# The Super Awesome Pinball Show - S1 E15 **Source:** The Super Awesome Pinball Show **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2020-09-15 **Duration:** 115m 16s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://superawesomepinballshow.libsyn.com/the-super-awesome-pinball-show-s1-e15 --- ## Analysis Episode 15 of The Super Awesome Pinball Show features hosts Christopher Franchi and Christian Lyne with guest Jeff Parsons from the Pinball Players Podcast. The discussion covers recent pinball activities during COVID-19 lockdowns, including visits to arcade venues, home game maintenance, vacation experiences, and ongoing voice work for Rick and Morty pinball code updates. Topics include game complexity (Simpsons Pinball Party), pinball community resilience, and personal anecdotes about competitive play and machine restoration. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Jeff Parsons is president of the New England Pinball League and is managing reopening logistics during COVID-19 pandemic — _Parsons states: 'I'm president of the New England Pinball League, so I'm kind of in the process of figuring out who's open, what state regulations are going on'_ - [HIGH] Several New England pinball venues have closed permanently during lockdown: Flat Top Johnny's (Boston), Mystic Pinball (Western Mass) — _Parsons: 'We've lost Flat Top Johnny's in Boston. We lost Mystic Pinball in Western Mass.'_ - [HIGH] Morristown Game Vault arcade in New Jersey features 15-20 pinball machines in immaculate condition with mods and color DMDs in a restored bank building — _Franchi describes visiting: 'It's got the columns on the outside... filled with arcade games and pinball machines. There's something like 15 to 20 pins... in immaculate condition'_ - [HIGH] Jeff Parsons has been doing voice work for Rick and Morty pinball, adding new call-outs to Roy mode code — _Parsons: 'I did more call-outs for Rick and Morty for the Roy mode... they're basically call-outs like, hey, the announcer's getting really upset'_ - [MEDIUM] Parsons previously did voice work for a Cactus Canyon remake for Eric (likely Stern designer) — _Parsons: 'I got the gig because he did the remake of Cactus Canyon... he asked me to do a voice for one of those. It was like a cowboy.'_ - [HIGH] Simpsons Pinball Party has exceptionally deep rule complexity with alien invasion being only one of six parts needed to reach final mode — _Franchi: 'I hit this alien invasion mode... that's like one of six parts that you have to complete to get to the final mode. I was nowhere near.'_ - [HIGH] Clay Harrell's Ann Arbor pinball show features approximately 300 pinball and arcade games, mostly his personal collection with ~10 machines belonging to others — _Franchi: 'how many of these games are yours, and how many are other people's? He says, like, 10 of these are other people's.'_ - [HIGH] Christopher Franchi is currently working on artwork for a new pinball game pitch (theme and manufacturer undisclosed) — _Franchi: 'I started artwork for a new pitch... I'm not going to say what, I'm not going to say who'_ ### Notable Quotes > "The secret is do it when you feel like doing it... if you listen, great. If you don't, eh, no big deal. I'm doing it because I enjoy it." > — **Jeff Parsons**, ~0:08:00 > _Reveals podcast sustainability philosophy—quality over consistency drives long-term engagement_ > "One of the most disheartening things in pinball has to be looking down on your play field and seeing a screw that you have no idea where it came from" > — **Christian Lyne**, ~0:35:00 > _Humorous but relatable frustration about manufacturing variability and unknown hardware loose in machines_ > "There's something like 15 to 20 pins... in immaculate condition... And there's a big bank vault in the back and you walk in the bank vault and there's a safecracker pinball machine in there, which was super cool." > — **Christian Lyne**, ~0:38:00 > _Highlights themed arcade venue appeal and experiential design in location-based pinball_ > "I swear there's no other game deeper than that thing for us... It was nowhere near [the wizard mode]. It's such a crock." > — **Christian Lyne**, ~0:48:00 > _Criticism of Simpsons Pinball Party's extreme rule complexity and grinding requirements for casual players_ > "Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man is one of those... the thing I love about the game is how they integrated basically a Pac-Man game in with just inserts in the middle of the play field." > — **Jeff Parsons**, ~1:15:00 > _Analysis of innovative rule integration in classic pinball design_ > "I'm like, yeah, I would love that... Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man when I'm done with it for the winter. Give me that!" > — **Jeff Parsons**, ~1:12:00 > _Community generosity and machine lending culture in pinball collector scene_ > "Hearing myself in it, I still get to play the damn game though... hearing the first time I heard it was when it debuted on adult swim. I'm like, wow, that is really cool. I'm in a pinball machine." > — **Jeff Parsons**, ~1:28:00 > _Personal fulfillment from voice actor role in pinball machine production_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Christopher Franchi | person | Pinball artist and co-host; working on artwork for new unrevealed game pitch; attended Ann Arbor pinball show; visited Morristown Game Vault | | Christian Lyne (Dr. Pin) | person | Co-host of Super Awesome Pinball Show; works on pinball projects at home; experienced competitive player; visited Morristown Game Vault and Ann Arbor show | | Jeff Parsons | person | Guest host; co-host of Pinball Players Podcast (61 episodes); president of New England Pinball League; radio DJ; voice actor for Rick and Morty and Cactus Canyon pinball; competitive Maine pinball player | | Morristown Game Vault | venue | Restored bank arcade in Morristown, New Jersey featuring 15-20 pristine pinball machines with mods, color DMDs, safecracker machine in bank vault | | Clay Harrell | person | Collector and arcade operator; hosting Ann Arbor pinball show; owns ~300 pinball and arcade machines (mostly personal collection); owns former Christian Lyne Beatles pinball | | Chuck Webster | person | Pinball collector in Tennessee/Maine area; owns Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man and Hot Wheels; lending machines to competitors; active in New England competitive scene | | Arcadia National Bar | venue | Portland, Maine location; closed during COVID-19 pandemic but adapted with takeout window; venue for New England Pinball League play | | New England Pinball League | organization | Tournament organization in New England region; put on hold during COVID-19; planned to resume season after new year; president is Jeff Parsons | | Pinball Players Podcast | product | Podcast hosted by Jeff Parsons and co-host Joe Lemaire; 61+ episodes; recently increased production after Joe joined | | Rick and Morty Pinball | game | Pinball game receiving ongoing code updates; Roy mode featuring new call-outs voiced by Jeff Parsons; continued development with new features being added | | Simpsons Pinball Party | game | Extremely complex ruleset with alien invasion as one of six parts to reach final mode; considered very difficult for casual players; available at Morristown Game Vault | | Hot Wheels Pinball | game | Spooky Pinball title; praised for beauty, speed, and multi-generational appeal; features stop-motion animation integration from YouTube series | | Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man Pinball | game | Classic pinball with integrated video game elements via playfield inserts; owned by Chuck Webster; being loaned to Jeff Parsons; highly prized by collectors | | Ryan Claytor | person | Artist and author; created Coin-Out book with Nick Baldridge; designed carnival-themed watch with moving game targets; met at Ann Arbor show | | Nick Baldridge | person | Co-author with Ryan Claytor on Coin-Out book about carnival games; active in pinball community | | Rodney | person | Friend of Christian Lyne; met at Morristown Game Vault; accompanied on arcade visit | | Eric | person | Likely Stern pinball designer; directed Rick and Morty code additions and Cactus Canyon remake; collaborated with Jeff Parsons on voice work | | Joe Lemaire | person | Co-host of Pinball Players Podcast with Jeff Parsons; takes more active role in episode production; helps drive show direction | | Chicago Gaming Company | company | Pinball manufacturer; sponsor of show; remakes games like Monster Bash and Medieval Badness | | Cointaker.com | company | Distributor of new/used pinball machines, mods, accessories, LEDs; show sponsor | ### Topics - **Primary:** COVID-19 impact on pinball venues and tournaments, Home pinball game maintenance and restoration projects, Arcade venue experiences (Morristown Game Vault, Ann Arbor show), Voice acting and code development for Rick and Morty pinball - **Secondary:** Rule complexity and game depth analysis (Simpsons, Wonka), Competitive pinball scene resilience in Maine, Machine collecting and lending culture - **Mentioned:** Podcast sustainability and content creation philosophy ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.72) — Hosts maintain upbeat, humorous tone despite pandemic restrictions. Positive about venue experiences and community resilience. Some frustration about game complexity and venue closures, but generally celebrating adaptive community responses. Banter is friendly and self-deprecating. ### Signals - **[community_signal]** Spooky Pinball (Hot Wheels) continuing code development and content integration with YouTube stop-motion animation series (confidence: medium) — Parsons praises Hot Wheels integration: 'they integrated with the whole—I had no idea there was a thing on YouTube. There was all the stop-motion animation of the show' - **[event_signal]** Ann Arbor pinball show with ~300 games operating with COVID-19 safety protocols (timed tickets, crowd density management, social distancing measures) (confidence: high) — Franchi describes Clay Harrell's show with ticket time slots (9a-12p, 12p-3p, 3p-6p, 6p-9p) across 5-6 buildings to manage crowd density - **[community_signal]** Machine lending culture and community generosity: Chuck Webster gifting playfield and offering Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man loan to Jeff Parsons (confidence: high) — Parsons: 'he gave me one of the playfields... he said, if you want to borrow Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man when I'm done with it for the winter' - **[competitive_signal]** New England Pinball League suspended operations during pandemic; tournament play shifted to home games with social distancing protocols (confidence: high) — Parsons describes playing at Chuck Webster's home with masks, distancing, and noting standard tournament was cancelled - **[design_philosophy]** Simpsons Pinball Party criticized for extreme rule complexity creating prohibitive grind for casual/intermediate players (confidence: high) — Franchi: 'There's no other game deeper than that thing... one of six parts... I was nowhere near. This is such a crock' - **[community_signal]** Jeff Parsons expanding voice acting work for pinball games (Rick and Morty, Cactus Canyon remake) (confidence: high) — Parsons describes voice work for Roy mode and Cactus Canyon cowboy voice, with Rick and Morty code still in active development - **[product_strategy]** Christopher Franchi working on artwork for new unrevealed pinball game pitch from undisclosed manufacturer (confidence: high) — Franchi: 'I started artwork for a new pitch. Let's just say that. I'm not going to say what, I'm not going to say who' - **[venue_signal]** Arcadia National Bar (Portland, Maine) adapted to pandemic closure by converting front door to takeout window; maintained takeout operations to stay solvent (confidence: high) — Parsons: 'They've been closed from the beginning. They kept going by actually turning their front door into a takeout window' - **[venue_signal]** Multiple New England pinball venues permanently closed during COVID-19: Flat Top Johnny's (Boston), Mystic Pinball (Western Mass) (confidence: high) — Parsons: 'We've lost Flat Top Johnny's in Boston. We lost Mystic Pinball in Western Mass.' --- ## Transcript Let's have some fun. This is like the sensitive, awesome pinball show right now. It's the Super Whiny Pinball Show. Your host and big baby brat, Bruce Ritchie. And the guy that hates him and takes everyone else's side, Christian Luck. The guy who likes to throw him under the bus. Please focus on the show. The following is an ad-hoc radio production. It's the Super Whiny Pinball Show. Pinball Show. That's right. It's time for your favorite pinball show with your favorite hosts, pinball artist Christopher Franchi and Dr. Pin himself, Christian Lyne. And don't you stop and don't satisfy. Oh, yeah. Also, a rotating gallery of bonus co-hosts to spice things up. Don't satisfy. Sponsored by Chicago Gaming Company, home of your favorite top-quality pinball remakes like Monster Bash, Medieval Badness, and more. Visit Chicago-Gaming.com. And by Cointaker.com, distributors of new in-box pinball machines, mods, accessories, LEDs, and much more. That's Cointaker.com. Also by BackGalleyCreations.com, makers of the most amazing pinball mods, black barrel pinballs, and the easy-slide playfield support system. That's BackGalleyCreations.com. Hello, you pinball rock stars out there. It's episode number 15 of the Super Awesome Pinball Show, and we've got a doozy again this week. We're going to go over our last two weeks in pinball, teases from Deep Ruth and Jersey Jack, more show cancellations, accessories and mods, floating pinballs, new innovations, and more, plus an exclusive interview with Mr. Keith Elwin of Stern Pinball. And we're doing all of this with another awesome guest host. And if you don't know our next guest, please hang your head in shame, because he's one of the nicest guys in pinball. He's big into the competitive pinball scene in Maine, and he moonlights as a radio DJ, and he's now working at his real job, hosting one of my all-time favorite podcasts, the Pinball Players Podcast. Welcome to the show, Mr. Jeff Parsons. Hey, thank you for that, I guess, nice welcome. Where I make the money is on the radio, but I'm not listening to the podcast. Hey, we didn't mention the months in between episodes or anything. Oh, right. It didn't take you any time, did it? What are we, like less than a minute into the show and already you're telling me I haven't put out an episode? That's right. It's only been eight weeks, that's all. no big deal, you know? The pinball world has kind of come down to a real slow roll right now, so it's not like there's a lot of news, but it's all happening now. I'll give you that. I'll give you that. That's true. Alright, well, welcome aboard, sir. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Thanks for the invite. Yeah, we're happy to have you, man. We've got a few questions for you, just, you know, for people who might not know you super well. Tell us a little bit about your involvement in pinball. I have been playing pinball ever since I was old enough to shove a chair in front of a pinball machine and stand on top of it so I could reach the flippers. Always loved pinball ever since I was a kid. I learned how to play by watching guys in a diner I went to with my mom. She was friends with the person that owned it and she would give me quarters just to go play the pinball machine. And I'd play and I'd watch other people play with their ashtray over the scorecard, smoking a butt, flipping, and I learned how to play a lot of games at a young age at that point. Games like Matahari. She had a Flash Gordon for a long time there, but these were all new at that time. That really got me into pinball. And when I really started to actually learn more about how you can play it is when I was in high school, a kid that was in my chemistry class, I was at a bowl, you know, and I was watching him play. And he did a post pass. And I'm like, what? You can do that? That's a thing. And all of a sudden now I wasn't just flipping away. I was controlling the ball. And then I really got into it, threw away my entire freshman year in college by playing games like Earthshaker and Whirlwind and Monday Night Football in the student union. skipped it because I wanted to go to be in radio and was taking stupid classes that had nothing to do with radio. I just skipped everything, played pinball, and it just grew from there. That's what she said. Then when I discovered that there was actually a guy not more than 20 miles from where I lived that had 50 plus pinball machines in his house. Wow, man, freaked out. Everything opened up. I realized that there's a real competitive scene, a real collector scene. This guy introduced me to everything. I started playing in tournaments. I went to pop-up for the first time, and then it's It's just a snowball from there, and I've just loved it ever since I was a kid. Nice. You're 61 episodes into your own pinball podcast. What's your secret? Because most people who have started off in podcasting when you did have kind of faded off and gone on to do other things, but you stuck with it. So how does that happen? The secret is cock magic. No, honestly, it's about your complaint. The secret is do it when you feel like doing it. For a while, I got stuck in like when I first started, it's like every week I've got an episode every week. And I originally started doing it by myself. It's a little bit more of a challenge there, but I was thinking, I work with two people on a morning show every day. I just kind of want to do a solo thing. And that was great for a while, but then we got Joe Lemaire on board, and I think the show's taken a whole new direction, and I really enjoy it even more now. But I have to be in a spot where I'm like, yeah, I want to do this. I feel good about this, and I want to. and that's when it happens. I gave up on the, you know, make sure you get an episode out every week so people stick around. It's like, if you listen, great. If you don't, eh, no big deal. I'm doing it because I enjoy it. And when I'm not enjoying it, don't waste the time. So when I feel the need, that's when I do a show and we're