the first one, so I pretty much have to love it. It does the card-based, which I like, even though it's the hardest thing to qualify for. I like the card-based qualification system instead of pump and dump. But it's just going to run so much longer now. So here you go. Here's the thing. Here's all your tournament stuff in one fast minute. On Thursday night, they're going to have the Western Mass Pinball Club and Southern Mansion Room Pinball, the Plunge, which will be 96 players. Friday evening, they're going to have the women's event of Bells and Chimes happy hour, which is going to be cool. Friday night at midnight, they're going to have a Midnight Madness tournament. I think some of those they already had, though. I know what I'm saying, but it's going to be, you know. None of those have anything to do with the Pentastic tournament, other that they're in the same area. Well, the problem is going to be also, again, I think, with the women's tournament conflicting with the main tournament always. Why? The women's tournament is Sunday after the main tournament's over. Oh, it doesn't finish Sunday? No. Now, if they're four out of seven and they run so long into Saturday, then they might have to finish it Sunday morning, which may interfere with the women's tournament. Yeah, it's just a lot of pinball. It's just, I really liked it. Everything, the timing was all good. It worked well. And then you want to get more whoppification, so you're going to make this stuff longer. It's just, I don't know. I mean, hey, it could go great and finishes perfectly on time, and we look like idiots. But it just seems, if you're adding that many more games, it's going to have to run longer, doesn't it? Yeah, it has to. I hear Dick snoring, so he's not going to the tournament. Yeah, I have never played in a tournament. I do love listening to tournament talk, and I watch it on YouTube more than I care to admit. But it's all kind of a giant mystery to me. Well, you can watch the finals today of the Great Lakes Open on Fox City Spinball. Yeah, it'll be over by the time anyone hears this. That's probably kind of stupid to say that, but whatever. You're talking to Dick. Oh, yeah, that's right. I'm telling you to watch it. Well, you can always watch recaps. I mean, that's what I generally do anyway because then I can skip over, you know, whatever. That is the easiest way. Yeah, skip over anything like Game of Thrones, any newer stern that was going to take forever to play. Just get the classics games. They're much quicker. Yeah, I feel bad for some of these people at the D82 because their feet are hurting. Oh, they were up all day. Yes. Yeah. And now they're playing in chairs. Yeah, I saw some people sitting in chairs playing. Yes. Yeah. That's when you're saying, okay, stop, guys. This is getting a little ridiculous. Okay, what's our views on playing in a chair? No, it's not even that. Just, like, that tells you right then and there, the tournament's too effing long. They've got plenty of seats there. This is just sit on the floor. There you go. Oh, yeah, it's got to be that. Get in better shape. Get more comfortable shoes. The shape of my shoes is round. Yes, yes. We know, Bruce. Yes. Let's see. Well, what else do we have about tournaments? What other tournament stuff is going on, Bruce? The Stomp is coming up. Hey! Stomp West. May 19th and 20th. Stomp West. We're only doing two days, and one's at night on Friday, and then the whole day Saturday. There you go. You can be home by Saturday night or early Sunday morning and spend time with the family. Oh, God. That's your plug, huh? That's my selling plug. And there's plenty of chairs. Hell, we have a cocktail machine so you can sit while playing. Yes. Maybe two by then. Wow. We're really trying to push rotation eight. That's the key. We were working on a couple games yesterday. Let's see. Did you answer? We had a mail from someone. No, save that for the ball bag. My ball bag is going to be full and ready to shoot. Up. No, Bruce, we can do this one now. Stop West. Charlie says, hi, I see no way of signing up for your May Stop West. Any help appreciated? Yep, you can go right to either the RPC, which is Rock Pinball, or RochesterPinball.com. And there's information there. There's also information. ROCPinball.com. If you said Rock Pinball, I would think it would be ROCKpinball. ROC, because that's what we call it up here, ROC. Just like the... The rock. No, the abbreviation for our airport, ROC. Ah. That's where we get it from. So, or Rochester Pinball. Information's there. You can also look at our Rochester Pinball Collective page. It's under events. And also the Slam Tilt. It's under events. On Facebook? Yes. Yeah. No wonder we couldn't find it. Oh, because we're not popular. We're not Banco Popular. You're not clear enough, Bruce. Oh, maybe you should be putting it on our website. Where does this tournament take place again? It's in beautiful East Rochester, New York at the Rochester Pinball Collective. 349 West Commercial Street, East Rochester, New York. Suite number 2965 with 50 pinball machines. Wait a minute. You have 50 now? We do. It's just it's not confident. It's not confident, but we can have it put 60 if we wanted to. It'd just be a little tighter, a lot tighter. And we have the new Foo Fighters. Oh, you have the new Foo Fighters. Oh, Ellie, you're pro. Pro right now. Pro right now. All right. So that got moved. From Zachary. Yeah. But you will have an LE, too. Yes, we will. We'll have an LE, hopefully, by the tournament. Will you have a, what is it called, godfather at all? No. No? No, I don't like extra ball mania. Hmm. You had a Guns N' Roses. Yeah, we did, and you saw how fast that turned around. So, Dick, have you played any of the new games, the seven games or whatever that came out? Ah, jeez. Of course, you probably have to go to a show to play some of them, except maybe Foo Fighters. I've got some friends around who have some new games, but no, I don't think I've played anything newer than maybe Godzilla, Ultraman. That's the latest I've played. So you've played a good game and a bad game? Wow. Wow. What do you think of Ultraman? Well, it could have been worse. It could have been Halloween. Oh, that's terrible. You know, all machines are, I don't know if you guys are probably pros at walking up and understanding, but all machines are a giant mystery until I've got, like, you know, at least a dozen hours on them. I just, you see it, but you don't see it. Do you know what I mean? I know what you mean. Bruce doesn't. He's way smarter than me. But, yeah, I don't understand any of these games. Okay, can you clip that, people, and just make that as? Oh, I'm totally, I'm the ultimate sucker. I have to play games so many times before even the most basic things are understood. I was explaining to some people, Stern Star Trek, how you can combo the triangle. You know, you do two, and then you do two on the other side. Combo. Oh, you mean get in a row. Yeah, in a row, but you combo them. So, you know, you do two on top, and you do two on the left or two on the right, you know, and then you get the last one, and you get both. You get both of the lines. You save your corner, yeah. Yeah. And people didn't know that. They're like, what? And these people, they play pinball. They own pinball. And I'm like, you didn't know that rule? Like, no. Like, oh, okay, well, here you go. I saw this three months for Dirty Harry, and there was something there. Like, what? You can do that? And that's not even like a complicated. That's like a Williams, you know, 90s game. And I was just like, uh. Yep, I'm comfortably dumb. It comes to me. Hey, it's all about the discovery. Look at these pretty lights. Woo-hoo! I'm going to play me a pinball machine. You could do a thing like I did at District 82 where I was last place in NASCAR going to my last ball, and I started multiball, and I raised some kind of value somehow just by hitting something over and over, not knowing what I was doing. And then I cashed out not knowing what I was doing and passed everybody. Although even they were like, how did you do that? So they went back and looked at it, and they're like, oh, that's how we did it. And then they explained it to me, which I already forgot. All right. I already forgot what the hell I did, so it's great. Nice. rules. We have some new code out there. We have new code? New code? New code for what? Scooby-Doo. Scooby-Doo came out with some new code. And I think Foo Fighters did also, didn't it? Did Scooby-Doo have a code upgrade? Scooby-Doo has a new code upgrade. It's called You're Too Good. Or if you just play too long, it just kills the flippers. No, you gotta leave. Nope, you're done. It is a very long ball time. I think it's longer than JJP, Guns N' Roses. Well, speaking of code, what do you think? You have a show option that you set