good to go. Joe sometimes feels the need a little more often than I do, I think. But, you know, until he starts editing and then, you know, we're going to go on my timetable. But no, it's just been great. Ever since Joe came on, the show is, I think it's really even more entertaining than it ever was. So we got a good vibe going. Well, when I talked to Joe about having you on, he said, oh, you know, when you get him, make sure you tell him to record more often. So, you know, going back to what you were talking about with watching the big kids play pinball, you know, at the CD bars or whatever. I don't know if this was just something that happened in my area of the world. But back then, did you put your quarter up on the glass up by the lock bar, like as if to say, I've got next game? I never did on pinball. I did on video games in arcades, but I never did on pinball. I used to do that in the hockey rinks until this one kid that was about three feet taller than me finished his game, and he just looked at me, and he looked down, and he took my quarter off the glass and put it in. I knew that was coming. Oh, sweet. It's no good. Fucking ouch. I hope he's dead. I hope he got syphilis and died. Oh, nice. How do you really do, man? How are you doing in Maine, man? How are things going there, and how is pinball? Like, how is the pinball scene out there right now? It's kind of at a standstill for the most part. I don't know if you guys know, but I'm president of the New Robert Englunds Pinball League, so I'm kind of in the process of figuring out who's open, what state regulations are going on, and when we can get back into the whole competitive pinball scene. The local place that we have here, Arcadia National Bar, which, if you're ever in Maine, and you're ever in Portland, Maine, check the place out. It's great. They've been closed from the beginning. They kept going by actually turning their front door into a takeout window. Some people are still ordering, and they'll come up to the window in no pinball, but at least they're staying afloat for now. It looks like they're going to come out whenever we get out of this still around. But we've lost a few places in New Robert Englunds. We lost Flat Top Johnny's in Boston. We lost Mystic Pinball in Western Mass. We lost. So there are some people just playing at home. If you've got games at home, we might invite a friend over. I did go down to Chuck Webster's a couple weeks ago. He invited three of us, Nicole, Bernier, Mackay, and me to go down and play. Like it was a round of New Robert Englunds pinball. We played Hot Wheels and some of the other new games he had. All socially distanced, masks on, six feet of the whole deal. But it was fun, and it was nice to play, but it just didn't eel quite right. Because, one, I hadn't played for so long, so I sucked. Nothing but garbage. Right. And, you know, when you're wearing a mask, I hate to say it, but it kind of affected my gameplay, I think. Anyway, it was a different experience. But, you know, I'm trying to see. I've got one machine myself that's my buddy JR's NASCAR, so I flip it every once in a while. But other than that, it's really not a lot going on. Here in Maine, places like bars still aren't really able to open for things like pinball because, I mean, I think we all know pinball. Everybody's touching everything. So I think it will get to that point at some point, but I don't think we're close now. We were supposed to start a new season of New Robert Englunds Pinball League this week, and the next one will start after the new year, and I don't even think we're going to make that one. We're just on hold until everything kind of gets back to where we can do this again. Yeah, as everyone else is pretty much everywhere. It's unfortunate that you've lost some really epic places out there. I've always wanted to go out to Mystic Pinball. That seemed like a really cool location. But I'm glad guys like Chuck are kind of keeping the scene alive to a certain extent. I've seen him streaming Hot Wheels all the time. What did you think of Hot Wheels? I like it. You know, I didn't get a whole lot of play on it, but what little I played, it's hands down, it's the best thing that these guys have put out so far. I mean, I do like Oktoberfest, but, I mean, that side ramp just is not ever happening for me. Right. I think it loses a lot of that. But Hot Wheels, it's a fast game. It's a beautiful-looking game, I think. And I like the appeal. It kind of has a multi-generational appeal. I mean, who doesn't know Hot Wheels? And the way they integrated with the whole—I had no idea there was a thing on YouTube. There was all the stop-motion animation of the show. And I'm like, wow, this is the—because at first I saw the dinosaur. I'm like, what the hell is a dinosaur doing in that? And I'm like, oh, this actually makes sense. It's fun. The way they've done it is really good. I really enjoy it. You know, you bring up an interesting point because you said that Hot Wheels was sort of a multi-generational thing. I've been a proponent to have the monster cereals made into a pinball machine for that same exact reason because kids that are 60 and kids that are 66 all know Count Chocula and Frankenberry and Booberry, but I can't get anybody to bite. Do you remember, you're old enough to remember when they weren't just a Halloween cereal, right? They were all year round. You remember that? Yeah. I ate Booberry like in the middle of June. It was fantastic. Frank, I had some last night. Yeah, I saw your Facebook post. No, that was this morning. You were snarfing some. Oh, this morning. Nice. It was actually not this morning. It was this afternoon. So just start your afternoon with blueberry because I had just gotten up. Don't eat too much, though, because it will change the color of things, if you know what I mean. I found out I was. I freaked out when I told my mom. I was like, what's wrong with me? She said, well, you ate too much blueberry. That makes pooping fun. Yeah. Let's not talk about poop. I'm sorry. I went that way. You can take your apology and shove it straight up your ass. I'm sorry. Yeah, I got to get somebody to bite on the monster's ears. That'd be way too cool. I'm all for it. Yeah, man. Well, you guys want to head into our last two weeks of pinball? I would love that. As a matter of fact, let's play that theme right now. Our last few weeks of pinball. Pinball. Well, I had a week of vacation last week, so I had nowhere to go. thanks to school and COVID. So that meant I played a ton of pinball at home and I worked on some pinball projects around the house. I worked on some questions for the Keith Elwin interview that's coming up. But man, every time I have a break, I just say, okay, what of my piling up list of pinball projects should I do this week? So I had a bunch of Planetary Pinball Supply, Cool William stuff that I had bought last year that was all of their blueprints from a bunch of their different games and some some really cool iconic stuff i got for christmas a williams flipper blueprint from 1963 medieval madness tower blueprint and saw blade from theater of magic and spinner from mystic and that sort of thing so i got those all framed it took a little while but i have them and now i just need to do the other side of my basement so i have a place to actually hang them because all of my my wall space is taken up already with pinball stuff but i played a lot of pinball and I have to say that one of the most disheartening things in pinball has to be looking down on your play field and seeing a screw that you have no idea where it came from and so I'm in the middle of this epic game of wonka and I look down and I'm like oh no so I immediately turn the game off lose the score and take the glass off I literally went over this game with a headlamp, like total Andy P. Rosa. Is that who wore the headlamp in the sense? Yeah. Yeah, so I totally rocked it. I had a flashlight in one hand, and I was looking all over the play field. I literally have no idea where the screw came from. I looked at every screw hole. I took the play field out. I looked underneath it, above it. And so how worried should I be? You guys have been in pinball longer than I have. What would you say? I find sometimes there's just randos in there, like when people are putting them together and they drop a screw and they can't find it, like whatever, and they grab another one. It just gets caught up somewhere where it eventually just works itself free or bounces out of wherever it is. So I'm not saying that's what it is, but it could possibly just be a random screw from production. That's right. Yeah. I mean, I'm just worried that my golf stopper is going to fall off or something. I can't imagine one screw is the only thing to keep that from falling off. I think you're probably going to be fine. It's probably like from some plastic somewhere or something, and I just can't find. Who knows? Did you tip the play field up? Oh, yeah, man. I did the whole thing. I looked at it literally from every angle I could. But Wonka has, like, you know, under some of the ramps and the gobs that is the most secret machine, there's a space under there that you can't really get to, and it's really hard to see under there. So I did not lift up any of the ramps or anything. Not every screw needs a nut, too, so if there was no nut, that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Just make sure you hang on to the screw, and then when something does fall off, you'll know where it is. Absolutely. That's what I'm going to do. In the meantime, we can just say Christian's got a screw loose. A screw loose. I love it. That's a solid dad joke, buddy. So Sarah's back at school and the kids are back at school. I'm not going to go into a lot of details about it, but it's really been tough for her because she's got 25 kids. There are some at school. There are some at home. And she has to teach, you know, to an iPad at the same time as teaching to her class. So she's been stressed out. So we decided we'd go away for the weekend and do something fun last weekend. We went to Morristown, New Jersey, to a place called the Morristown Game Vault. I've heard of it. I have not been, but I've definitely heard good things about it. Oh, my God. It's awesome. So it's this old bank that is in the middle of this really pretty town in Jersey, and it's exactly what you would imagine an old-school bank looking like. It's got the columns on the outside. It's got the triangular roof on top of the columns. You walk in, and it's a bank, but it's filled with arcade games and pinball machines. There's something like 15 to 20 pins. pins. They're in immaculate condition. They're pimped out with, you know, mods, color DMDs, a ton of really great games. And there's a big bank vault in the back and you walk in the bank vault and there's a safecracker pinball machine in there, which was super cool. So we went there, there were maybe four other people in the whole place. So it was very social distance. We did the, you know, the mask thing. In fact, they handed us masks as we walked through that had the logo of the arcade on them, which is pretty cool, but played a lot of pinball there. A buddy of mine, Rodney came out and we hung out with him for a bit. I played The Simpsons Pinball Party there on one of the nicest versions of the game I've ever played. But I've always heard that there is a wizard mode that's impossible to get to on that game. And so I was having an epic game. I had to have played it for maybe 30 minutes. And I hit this alien invasion mode, and I was like, holy shit, I got to the wizard mode. And I was freaking out. I was just telling my buddy Rodney, I'm like, dude, I got to the wizard mode. Later on, I looked up the rules. That's like one of six parts that you have to complete to get to the final mode. This is such a crock, I was going to say. I was nowhere near. It was wrong in this thing. I swear there's no other game deeper than that thing for us. I'd get nowhere in that thing because it's just so much of a grind to get anywhere. Yeah, and I can't believe how much you have to do to get through just that one mode. But it was fun. It was really fun. I played a mode where the flippers were reversed. I didn't know that it had that mode in there. But anyway, that was really fun. We had a good time. It was a nice way to kind of get out and get out of the house and play some pinball, which is a rarity these days, as you guys know. I find my monsters have had the same problem with the deepness of code. I get to the loop three or four times, and it's like, I can't get to the fifth. Well, let's see. My two weeks in pinball. Like you, one of them was spent on vacation. I went down to Tennessee where me and some friends of mine rent a cabin up in the Smoky Mountains. And by cabin, I mean a log-type looking structure that's got like 10 bedrooms, of swimming pool and arcade and like uh yeah it's pretty it's pretty posh it's got everything you need i was gonna say you don't have to leave and i didn't leave well you know we could have went down into town there's a lot to do it's right by gallenberg and there's a there's a lot of touristy stuff to do and you know those gravity coasters that come down the mountain and all that crap and i've done all that you know because we go every year every labor day so this year i just went i'm gonna shut my phone off and sleep so i just uh chillaxed for a long time let's see i started a new, all I can say is I started artwork for a new pitch. Let's just say that. I'm not going to say what, I'm not going to say who, I just started a art package for a new pitch for a new game, which is very exciting because it's something that I'm very much into, not monster cereals. Golden Girls? Yeah. And other than that, my buddy Joshua Clay Harrell's having his big Ann Arbor pinball show this weekend, and I will read the text messages that I got from him. I wrote to him, that says, hey, dude, you've got a show this weekend, question mark. And that's usually my line for put me down for free passes because I get to go free every time. And his response was, yes, but please don't come. Last thing I need is Chris Ranchi getting coronavirus at my arcade. Oh, my God. So he's doing the legit show. He knows there's a risk. Like, how is he trying to make it safe? I hope he's got some sort of precautions in there. Yeah, what he's doing, from what I can tell, is instead of just getting a ticket and then you show up, you get a ticket for like 9 a.m. to 12 noon, or you get a ticket from 12 noon to 3 p.m. or 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. or 6 p.m., whatever. He's kind of like, you know, putting people into little pockets so that you don't have a full house there all day. You know, you've got maybe 50 people in there at a time. And between the, well, what, one, two, three, four, five, I think five or six buildings that he has in this little compound, he's got more than enough space and breathing room to, you know, to have a decent amount of people in there and not be all cluttery and gross. and I'm sure he's probably got the wipes and all of that stuff going on. So I would just bring rubber gloves. You know, you just take them off at the end of the day, and as long as you don't touch your face, you don't need to be wiping your hands every damn time you play a game. You know, like the surgeon's gloves. Yeah. No, no, I'm just saying there's some controversy about that just because you might be spreading it around to different things, and it's just better just to clean your hands instead of wearing gloves. But listen, man, there's really no wrong way to do it as long as you're being safe. And you had told me before the show started to record that Joshua Clay has got something like 300 games. Is that true? Yeah, he's got a shit ton of games. I thought it was kind of a community thing where, like, him and his pinball club, kind of they all kept their games there, you know, with their overflow or whatever. That won't fit in their basement. So I asked him one day, and I said, how many of these games are yours, and how many are other people's? He says, like, 10 of these are other people's. I'm like, oh, jeez. So, yeah, he's been collecting for a long time, I mean, he's got everything from, you know, old, you know, 1950s EMs, you know, all the way up to modern day stuff. He owns my former personal Beatles pinball machine. The one that went through the flood? The one that went through the flood, yeah. Okay. Fixed it up, and so that's Golden. And he's got a lot of fun stuff. He's got one of my favorite old games, Embryon. Yes. Which I love to go there and play. And, yeah, just a ton of games. He's got some other kind of cool stuff, too, like those old, you know, like you get the rifle and, like, you know, the metal duck. Yeah, yeah. stuff like that he's got some really cool like penny arcade sort of old games you know the love meter and all that kind of junk so uh it's really fun yeah and you just pay one flat rate i don't know what it is because i never pay but you pay one flat rate and you just sit there and play all day and then he's got a little sort of like a state fair style snack bar outside you know where you can go get hot dogs and beer and shit it's a good time last time i was there i met one of the guys anyway that did the coin-out book yeah yeah coin-out carnival and it's ryan later and nick shell right yeah i think ryan was there uh is he the guy who did the artwork yes yeah so he was there he's a really nice guy yeah so anyway yeah he was the cool when i was there last time i went to buy a back class like some guy was selling back classes there and they had the boodles beetles you know where they yes they made the uh you know they actually put the beetles on there and i'm like you know i should get that because i did the beetles game and that would just be fun to hang up and I, you know, I saw it earlier in the day and I go back to get it. Some dick bought it. Yeah, thanks. God damn it! Oh! Oh, god damn it! Everybody wants it. I like that game. Yeah, I don't know if he had the game there. I don't remember. It's tough to get through all of them. I mean, there's a ton of games there, but I misspoke. It's Ryan Claytor and Nicholas Baldridge are the guys