a game to where it's just ball time. Yeah, you can do it almost like the time that they did in old Segas. It comes on, you have? Two minutes, done. That's it? So you're going to be on stand-alone for two minutes? Yep. Not even five? Nope, two. Two. Two, guaranteed. No, two guaranteed. So you just keep draining and it doesn't matter? Yep, until two minutes. After the two minutes, the next ball you drain is done. Okay. Just like you did in Sega. Sega! I was thinking of something the other day. Let me float this out to you guys. Maybe it's stupid. But a skills challenge, like a two-player skills challenge, where it lights a shot and says, player one, go for it. If you get it, you know, you have to get it within a minute. If you do get it, then it records how many seconds. and then player two's up and they have to do that same shot with a countdown timer, so they have to get it in fewer seconds than player one. Pressure. Yeah. And then it should reverse it, too. It should reverse it also, so, like, player two gets a chance to make player one pressure it also. Yeah, it's like a heads-up thing. Yeah. Except instead of the goal, it's literally a shot integrated into the game with a timer. Yeah, because, you know, sometimes when you're playing against, you know, Like, if a machine's in my house, I'm going to be able to play it for a while, right? And then somebody's over, and they're looking at me, and they're like, you know, when do I get to play? So something that just keeps the flow of the players kind of cycling through at a faster pace. And again, you know, pinball is pinball. We all love pinball. But what if there was a slightly different way to enjoy the same, you know? Never! You can't change it ever! That was one of the things that happened early on to me was I was trying some experimental rules like that, and some people were just slamming me on, you know, what's the name of that site that we all love? Pinside. Yeah, Shitside. I get it, but, you know, then other people were like, hey, you guys are always saying, where's the innovation and new rules, and then this guy tries some innovation, and, man, they couldn't jump on me fast enough. So it's an interesting dichotomy. Well, you changed something. That's why you changed something. It's so different than we want non-cookie-cutter playfield layouts. So then you had Gottlieb doing all kinds of crazy shit, and it's like, but it's Gottlieb. Screw that. You know, the best thing about Gottliebs is the playfields are always super clean because they didn't last long enough to... Yeah, they were always super clean. Pulled out and pulled out and pulled out. If your boards don't work, and same with Atari, if your boards don't work, then the play field stays clean. They're awesome. It lasts forever. What other code came out besides that in Foo Fighters? Anything else? I heard the music got finalized for Bond. Did I hear that? They added a couple more songs. It's still very broken. I wonder why. Oh, God. Wonder why it's still broken. they made now jetpack multiball used to at least be a little bit of a challenge you get it in the side you know the side kicker then you had to make the outer orbit three times now it's just you get in the side kicker you make the outer orbit once you're in multiball oh yeah I did that I did that there I did that in RPC I was confused I knew the one rule you go in the creature from the black lagoon area and that lights the jetpack locked shots. Yes. And I thought you had to hit it three times to lock three balls. I hit it once and it's like, boom, I'm in jetpack multiball. Like, whoa, okay. And then it kicks another ball out and then whatever you drop the ball, that's your jackpot for all the other shots. Yeah. And it's like, oh, God. And we actually have combos now. Hey, we have combo shots now. We'll see if it can ever recover. I don't think so. Some games can recover. Going down, going down. I mean, you could have, like, the great recovery games. I would say Guardians. Deadpool. When that came out, yeah, Deadpool. Especially Guardians came out with, like, Alpha Code. And by the same guy, by the way, Bruce, that you're bashing all the time. Just saying. Yeah, because I think he had a lot of help. Oh, shit, we've got to fucking make money on this thing or we're screwed. You know how much this license cost from Disney? Holy shit. And it went through all the different stages, you know. Groot all day, Orb all day, and then finally where it is now. And Deadpool. Again, that had issues when it was released early. They were low on time. But, yeah, that's like, and they both made full recoveries, and they made Guardians for a long time. Yep, and Deadpool's coming back out. Yeah, so you don't think that can happen with Bond? Yeah. I think the licensure is just acting really tight, and they want to see everything. They want to go through every piece of it before it's released. And who has really heard it? It really is just crushing it. You know, you have, like, this game that comes out after it, and everyone just forgets about Bond now. Yeah. I don't think they implemented the stuff well in the beginning, and it just put a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. I don't think it's going to run after the first run. What happens if they could have held off on it? Like, maybe it comes out after Foo. I think they should have held off on it. Although maybe they couldn't. Again, licensor, maybe they couldn't. I know, but I think this three-corner stone sometimes... Well, they haven't done three in a few years. I don't know, but that's their plan this year. No, their plan is to do two. George Gomez said there will only be two. We talked about this. I consider Bond really like December being... You know, there wasn't a big lapse of time between Bond and Foo Fighters. There really wasn't a decent amount of time. I'm sure someone is going to write in, there was the same amount of time between so-and-so and so-and-so. Yes, it will. No, it won't. If you want to prove Bruce wrong again. Please, I'm encouraging this one. Encourage slamtillpodcast.gmail.com. Please prove him wrong. But, yeah, I think they just didn't do the stuff in the beginning right. And when you actually release the game and it says right on it, waiting for licensing approval, that's just a backhanded, yeah, we weren't really ready for this yet. The licensor could just suck. That does happen, you know. It does happen. We've seen it with other products, but you think they would have learned their lesson. They need to learn their lesson because it's going to hurt them in the end. See, I don't know what's involved with when they make these deals, like if they know how much they're going to get. Yeah, but hold on. I'm going to go by proof and truth. Ron, Bond is one of your favorite top pinball themes, right or wrong? Bond is, yeah, I'm a Bond fan. I like your proof and truth. I like that. Proof and truth. So now that you've seen the game and you see how bad the code is, would you buy this? See how bad? It's huge. Wait a second. If you're not saying yes or no right away. No, hold on. You forget. I'm play field first, baby. Okay. And the play field is. Your play field is great. Nah. I like it. I'm not. That side ramp shot is way later than you think it is. Well, so is Foo. Foo is a lot later. No. Foo, you can't miss the side. You can't miss that upper flipper. You can't miss anything. No, the upper flipper's great. I'm talking about the ramps. They're very delayed where you think they should be. But that whole upper left with the dildo missile thing there, like you hit the target, then you hit the thing, and it bounces around, and it's just like, okay. And I hate that thing on the left, the creature shot. It's just like this gaping hole that just fires the ball out at what? I mean, it just bounces around. What they should have had is almost like a habit trail on the left-hand side where it was like a catapult, like medieval madness, and brought it right back up top. That would have been a lot easier. Instead of just kicking it out and putting it into the pop bumper, hit one pop bumper, and then sometimes stream down the middle, sometimes barely hit your flipper. I mean, I do like the left orbit Avengers shot. Because that's where you hit first. I actually like that. But that's kind of, it's not like Deadpool. I'm going to pick the same designer. When I hit the lock shot the first time, it's just like, ah, yeah. The way it comes around, and it just barely makes up the ramp, and then just goes along the habit trail. Kind of like some of those older Williams games, like a, what is it called, Sorcerer. Like when you hit that steep ramp, and then it just, it kills all momentum, and then it just slowly goes down the habit trail to lock area. I love that. and the repeatable left orbit come all the way around on the premium. I