who did Coin Out. Nick Shell is the Rowan Oak Pinball Museum owner. Yeah, really nice guy. I bought a book and I bought, they made a cool little pin too out of their logo or something. I got one those two because you know you've got to support your fellow pinballers yeah man did you see his watch that he made um ryan clader did not he did not show me his watch so he he hooked up with this company i don't know where they're out of but it's like a watch with a carnival image all the illustration obviously was by him and then there's like one of those carnival games where you have to shoot at a duck or you know various targets as you were talking about earlier and as the time changes the ducks or whatever the targets are move across the screen and they have different times on them. So there's, yeah, there's an hour for the, you know, the ducks above and then the minutes down below. It's really super cool. It sold out instantly. Basically there was a very limited run, but yeah, I don't know how he got hooked up with that, but that's, that was really neat. That sounds really cool. Yeah. So that's it. That's my two weeks in pinball. How about you, Mr. Parsons? Well, a couple of things have happened. I was talking earlier about how I went down to Chuck Webster's. Um, when I went down there, he had a Mr. And Mrs. Pac-Man set up in his garage. His garage. Yeah, exactly. His garage kind of like, it's like, I've got overflow, so I'm going to work on some stuff out here, and you'll see it, as you, first place you'll see when you walk in, and I was like, wow, Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man, and I walked in, and I said, you didn't tell me you had one of these, and he said, you know, he's fixing one up, and he said, there's, out there, there's a playfield next to it, that he got, I guess he got a couple extra playfields when he picked this up, and he gave me one of the playfields. Oh, wow. Because he knows how much I love the game, and I'm like, that's just way generous of him, but he didn't stop there. He said, if you want to borrow Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man when I'm done with it for the winter. What? More than welcome to. I'm like, yeah, I would love that. Give me that! Give me that! Oh, that's funny. Yeah, Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man is one of those, back to when I was a kid, I remember playing it waiting for pizza at one of the places. I mean, there's not much to the game unless you learn what it is you're doing, but the thing I love about the game is how they integrated basically a Pac-Man game in with just inserts in the middle of the play field. You move by pressing the flippers, you've got to try to get the ghosts or avoid them depending on which mode you're in, and it's really a lot of fun. And if you know what you're doing, if you're just kind of flipping around, it's like there's not much going on. But that adds a lot to it. So I was thrilled. So it's sitting there across the room from me now, leaning up against the wall in this NASCAR. Wow. That's a huge gift. I also did a few more call-outs. This was more than two weeks ago, but it was probably about a month ago. I did more call-outs for Rick and Morty for the Roy mode. I guess Eric wanted some more call-outs for some different things he had an idea for. One of them being when you're trapped up trying to either talk to somebody or you're not paying attention to the game. They're basically call-outs like, hey, the announcer's getting really upset now because you're not playing. You know, stuff like that to get their attention. He wrote some really good lines. I don't want to give them away. But if you've got the new Rick and Morty code, just trap up sometime when you're in the Roy mode and see what happens. Give us one of your favorite lines that you did that's already coded into the game. No, I'm drawing a blank. I did that like a month ago. So I'm like, you can just... That's it for episode number 15. We'll see you guys next week. It's so cool that you were involved in that, though. And it seems to me like they're still pushing to add more and more content to the game, just as they were saying they would. He's always thinking of doing other things, too. I think I got the gig because he did the remake of Cactus Canyon. Yes. And he asked me to do a voice for one of those. It was like a cowboy. I was like, oh, Western cowboy kind of voice for him. And he loved it. And so I decided to. I know Sam Elliott. Shoot the spinner and run around. that kind of stuff. But, um, so I did that for him and he came back to me for, for Rick and Morty. I'm like, yeah, sure. I'd love to do that. And this was more like an, he went on a Richard Attenborough type of sound. I'm like, well, I'm no Richard Attenborough, but I can just read it like an announcer doing a documentary. So that's kind of what it did. And it was fun to do. It was a blast. And hearing myself in it, I still get to play the damn game though. I haven't either. Yeah. But hearing the first time I heard it was when it debuted on adult swim. I'm like, wow, that is really cool. I'm in a pinball machine. It's like a dream come true. Yeah, that was great. And then one more thing. It's kind of pinball related, but I haven't had my son with me for weekends for six months, and I finally got him back after everything. And the reason that was is like his grandfather has pulmonary fibrosis, and I was doing everything I could to protect him from any possibility that I could transmit because I was still working because it was essential, so I had to go in. I didn't want to take any chances that could get to him, so we just talked on the phone every once in a while. I'd go up and see him in the driveway, stay six feet apart. But his school district, they're all going back every day. So that kind of just was the point now. So his mother and I agreed, yeah, you should have him back. So one of the first things he did when he came in the door was came downstairs to play NASCAR. And he wanted to check out the Ms. Pac-Man play field, which is great to have. And he's been playing Fortnite. But at one point, I hear pinball, and he's playing pinball arcade on Xbox. And he's going to town on Banzai Run, one of his favorite games. So this was a disappointment because this was going to be his first year at Pinburgh. And we were all set. And it was like, I was so excited. I wanted to take him, but he was always just never old enough for me to say, I can let you go on your own and do your thing. But now he is. So we were all ready for it. And then, of course, everything that happened happened. But I keep telling him, don't worry. We got our tickets. We want it goes. We're there. What's happening? You know, Jeff, there's so many people who have obviously been through a lot during this, but not being able to see your own kid for the, you know, for the right reasons, obviously. But that had to be really freaking hard, man. In fact, I had a moment. It's something I never felt before, but I felt anxiety and depression because I was just sitting in my chair just watching TV, and it's just this feeling, and I'm like, what is wrong with me? I'm just thinking I'm not out playing pinball like I always am. I don't have my son. I haven't seen him, and it just all kind of came crashing down at one point. I'm fine now, but it's just a moment where like, wow, this is really affecting my life. But having him back now is just – and we don't need to do it. We're not doing anything. You can't really go out and do anything. He's just in the house. I had a tough time on vacation, actually, because prior to COVID, you know, I was going into an office that I rent. And, you know, Barlow stayed at home. And, you know, so for the past eight months or so, I've been working, you know, I set up a workstation at home. So I've been working at home with him. And when I went away on vacation, you know, pretty much, I think, every week for two days he goes to puppy camp just to play with other dogs and interact, be a social pup. But I was without it for seven days, and I actually had a bit of that, which was strange because, you know, of course I miss my dog whenever I go away. But because we spend every day together now, it was so much different that it was really tough to get through vacation. It was weird. It sucked, man. Yeah. It's all relative to what your norm is. And, you know, my kids, when they went back to school, they're not allowed to play with the other classes on the playground. So my youngest daughter doesn't get to see, you know, some of the friends she had last year. And that took a real toll on her. She came home from the first day and it was like, okay, you get to see them for 15 minutes a day. It doesn't seem like a big deal, but it's all relative to your situation. And for her, that was a really big deal. So, you know, you never really know what people are going through. Everyone's kind of fighting their own thing. And the coronavirus is really taking a toll. But, you know, you got to look at the happy stuff like your son being around now and, you know, being able to get out and play some pinball. Now I can just get him to cut his damn hair. I'll be all set. He's got a lot of hair. Oh, my God. Yeah, I feel like I'm in the 60s. Cut your hair, dude. Seriously. How can you see? Your hair is in front of you. I told them at one point, you know, you're going to be going into school, and they need to take your temperature on your forehead, and you got so much sweat up there because your hair is covering it they going to send you home You could go hipster and rock a man bun with all that hair probably I mean he Man bun I guess that the thing He's not the only one in this school. I guess they're all doing long hair again, so... Hockey mullets coming back, too, with the hockey players. Oh, man. Some mullets. And now, Tim O'Luminews, with your super awesome eyewitness news crew. Don't fucking just read news up here, you fat piece of shit. In Spooky's latest podcast, of which there are plenty to listen to, they dropped some bombs, Christian. Oh, my God, yeah. I mean, they said some really interesting stuff. Every once in a while, they'll drop a gem on that show, and they dropped a few this episode. Their next game is being designed by David Van Ass. Bunya. Bunya, yeah, yeah. And an interesting choice, because he's been the creative director and the animator there, but I didn't know he was at all involved in pinball design, and maybe this is his first go at it. That's going to be cool to see what he can come up with and maybe get some more fresh blood in the pinball design world. They have their next three game licenses figured out already. It was another bomb they dropped. So apparently they have three games in the pipeline. They know what those are going to be. I know what one of them is. Yes, you do. And then the last thing that they said, which I thought would be interesting to you, Chris, is that Jersey Jack Pinball initially pursued the Yellow Submarine license with Joe Balcer when he was there. Did you know that? No, I didn't. I knew there were other people snipping at the Beatles in general when Cannon Co. was going through it, but he was extremely confident that nobody would ever break through, and he was right. But after the regular Beatles came out, it was pretty much a free-for-all if anybody wanted Yellow Submarine at that point because Joe was just moving on to other things, so he wasn't interested in doing another one. I honestly can't see it being better than the Beatles that Stern did, the classic Beatles. It's done so well. Joe came to me and he says, we're doing the Beatles, and here's what we have a choice of, a classic Ed Sullivan Beatles or Yellow Submarine. He was asking my advice, and I said, well, you know, every time I see Beatles merchandise, it's always Yellow Submarine, always. You rarely ever see the Beatles just as the Beatles. It's always these goofy cartoon things, or it's just the submarine or the other characters, the Blue Meanie and all that stuff. I said, I'd just like to see the Beatles. And plus, they were talking about doing sort of an old school game. And I said, well, even more so. The artwork on the play field was a lot more retro than we ended up with. I had a lot more areas of just bare wood showing because I thought that was really cool, like the old EMs. Oh, I would have loved that. But I know that's going to be a tougher sell. Yeah, there's some areas in there where there's still wood showing, but not as much as I had. And they were like, can't we fill this up? You know, Joe's like, you know, I'm spending a bazillion dollars. Can we get some beetles in here, for God's sake? So, yeah, it was a little more retro. But, you know, it just seemed to fit. I was much happier to see the Beatles as the Beatles on that game than those goofy cartoons. And not that I was against it if he wanted to go back to the well, you know, to do another game. But I thought if we had the choice and we can only do one of the two, we've got to do 64 Beatles. Was there ever discussion of, you know, merging the two and having different components of the Beatles all in one game? No, because you can't. Okay. There are two separate licenses. You know, you've got to go through King Features as well as the Beatles for Yellow Submarine, and you get what you get. You can't do anything beyond that. So that was our only choice. If we wanted to show the band, you know, as the actual people, we had to just go with the 64 Beatles. That was the right choice. Yeah, for sure. And who knows what would have happened if Jersey Jack got the Yellow Submarine license. That's kind of interesting to think about what they would have done with that because, you know, obviously they go big. Yeah, I think it would have worked out perfect because I think, you know, The 64 Beatles is much more of a Stern game. And to open up the world of Yellow Submarine with Jersey Jack and all the kooky things you can do with that, just weird tubes popping up out of a play field and balls going under subways. Jersey Jack Pinball is the company that would do that. Stern has their price points and how they keep things in order. But Jersey Jack is definitely a lot more flamboyant, and I think Yellow Submarine would have been right up their alley. Imagine having the two of those side by side. That'd be fantastic. Yeah, it would. Back to Spooky, they have just today posted on Facebook that they are finishing up their 2000th game across all of their games. So that's pretty cool. Congratulations, Spooky. I'm the only one that ever claps. Damn it, both of you clap. I know you're going to put in a clip, man. You're going to have plenty of applause there. Applause and real applause. So they said the Ben Wisconsin population is 973. So that's just a little over two games for every person in their town. I thought that was pretty cool. I'm impressed with what Spooky has been able to do. You know, just like they just say, hey, you know what? We want to build pinball machines, and they made a success out of it. I mean, who does that? Yes. And it's so well done and so professional. They announced it, so it's no secret other than what it is. But, yeah, they're doing a game with Chicago Gaming where they have the design. It's actually Ben Heck's design that's being reformatted for a new license, and Chicago Gaming is going to build it. So that basically gives them the opportunity to create another game and not have to worry about production. They can keep going with the Rick and Morty, and plus they're looking to amp up the production as well. So big things for them in the future, I think. Yeah, every game they do gets a little bit better and bigger, so they're moving in the right direction, which is exciting. I've liked what they've done ever since America's Most Haunted. I thought that was a great game. I don't know, a lot of people kind of crash on it sometimes, but I love it. I played it once. I played it once, so I haven't really had a lot of time in it. But it was really dark when I played it, and it was in a dark room, so I couldn't really appreciate it as much as I wanted to. But, yeah, it's hard to find. I played a Domino's once at some random arcade that I found, and that was fun too. I'd love to play at Jetsons. You know, they've got a lot of games out there, some that are super niche and you may never see. But I'm glad that they're kind of ramping up to bigger and better runs and licenses, especially with stuff like Rick and Morty. So I can't wait to see what's coming next. It's going to be cool. And our next headline. Now, I think every time we have a show, I say this headline in the news. Another innovation. Oh, shit, yeah. For Multimorphic P3. Do you want to tell everybody about what's going on over there with Twitch Connect? Oh, my gosh. Literally, as you said, it feels like every single time we do the news, we're talking about something new that P3 is doing. And I think that's really cool because they're pushing the envelope with internet connectivity. And their whole system is kind of pushing the envelope compared to what normal pinball is. So I think it's really cool that they keep doing this stuff. This Twitch Connect thing is new. I don't really know a ton about it, but I do know that it's going to allow people who are watching Twitch and watching people play pinball on the P3 system interact with the actual game in different ways. I don't know if you can actually take over the machine and play, but you can control aspects of the gameplay. So I think that's a really cool thing. I know that people have set up remote games where you can log in and flip like a Batman 66, but if you could take that to the next level and say, okay, if we get 10 people who are doing X, then this multiplier is going to be lit, or something like that. I mean, just really fine-tuning what the people watching can do to interact with the gameplay. I think that's really neat. Can you imagine the frustration in Jack Danger trying to play a game and all of his Twitch people there jacking his game watch? Who's flipping my flipper? Flippers just go dead. God damn it. Yeah. I'm really interested to see where that goes and if other companies implement stuff like that because on Twitch and just watching people