don't have anything like that on Bond that I'm really feeling. So for me, it doesn't pass the first thing. So I don't even get to the code. Which is worse. Yeah, you can fix bad code, but you can't fix bad layout. The question is, will they fix bad code? No, and I don't think they will. I think they're probably... And I don't think it's bad layout. It's just not my kind of layout. Let's just say that. They're going to duct tape this game. Like NASCAR. We put the duct tape on, we keep it going for a little bit, and then we get packed at 1.0, and then we're done. NASCAR, because everyone's from the South, and NASCAR, as we all know. Heck yeah. The problem maybe is that, you know, with the temporary licensing, do they have a real reason to go back and fix old code? Like, what am I thinking, stranger things where they can't produce more because the license ran out? Not according to George Gomez. Yeah, I know he said that, but didn't Stern come back and say, no, we're not doing that? Yeah, no, we're not doing that. We're not doing that because they did run out. So are you incentivized to fix code because you can't sell new units? But you're selling mods also, though. Don't forget, you're also selling mods where you have expression lighting and that kind of stuff. Guess what? That's going to make you want to make your mods and buy your stuff and everything like that if the game is updated. Yeah, Dick has a point, though, because in the past, there have been times where, for example, Spider-Man. Yeah, the original Spider-Man. The Stern Spider-Man. I know where you're going with this. And at a certain point, Stern told Lyman, okay, stop working on this. We're moving on. And this was an issue for him because for him it wasn't done yet. I mean, they had voice clips they didn't even use yet that were recorded for the game. So he pretty much did it on his own, on his own time. Yeah. You know, not stern time. And then they eventually came out. That was the update that added all of the, you know, today's headlines, Sandman beached, and all that stuff. Like, that wasn't there before. And the 2X and the 3X for the rest of the ramp and for the ball. That was there. That was always there. That was always there. I own the game. So did you, and so did you. I know, but I'm talking about in the beginning. We got the game. It was 1.2, if I remember, 1.3. We got the game. I remember it still had the 2X for when you start a mode, and if you finish a mode, the shot you hit is 3X. That was still there. I don't remember that. Yeah. But, okay, this is going to pass us. But if Lyman didn't do what he did. On his own. On his own. Ten years later, they probably wouldn't have released another Spider-Man with the new artwork and everything else. and that's where it proves that if you can get good rules, it will help sales. I can still see it from Stern's perspective though. We need to move on to this new game. We can't have you Well, look at Led Zeppelin. That's the perfect point of it. It's done. Thank you. They can't even get, some people are trying to sell premiums for $6,900 and they can't even get that. It's like, holy Holy crap. That's the proving point. Hey, at least you can have expression lights on your Pro. Yeah, exactly. Good. Because they just came out, as we said the last episode, from what I heard, a ton of them were sold, expression lighting. I wonder if Stern may rethink the whole no expression lights for Pro if they sell enough of these things. I don't know why they didn't do the Pro for Foo Fighters. The only thing I could think of was that they didn't sell enough of them where they just didn't think it was worth it to have the cabinet, that cabinet, the special cabinet. But if they did, they do end up selling a ton of them. But they almost can't change their mind now because it almost says that they're wrong. And then you have a bunch of Foo Fighters people pissed off. Did we lose Bruce? No, I'm here. I just didn't mind you. We have the best expression lighting with the best game, and we can't combine them. that's going to be pretty piss poor. You talking about Rush? No, for Rush. Wow. I love Rush. Well, we already have someone on Pinside that's got the kit to add the – actually, it's the guy that did the – well, he's one of the – he did the Tokyo Neon sign. I think Stumbler. He's combining with someone else, and they're coming out with this kit that has – it's basically the post, the ball save post for Foo Fighters that you can put in a pro. Yeah. Because the pro has the hole. Yep. They just put spring steel over it. So you just remove that, put this kit in, and it ties into the game somehow where it should work. Mm-hmm. Now the funny thing will be when you have somebody making a template to router out your cabinet Oh what for the expression lighting Yeah Yeah And you chiseling your wood out your piece of the wood How would that even work, though? Because I would think the pro code probably won't have the expression lighting stuff in there. Like, you know, I could see somebody trying something. Like the neon lights for Tron, you know, pros didn't have it. But somebody made a kit with the lighting and everything else. Yeah. Which, at the time, they don't really do the code. They just tie it into a flasher or something else to get the stuff to come on. Yeah. But it does work. It does work. Let's see. What else did I have here? Well, there's the thing you mentioned at the top of the show, Bruce. Paywall extraordinaire. Okay, Bruce. What is this all about? Oh, Jesus Christ. Another friend of the podcast. Well, maybe not anymore. Maybe not anymore. I'm not going to call him out because I'm an asshole. But I have orders with him, so I don't want my orders to get canceled, Bruce. He's your boss. And he's my boss in the other podcast, Bruce. So you're going to get me. My other podcast, which, by the way, is Silver Ball Chronicles, which can be heard on the Pinball Network. Really? Yeah. Wow. And do you know we have a Patreon? Yeah, I know. You're one of these idiots, too. Did you approve of that? Okay, we're talking about the pinball show, Bruce. We're talking about the new Patreon. Do you approve of your show having a Patreon? Or you're not getting any of the money since it's all in Canadian. Okay. I don't have issues with the Patreon depending on what you get. Yeah, I just don't believe. Guess what? You don't need to make. These people making $5, it's like, really? We know. Bruce hates all Patreons. What do you think, Dick, about Patreon? You know, I'm okay with Patreon. And subscriptions in general, I think, are tough, you know, for, I don't know. I don't know. You know, pay if you want, but don't make it subscription-based. You know, like a one-time whatever, you know, donate to show that you're, I don't know. Jesus, who knows. Like Patreon, for example, so the Pinball Show has Patreon now. And I think some of the features are pretty cool. They have the, basically what a lot of them do now. And I think Silverball Chronicles does this too, where at a certain tier you get, well, I think the first tier, you get access to a private Discord server where you can talk to the creators of the show, i.e. me and David Dennis. You get, I think in our case, if I remember, our show has commercials in it, but if you're a Patreon, you get the non-ad version. You also get it early, you know, and for some of them there's like swag. I think the pinball show did a thing. If you go upper tier, you can get, like, private conversations with Zach and Dennis. Upper decker. And the other thing I thought was – wow. He got that one really fast. I want an upper decker from the boys. And the other thing they have, which I thought was a cool idea, is, you know, we know all this insider or these rumors and stuff that we can't say on the podcast, But if you want to be in Patreon, we'll let you know what they are. Like, okay. But what I don't like is when you have an episode that would be your normal episode, and you decide to clip out like a 15, 20-minute portion of it that you know a lot of people would want to hear what you have to say, and you say, like, to hear this section of it, you need to be a Patreon. Yeah, I don't agree with that at all. Then it ceases to be Patreon, and it becomes paywall. A paywall. Which Zach even himself called it a paywall. Yes, he did. Like that part of it. Yep. Yeah, not a fan of that. No, you and I. He's canceling my orders right now. Ron doesn't need expression lighting. I would just cut that off. Yeah, I don't agree with it either. But I was telling Bruce, it's like, if we can go long enough, if we're really like the only, what, because I said long? Yeah. If we can go long enough for the only podcast that doesn't have Patreon or merchandise of any kind, that could be our gimmick. We already have a gimmick. We're the longest-running podcast that's not charging people anything. For Pimple. For Pimple. You might be. Oh, my God. You might be right on that one. If anyone knows of anyone who has done it longer, and it's, what, June of 2016? Yeah, I think maybe one or two. There is one or two. But they are not consistent. We try to be consistent. They're not consistent. Well, no. Some come out, like, once a month. Some come out once every two or three months. That's consistent? No, it's not. Yeah, once a month is consistent if that's your normal schedule. No, no, I mean like, no, they'll do like one a month, then they'll go like one every three months, then one a month again, you know. Oh, okay. Okay, so we're the longest running regular pinball podcast without any income. Yes, yes. We poor. We very poor. Very poor? Yeah. Okay. That's a quicker way to say it, yeah. Yeah. Well, Bruce knows I'm rich, so, you know, we don't need any money. Independently wealthy. Yeah, independently wealthy. If I had Ron Hallis money, I'd burn my own. I'd burn my own. Oh, God, that's good. I like that. I don't know. For me, it's just because also the Finball Show is like one of my main podcasts. Oh, it's a great podcast. It's the main one I watch and I've listened to. And, you know, it's like, oh, I really want to hear this section. And before he even did it, when he said the Patreon, and he kind of intimated that there would be content that you'd have to pay for. And I'm thinking, okay, what time during this episode is this going to come up? And as soon as he got close to the point, I'm like, this is going to be it. The whole conversation about this particular game is going to be the paywall part. And then, boom, I was right. Yeah. Especially when you tease it in the beginning, like, hey, you're going to hear this, this, this, in this, but you don't. Yeah. Now, you're causing problems to Kendris. You're going to get us in trouble. That's my middle name. So, maybe, here you go. How about if you hide from flipping out, you get a free year of the Patreon or something? No, because it's not mixed together. Huh? It's not mixed together. He said in a post, he said, you know, hey, this is my business. This is just, you know, my other thing. So... Ah, boo. Come on. It's like, I bought a game. I want access. Damn it. And you keep on buying the games. You keep on getting access. Yeah, there you go. See? I think that's a great idea. I think that's a great marketing plan. Great marketing plan. He's going to make hundreds of dollars. Hundreds of dollars. Well, like I said, a lot of the stuff I thought was pretty cool. The whole, you know, insider, like, you know, or just get a private session with the – I like that. Okay, Bruce, let me ask you this. Yeah. Do you think people would pay for a private session with us? Fuck no, because guess what? They'd pee on me on freaking Facebook and go, hey, I got this question. I answer it right away. Oh, I'm not going to say, sorry, you need to be a Patreon subscriber. No, I mean, okay, people out there, you can reply to slantelpodcast.gmail.com. Would you actually pay, if we did a Patreon with some kind of, I don't know, how much would it be? Upper tier for you get a one-on-one. You get an upper decker from Bruce. What do you want? Bruce Denron. Yes, you get. Hold on. I'm going to say something opposite. Dick, how much did you pay to come on the show? So far? Yes. So far, I'd pay any amount. No, but how much did you pay? How much did I pay? Zero. We encourage pinball. We want pinball to grow. We're here to have fun. It calls into question what the motivation is. Yeah, that's just... You guys are obviously doing it for the love of the hobby, right? For the love of the game. Yeah, this is like baseball. I watch baseball for the love of the game. These guys don't make any money, right? No, of course not. But I look at it that way. I don't want to charge people. Guess what? If you have a product, if you have something out there that you're selling or doing for pinball, you make it, guess what? I'll promote the shit out of it. I'm not going to make anything off of it. congratulations pinball grows paywalls and patreons paywalls and patreons oh my yeah they suck moose balls they do I wish they would just stop this crap especially when you're cutting out comments that you're talking about in the beginning hey we're going to talk about this this and this and then not yeah I'm not as militant as you are but yeah that was really my only issue was the whole, this is our normal episode you would hear, but now this one section you're not going to hear on this show. And I love Dennis, and I love Zach for their content. They do great work. They are one of the best shows out there. The most popular show, according to what they said. I like that, damn it. We are the most popular show. I think they are by listens. Probably by listens, but not by twippies. But it's just a job, you know. Do you really, you know, guess what? You're making $3,000 a month. Congratulations. You are? That's what somebody charges. Somebody charges $5 a month, and he says he has so many subscribers. That's $3,000 a month. Oh, yeah, that's right. Oh, yeah, that's how that 600 listeners thing, which he got every single one of them to vote for him. Exactly. Maybe that's it. Maybe this is a ploy to finally win a Twippy. Yeah, so, but, you know, guess what? spend the $3,000, donate the $3,000. I would be more impressed with that. If you actually did a Patreon and you donated all the money to a charity, there you go. I would be very happy about that for Cancer Society, dogs, that kind of stuff. Make it towards something. Don't just take it and go, thanks, assholes. It's in my pocket now. Well, I mean, there are shows. I have seen shows that they take the money and then they'll get, like, better microphones, a better camera for the show, that kind of stuff. Guess what? That's operating costs. I can agree with that, but not, hey, hey. I'm trying to see what you agree with, Bruce. Hey, hey, $3,000, do you think somebody has $3,000 worth of equipment every month? Oh, no, no. Exactly. No, no. So guess what? Donate it. Well, I don't make anything off of anything I do. Exactly. Yeah. You're doing it for the love of the hobby. And people are going to go, oh, you're stupid for doing that. Guess what? That's your choice. It's these people's choice to charge. Although I should say that I do, you know, when I'm developing a machine, I work with a partner who buys and sells the machines that I work on. And, yeah, we get, you know, somewhat of a premium when we sell because we're selling a one-on-one at that point. Exactly. So there's a little bit of an incentive on that because for a while, yeah. Your time and input has been put in. Programming is not just getting on a podcast and going, hey, I'm going to talk about this. That's not that hard. Well, hitting buttons is not that hard either. I mean, you know. But guess what making boards are. And programming. Programming, you've got to debug a lot of shit. So when we were kids, we used to watch the Jetsons and think, you know, look at George Jetson. All he does is push a button and he makes a good salary. That would be a dream. and that's all we ever do now. I mean, everybody in the world just pushes buttons and they make a good sound. But we don't work on anything as cool as a Uniblab like he did. Or Spacely Sprocket. I just remember that was the computer, Uniblab. I don't have a damn Rosie. Oh, yeah, Rosie. You could. Yeah, I want it where I don't have to walk. I just have conveyor belts everywhere. The future looked really cool in the Justice. But they did have cash in the future, don't forget. That I don't understand. That didn't follow. Oh, yeah. And they had teen idols like Jet Screamer and criminals like Knuckles Nuclear. Yeah. I loved it. Oh, God. What if only somebody made a Jetson film? Yeah, if only they made a Jetson film. They did. Oh, they did. It was a turd. It was a turd. Dun-dun-dun-dun. This game sucks. Don't buy it. Oh, boy. Okay. All that being said. Not a fan. Let's see. What else we got here? Let's just do it. Games you like, games you hate. We do this with every guest. We need to know a game you like and a game you hate. Or if you're one of those guests that I don't hate anything. Okay, game you dislike to a degree. Well, here's the thing. So if I walk up and I get to play pinball, it's a good day, you know? I don't hate playing. Hold on. Is it really? Come on. If you saw, wait a second. If you saw, what was the first game from freaking, from the guys that are now doing Spinal Tap? What was that? The Incredibles. Or not the Incredibles. I mean, that would be great. Thunderbirds. Thunderbirds. If you saw Thunderbirds. All right. I have not had the misfortune of playing Thunderbirds. But if you saw Thunderbirds, he would be like, well, I'll just reprogram it so it doesn't suck. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. So let me say this, though. So I won't give a strong opinion about playing pinball, but I do have strong opinions about pinball machines. And that's because, you know, I get the broken ones, and they have to be working completely when they leave my house. And let me tell you what. There's no such thing as a System 80 machine that I consider to be completely working because it is just minutes, minutes or hours away from failure. And the grounding stuff, oh, my God. See, I worked on a volcano recently. and did every ground that you can possibly do. And I replaced all the capacitors, and I did every single thing. And then, you know what, I was like, okay, I'll just take a flyer. I had a board sitting around, so I'll just drop a new board in it too. So now I feel like I've done my due diligence. What happens when it gets to the owner's site is the pop bumpers start locking on. And so you think, well, did I rebuild the pop bumper boards? Of course I rebuilt the pop bumper boards. Did I completely repin that stupid connector down in the bottom that connects all the grounds to all the grounds? I cleaned it. I didn't repin both sides of it. And that's what it was. It was, you know, the grounding on those machines was like, did they not have grounding in space? Why was Rockwell so, what was wrong with Rockwell? I don't understand. But it's like, isn't the whole idea the pop-up reports so it doesn't lock on? It's just, that's not the way it works. I don't know where you get that idea, but that is not the way it works. Those things are meant to burn up. And why not put solenoid drivers on your solenoid driver board? Well, you've got to sprinkle them around. Like, Volcano has the fire pit. Guess what happened to the fire pit? Caught on fire. Guess why? Because a lamp stuck on, and that's because they were using a lamp to drive a transistor under the... Anyway, I don't know if you've got the sense, but my machine I hate is Volcano. Yeah, I can sense that. We'll just say System 80. We'll just say that. You can blanket that. Yeah, I had the longest three months working on a Spider-Man one time. All right, game you like. What's the game system you like then? We could do it that way. So I like Bally and Stern because they were so, they're bulletproof, and they were absolutely the smallest number of parts to do the most number of things. It's amazing what they squeezed out of, you know, those cheap parts. And the Williams, again, I'm hitting this from an architecture point of view, But the Williams, they did the opposite. They just threw PIAs at everything. They threw circuits at everything. Your lamps are on a matrix. Your switches are on a big 64 matrix. I love the way that they did stuff architecturally, just throwing all the money at it. They made some mistakes in terms of that 40-pin connector, et cetera. But I think they really got it right. When you get to 11, I love a System 11 machine. I like to play them. I like working on them. They over-engineered the System 11s, too, with the stupid interconnect boards. Well, even before that, they had the AC relay crap, and then all the boards under the play field, especially the early System 11s, where the resistors just fall off and then the flashes don't work anymore. Okay, all right. So there's some issues. But, you know, so the machine I currently love, like I said a little bit ago, is Black Knight is in my living room. It's the only machine in my living room. I play it every day almost. I just, I don't know why. I just love Black Knight. And when I don't play well, I just know I need to play better because Steve Ritchie told me so. That's right. Play better. You love it because it's me, Steve Ritchie. Stay tuned for my awesome Elton John pinball machine, Jersey Jack pinball. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I can't wait. Oh, because it's time to dance. Oh, yes. There you go. Okay. Did you sign up for the Beast run? Yes, I signed up for the Beast. What is the Beast, Bruce? The Beast is the Buffalo, I don't know the exact abbreviation. Oh, it stands for something. It does. I had no idea it actually stood for something. Yes, I'm going to look for it right now. It's the Buffalo tournament being run by Canadians. Yes, by Canadians. Oh, Canada. At Pocketeer. At Pocketeer Billiards, where the old Buffalo Opens used to be. Yep, I'm looking it up right now so I can see. So the beast stands for Buffalo Extravaganza Annual Summer Tournaments. It is August 4th through the 6th at the Pocketeer Pinball Club. Annual tournament. So that denotes that they're going to do this every year? I'm assuming so. Okay. So sign-ups were done and are going on. I don't know if it sold out or not, but Ron's joining me, and I'll be repairing there. Yeah, I saw you were on the tech list. I am on the tech list. And I'm bringing a couple games out also. Which games? I don't want to tell yet. You've got to keep it close to your chest. Thank you. But they are classics. That tells you right there what I'm bringing out. Yeah. It's basically like the old Buffalo summer opens. Yeah, but you can't say that. Can't say that. Oh, okay. Sorry. Is it all? It's totally not like them. No, not at all. It has nothing to do with them. Nope. Even though it's pretty much the same format. It's got the main, the classics. But there's women's. Yep. And then there's the you didn't make it, you're a loser Sunday tournament. That's what I call it. That's the one I'm usually in. The you didn't make it, you're a loser. Okay. Ball back time? Yeah, I love the ball back. Oh, my God. What have we done to people? So, yeah, we'll do the ball bag, and then we'll finish with your would you, would you not buy that. Hey, if we go paywall, the ball bag will be hinded. Oh. It'll be hidden with a glory hole. God. Would that be the cheer, the glory hole cheer? The glory hole cheer. That's the only way you get to listen to the ball bag is the glory hole cheer. I like it, yeah. Hey, we're thinking of things on the fly. What other really inappropriate names could we have? We have the Oh My tier. That would be like the first one. We do the Oh My, Oh My tier. Then you have the Glory Hole tier. What was it, the Upper Decker tier you could do? Upper Decker tier, and then we also, hold on. Wow, we got a fourth one? Yes, because Steph made it a couple days ago. And I'm trying to remember the name. She said it was great. Where I just abused the people. Well, while you're looking that up, I'm in the ball bag right here. We're going to start. This one's from Justin You remember Justin from episode 190? I do He says, hi boys I wanted to give you guys an update Since talking to you on episode 190 I have yet to receive my Godzilla premium From Project Pinball But I did receive something else We mentioned on the show I remember this I was presented with an original Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle topper By several members of the Nashville Pinball community They heard on Slam Tilt how much Alice Cooper pinball machine means to me, and they got together and made it happen. I was speechless, emotional, and shocked. Did you see the picture? I did. It was pretty freaking huge. Please help me show my appreciation by giving a shout-out to the local pinballers that made it happen. All right, this shout-out's to you, Joe, Cher, Ian, Zach, Jay, Steve, Chris, Richie, Seth and the No Quarter Crew my fiance Amanda and a special shout out to the ringleader Glenn the Skateboarder Watcher for organizing everything and getting the topper while I was at TPF. I am so blessed to have so many great friends in the pinball community. Have a great rest of the show boys. Justin from episode one nine. Thank you Justin. Thank you Justin. Man I should have saved that for last. I can't top that. We did something good. We just put the good after being so negative all the time. Let's see. This is from Robert. It says, guys. Oh, he has a list. Uh-oh. Stargazer, Stars, Quicksilver, Sea Witch, Centaur. I have a 90s and later arcade collection, and I have space for one of these classic machines. Wow. Which one of these do I pick? or is there one I'm missing? P.S. I was totally happy with my 90s and more modern machines and my arcade, but no, you two had to talk about all these 80s hard-to-get machines. And then I visited the RPC and played them. Now I'm infected. I blame you both, but mostly Bruce. Woo-hoo! First, I'm going to tell you the first rule. Sell a couple of those 90s games, and then you get more 80s, and then you feel better about yourself. That's the first rule. But out of the five, it all depends on what kind of game you want. Do you want an ass-kicking game where you're going to get your ass kicked every time you play it? Of course, stars. Okay, I'm going to be more practical here. If you want one of these games, I would just get stars because you