game is the new thing, you know, and maybe not so new anymore, but that's a really big part of gaming culture these days. So anything you can do to help the people watching interact, I think that's going to be a win. Yeah, definitely. And speaking of innovations, of course, Deep Root is teasing plenty more with their little, What do you want to call that? They have a little program. Reel a little bit more each time. Well, yeah. Did you guys see that they finally revealed the whole thing today? Yeah. Oh, I haven't seen it. Yeah, it says 9-21-20. So, obviously, the 21st is when we're going to see some information. And BD, which a lot of people are thinking maybe means before Deep Root. It's hard to say. It's just very cryptic. But, yeah, 9-21-20. And then you can see the Ned dude, the alien Ned from the game, kind of reaching through a hole at the date. So, something is coming. It looks like the reveal of Raza and its glory with all the additional features that we didn't get to see before in the prototype. Does the fact that it's a capital B and a lower D, is that any clue? I don't know. Because the Deep Root logo is all lowercase letters. Ah, okay. Got it. Yeah, that's probably right. Yep. So we talked about this last episode, Jeff, about what we wanted to see at the Deep Root reveal. But what do you think? What would you hope is coming, and what do you think they're going to show, and then what do you hope they're going to show? Well, let's be honest. Really, the only thing we've seen is a prototype of Raza, right, which for the most part, I mean, it looks okay. It looks good. That's all we really know about it. There's a lot of promises being made from Deep Root that they're dimpling the issue being one of them that they've solved. You can pick a hammer to it. Do it then. That's what I want to see. I mean, probably that's what they've got planned, but if that's what you're claiming, I want to see that. As far as games go, I'm really curious about how many games you've actually got in the chamber here. I mean, before they were talking about we've got all these games and Raza's just the start, but like ready to go at one point, didn't they talk about they're going to launch with like games ready to go, more than one? I think that's been three and a half years. I still have my doubts about that only because it's been so long. In fairness, COVID, okay, I get it. That did slow things down a little bit, but let's just show us what you got is really what it comes down to now. Do you think there's any way that they're not going to show a more than one game? I mean, could they come out and just reveal Raza and make everyone who's been clamoring to see what they've got happy? Or do you feel like they almost owe more than one game at this point? I feel that you made promises of more than one game it revealed, and stick to that. Even if it's two, that's still more than anybody else would ever do at once. Because at this point, you're playing catch-up. Because how long has this been in the works? Like two years now? I don't even know what it is. And I've always said this when I talk about Deep Root is I still have confidence in what they're doing because I believe that Steven Bowden would not have given up everything he did to go down there and work for them if he didn't believe in the product. Correct. We're all friends with Steve. He's such a good dude, and we know he's so talented. So whatever he's going to put out is going to be awesome. I just hope that he really is able to shine and leave his mark on this game that kind of was already made before he got there, right? So it would be really cool to see that he's really happy with the end result. But it sounds like what they're going to do is going to be pretty epic. So I'm excited to actually see it from afar. I wish I could be there in person. But, you know, I know that there are a lot of people going. I know of quite a few people who are making it out there. So I can't wait to hear, you know, what they see and all the coverage that they're going to do. I could not get on a plane right now. I totally agree with you. I totally agree. Speaking of not getting on a plane, let's go over some new show cancellations. Chicago Baseball Expo finally pulled the plug. but they're not really 100% gone. Rob Burke has contacted me and he is telling me details about and it's nothing secret between the two of us how they're going to do sort of a virtual expo and all the seminars and stuff like that. He's asked me to do one though I'm probably not going to do it. He wanted me to do one on my artwork and I was thinking maybe we'll do one about our podcast and bring Christian in. No way! Yep. He's like, oh no, that's a deal breaker. He's like, I can do whatever I want. So, and I haven't had anything come out in the past year. So there's really nothing that you want me to go back and talk about Batman. And, you know, I've done that already. So, but anyway, yeah, so there's going to be like sponsors. Somehow there's going to be some kind of like, you know, virtual store where you can do like pinball shopping and whatnot. And I'm talking about just games, but like, you know, LEDs and light up flipper buttons and whatever you want. So yeah, definitely go to the Expo website, which I don't know what it is, but we'll get up and find out about that. I love this. I've wanted to go to Expo for 25 years. Now I'm finally going. Yes. Yes, me too. I think it's a great idea. Yeah. I mean, everything is doing, every big event is somehow tying it into a virtual thing. So I don't know why any people haven't done this before. I think it's a great idea. You can at least have the seminars and people can watch those. You can have maybe someone go through a bunch of games and, fuck, I don't know. There's so many options out there on how you can make this fun. Just to get together as a community and celebrate pinball, even if it's virtually, I think that's cool. And Freeplay Florida is doing something a little bit like that. Yeah, like little satellite game assortments or whatever you want to call it. Yeah, much smaller venues, just kind of doing a couple of games here and there all over Florida so that they can maintain social distance and still do something. So, yeah, people are making the best out of a bad scenario. Yeah, and what about White Rose? I haven't heard about them, but it's on the list. Well, that's important to me because it's so close to my house. It's in York, Pennsylvania. It's a really good show. It's smaller compared to, you know, Fantastic and that sort of thing. but it's a fun show to go to every year. We look forward to it. And unfortunately, that's canceled. So that sucks for us. But it was expected. And I'm sure that there are going to be other shows that are going to cancel, you know, moving forward. I'm even concerned about replay effects for next year. Me too. I don't think it's going to happen. I'm worried that it's not either. Even with the vaccine, you know, when are these things going to get back to normal? We talked to Ed, and he's ramping up to do Texas Pinball Fest, and that's in March. so well yeah there's a lot of people are saying like you know shit's just not going to happen until there's a vaccine but even so it's like once there is a vaccine everybody on the fucking planet's going to need it do you know how long that's going to take until they get around to everybody well it's not even talking about the ones that don't want it yeah and then yeah there's that and then there's you know you have to manufacture it and then you know it has to be put inside your body you know i mean this stuff is going to take a long time and there's still as far as i know no vaccine no well there's a couple major companies that that want this huge possible payday. So there's at least three big ones in the States that have, that are working on trials right now. And there's, you know, there's other countries that have come up with, you know, Russia being one of them who have come up with vaccines that they say have some promise. So we'll see. I do think that this is going to be a vaccine that comes way faster than other vaccines have in the past. You know, you're looking at five years on average for a vaccine to get made for anything. So don't quote me on that. You know, you're looking at five years on average for a vaccine to get made for anything. Unquote. But it's a number of years, and I think five is a reasonable estimate. So to do it within months is insane. That just shows you how full-court press these companies are going to make this happen. But yeah, so hopefully sooner rather than later, and then we have enough to actually do it. I did want to go into another news thing. Franchi, I know you're going to give me a hard time about this, but it does actually come back to our show. the Hershey Bears homebrew game that I was kind of involved in. Again? Yes, I'm talking about it again. Because there is one cool development that I want to talk about and that I won't talk about anymore. But we talked about this in the last episode. It's a game that my buddy has made to celebrate the Hershey Bears hockey team. And there is a hockey site that is called Russian Machine Never Breaks. And they reached out to Joel DeGuzman and Bob Goodman, who's my partner, and basically wrote an in-depth article about it. and it's been posted on the site, and they have so many followers on the site that it got picked up by the American Hockey League. So now there's a big feature on it on the AHL website, and the article has been shared 1,200 times since I last checked. It's always cool when pinball hits non-pinball media outlets. And those were all Christian's family members. You got the back glass. Oh, boy. That's right. No, but what's really cool, Chris, and you'll like this, is that the Super Awesome Pinball Show was actually given a shout-out in the article, and there's a link to our webpage in the article. So, you know, I don't know how many hockey fans are going to be listening to a pinball podcast, but if you are listening to this and you're coming in from hockey, welcome. That was my introduction to pinball, playing in all the hockey rink warming rooms when I grew up as a kid. You're a big hockey guy too, right? I played hockey for 30 years. Oh, my God, yeah. Where can I see this thing? That's what she said. You can go to AHL.com. You can go to Russian Machine Never Breaks, or we posted pictures on our website. but you really want to read the article because it's very, very good. We don't have a website yet. Our Facebook page. But go to the AHL.com and check it out. It's featured on the front page. Okay, cool. The website is actually theahl.com. You know Joel pretty well. You guys are friends. You haven't seen pictures of this yet? No, this is the first I've seen it. I've heard talk about it, but I haven't gone on to it. See, Joel, you can see who your friends are that support your work. Me and Christian were right there for you. You were there. And then where's Parsons and all this? So we're thinking about maybe recording a new episode of a podcast. All right. So what else are we going to cover in the news, gentlemen? Elvira. Topper. Oh, yeah. And Shooter Rod was revealed. So, yeah. So the Topper came out. It looks cool. It's got two gargoyles on the side, a deadhead family crypt plaque, and apparently the centerpiece of the Topper lifts up and you see Elvira in there. The big controversy is the price, though. I mean, we've talked about Topper prices in the past on the show. So $600 was kind of a holy crap moment, but $1,000 for this copper kind of takes it to the next level. What do you guys think about that? What a bunch of bastards. I believe it's made out of actual marble. It better be. I don't know. I mean, the price, I had not seen it in action. I was like, that's a lot of damn money for what looks to be, like I said, a bookend. But I didn't know that it opened up, so I've not seen it. So I'm really not qualified to talk about the price without seeing the feature work. Dude, what would it have to do to justify a $1,000 price tag? Just the tip. I mean, you'd have to have those gargoyles do a jig on top of that thing. I think the actual Elvira would jump out of the top. Yes, yes. You'd pay $2,000 for that. No, I'd pay at least $1,003. Plus shipping. well listen yeah talk to gomez right i mean he said that all of their jurassic park toppers that you know caused so much to do about the price tag sold out instantly so i think they're testing the waters a little bit here right i mean are they they're going to try to see how high this feeling is and when schmeckle heads with a lot of money will put their wallets away and i don't think they've hit that point yet as long as you can keep selling them for whatever price you put up there keep going it's limited to 200 or 250 or something like that yes it's limited i don't know what the number is though. Yeah, I think it's 200 or 250. So, I mean, if you say, hey, if we make 250 of these, you know, will they sell? Yeah. Okay, well then go for it, I guess. You know, it's a tough position to be in. It's like, you know, you want Stern to succeed. You want them to continue making product. They have a lot of employees they have to pay. They took a huge hit with COVID-19 and, you know, still have to make up for that. So in that sense, you're like, yeah, but if you're one of the guys that like wants to buy one of these, you're like, ouch, you know. Well, here's the thing. Most of these toppers don't affect gameplay at all. So if you're a player, no big deal. Let the collectors do it and keep starting business. That being said, how do you feel about toppers that implement a new mode, a new feature into the game that players wouldn't get access to unless they own the topper? Well, the UV kit for Stranger Things did that, but that was only like 300 and something. It's like I think people have talked about before. It's like downloadable content almost. It's like, hey, there's a feature in here, and you activate it by buying this. Fair enough, because honestly, it doesn't, well, I guess it does affect gameplay because it's a different mode, but as far as the UV, that's not a mode, is it? No. No. And it's an additional mode. It's not like the game, in theory, is complete without this. This is just an extra thing that they're going to sell to you. And that kind of leads me to one of the other things we're going to talk about, which was the Stern's Pinball Mixer. And I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this, because it was kind of just innocuously dropped on YouTube. There wasn't a whole lot of fanfare about it, but Jack Danger did a quick video about it. Nope. It's not a singles party with free liquor. It's called the Stern Mixer, and it's basically a way that you can go into your machine and you can play music from the game at any point and you can make playlists and you can do things like that. But what was really interesting about the video is that he kind of hinted that there was going to be more to come with this. And just thinking about what that might be led me to think, well, maybe they're going to, once the internet is hooked up, they're going to allow you to go and buy additional music or buy, you know, for a music game like ACDC, maybe you can buy new tracks to play in the game and that sort of thing. So it kind of does open the door for the DLC model that everyone's kind of nervous about coming to pinball. The whole buying of music tracks of bands, that might be a little sketchy licensing-wise, you know? You're basically selling their music, like, separately as opposed to being paid for it as part of the game. Maybe I don't know licensing, but that seems like, you know. Yeah, we'd have to be a new license. Yeah, I would imagine you'd have to have to. It almost seems like it's not worth the money to do that for them, but I could be wrong. Jack Danger said, it's just the tip. Of the iceberg. Oh, God. And the hits keep on coming. Hey! Like the video, I'll be here all week. Hey. So we'll see what happens there. Next up, a huge collection of pinball documentaries have been released. Yeah. Parsons, did you see this? No. This was kind of something that happened last week, and I don't even know if these are still up there. I would be shocked if they were, but somebody went on a bunch of different pinball Facebook groups and they said, you know, hey, I just compiled a bunch of these things for you guys to check out. I hope you enjoy. And it was literally every pinball movie that's ever been made in a Google Drive. So you can go in there and just watch it for free. You're going to get shut down, dude. Yes. I checked this like two nights ago and it was still up. But if you are part of, like, the pinball enthusiast Facebook group, you know, scroll down a couple of days back and see if that's still there because it was impressive. There was, like, I would say 25 pinball movies, you know, Special One Lit, Tilt, Battle to Save Pinball. A full walkthrough of the Stern Tour with Jody Dankberg, I think, was in there. So pretty cool stuff. And if you're into pinball like everyone listening to this show is, you definitely want to check it out if it's still there. Oh, Dankberg! Dankberg. If you don't want to pirate, you can actually watch Tilt, Paddle, and Save Pinball. And Special When Lit are on Amazon Prime if you subscribe. Yeah, that's right. So is the spooky one. Oh, yes. There you go. I mean, they're out there. That's great. Yep, or free. Or free. If you're already on Amazon Prime, I mean, that's half of the stuff I'd do in my life right there. There are no pinball documentaries on Netflix. Thank you very little. Robert Gagno's movie was on there for a time. It's gone now, but it kind of rotated through for a second. I feel kind of hoodwinked with this whole Netflix thing. I know it's not pinball related, but there's a couple of TV shows that are exclusive and that are awesome. But every movie that I've, like, thought about and, like, oh, yeah, I want to watch this and looked it up, they don't have it. No. But they got this crap like the Corn Flake Killer, you know, and all this other shit. They're making tons of cash making these TV shows that look like frickin' Hollywood movies and all that. They're making some bucks. There's some good stuff on there, but you have to really, I mean, the real benefit of Netflix is the TV shows that they make. and the stuff they produce themselves. And the horror movies that they have on there, the Microwave Massacre, like, this is, like, stupid. Dude, that sounds like it's right up your alley, Microwave Massacre. I just watched one called The Witch of the House or The Witch in the House or something like that, and it kind of sounded interesting, and I watched it, and the whole thing was computer animated, the spooky ghost witch. Can't you just, like, have something practical in the, like, they just said, I wrote this movie about this witch, and we'll just get a computer to do it and whatever, and then you can just tell it's just a hack job. It sucked. It was the worst piece of shit I've ever seen. It was worse than House Shark. Was it you that shared that on Facebook? Somebody did. Yeah. God, what the hell? Oh, you wouldn't believe. It starts right off with a girl taking a shit. Oh, my God. And the shark coming up out of the toilet. Oh, my God. And luckily, we got a shark's eye view, which was quite delightful. Oh, God damn it. Did you fart? I would say House Shark was definitely worth it. I bought it at Walmart for like $3. The cover on that DVD or whatever, the poster or whatever it is, is just lava. Yeah. So it's literally a shark in a house? It's like in the pipes? Yeah. Yeah, he's in the house. Look, I fell asleep watching it, so I've got to re-watch it again and find out the extent of his powers. I honestly didn't believe it was real. I thought it was like something maybe you made up. And then I looked at it and was like, no, man, this thing exists. I took a picture of it and I sent it to somebody and then I put it back on the shelf and then I went there like three or four weeks later and I'm like I gotta find that fucking House Shark movie because I should have bought it when I saw it the first time and luckily I was able to find it and buy it and you know for five bucks or whatever it's worth it you know Saturday night with your buddies get some beers and watch a hokey piece of shit movie that actually sounds like a fantastic concept for a movie and way better than Sharknado that's for sure oh yeah House Shark it is a good time I mean, it's not fucking Citizen Kane, but it's... Next theme for Stern, House Shark. House Shark. Oh, my God. All right, guys, so that was kind of the news. Before we jump into our freaking awesome interview with Keith Elwin, I just wanted to ask you guys a quick question. I was sitting and watching the reveal of Avengers, and my wife was at work, and I was so freaking close to calling Cointaker and putting the houses down for this game. It was like the hype was real. It was getting to me, and the game looks so damn good. But, you know, we're trying to save money and Sarah would freaking kill me. So I didn't pull the trigger. But I was sitting there thinking, you know, what would be freaking awesome if distributors would have a payment plan option? Because it is so much more palatable to buy a new in-box game or, you know, like a car and just say, I'm going to pay you 200 or 300 bucks a month and just make monthly payments. I could do that easily and not even think about it. There's two different ways of doing that. There's the financing way where you actually get the thing and you make payments. Or then there's like the layaway type thing where you make payments and then when you're paid off, you get it. Are you saying either one or are you saying more of the get? Anyway, obviously you can get a loan and you can do it. I mean, but like why don't distributors have models where you don't have to drop $6,000 to $10,000 in one fell swoop and you can just kind of, you know, spread the pain out over time? Do you guys do that? It's tough to do. I mean, like when I get a new computer, I've got an account with Dell. So when I buy one, if I pay so much within a year and the computer is expensive enough, I get no interest. So if I get a $1,200 computer and I make a $100 payment for 12 months, I have no interest. That's the kind of thing they could do. And then if you go over the 12 months, then they kill you for the interest because it's all compounded from the whole time. But I would love to see something like that. I'd be all over that. You have a computer account? Yeah. Are you like trashing computers with porn left and right? No, no, no. I get a new computer probably about every five to six years. But when I needed one, I'm like, well, I don't have any money right now. Oh, I'll get this credit card. And there was no interest because of the price of the computer for 12 months. And don't miss a payment. Make all your payments and no interest if you pay it off. I did that. It was like paying that front, but I did it over a year. Maybe we can get Chris and Melissa from CoinTake around to ask them this question because I know it's got to be a headache for distributors to set up that and have to hound people that don't pay and that sort of thing. So I totally get how that would suck for them. I would also think that they would sell more machines just because people would be way more able to do that than drop $10,000 at once. That's crazy. Well, you know, to make your dreams come true, Christian, I have already talked to Chris and Melissa at CoinTaker, and they are going to come on the show. Oh, fantastic. That's great. So you can ask them directly. Excellent. They're good people, so I'm excited to have them on. You can get a car for $8,000. I mean, granted, it looks like those wooden Dutch shoes, but you can get a car for $8,000. So why wouldn't there be financing for something like a pinball machine? But it's the same thing with a car. Like you open up a new and boxed pinball machine, knock $500 off the price. Well, everyone knows as soon as you drive a car off the lot, knock $2,000 off the price. I guess it's easy to repo a car when it's sitting out in the street. And like, you know, you can't repo a pinball machine when it's in the house. So that might be a problem. I'm sure that's the reason why people aren't all over this. And the distributor model for a pinball machine is a little bit unique in terms of selling stuff. But, man, I really think the benefit to the distributors would be selling more games. And I don't know if anyone's ever tackled that model before, so we'll have to ask them. Melissa is very sharp. She's definitely a businesswoman. I think Chris just cuts the grass over there. Oh, wow. Mr. Sarcasm. I'm just kidding, Chris. So I'm sure she's thought about it. I'm sure she's got some things to say. So we'll have to get them on sooner rather than later. Sounds good Stay tuned for that All right Are we ready for our big interview Heck yeah let get Keith Elwin on the line All right man well we got to take a commercial break but we will be back with Mr Keith Elwin of Stern Pinball so stick around We'll be right back. As everyone knows, rainbows usually have a treasure at the end. Let's follow this one and see if we can find the Super Awesome Pinball Show. There's something curious about this broadcast. You know, it really is amazing. This show is sponsored by Cointaker, distributor of brand new full-size authentic Stern pinball, Chicago game, raw thrills, arcade games, and much more. Also, a full line of dramatic pinball mods, LED flipper kits, speaker lights, custom laser LED toppers, playfield protectors, Valley Williams parts, pinball apparel, and much more. Get the latest releases and glam out your game room with Cointaker. Everything at your fingertips at Cointaker.com. Get your game on. Quick, let's hide. Let's keep him waiting to come up from space. It's Kenner's new stretch x-ray. He's stretching! Now he's bringing back into shape. You can see inside him. There's his internal support system. Far out. I got him now. Let's wrap him up. He's breaking loose. Give up stretch x-ray. We see through your evil scheme. Stretch x-ray, new from Kenner. Hi, this is Keith Elwin. Since I was forced to be on this podcast, I'll make the best of it and give him a little teaser here. You're listening to, uh, what's this called again? Uh, Super Awesome Pinball Show. Oh, oh, Super Awesome Pinball Podcast. Show, not podcast. Oh, show. Sorry. You can take your apology and shove it straight up your ass! What's up, dog? We're back. Honestly, though, them boys are a little scary. The Super Awesome Pinball Show. It's a cool show. It would be tough to argue that Keith Elwin isn't pinball's greatest all-time in the competitive world, and spending years at number one on the IFPA rankings, but he's also making a bid for one of the greatest in pinball design as well. His first two ranked games are consistently in the top ten of the all-time on Pinside, and his new game, Avengers, has just been revealed by Starin and looks to continue his streak of amazing pinball games. Welcome to the show, Mr. Keith Elwin. Thanks, thanks. Nice to be here. Thanks for having me, Esther. Congratulations on your new game. It's awesome. Oh, yeah, and someday when I get to sleep again, I might actually enjoy it. You know, you're working on the weekend. I mean, are you pretty much at the Stern Factory all the time, or do you have days off? So basically, myself, Rick, and Raymond worked pretty much two weeks nonstop trying to get everything into the game we could before the stream. And then I had to peel off and help the assembly line, you know, kind of go through how the game's put together. So, yeah, it's been a lot of work, and I haven't had a day off in forever. And tomorrow is my first day off, so I'm super excited. You can have some drinks with us tonight, then? Yeah, as soon as I hang up, man. Why wait until you hang up? Let's not play with us. I'm trying to caffeinate so I can get through this. Then I'll drink away. All right, sounds good. Well, let's start the interview with a question I wanted to ask you for a while. So one of the reasons you're the world's best pinball player is that you seem to be basically unfazed by stress. I've seen you in super tense situations on the pinball stage where you've got announcers calling out every move on the megaphone and crowd is cheering. and you basically look like you're just relaxing on the porch with a beer. So how do you keep the stress from getting to you, or does it, and you're just really good at hiding it? Actually, I think I thrive on stress. The more casual the tournament, the worse I seem to do. So I think it actually helps me in a way. No, I can see that. If that makes sense, yeah. Do you think that comes because you're confident in your skill level? I mean, you're clearly very, very good at pinball. So does that just bring calm to you because you know you have the skills to make it happen? if you ever mic me up when I'm playing it would be very entertaining I tell myself I suck I'm the worst, I need to quit and then something will happen and then I'll get my confidence back and then I'll steamroll but up until that point I'm my own worst enemy you're like the very quiet Eric Stone because I've never heard you say anything like that yeah exactly how does it translate to one of your games when they're released, are you nervous about that about how it's going to be received or can you be very calm about it like you are on the pinball stage? It's easy for me to be calm about it because I know what I like in a game, and since I'm in control of that, I'm pretty confident that if you like my previous games, you will like the next one. So obviously there are things that are not in my control, but hopefully I can get together the most complete package I can and make a fun game. That's my goal. I'm in control of the fun. Everything else, I'm relying on my team, and I think we all have confidence in each other. This is our third game as a team. So each game, we're getting to know each other even better. We're becoming more tight-knit, and hopefully that continues. And when you say that if someone likes your previous game, that they'll like your new one, when you're designing games, do you work sort of within a box where it's like, you know, people are going to want a Keith Elwin game, so I have to give them that? And is it tough to stay in that box? I mean, because you can see similarities to your games, you know, nothing that's like criminal, just in the original layout and the original shots and all that sort of stuff, but everything's kind of different. But just in the fact that you said that, I'm curious, if you confine yourself to a playground when you're designing a game or if you jump over the fence once in a while, how do you handle that? I was referring more of the rules of the game. Layout-wise, I'm trying to stick to what I think is fun and trying not to copy too much of myself. For example, on Jurassic Park, I wanted shots way off to the sides that were important, and most people like that. Some people do not like that. You know, they say the shots are too tight and actually they're not too tight. They're just lower than what you're used to. So when I approached Avengers, I was like, well, I'm going to do the opposite of Jurassic Park. I'm going to put the shots more where, you know, people are used to them. And so this, you know, more of a traditional, I wouldn't call it a fan layout, but it's more of a traditional layout where most of the important shots are up the middle and the shots on the side, I won't say they're not important, but they're not sharpshooter type shots. So Keith, on reveal day, Are you surfing Facebook all day, kind of reading comments, reading Pinside, or is it not something you really get overly into? Yes and no. Between going through 2,500 lines of speech and, you know, putting out fires on the assembly line, I tried looking at what was going on. But, yeah, it seemed positively received, so I didn't read every single comment, but it seems positive, so I'll take that as a good sign. Yeah, for sure. Your last game release was Jurassic Park in 2019. was basically the last summer, and before that, Iron Maiden in 2018. The development cycle for your games at Stern is around 18 months or so, according to some of the people that we've had on the show. And yet you're cranking amazing games out at least once a year. How do you maintain that pace and that level of quality and creativity? 100% credit goes to my programmer, Rick Nagel. That guy busts his ass like nobody. For me to design a game, I can design a game fairly quickly. The catch is, hey, I got all these rules I want to put in the game, and you got X amount of months to do it. And he's just amazing at that. So if you look at Jurassic Park, I think that game had twice as many lines of code as Iron Maiden or something like that. And he got it done in a shorter amount of time. So he gets the credit for pushing his team over the top. And in this case, for the Avengers, Raymond Davidson came on in the middle, and he busted his ass, too, to get us where we are. So big props to him as well. How is Raymond coming in? Because he's obviously a huge pinball guy. I'm number one in the world right now in IPA rankings. And he's got a coding history, but learning the pinball coding world was a little bit unique for him. He had said on another podcast. So how was the transition for you guys just getting him into this game? It's good. I mean, obviously COVID is making this difficult where, you know, I don't see him in person. We're just talking to each other on Slack. So Raymond comes in. He worked a little bit. He did a Jurassic Park update for us. He worked a little bit at Iron Maiden. Then he comes over. And, yeah, he's just – he works odd hours. I'll see him online really early in the morning and then really late at night so I think he's getting used to he just moved down here from Washington obviously so I think he's getting used to everything but yeah being pretty much entirely off site together we run constantly on Slack we're typing back and forth talking about rules and modes and I keep reminding him hey you know this game isn't for us we can put stuff for us we can put stuff for us in it but we need to put a lot of stuff close to the start button So a good example is the Soul Gem mode where you get a certain amount of flips. The first iteration of that was almost impossible. And I was like, we've got to make this so it's a little bit challenging, but we don't want to totally frustrate novice players. So we've made it pretty generous now. So if you're a novice player, you have a good chance to get through it. But even I still don't get through it sometimes. You can get stuck on one shot. And you're not losing your ball during this mode. So I think it's a great tradeoff for, you know, hardcore players are going to like it because you get a bonus for how many flips you have left. And then all those players just getting through it is going to be satisfying. So we're going to see how that mode goes and maybe incorporate more stuff like that in the future. It was a really cool mode. And watching that on the stream, just seeing, you know, how you approach that, because I was thinking to myself, is it better to not trap up and wait for that flip? Or should you trap, you know, and just eat it and see if you can control the shots? It sounds like, or from what I saw you doing, it seems like trapping up, even though it's wasting a flip, is a smarter move. Yeah, yeah. See, this mode is an iteration of the topper mode in Jurassic Park, which we did a while ago. And I was like, this is actually kind of a cool mode, but, you know, hardly anyone's going to see it. I really want to revisit it in Avengers. So we kind of embellished it a little more and put it closer to the start button. And hopefully it really, you know, it's something we can add in future games because I think it's awesome. Yeah, it seemed like fun. We'll see how people like it. Speaking of the stream, some people said that it's pointless to have Elwin on a stream displaying his new game because he's so good that it doesn't give anybody really a realistic idea of how the game plays because no one else plays that well. I liked it, though. I liked that because you could see further into the game, and then guys like Jack Danger represent, you know, Jack is really freaking good at pinball, but