can't go wrong with stars. And if you said, you know, is there one I'm missing, I'll say yes, meteor. You can also get a meteor. No, I'd say countdown. That wasn't one of the ones on the list. I know, I'm thinking. I would say countdown if you're missing one. These are high-production games that are not obscenely expensive. Exactly. Centaur is so cool, though. I know. It is great, but it breaks a lot. But it's really expensive now. And it's really expensive. There's a project one in Ohio for $3,800. I was like, holy crap, and you've got to do all the work. Wow. Do you think the prices on Centaur will go up or down after Haggis announces it has their next game? It'll go up. You think it'll go up? Yeah, because that's what's happening right now, some of these fathoms. Okay. Being honest. They're going up. And no, we don't have any inside info what the next Haggis game is, but to me, it can only be one of, it can either be, it's either going to be Centaur or 8-Ball Deluxe, and I would think they'll do Centaur first, and then probably 8-Ball Deluxe after. Hmm. Then I have no idea what they're going to do after that. Yeah. Those are the ones that you have to do. Frontier. Frontier. Crickets. Yes. Literally, crickets. I know. I thought you hate Frontier. I hate Frontier, but it is a good game to sell. I like Frontier. Yeah, because you're looking at these other games like Stargazer, Quicksilver. Those are expensive. You're going to be paying. Expensive. Yeah. Sea Witch is cheaper, but, I mean, you have Beatles, which is kind of a better version. Centaur, expensive. Hey, what do you guys think of the Star's reproduction play field that Beehive did? Not reproduction, like new play field. Re-artwork? Yeah. Ugh. Yeah? If it's new, Bruce is just like, it sucks. It doesn't do anything for me. The original looks great. But, you know, it didn't do anything for me. Congratulations, Eddie Donat. I haven't played too many stars that are completely blown at playfields, though. There are a couple out there. I know, but most of the ones I see are always decent. Yeah, yeah. I agree. Totally so. Did you find our fourth tier, Bruce? Yeah, it's the Bruce tier where you get insulted. That's what you called it. It's just called the Bruce tier. Yeah, the Bruce tier. Okay. You get to follow me around. You get to FaceTime me anytime. You can walk around with me anywhere I'm going. Let's just make that the supplemental tier. There you go. All right. So, yeah, I say stars or meteor. What do you say, Bruce? Stars, meteor, downtown would be a good one. If you want to go ass-kicking great game that's cheap, you can still find that's reasonably priced. If you've got money Then I say Quicksilver I love me a Stars There's no volume knob on a Stars So in a tight setting I don't know You can't adjust the So go Meteor Yeah Meteor There's no volume knob on that drone Well there is on that drone But it's a little droney It's the best drone ever It's a great drone But it's a little droney Somebody said that was like the worst background sound ever I'm like, are you high? That is literally possibly the greatest Solid State background sound ever I know What is the worst Solid State background sound? Ooh Some of the late 70s Valley games with the Future Spa With the background noise on Oh my god, it is terrible Future Spa has it Hot Dogging has it and there's like one or two others. They're terrible. Yeah, they're pretty bad. That's why they're always off. What about the water torture beep on Stellar Wars? Yeah, that's up there too. But I can ignore that a little bit because it's just a beep, beep, beep. Or with another one, the switches, when you hit the switch, any flipper. Hoops does it where it makes sounds when you hit the flipper. It does? I think it does, yeah. I've never – I know Robocop does that. Robocop does it. And Swords of Fury does that. Yeah, it's just that way. That's a pet peeve. never do that Never make a sound when you flip the flipper Sound just changes games though I mean that one thing that I didn realize before I started messing with rules but if you put different sounds on a game it just feels like a totally different game. Yeah. Totally agree. That's what Pinball Brothers is thinking on with Queen. Hmm. Because they got David Thiel in there now to redo the sound package. Oh, cool. All right. That was Robert. Let's see. Da-da-da. Just one more left. Okay. Oh, my. From Glenn. Hi, Glenn. Hi, Glenn. Fuck yeah. Fuck yeah. Hey, guys. Totally crazy idea, but I'm falling in love with classic Gottlieb games. What's wrong with that? Let's see. Genesis. Genesis. Fucking Joker. Poker. Countdown. TX Sector. Victory. Hold your ears, Dick. Volcano. Surf and Safari. Alien Star. Am I missing any? Frank, you're top five of all Gottliebs. Fuck yeah. Fuck yeah. Well, I assume he means they have to be at least solid state because he didn't name any EMs here. He did not. So, top five. Let's see. Well, I Love Alien Star, Surf and Safari, Countdown, Sinbad, and I'll work on my fifth one. Okay. For me, it's going to be Countdown. Bad Girls. Oh, Bad Girls. Okay. I'll put Bad Girls in there. TX Factor. Can't Beat the Music. RoboWar love RoboWar see you lost me at RoboWar RoboWar is so cool it is you just have no taste no taste at all and the fifth one for me would probably be Surfing's not there for me but it is but it isn't it is but it isn't it's like six or seven for me in some ways but in some ways it's kind of cool the goofiness of it really appeals to me. Oh, Tito. I like Tito. Yeah, I'll have to go surfing for the stupidness. Or Cactus Jacks. It is silly. It is silly. Which would make you think I would like it, but I just never was. Nah. Okay. Okay, Dick. Your turn. Give me all those Gottliebs. You know, I love those big, dumb flippers. I love Spider-Man getting scissor-bitched on the right-hand side while everybody else is just, you know, shouts in the inlanes. I love them all. There you go. Okay, so there you go. There's our list. I hope you didn't want them in any particular order, because I don't know. I'm in a real surfing mode lately. But before that, I was in an alien star mode, so. Five would be surfing. Four would be RoboWar. Three, TX Sector. What did I say for my? See, I don't know. TX Sector to me, it's the music is the whole gamut. And the music, I actually like the dots. Yeah, but it's all just spinner all day. That's all it is. I know, but I do like the multiball. I kind of think that's fun. Okay, I'll give you the whole transporting the ball around is pretty cool. Yeah, even though it's not transporting it, it's cool that it acts like it. It looks like it is, yeah. I know. What was, I forget my other game also. Countdown. Countdown, and there was another one. I had five, and I only wrote back four. Countdown's number one now. Yeah, it's tough to be Countdown. Did I say Countdown? If not, I'll say it now. Countdown. All right, then. That was the ball back, which you can only hear in our glory hole here. Let me shout out Dan, who hooked me up with you guys. I listened to your show, but I never dreamed that I could be a guest, and then Dan suggested it. So thanks to Dan. So you are now in the suck up Bruce and Ron tier. This tough cup bruising. That was really not good. No, see, that's how good that's what you get when you're actually... Ew. Is that above the upper decker? It's above the upper decker. Wow. Wow. That's awesome. Yeah. Okay. Oh, my. All right. Would you? We're going to finish it up with would you or would you not buy this? The Monty Hall version. The Monty Hall. For those at home that are under a certain age, that's the guy that used to host Let's Make a Deal. And he was Canadian. Did you know that? I did not know that. Yes. So we have curtain number one, curtain number two, or curtain number three. No, it's door number one, door number two, or door number three. And this is all on eBay, folks. So go to eBay right now. Yep. Even if you're driving, just bring it right up. So our guests will get to pick which door he wants to pick. Now, you can get either a good game, a bad game, or a more game. And they're already picked out. They already picked out. One, two, and three, I have. Okay. So we've got to go through all of them, though, right? Yeah, we've got to go through all of them, yes. Straight down the middle. Ticket number 275-175-016-794. This is what you could have won Oh god Oh man You didn't win this You actually picked this one So this is what you won We have a torch pinball machine Gottlieb For only $3,000 With a $700 flat shipping rate From Newberry Park, California has no issues. Working condition, no issues. Let's see. Original cabinet with original side art in great condition. This is the guy, Joe Zuzu, who's always been on our show. That's why I always get... Oh, Joe Zuzu again. Yep. We always get some good winners from him. How could you use that