he represents someone who's new who's kind of just playing for the first time, and you could see how brutal the game was when Jack was playing it versus when Keith was playing. Is this like a fast play, or is this a pretty brutal game, or do you feel like even novices have a chance of playing more than two minutes? I mean, first thing to understand, all of us are on very little sleep. We wheeled that game in there. I didn't know. None of us really knew what was going on with the stream. So, yeah, we wheeled the game in there, and I was like, oh, there's going to be a Raymond and I playing. We're like, oh, man, that's not good because really for a reveal stream, I don't want to get too deep into the game. So I was like, well, you know, we'll just wax this down and pitch it really steep, and we'll do that. And I totally, I mean, my bad, I forgot Jack was going to jump in, too. And he had never played this game. He had never played it. So, obviously, you know, Jack being Jack, he's sitting there commenting on stream, chatting, and he's, you know, obviously his attention is divided. Foundering away. Yeah, that probably would have been best if Jack had got some time in that, and Raymond and I would sit off and go over the rules. But it is what it is. I'll take the blame. Well, I think I really enjoyed that. I like to see how you kind of get into the game and the depths of the rules. Because, man, I know your games are always very deep in terms of code, but I couldn't get over. I was trying to wrap my head around, you know, everything you were doing, moving gems and starting modes and how the jewel grid worked and all that stuff. I mean, it's a really freaking deep game. Yeah, see, that's the stuff I was trying to avoid. I was trying to focus on, hey, you shoot the disc, you start the quest, you win this gem. And what this gem does, we'll discuss in a later date, but you win the gem. You put it on a shot, it gives you a perk. You can power up the Avengers. We'll cover that in another session with the glass off. But to me, it's kind of pointless to go through all that, A, when the code is still evolving, and B, if you don't have the game in front of you. It's like when I watch a pre-order of a video game. I'm watching someone play, and they're like, oh, you do this and this and this. Well, I'm not familiar with the game at all, so it's just like this means nothing to me. Right. So I kind of followed what we did at Jurassic. We did the same thing. We showed the shots. We showed all the mechanisms work. And then two weeks later, we took the glass off. And okay, this is how this works. This is this perk. So we're going to do the same thing for this game, too. That's cool. I mean, you brought up the video game thing. Avengers Infinity Quest was revealed the same week as the big new Avengers video game was released. Was that a coincidence at all, or was it just somehow timed to kind of release at the same time? That was absolute coincidence. Okay, all right. I thought maybe that was the case. You mentioned on Facebook that Avengers was designed before Jurassic Park was even released. Tell us about that. I mean, is it just a white one at that stage? Was the game basically complete before Jurassic Park was revealed? What's the process with that? So there's a bit of a lag between when the physical game is done. So we have to design the game. It has to be prototyped. We shoot it. Okay, this game shoots. Now we give it to the programmer, and then the programmer has it for six months. So there's a good amount of time while the programmer is putting all the rules in that the designer has to start working on his next game. So, yeah, before Avengers was released, I finalized some design stuff on game number four. So that's just kind of how it works. Are you working on the rules right up until release, or do you have those basically all figured out once the game design is finished? So what I have to do is I put together like a framework for rules. It's like, okay, this mech is going to do this, this mech will do this. We'll have, you know, six or seven modes. We'll have some minor modes over here, but I won't go into detail until the programmer is actually working on it and has it in front of them, but then we'll flesh out the modes. You said that you've also got game four pretty much in the can, and game three was just rebuilt. So is it, like when you're doing interviews with us, is it difficult for you to juggle all this stuff and keep track of what you're talking about and what you can't talk about? Yeah, a little bit. So while Game 4 is not quite in a can, it will probably be in another month. Wow. That's cool. And that is what again? That's right. You said it. I just didn't hear it. What was it? So we can expect at your design rate that Game 4, yeah, Game 4 will be out about a year from now. So you've got a little bit of time left before your next reveal, but it's already in the can. That's impressive. Get some sleep. Yeah, man. Okay, tell me about it. So how has your game development time and process been affected by COVID? You said you're working kind of remotely. How does that work? Because as a game designer, you would think that you would need to be standing over this thing. And obviously you have one probably in your apartment. But how does everybody else get involved in this? And are there some things that you like better about working remotely, or is it all kind of harder? So to answer your question of whether I like it, I like the flexibility I have. So if I'm doing CAD work all day, I absolutely love being at home where I'm not distracted. If I'm writing rules, I love being at home, no distractions. Obviously, when I'm putting the game together, I like being in the lab with my coworkers and going over stuff, especially with my engineer, Harrison. We'll go over stuff together. That stuff is really hard to do remotely. And then when the co-owner has the game, it's not as bad. it would be, obviously it would be better if we can look over the game together and go over stuff. So we had a couple in-person meetings, but other than that, it was all strictly remote. Actually, the hardest part of Avengers was Jerry Thompson being remote, because on a normal game, Jerry flies out to Stern like once a month, and then he'll bring out his notepad, we'll stand in front of the game, we'll shoot it, we'll play the modes, and he'll take notes, he'll ask me what I want. So we had none of that for this. Basically, we sent him a game, sent him code updates, and then said, what do you think of this? And then I'd have to download the code, install it in the game. He's like, no, can you do this? So that was really hard. That was probably the hardest part of this. It was the sound. That makes sense. How much do you actually guide him through what he does versus just say, I'm kind of going for an ominous theme here. What can you give me? Yeah, usually I'll say, hey, this is what I want. And then he'll give me like four or five examples here or pick one. Oh, cool. And so a good example is the bonus count up in Jurassic Park. It was the ascending drum where him and I went through like five or six variations of that to finally, you know, we got one we both really liked. And if we had done that remotely, that would have been a real pain. So technically, this is the third iteration of the Avengers done by Stern. Originally it was Gomez doing it in 2012. Then there was the pin. Why was this the right time to go back to the Avengers again in a different way? I don't know. You never brought Philly in on that one, huh? You're just doing it. I do what I'm told, sir. Okay. All right. Say no more. I think it's a home run theme, if you ask me. The movies had come out the previous year. Everyone's familiar with this theme. Me, myself, I know it's, obviously, I know it was a comic, but I wasn't familiar with them. So when I found out I was on the project, I bought all the related comics. I read through them all. and I was a little surprised how much darker the comics are than the movies. So obviously since it was the comic theme we were doing, we had to kind of take a darker approach. So you can see that in the gameplay with the music and everything. It's a little bit darker than, you know, if you're used to the movies and you're used to them cracking jokes, you know, making fun of each other and some lighthearted stuff. Obviously that's not true in the comics, so we kind of had to stay to that form. But I think we got some funny lines in there, especially with Hulk and Marvel. Yeah, I did like those. Was the decision to go with a comic book version of The Avengers based on limitations of the movie assets, or did you just want to go with a comic book theme for a change? We actually sat down with Jodie Dankberg and the licensor. It's kind of the right thing, I wanted to say, because the movies were already, you know, movies that came out the previous year. Yeah, obviously it would be kind of a licensing nightmare. Those are all like AAA actors in that movie. So, yeah, we all sat down and said, yeah, we'll make it timeless. We'll use the comic. and Jeremy was absolutely on board with the comics, so that's when that decision was made. Yeah, and a good decision, too. For some reason, I don't know why, but I just love comic book art on pinball machines. The old Spider-Man, you know, and the old Superman, you know, I love those games. I was just going to say that the 1980 Gottlieb Spider-Man, I used to play that thing to death as a kid, and I look at it now and it's like, it's timeless. It's the comic book Spider-Man, that's what I remember. It's not the movie, and I think it's going to age well. Yeah, I want to buy one of those Spider-Mans and just turn it on and set it in the corner like a nightlight. Like, it's just beautiful. Oh, man, that game was so big and so fun when I was a kid. You know, I could barely get my arms around it. I just had so much fun playing it at the pizza place down the street. Did you have limitations on this? I mean, you had assets, obviously, tons of assets in the comics, but did they put any limitations on Jeremy or on what you could use from the comic book? There were some limitations, yeah. We cannot modify their art, so what you see on the screen is, you know, We're basically taking the comic panels and animating as if they are comic panels. Oh, okay. I love that, by the way. Yeah. No, it absolutely works. We were a little scared at first, but then the licensors said, yeah, yeah, you can animate around it. You just can't change the artwork. And so that's what we did. And it's like, oh, that absolutely works. Yeah. There was actually, in the 60s, the late 60s, there were Marvel cartoons that were done like that, where the animation was just like an action pose of the Hulk, and they just kind of moved it across the screen. He wasn't running and his arms were moving. The artwork's obviously a lot better in the game, but it does kind of harken back to that, which is warm fuzzies. Yeah, no, it absolutely works. It's funny, everyone says, oh, it's so much faster, and it's like, no, it actually isn't. So you said you bought the comic books when you were assigned this job. Were you a comic book guy? No? Does Mad Magazine count? Nice. It does. I grew up on that as well. Spy vs. Spy, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those comics. Those are pretty much the only comics I ever got into as a kid, yeah. I used to love the Don Martin stuff and, yeah, the Spy vs. Spy. Yeah, all the little stuff in the borders. Look at those little cartoons that you used to see. Yeah, Euroginous, yeah, and his border. Oh, God, those are great. Man, I miss that magazine already. I know, I know. I don't know if they still make them, but you can get the DVD with all of the magazines on them to just flip through at some point. I think they just stopped, or they're stopping at the end of this year. well with all your comics that you had i mean that you went out and you bought you must have had a ton to work with in terms of storyline as well did you know immediately that you were going to do the thanos storyline or could you have gone any direction with the avengers no we had to stick to the uh the thanos storyline so we couldn't go off too much okay but it's the storyline that everybody knows right and uh you know it's you know it's a pinball machine you're basically battling these characters so yeah we decided all right you're obviously you're fighting for the stones. Each Black Order member gets a stone, and he's trying to take it to Thanos. So Dr. Strange sends you to the portal. You're going to stop the Black Order member before he gets it to Thanos, and that's kind of the story of the game, and the rest is, you know, it's almost essentially a fighting game at that point. Right. You mentioned earlier that Raymond Davidson, of course, being on this, and I just think it's cool that we've got two of the best pinball players of all time designing pinball machines. I've always thought that players that are intimate with games and rules and playing games were perfect. I think it's a perfect pairing for you. Raymond, you said he was off and running. You mentioned you collaborated together, but were you on the same page for the most part, or would he suggest something and you're like, no, and you suggest something and he gives a different thing? How much, I guess what I'm trying to say is, how much of what's in there comes from each of you? There was definitely some back and forth on some stuff. He would say, hey, I don't like this. What about this? And I'd be like, no, I don't like that. I'd rather have this. I did get him free ran on a couple of wizard modes, and I think they came out fine. I had no problem with them. There was real no sticking point for anything. I think the longest time we've battled, struggled what to do with the Soul Gem perk, but I think we finally nailed it down. So yeah, no, he's off and running. He's going to be something. That's cool. Keith, you know, you're one of the few game designers that you design the game as well as the rules. I was wondering, when you're designing the game, do you design the game and then come up with rules for it? Or do you come up with rules and then maybe design a feature based around that rule? Or do you do both at the same time? How does that process work? I try to do both at the same time. So I'll give Jurassic Park as an example. I wanted that weird Newton ball thing in it, and I knew I wanted to affect something you did in the game. So when I was thinking, it's like, okay, we'll make this the truck, and whichever way this is facing, this is the way you progress on the map. So I totally built the rule set around that one toy on Jurassic Park. And obviously in the case of Avengers, I did the same thing with the sling ring disc. It's like, okay, this is front and center of the game. This is Dr. Strange's. He's sending you places. This is going to be a really important part of the game, so I need to be able to shoot it from all three flippers. It needs to be kind of front and center, and so I designed a game around that with those rules in mind. Cool. Well, there was an excellent deep dive into the game on Twip, and you covered a lot on the Sturg Insiders podcast and some of the game streams, so we don't want to rehash all the rules and features of the game, but we definitely want to dive into some of the details of the game with you. So talk us through the design process for Avengers. So we had some of our Facebook page family write in and give us some questions they wanted you to answer for them if you could. And the first one is from Trey Cruz. He says, how many Whitewoods did you create while designing this game? Two. Okay. Is that average for you, or are there games where you nailed on the first attempt, or are there games that have taken you like a million Whitewoods? I think Iron Maiden was three, Jurassic Park and Avengers was two. So when I say two, that's actual machine-cut vendor-formed ball guides. Harrison and I build what we call Whitewood Zero, and that's basically a blank wood with hand-bent ball guides. We kind of do it for a geometry test. There's no inserts. There's no rules. It's just flippers, bumpers, and ball guides. Once we get past that phase, then we'll send out to get a cut play field with vendor-formed ball guides. Cool. So most of the game is designed on the computer, right, in CAD, and then how much do you tweak a white wood once it's done? Is it mostly just moving stuff to change shots a little bit, or are you making drastic changes? It's mostly minor tweaks. I'll give Iron Maiden as an example. The first Whitewood, the middle spinner, the left orbit, something was really off about it. I could not hit it. So I went back. I opened that shot up a lot on the game, started shooting it. Okay, this shoot is great now. Now I've got to transfer this to the CAD. So I'm out there with rulers, protractors, everything to get all the new angles accurate, get that in my CAD file, get it over to Harrison. And then when the next Whitewood came, it was like, ah, much better. This shot's so much easier to hit. Nice. Remind me where we are. I was swatting a spider. My house is like practically spider-free except for where I decided to set up my office when COVID hit. I have a little desk area off to the side next to my fireplace. And apparently that's where the spiders like to hang out. Having arachnophobia, it's quite delightful to hang out here. That would be a fun game. Christopher Franchi versus the spiders. We got a title. Everybody root for the spiders. Another follow-up. So the same guy, Trey Cruz, also wanted to know, what was the first play field element that you decided had to be in this game? The spinning up-down disc. Cool. That's very cool. So did you know on the pro you were going to take away the up-down factor, or was that something you decided to do later? Kind of assumed, yeah. I wouldn't be on a pro, yeah. Okay. I want to do my take on a spinning disc, which is a, you know, yeah, it's cool that it spins, but it seems like it should do something else. So, yeah, I worked with Harrison. He's like, oh, yeah, no problem. So, yeah, I think we pretty much nailed it first try. We didn't have to do any revisions to that. So, yeah, I finally got a spinning disc, which has been done, you know, a hundred times all the way back to the 60s and put our own spin on it. Our own literal spin. Did you think of the Ringmaster in Circus Voltaire with it rising? Was that your thought with that? Is it something to incorporate that way? Because that's the only thing I think about I've seen that's done that before. Yeah, I guess. It's not my favorite game, but that's actually not a bad mix. So one thing I remember not liking about that game was it rejects a lot when you're trying to shoot it in the hole there. So when I was working with Harrison, I was like, this needs to not reject or I'm going to be really mad. So he worked a lot into the geometry to make sure that once anything goes down in a hole, it stays down in a hole. Is that rejection on Circus Voltaire, is it because it's on the spring? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. This one projects the ball down. I think the spring, depending on where you hit it, it could go anywhere. Okay, that makes sense. All your games have, like, unique and original design features. and of course this was no exception. You want to tell us about the decision to include a vertical ramp, and is that something you wanted to do for a while, or you just came up on this particular game design? It was something, yeah, that was something that came in later in development. I was trying to think of a shot that would set up the upper left flipper, and then I was looking through the newer Avenger comics, and I saw the Avengers Tower, and I was like, ooh, I could do something with this. So I was trying to think, maybe I'll make it a captive fall, in like a vertical cap to fall and i was like yeah that would never have enough energy for that so uh we decided to try yeah just the uh enough down ramp and not enough down ramp but it's just like a vertical ramp basically with a stop at the end and i was like i think we tried that without the magnet and it was like oh this sucks this isn't fun so then we tried it with the magnet and i was like oh this is okay this is cool this works and then uh when we were developing it um i forget what happened it was like a bug or something where sometimes the magnet would just release the ball early and it's like oh i kind of like this it keeps you on your toes so we actually made a motor around it at the hawkeye challenge where the first time you hit it it gives you a nice little countdown and release it and then you have a target to hit uh the harder that then the more you get into it the harder that gets it doesn't tell you when it's going to release it just drops it and so you have to be on your toes and yeah we were playing around with that and i thought it was great fun and that's not the only vertical you know thing you have in there in the premium the you have the Captain Marvel ramp that's essentially straight up. How hard was that to engineer? Did you go through a lot of iterations? Oh, yeah. Harrison was ready to kill me on that one. I basically said, I want a web slinger, but not from a Vuck. Right. And he says, you're high. And then I kind of skips out what I'm looking for, and he's like, that's going to be so expensive. It's not even worth it. And he's like, come on, man. Let's try it. He's like, the vendor's going to shoot this down. The vendor's not going to do this. Yeah it took to finally you know you finally got it done But yeah that ramp was I guess was an engineering nightmare I mean dude speaking of expense your games seem like they have like four times the bomb as other games. Like your wire forms alone in this game are insane. There's like more wire forms than any recent Stern that I can imagine. So do you have just like a secret, you know, inside track with Gary where you can just go in there and bamboozle him a little extra money out? Or are you still working with the same bomb as everyone else? Boy, I wish. No, we all get the same bomb. Wow, that's impressive. You milk it well, sir. A lot of credit goes to Harrison. He is very efficient at putting as few bends in the ball guys as possible, stuff like that. Cuts down on costs. So he's very efficient at getting the most out of what we can. Talk about the center right ramp. It's hittable with every flipper in the game. Did you set out to do that, or did it just kind of add to your designs, like, hey, wow, we can actually get this from all three flippers? I did not. But on the first whitewood, that was just a regular ramp. And I was really worried that the upper flipper was going to blow out the side of the ramp. And so I kind of put a post below it. And then I was actually aiming for it, trying to break it. And I was like, well, this actually does go up the ramp. It's just really clunky. So I called Harrison over and I was like, can we just like bulge this side of the ramp out? And he's like, yeah, we can try. So we actually uncut where it attached. We bent the kind of boated out, like I call it the pot belly. Suck it back in there. It shot great. and we're like, wow, this works. We should try it. And so, yeah, contacted the vendor. They sent us another one a couple weeks later, and it's been there ever since. To answer your question, no, I wasn't originally intended to do that, but like I said, I was afraid it would blow out the side of the ramp, so I knew how to do something, and it actually worked out incredibly well. That's really cool. Another one of our listeners, Jeff Wilson, on Facebook posted he wants to know, was there any shot or ramp mech in a game that you took inspiration from a past game? Ooh. Oh, man. I would say the back ramp from Deadpool on the Deadpool premium that George does a little differently, where it's coming down and goes up the ramp. But I really like that huge orbit that it creates, and I wanted to make that even a bigger orbit. So that's why I set out to make the right orbit. Not only does it go up a ramp, but then it crosses all the way across the playfield. So I took a little inspiration from that and added my own twist of making it very visual as it crosses the playfield. That's cool. And speaking of Gomez, I mean, you kept some features from the original Data East Jurassic Park game to pay homage to that title. So was there anything from the Avengers game that Gomez did that you tried to kind of call back to to bring that into the new game? So I really liked the Black Widow ramp shot on the original Avengers. So I kind of wanted to one-up that, and that's why the Marvel ramp is where it is. Okay. And when it came time to actually name what it is, I thought Marvel fit better than Black Widow. But it is a bit of an homage to the original location of that ramp and how hard it is to hit. That's cool. Another Facebook question from Dr. John Cosson. He says, I'm in for the LE. I wondered about the process of manufacturing the clear subway. Are there any concerns regarding the long-term durability of that? And how have they done this with the past clear problems? Referring to the clear windows? Yeah, I think he's worried about how that's going to be maintained over time. if you're going to see any changes to the overlay of that kind of see-through portion after a long time of playing the game. Yeah, it's the same process as for Metallica. Okay. Yeah, I don't know. Obviously, you're going to get scratches and stuff over time on your game, but it's not going to ever not be clear. So if you look at an 8-year-old Metallica, however old it is, that's probably what it's going to look like in 8 years on this game. All right, I have a question that is completely out of context right now, but I saw something on there that reminded me of it, and I have to say it. Star Rollover. No one has used one of these in such a long time, and there's only one. I've got to think you were just sitting there looking at the game going, we've got to get a Star Rollover here somewhere. What's the story behind Star Rollover? I love Star Rollovers. Yeah, I mean, if I could, I'd put them all over the place. They feature prominently in my most hated game ever, Captain Fantastic. yeah so yeah i definitely wanted to get one in there but it just worked out that that shot that goes underneath the ramp up there there was no room for any of the switch so it was just a perfect fit right there plus it lights up so you know it's blinking for the skill shot so you can kind of see it so uh no that was that was a perfect marriage for a star rollover yeah i was watching the video and i saw it and i got so happy i'm like a star rollover yes a little bit a little bit old school A little bit of a useful. Well, you do kind of seem, to me, it seems like that bingo grid you've got there, I saw that and I instantly thought, and I think maybe on another podcast you might have mentioned this, I thought of games like Big Game or Ripley's. Frontier maybe a little bit, but not quite the same. Did you have those in mind when you created that? Definitely Big Game is my favorite classic stern. Obviously, it works a little bit different. Ripley's, obviously, I'm a big fan of Ripley's. Nice. And there was something about Walking Dead, the way Lyman did the collecting supplies on the drop targets, where it's just moving and then you lock it in. I thought, oh, that would marriage perfectly with something like a Bingo Grid award. So that's where that came from. I kind of, I knew a little bit of that for a long time. I was originally going to print the awards on a play field, what the Bingo Awards are, but then I said, well, then I'm going to be locked into it. And I think, I know it's not going to be everyone's favorite, but the awards are on the LCD, and I figured it's going to be much better in the long term for keeping that fresh and adding stuff to it rather than being locked in anything on the play field. And, yeah, I'm really happy that it stayed in there all the way from the first Whitewood all the way to the end. And if you could explain to me, I can't remember how it works, but if you do them in order, it's like a super award or something like that? Is that how that works? So there are a bunch of awards that are attached to the bingo grids. There are super features. I call it super features because it's the Avengers supercomputer. There's six modes, and then there's a supercomputer wizard mode in there, too, if you get through all six of the super modes. There are other awards in there. There's extra balls. There's portal locks. There's 5X bonus. So there's a bunch of other stuff to go with the modes in there. If you hold the instant info, it'll show you what's where. So you can plan your attack of how to get multiple bingos at once to collect multiple awards. So I think it's a really fun strategic element of the game. Yeah, that sounds great. It does. Part of the reason that your games are so praised is that you're really good at balancing the game. So there's not usually one path that you have to travel to get it to the highest score, make the most progress. How hard is that to do when you're coding the game? I mean, how long does it take you to sit there and say, all right, how are we going to not have an exploit in this game? Because you're a competitive player, and obviously that's what the first thing people look for is how do I blow this game up? And your games are notorious for not being able to be blown up in any one way. It's very simple. You put the risk-reward on single-ball play. So this was something, when I first started, Lyman instilled this on me. He's like, because Walking Dead is one of my favorite games. And I was like, man, this Will Walker multiball is worthless. And he just like point blank said to my face, if I made it worth too many points, that's all I need to do. And I was like, oh, yeah, that's why so many games are banned from IFPA, because all the points are in multiball. And it made total sense. And that's stuck with me ever since. Yeah. Yeah. You can get points. If you play the multiball, great. You can get points. But if you make that the sole source of points, then that's all anyone's going to do. Then it becomes a one-dimensional game. And the rest of it, just throw the rest of it out. So do you purposely nerf your multiballs? Oh, yeah. You do? Okay. Oh, yeah. Raymond went through and changed the scoring on four, and we were playing it, and he's like, I just got more on four, which is the bozo multiball, than blowing up this mode. We've got to change that. And he's like, oh, yeah, I agree. So we went back and nerfed it. So I think he's on board with that, too, now. That's cool. I mean, with all of your gems and being able to place them on shots and having such deep code, how does that, I mean, you would think all of that would make it even harder not to build exploits into a game unintentionally. When I set out to do this game, I was like, I am not going to have a Playfield multiplier. I am just not going to have it. And when I'm putting the rules together, oh, you know what would be cool here? A Playfield multiplier. And I had to stop myself. No, I am not going to do it this game. I think because, you know, when the Playfield multiplier just creates havoc later on, if you watch Carl D'Python Anghelo and his Pteranodon streams, he's like, he builds it, builds it, builds it. Well, I'm not going to collect this until I get a Playfield multiplier going. And on Jurassic Park, I was a little evil. I put it on a target you normally would never shoot at, but when you try to shoot at it, it's very dangerous. So I kind of made up for it that way. But, yeah, in this game, I set out no play-filled multiplier. There are multipliers. There are shot multipliers, and those can stack, but not a play-filled multiplier. So that made it real easy to balance as compared to, say, Jurassic Park and Iron Maiden. Do you have a strategy on this game that you go for when you're playing? Like is there one way that you think is the best way to blow it up? I don't think there is one best way. know, but I definitely try to have Thor ready to go when I start a quest so I can bring that multiball in there. Same with Iron Man. If I have Iron Man multiball ready to go, I try to save it until I start a quest. And also, the quest can be turned into multiballs themselves, which you can then bring in Iron Man or Thor to stack in with it. So there's yet another strategy. So yeah, my strategy is that the points in multiball are never going to be super huge in my games, but if you use the multiball in conjunction with a mode, then you're going to get some points. That make sense? I like it. The co-op mode was a big hit for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as well as everybody in the stream the other day. So I was wondering, the Avengers seems like, you know, obviously it would make sense, you know, teaming up with other Avengers and whatnot. I don't know whether the question was answered or not, but if they weren't listening to that stream and they're listening to this show, is that something you guys are planning on adding later on? It is on our wish list. It's going to depend how long it takes to get everything like we're still missing tons of call-outs We're still missing animation. It's going to depend on how much time it's going to take to get all that stuff in there. And then, yeah, we would love to add it. But right now, as a release code, it is not in there. That is the only answer. Are there any other unique modes in the game that are going to escape from Nublar-style game option? Yes, right now we have a Battle Royale. It is in the ship code. We're still working. There are no call-outs for it, but it is there. We still need to go through and polish that up. But it is a mode where it is six Avengers versus five of the Black Order. And it's also semi-based on flips. You have X amount of flips or X amount of time. And if you use up your flips or you run out of time, you take damage. If you drain, you take a lot of damage. So basically, you need to fight each Black Order member with your character. Once your character dies, then a new character comes in with a full health bar, and you get your restored flips in time, and you're battling through the Black Order. It's a fun little mini-mode. There's a timer on it, and there's a score. Will there be a character selection option in the game? Is that something you consider during the game, or are you planning on putting it in later on, or no? As in play as a certain character? Yeah. No, no. We focus more on the gems as your perks rather than the characters. The characters, you collect the characters as you go, and you can power them up. So that was kind of the tradeoff there. So when you're designing, there's three versions. You've got a pro, you've got a premium, you've got an LE. So when you design, which one are you thinking of at the time? Are you putting everything in at once, like picking LE, and then just take away? Or do you have a different thought process for each of the measures going in? Or does just Gary come by after you've built and said, that comes right back up? No, you definitely designed for the LE because taking stuff out is much easier than trying to shoehorn something in. Did you get taken out that you were disappointed by, though? No, absolutely not. I knew how expensive that marble wrap was, that that was never going to make the pros. So I thought, well, how can I still make this shot cool? So I did a couple iterations, and I'll have a spinner with a little horseshoe U-turn at the end. It's still a fun shot. It doesn't have the wow factor of the ramp, obviously, but you can't say, wow, that shot sucks. I don't think anyone's going to say that. And pretty much near the subway was a no-go because that also is very expensive. So everything else I wanted, like the magnet in the tower, the spinning disc, the drop targets, all stayed, and I was happy. Who makes the choice of what comes out? Is it strictly you, or do you do it as a team, or just you collaborate together what you think should go? it's pretty much a collaborative effort of product development so we show the game to sales sales plays it they see how it does and you know we go through the cost estimates and they're like well what can you live without and what do you really need and I tell them and they're like yeah I agree I agree it's like the star rollover is actually on the chopping block at one point and it's like well I have no other switch to put there so it's basically we need it and they're like yeah alright we agree if you say you need it you need it are those expensive? yeah star rollovers star rollovers are expensive Wow. The Stern uses optic star rollovers, so they're a little pricier than the old-school belly ones. Okay. So there's a weird rumor floating around on social media, and I pretty much already know the answer to this, but it's going to hold more weight coming from you. So people are saying that the Avengers design was originally created for Ninja Turtles. Is there any truth to that? Did you do – is there nothing at all? That's absolutely not true. Okay. All right. Fair enough. So that is split to bed. I'm not surprised you're seeing those rumors go out there. It's like, come on, guys. I know. I know. I hesitate even bringing it up, but I figure it's good. It answers the question once and for all. No, no. John was begging for that game for a while, and he finally got it, so I would never take that from him. That's cool. We're going to move on to art. Speaking of rumors, you worked with Jeremy Packard on two of your last three games, and there may be a rumor that he's working on a third one with you, your fourth game. And, you know, outside of him being a fantastic, phenomenal artist, is there any reason why you keep teaming up with him? Do you have a brotherhood, good relationship? You just love the jokes? Dad jokes just keep on coming, man. Oh, my God. It makes it hard not to work with him. Him and I are pretty tight. You know, we text almost every day and, you know, mostly bad jokes, but sometimes work-related. But, yeah, no, him and I have a pretty good working relationship. Or he's like, oh, I don't know what to do here. I don't know what to do. Do what you think is good. I don't think anyone's going to hate it. all right, and then it gets revealed, and everyone loves it, and it's like, see, I told you. Yeah, you're right. I overthought it. Sorry. Well, if you don't mind, next time I need to get a hold of him, I'll just send the text to you. If you could forward it to him, because, you know, if you get responses on a daily basis, that beats me out. Yeah, he does get busy. So, you know, you guys can both crank out a ton of great content in a short period of time. That must help, you know, in the design process. And, you know, we heard a rumor that he's going to be on your next game. So, you know, when you guys are synced up like this, is it just easier to just keep sticking with the same artist? Obviously, the working relationship is good, but the fact that he can do things so quickly to get the next game out there as fast as you can, I imagine that might be a huge help. Yeah, I love working with Jeremy. He's very fast in the turnarounds, and this project went way further than the previous one. So I think he is much happier than he was at the end of the previous one. So he's like, yeah, let's do another one. All right, so hopefully we'll get another one out shortly, and we can have another team up. Nice, nice. Out of all the art packages that he did for these machines, which one's your favorite? Ooh. Are you talking about between Maiden and Avengers? No, just the Avengers packages, yeah. Like, you've got the LE, you've got the... Boy, when you see this back glass, the mirrored back glass in person, it is stunning. That's got to be my favorite. That's cool. Who made the design choice for the LE armor? You know, some people love it, some people are like, eh, it's a little bright. Like, who makes that decision? Is it Jeremy, or are you in on those decision-making meetings? Obviously, that call does fall to me, but I am not going to override what the art department sees fit. Gotcha. I'm not hired to be the artist. Right, right. The problem with the LE sparkle armor is the sparkle does not come through on pictures. Yes. When you see it in person, it looks great. Cool. And I've felt the same way about a lot of other pinball machines in the past, is you just don't appreciate it until you see it in person, so I'm excited to see that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the light's not shining on it, and all you see is this bright yellow. It doesn't look like that in person. Gotcha. Moving on to music and audio, Jerry Thompson's on the sound design and Kevin Hale's on music. As always, they've done a fantastic job. And I was wondering, how much development do you have with sound effects, call-outs, et cetera, given that you like to have your hand in a lot more of the game design? Sound effects, pretty much, you know, I'll give Jerry a little bit of direction. He'll send me some examples, and then Rick and I will sort through them. Oftentimes I'll let Rick pick them out unless there's a specific one that I want. Because especially during COVID, he can just put them right in on his machine right there and test them. Obviously, if I want to hear them, I have to wait for him to do a build and upload it. Then I've got to download it. So I trusted him with more of it on this project. Kendall Hale, he also did the music on Jurassic Park and on this game. So with Ken, you basically went through and found some music on YouTube that sounded Marvel-like. and I told Ken, yeah, you know, something that sounds like this, we need some energy stuff, we need some darker stuff, and we need some victorious stuff. And he ripped those right over to us and they sound great. So I sat in on the recordings for these call-outs. Marvel provides their own voice talent. We supplied the scripts and I kind of sat down. They did a few reads. They would say, is that good? Is that good? You know, a retake. And then they sent us all the files. We've been sorting through them. So that is 100% what gets in the game is up to me. So I'm trying my best to put the absolute best stuff in there I can. Did Marvel provide you with actors that have done these characters in the past, or are they new actors? I don't remember if they're from the video game or the cartoon. They brought it up a long time ago, and I forgot. But these guys are veteran actors for the characters they are doing. We just have a couple more random questions to close out with. So one of them is, with three games under your belt, we're kind of starting to see the Elwynn design. And Raymond Davidson was on the Final Round podcast the other day. They were kind of talking about what features you have in your games that are starting to kind of be Keith Elwin features. Raymond was saying a captive ball, spinners, unique entrance from the plunger, an upper flipper, a shot through the pops, a unique shot layout. Do you agree with all those things? And are those things you're always going to see in your games? Or do you feel like you're going to try and mix it up every time you design a game? I'll try to at least do four of those five. Okay, nice. Yeah, those are all things I enjoy personally. I love captive balls. I love spinners. Spinners are more than anything, man. When I was a kid playing with classic sterns, oh, man. That's why on Jurassic Park I completely copied the nine-ball spinner feature. I was just a huge spinner fan growing up. I love upper flippers. I like unusual shots. I like a mix of hard and easy shots. So I guess that would be my style. That's cool. So, okay, you've got Raymond Davidson. You've got Zach Sharp. You've got Tim Sexton all working for Sturm. a whole bunch of other great players. You've got the line machines there. When you are in the break room together, how heated is the competition on the machines there? It's not as much as you would think because generally we're so focused on the game we're working on. I haven't played anything except Avengers for the past three months when there was enough code there to make it playable. So we're all focused on our own games. But Zach is the one who's usually, back when we were in the office, he was usually the one in the arcade putting up scores and then Tim would go out there and dethrone him. He was heartbreaking, so Lyman and I would go out and try to, yeah, we kind of missed that camaraderie. Yeah. Well, you'll get back there eventually. Eventually. With the Twippy Awards, we want to talk about this, because not only are you doing damage on the Twippies every single year, you won, I think, seven Twippies last year. Why did you decide to use Kate Martin to accept your awards last year? Was that something that you had planned out long in advance, or just kind of like a spur-of-the-moment thing? That was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I don't remember why. Oh, I remember when. Yeah, so, yeah, there were. You had a big zit. No. So this happened right when COVID, and we got sent home. And the guy, his name's Roper, was going around. He was going to record all of our stuff. And then I completely blanked and forgot. And I had went home, took all my stuff with me, took my game with me. And I was like, ah, and yeah, so. And you were like, hey, just make some videos. He says, again? Yeah. I felt bad. I didn't want to seem like I was unappreciative or looking down on a Twippies. I was watching, and I'll do my best to appear next year. That's cool, because I'm sure you'll be there. I'm sure there will be plenty of other opportunities for you to accept some Twippies this year. Yeah, yeah, no. Absolutely great job that Jack does. Well, listen, I've got to make hay while the sun's shining since I got you here. Is there any chance you could give me some tips on how to not suck at Captain Fantastic? Yes. What's the goal there? I have like 1,400-point games on that thing. and it's just like, drink, drink, drink. The goal is to not use the upper flipper and then just keep shooting the ball at the top, hope you get the A and the B and a few plus three bonus advances, and you'll be golden. That's how a world champion can just whip out the rules like that to any game. Oh, yeah. If you watch any stream of any high-level tournament, you'll see that upper flipper never used. Wow. And I use it all the time. Like, if the ball even comes close, I'm swinging, and so now I know. Okay. Yeah, no, that's the sucker's game there. He puts that in there to suck. Oh, this looks cool. What does this do? Oh, it shoots the left outline. That's what it does. Yeah, I don't think game designers still lie, but if he is, I'm going to find him, and I am going to kill him. Yeah, it's definitely the game of shoot the lit rollover and hope you get A and B. If I don't set it on fire, I'll definitely give that a try. Don't set it on fire, please. Sorry. Every time you post something online, everyone immediately thinks you're dropping hints on a new game because people just love to, ooh, I got the scoop. This is what it is. You posted that you were watching the Ten Commandments, and the first comment was something like, new game, Moses Multiball. You know? It's like, you've got to admit that you must love trolling people with your posts, right? You're doing this on purpose, right? I don't know what you're talking about. Maybe I have to do the Harry Potter trip. You're like, we're going to need to do this. Let it out. Jaws reference. Come on. You're trying to mess with people, right? Yeah. The Harry Potter thing was great, because we were at Universal for Jurassic Park to sign the stuff, and they're like, hey, come enjoy the parkway here. They had the Harry Potter thing. So, yeah, we're just like, hey, let's have fun with this. Yeah. I am curious how much you guys are watching social media, like when a game comes out and for initial reaction and for what people are thinking. Is that where you turn to? Like on the day it's released, are you looking to see, hey, do people like this, do people not like this, or do you just let it go and just wait and put the dust to settle? Yeah, I'm curious to see what people think. I kind of knew the reaction would be like on other Avengers, but, you know, it's different cast of characters for the most part. It's the comic versions, you know, completely different games, completely different art. 2012, when that came out, just seems like a long time ago. How do you handle criticism? Because the only, I mean, I've seen very little criticism on this game. People freaking love it. But the only thing that I've really seen people harp on is the glove in the back. And they're like, oh, it doesn't look anything like the, you know, the movie glove. Like an oven mitt. Yeah, you know, does that stuff affect you? Or are you like, dude, it's the comic version. and this is what it looks like in the comics, and this is what we did. How do you take that stuff? So here's my thing. Yeah, obviously it's the comic version, so it doesn't look like what everyone thinks it looks like. If you look in the comics, that's pretty much what it looks like. And the other thing, too, is I gave you the framework. The framework is there. There's an LED board back there. It's hooked up. It's programmed. If you don't like it, obviously there's going to be mods for it, but the alternative is put nothing there. So the framework is there to mod it, so have at it. I kind of knew going into this that I remember when the Sparky first came out on Metallica, people were just modding the crap out of that thing. And I knew on this game, it's going to be the gauntlet. People are going to be dazzling that thing. They're going to be doing all types of mods to it. And I'm actually excited to see what people do. That's cool. So if you don't like it, the framework is there to mod it or, you know, whatever you want to do. Embrace the artistic community. Well done. That's right. I'm sure you read Twip from time to time. And on last week's Twip, there was a picture that I have to ask you about. There is a really awesome new T-shirt that is coming out through Silver Ball Swag. What do you think about the Keith Elwin greatest of all time shirts that they're selling? And how many of those are you giving out at Christmas time? Trust me, every co-worker showed it to me. Oh, that's hilarious. Well, that's pretty awesome. I definitely want to see you rocking that shirt. And I have none. I better start seeing some, I suppose. That's right. you're kind of like pinball's Chuck Norris in terms of uh you know legend status so you know when you were doing your stream for um the Avengers Ed Ed Robertson was was talking in there and he said he thinks your tears can cure COVID but you've never cried oh my god I am just a person anyone who knows me know I do not like the limelight I don't like attention and unfortunately, I picked the wrong hobby. Yeah. You're right in the limelight. For good reason, though. I mean, watching you play on the Pembroke stage is a thing of beauty, so, you know, kudos to that. And you're doing awesome in the pinball design world, too, man. You're kind of taking over, and people are really loving what you're putting out there. So, you know, we're so happy you came on the show. Thank you so much for taking a couple of hours with us and answering all our questions. Yeah, no problem. It was my pleasure. All right, ladies and gentlemen, let's just keep going. Thank you. Thank you, sir. That was awesome. Thank you. You're welcome, man. Enjoy your day off tomorrow. Oh, my God. I'm so excited. And best of luck with number four, sir. Thank you, sir. It's going to be a success. All right. See you, Keith. Take care. All right, buddy. We'll see you. All right. Bye. And that does it for our interview with Keith Elwin. What a dude, man. That was awesome, guys. What do you think? He was awesome. He's just amazing. Even speaking, he amazes me. I know. He's just sort of chill, but he's also the best of the best. So it was really cool to have him answer all those questions for us and spend some time with us. He already is a legend kind of in the industry, and I see a lot of years keep that one games in the future. Definitely. So thanks for coming on the show, and thanks, Stern, for sending us all of these cool guys to interview. It's been a blast. If you guys have any questions, you can email us at superawesomepinball at gmail.com. I'd like to thank all of our sponsors for sponsoring our show, as usual. And then our next show, coming up in about two weeks, is a very, very super exclusive special show. Not that having Jeff on this week wasn't. I'm not exclusive about that. Yeah. I've got my own show, you know. That's right, Jeff. Tell them where they can hear you once every three months. Stop it. Stop it. Actually, you know what? I'm going to tell you this much right now. There is an episode that will be out the same day yours comes out. Yes. It's almost like I planned that. And what's the name of the show again? It's called the Pinball Players Podcast. Mostly focused about playing pinball. But there's not a lot of that going on, so you have to wait eight weeks sometimes. Jeff has a lovely co-host. Yes, Joe Lemaire. That's right. I never called him lovely, but yeah, it's Joe Lemaire. Okay, so that's going to do it for this week, guys. Thanks for listening. We love you, and we'll see you in a couple of weeks. Good night. Have a good night, everybody. Take care. Super awesome. Pinball show. And it's super awesome. I just thought you should know. This is a freshie. And Dr. Pimps. I'm getting a lot of your answers. And don't you guess. It's super awesome. If you'd like to drop us a line or ask a question, we can be reached at superawesomepinball at gmail.com. Questions or comments may be read on the air. The original content of this podcast is copyright 2020 ASSAT Radio Productions. The commentary and opinions shared by the cast and guests do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the sponsors, Coin Taker, Chicago Gaming Company, and Back Valley Creations. Their sponsorships of this show only serve to add to their continuing support of the pinball community. Okay, okay, show's over. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Hey, you fucking chalupa suck, dude! Hey, everybody, this is Ed Van Der Veen. I will remember you. Will you remember me? Quick, bring me some duct tape. Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here? It was very satisfying. _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 78a25f7e-2d8e-4d05-9813-bc8b1f87e851*