name, even if it's your real name? I know. I mean, the whole gimmick of the commercials was he was a con man. Hi. Hi. I'm Joe Zuzu. And it was the same. He's lying on the bottom. Yes. Okay, glass-off picks, I mean, that's something. At least he's going to listen to us. Yeah, look at that. A direct overhead glass-off pick. No displays shown or lights shown in any of these pictures. It doesn't even have a power cord as far as we know. Nope. Had no issues. Come on, man, it's got to run. Playfield looks all right. Yeah. I mean. Would you or would you not buy this for $29.99? No, don't say it that way. It's $3,000. Oh, I'm sorry. $2,999.99. No. Actual retailer's price. Actual retailer's price. Probably $500. But no. Now, here's what you could. Well, you get to say yes or no. Would you or would you not buy that? No. I wouldn't even buy that with Ron's money. Wow. So here's what you could have won. And you couldn't buy it with Bruce's money because he burned it. Remember? Remember, I've earned it because I had runs. Here's what you could have won with one of our doors. Ticket number 334-830-258-193. This is where you get that womp, womp, womp, womp music. We have a stern memory lane, a memory lane, complete original condition, have not turned it on. Okay. Starting bid, though, of $550. Mm-hmm. Does it have a reserve? No. Buy it now. Buy it now for $1,200. $1,200, which I wouldn't do that. But $550. So let's take a peek out of here. Yeah. This was the womp, womp, womp, womp. And you'll see in one of the pictures why. He's got the glass out, but leaning out. That's a trans light. The glass is this thing. Ah. He saw the picture Oh my god He saw the picture You gotta wait for Ron's reaction now Did it ship like that? I don't think it could Wait for Ron Come on Ron Oh the top of it is Wow It's like disintegrating It is gone really It is rotting badly Yes Wow Yeah. Playfields, tons of wear. Yep. Back glass is broken, so it's got trans light. Mm-hmm. No shots of the boards inside, except for the one with the battery. Yeah, somebody's been monkeying with it. It's got some jumper stuff going on. Oh, yeah, there's a lot of. Free local pickup from Madison, Ohio. Yep. $550. Currently not playing, so it's broke. Yep. Definitely a... This was the want, want, want, want, want one. But note, he's read that only 2,624 memory lane pinballs were made. Wow. Yet I see one at every location and every show I go to. It's so weird. I had one. It's old mine. Yeah. I'm just not a fan of any... If you're going to put buttons in the middle of your play field, then who knows what's going to happen. You know what I mean? Oh, they stick a lot, too. They're not that great. Oh, wait a minute. So, okay. He said the glass, the original glass is included, but he says it's almost clear. Which basically means all the, it's faded. It's flaked off. He's got a couple pictures of the backbox first. Yeah, he does have it. I didn't see the other ones. But, yeah, that backbox head is smoked. Yep. It is quite smoked. I wonder how the ring came on this. A little paint. You'll be fine. Yeah, a little Bondo. We're good to go. No. No. Would you or would you not buy this? Oh, no. No. And now, door number three we actually had, which would be like the grand prize. Yeah, the other one was the donkey, and this one was, yeah. You got the middle one. Ticket number 394-563-342-227. Oh, come on, Bruce. What? How is this the prize? All your prizes suck. Well, because now, because of the new movie, it's now a premium. Oh, I get it. It's a Super Mario Brothers pinball machine. Gottlieb. Works and plays great with Topper. Only $15,000. I'm going to get $17,000 for it once I put that guy's voice on it. Who's that guy? Chris Pine? No. Or no, the guy from Guardians. Chris. Chris. Oh, God. Did I mess this up by saying Chris? It's probably not Chris. No, it is Chris. It's 100%. Chris Hemsworth or something? Yeah, no. No. No. No. I think you got it wrong. People are yelling at it right now. Fucking assholes! What was he? Starlord. Guardians of the Galaxy. I'll just look that up. Chris Pratt. Chris Pratt! There you go. Yeah, you put his voice on there, you get another two grand out of it. Yep. Easy. As many new upgrades and mods, just about every mod available is on this machine. I didn't know there were that many mods available for the Gottlieb machines, but I have not seen another one of these for sale. I'm this shape. I'm this shape. Oh, and a long time with the long and long being capitalized for some reason. Everything works as it should. Oh, it has new Invisiclass. Two new boards. professionally gone through by pinball company. Manual and keys in hand, ready for a lot more play. No, once you start playing it, you won't want to play it that much. Trust me. Although this is probably one of their bigger sellers. I am willing to ship myself and my pickup truck. That's another thing. This is one that got these bigger 90s sellers, so they made a ton of these. So it's not even like it's rare. Yep. Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. For a second, I thought it was the LEDs. It's actually got, it has arc blades. Yes, it does. Oh. Yeah. No. No. That would be the super grand prize. So you actually did pick the winner in some ways. No, there are no winners here. You are a loser. Okay, why is there a picture of the side that's cropped out by itself? I know. That's weird. That doesn't make any sense. Did it show something he didn't want? I mean, you can see it in another shot. I know. I don't get it. And it does have a little bit of clown LEDing. Yeah, it does have some clown LEDs. Yeah. Bruce, your game sucked today. Man, eBay ain't the place to get this shit, that's for sure. No, it's not lately. It's been pretty bad. Oh, man. Hey, do you guys think that new rules could help that Bugs Bunny game? Or is that play field just not shaped right? It's just not fun. Really? I've only played it a few times ever. It's not fun. It's got that weird thing on the left, right? Like the reverse play field? Yeah, and it's like a single play. I think it's a single ball, isn't it? It's by that guy. Yes, it is. But you know the art is by Python, so that makes it worth more. Say, hold on. I think that has, because I thought the last single ball game that Williams did was a bad cast, and that was 89. and I believe Bugs Bunny was after that. So it definitely has multiball. Come on, Bugs Bunny wouldn't hear of not having multiball in his game. The V, the V, that's all, folks. Yeah, it's pretty bad, though. As the story goes, Python's whole thing was like, I will never do a licensed art package until they give him that one. And even he could not turn down the chance to draw Bugs Bunny. All right. I say go for it. Do some new coats. See what happens. I have to find one first. And that's the problem. That's the problem. The problem I have right now is the opposite. I've got, like I said, I'm working with a partner, and he took it as his mission to fill my entire house with pinball machines. So I'm sitting about 20 right now, and I just don't know where to start. I've just got so many. Where can I get a partner like this? Just fill my entire house with games. You don't even want to know the deal he got on a whole trailer full of games. It was crazy. And there was the one that I can't wait to work on, and hopefully I will bring to Pentastic this year, is a really nice condition Defender in my basement right now. Ooh. I like Defender. I like Defender a lot. Hey, I got a Quicksilver. Wink, wink. Hint, hint. Wink, wink. Defender is what? One of 369 maybe? Yeah. But it's one of the two that run like a different... It's like a seven game, but it's only a two-player game. I remember with the Kahoot boards, it's one of like one or two games that has special dip switch setup because it's the only one that is something. There's Defender and like another one. Oh, yeah, it was Hyper Ball and Defender. But yeah, if you ever play that thing, you'll be like, Jesus, how much did this thing cost? I'd love to get me a Defender. because it's got, they're all controlled, if I remember. They're single drop targets controlled. It's got the weird one. It's got a lock shot. You've got to hit it with that upper flipper. It's hard to hit. Great game. And it's got all the awesome William sounds in it, so you know that's going to be good. They had the best sounds. They had the best sounds. Well, you know, I take that back. There was some really, really nice Gottlieb sounds, you know, in there, too. But, yeah, William's had some good ones. Thank you, Eugene Jarvis, for your sound system. Yeah, if we want to go for a game I'd like to get, Defender would be one too also, definitely. See, that would be good for the Rochester Pinball Club. No, that fucking wouldn't. Oh, that would be a nice rare game. Whoever gets to see that. Yeah, the problem is if something breaks on it, like plastics or anything like that, you're S-O-L and wear and everything. No way. I want to have that game to make sure no one can play it. Yeah, because guess what? My Batman 66 has frickin' playfield wear now on it. Really? Oh, yeah. Well, that's also gotten played a shit ton. Oh, yeah, no, but it's wearing because they crunched down the metal guides on the playfield and then it chipped and went from there. Terrible. Go Stern! Yay! Yay! Let's see. Have you bashed everyone, Bruce, that you wanted to bash this episode? Just want to make sure. Check your list. I'm going down the list right now internally. I got some names for you. I'll give you after. Okay, give me right now. No, no, no, no, no. I'm good. I'm good. I think I'm good on that. We're good? We're good? Okay. Let's see. That's all I got. This has been episode 204. Dick, would you like to plug anything one last time or plug some people saying thank you in the eyes? Yeah. I mean, thanks to everybody out at Pinside who's been helpful. There have been a number of people. Sorry. I think it would have been helpful. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, there's been a mix, but I wouldn't have been able to do everything I do. This is a mystery for me, and I don't need you guys to solve it, but there's a guy on Pinside named Zach, and I know there's a million Zacks in the pinball community, but I don't know if he's the same Zach as your Zach. Zach A.J. would be our Zach. Zach A.J. was super helpful on our Zach because I read his blog on, you know, He was working on a Dracula maybe or something, and he blogged how to interface with the PIA chips, and that was a big help for me. Also, I don't know if he's your Scott. See, I got this problem. But there's a Scott on Pinside who was also really helpful. He does code for old machines. Scott Charles. Scott Charles. That's the one. God, you guys know everybody. Yep. Scott was super helpful. Quench, Juto, and I haven't talked to Soren, but I've read some of Soren's stuff. We're lucky to have a lot of good friends At a podcast And one of my close friends Down in Massachusetts Hopefully he'll get out to Rochester One of these days Ben goes by Seth Benjamin on Pinside And he's been my sanity check On a lot of this stuff because It helps to have somebody on your side When it feels like Other people are just trying to Bash away Yeah, bash away But, you know, like I said, I like to try to keep a thick skin, but sometimes it's like, man, I wasn't doing this to insult you guys. I don't know what the animosity is for. So much bashing, Bruce. You know. I'm hurt. I'm woke now. I'm crying. Yep. Here you go. I didn't get my way. This has been episode 204, Bruce Never Gets His Way. So thanks, everybody. Where can they reach us? They can reach us. I said it several times. I'm going to make you do it again. Well, I have a list right here of verses. It's like plugs and website email info and all that, so I don't forget that stuff anymore. Okay. So, hi, Steve. Hi, Zach. Oh, yeah. Hi, Steve. Hi, Zach. Fun with bonus. Fun with bonus. Did you see the picture of Dusty Rhodes, a.k.a. Day Fix? Yeah, someone took Dusty Rhodes and put him in a picture of him next to Steven Bowden with Day Fix's face on it. That's right, Pedro. 100% there. The American dream of American pinball. Making pinball for everybody. Catch my biography on A&E. It came out last week. It was awesome, baby. I watched it. Actually, that is a shoot right there. I highly recommend you watch the A&E biography on Dusty Rhodes. It is fucking awesome. Just saying. If you want to hear what awesome promos are all about, baby. That's right, baby. We're talking about some galactic tank force, baby. We got tanks, baby. That's all I got. Sorry. Okay. Yeah, slamtailpodcast at gmail.com. Check out our website, www.slamtailpodcast.com. All our links are there. I've been taking some heat lately because I haven't been streaming. Yeah. I'm sorry. It's hard to stream just solo. It's easier when there's other people. Like, what am I going to do? Like, I'm just playing a game and looking at 10 people in chat, maybe. You know what's coming up in three weeks, though, Ron? What's coming up in three weeks, Bruce? Allentown. The chance to hug Ron. The chance to meet both members of the Slamtail Podcast. One of the few times. Yes. How about going to Fantastic? I don't know yet. That's a possibility. What is it now? When is it? It's the same time it always is. I thought they changed it. Oh, no, that's wrong. I said the exact wrong thing. It literally is a completely different time than it already is. It's in September. Maybe. If it's the end of September, I can't. I'll be away again. Oh. Vacation. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, my vacation's going to be warmer and nicer. The dog is pissed that you're on vacation. Not my dog. I have a small dog, not a big dog. So, yes, okay, in that case, this is the possibly only time you'll get to see both members of the Slamtail Podcast together. Unless you go to RPC. Or stop. Or stop, yes. Stop west. Yes. Bruce, come to Fantastic and you can buy my Defender. I don't want to buy you on my trade basis. We'll have to talk about Defender pricing, but oh my God, I can imagine my butthole just being opened up so much. Oh, so much. Gaping. Gaping. You don't even know. I can imagine. My hassle is so big right now, I just shit out a whole pinball machine. All right. I take it back. I don't want your money, man. I don't want it. I got Ron's. I got Ron's money. I burned my own. I'll get it to tighten up. You can also check Super Bowl Chronicles, my other podcast. It's on the Pinball Network. And I'm back to normal. That's plug number two. That is. Exactly. That is number two. I don't get two plugs on his, you know. Yeah, you won't either. You with the whole co-host thing, that's not satisfactory, all that bullshit you made me go through. Well, I didn't bring up the bullshit. it, Jeff Deol has brought it up. Exactly. Why am I giving him money for the Beast then? He caused all these problems. And I was just a willing participant from 199 episodes. Yes, you were. Yeah. Called Sucker, like our jackass on the old donkey picture. Donkey picture? Remember the old cartoons where you like Sucker, you know, have a lollipop? We went over the, yes, yes. The donkey, yes, the donkey picture and then I brought the Sucker. Yep. There you go. All right. Thanks, everybody. Thank you, Dick Dick Hamill, for being with us today. Thank you, guys, for having me. And let me say that I will start streaming again. If anybody wants to go sign up at Twitch, Dick Dick Hamill. Dick Hamill is H-A-M-I-L-L, just like Mark spells it. I'll start streaming again. But you guys got to tell me if new code is what you want to see or whatever. I got tons of machines here. I can go either way. If not, you can just say you're Mark Dick Hamill's brother and you have the force. So you need to watch this stream. There you go. There you go. Just don't play Star Wars. Do you like Star Wars at all, Nick? It's Star Wars. Win. For the win. It's okay. It's okay. I'm convinced at this point that me and Zach are the only two people in the world who like Star Wars. Yeah. So are those two. Oh, okay. So the three of us are the only ones. Three stupid amigos. Because I was watching the District 82 tournament that's going on at multiple games on Fireball Classic, and I think I'm the only one who likes Fireball Classic. I like Fireball Classic. Okay, we're the only two people who like Fireball Classic, because, man, the chat does not like that game. God, they hate it so much. They don't like lock stealing. I love lock stealing. I love lock stealing. I want to see a high-level tournament be decided on Fireball Classic. All right. Thanks, everybody. Until next time, this has been Episode 204. I think I remembered everything. Until next time, say goodbye, Bruce. Goodbye, Dave Romanowski. I don't need to keep you alive. Meteor! Level Zero! Clusterfuck! Searcy Kai! Jim Ball! Bruce Dism! Tournament Trap! Car Holder! Zeta! Xanadu! Hashgraph! ELO! Ball Fights! What you buyin'? Give you love. Give you hurt. Turn it on. Leave no pressure. Yeah. Oh, my. Oh, my. Oh, my. Oh, my. I wouldn't mind getting paid to edit, because that's the part I hate. Me? Do I make your life a little living hell? I make my own life a living hell. I edit way more than I should. Hey, speaking of edits, I got someone at the door, and I'll be back in five seconds. Got you. Buffalo Extravaganza Annual Summer Tournament. Okay, wait until Dick comes back. I know, yeah. Did you sign up? I just said yes. Okay, I didn't hear you. I was too busy doing other things also. You were too busy doing other things? You weren't looking it up yet. I was typing it in. I went the wrong way. _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 748f96ac-8aae-4796-947a-defe2630d46b*