# Episode 14 - So You Wanna Play Pinball?

**Source:** Wedgehead Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2024-01-22  
**Duration:** 41m 31s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** Buzzsprout-14304467

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## Analysis

Alan and Alex from Wedgehead Pinball Podcast advise new pinball players on getting into the hobby at locations. Key themes include learning two-player mechanics, understanding rule sets, avoiding premature gatekeeping based on forum opinions, accepting machine setup variations (pitch/level), and choosing play styles that match personal goals rather than following obligatory tournament paths.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Portland has a robust pinball scene with many machines on location and high accessibility to casual players — _Alan: 'Portland's a big pinball city it has been the entire time I've lived here for the better part of 15 years and it remains so we have so many machines on location'_
- [HIGH] Attack from Mars is a gateway game that teaches new players about pinball rules through intuitive objectives — _Alex: 'Attack from Mars... was the game that went from like not into pinball to obsessed with pinball' and he describes learning multiball, extra balls, and saucers as rule mechanics_
- [HIGH] There is no single correct pitch level for pinball machines; operators set games to their preference — _Alan: 'people set their games to different pitches full stop some places set them really flat some places set them really steep' and 'there is no one number there is no perfect pitch for a machine to play'_
- [HIGH] Online leaderboards for pinball are inherently flawed because machines play differently — _Alan: 'that's why you can't compare scores from one machine to another that's why online leaderboards are an inherently bad idea for pinball'_
- [MEDIUM] New players often blame machines at a 6-month skill plateau to avoid accountability — _Alan: 'there is a plateau point when you're playing pinball when you first get into it... and that's when i see all this stuff where it's like well it must not be level'_

### Notable Quotes

> "holy shit, like all these... it was probably been a year of me and Megan visiting barcades and we would just take turns... you could play two player"
> — **Alan**, early
> _Illustrates common beginner misconception about pinball multiplayer mechanics; sets up the podcast's core educational theme_

> "in the immortal words of steve ritchie the best advice is just to fucking play better"
> — **Alex (quoting)**, mid
> _Core philosophical statement anchoring the 'stop making excuses' theme; invokes industry legend authority_

> "a lot of these things are in your mind like a lot of the things you've been playing about in pinball are in your air in your head so focus on what's in between your ears when you're playing pinball"
> — **Alan**, mid
> _Articulates the psychological aspect of beginner plateau; addresses anxiety about machine conditions vs. player skill_

> "the poor craftsman blames their tools"
> — **Alex (quoting business partner Rodsey)**, late-mid
> _Reinforces accountability theme; adds credibility through peer authority in Portland pinball scene_

> "we're all playing the same game that's the biggest thing i always come back to with them all"
> — **Alan**, mid-late
> _Core thesis repeated multiple times; foundational principle underpinning all etiquette advice_

> "don't brag about scores on home games because it's like it's it's not the same thing it's a little bit corny"
> — **Alan and Alex**, late
> _Community norm-setting about home machine leaderboard culture; addresses emerging online scoring discourse_

> "you don't have to do that no there's no rules to this shit you just got to play pinball to get good"
> — **Alex**, late
> _Directly counters tournament gatekeeping narrative; affirms multiple valid pathways into competitive pinball_

> "i don't want to beat somebody... i want to like kick your ass and set a high score"
> — **Alan**, late
> _Personal preference disclosure; illustrates diversity of play motivations within the community_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Alan | person | Co-host of Wedgehead Pinball Podcast; owner/operator of Wedgehead pinball bar in Portland, Oregon; bar manager Casey (wife) also mentioned |
| Alex | person | Co-host of Wedgehead Pinball Podcast; 'Alex the Waterboy'; longtime Portland pinball player (15 years); works/played at Ground Control arcade |
| Wedgehead | organization | Pinball bar and podcast in Portland, Oregon; owned by Alan; bar manager Casey; referenced as location with multiple pinball machines |
| Ground Control | organization | Large barcade in Portland, Oregon; opened 20+ years ago; influenced arcade/bar culture across the country; where Alex discovered Attack from Mars |
| Megan | person | Alan's wife; casual pinball player; visited barcades with Alan before he became serious about pinball |
| Casey | person | Alan's wife; bar manager at Wedgehead; noted observation about casual players not knowing two-player mechanics |
| Rodsey | person | Alan's business partner at Wedgehead; referenced as source of 'poor craftsman blames their tools' philosophy |
| Attack from Mars | game | Classic Data East pinball machine; Alex's gateway game that taught him about rules, objectives, multiball, and saucers |
| Steve Ritchie | person | Legendary pinball designer; quoted ('best advice is just to fucking play better'); cited as industry authority |
| Jack Danger | person | Pinball designer/content creator; mentioned for setting loose tilt on stream; 'Jack Danger take' |
| Whirlwind | game | Classic pinball machine; used as example of Alan's early difficulty plateau; Rodsey brought one to demonstrate upper flipper shot difficulty |
| Venom | game | Modern Stern game; referenced for complex rule set requiring deep learning; used as example of appreciation through rule study |
| Rick and Morty | game | Pinball machine; referenced in context of pitch level complaints about upper orbit shots |
| Godzilla | game | Pinball machine; example of home machine high score posting on Reddit without disclosed settings |
| Adam's Family | game | Pinball machine; used as example of learning curve moment (hitting super jackpot for first time) |
| X-Men | game | Classic pinball machine; used as example of poorly maintained machines in smaller cities |
| Metallica | game | Pinball machine; mentioned in context of same game playing differently at different locations |
| Theater of Magic | game | Casual player favorite machine in Portland; referenced as example of accessible games |
| The Sopranos | game | Pinball machine; casual player favorite in Portland location scene |
| Stern Pinball | company | Modern pinball manufacturer; mentioned in context of modern complex rule sets and Bally Williams legacy machines |
| Bally Williams | company | Classic pinball manufacturer; referenced for bubble level design differences from modern Stern machines |
| Pinside | organization | Online pinball forum; source of gatekeeping opinions and misinformation about pitch/setup standards; new players warned against treating forum consensus as fact |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Two-player pinball mechanics and getting started, Learning rule sets and game objectives, Machine setup (pitch, leveling, tilt) and gatekeeping, Player accountability vs. blaming machines, Etiquette and community norms for beginners
- **Secondary:** Online leaderboards and score comparison, Tournament vs. casual play paths, Portland pinball scene and location accessibility

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.78) — Warm, mentoring tone throughout; hosts are genuinely enthusiastic about welcoming new players while being honest about common pitfalls. Criticism is directed at gatekeeping behavior and excuse-making, not at individual people. Some light frustration with online forum culture but framed constructively.

### Signals

- **[community_signal]** Home machine high score bragging perceived as 'corny' and inauthentic; clear norm-setting against posting home scores without location context (confidence: high) — Alan/Alex consensus: 'it's just corny' and 'don't brag about scores on home games'; Alan: 'i would never brag about a score' on home machine
- **[event_signal]** Dollar games (friendly 1v1 wagering format) presented as alternative to tournament play; referenced as emerging standard in local scenes (confidence: medium) — Alex: 'we call dollar games which you'll probably run into if you're in this hobby for any amount of time... you put a buck as a bet on the game'
- **[sentiment_shift]** Strong pushback against online gatekeeping (Pinside forums, Facebook groups) promoting false standards (6.5° pitch, bubble level centering) as absolute requirements (confidence: high) — Repeated emphasis that 'there is no perfect pitch' and that forum consensus about specific measurements is 'complete bullshit'; hosts position themselves as educators countering misinformation
- **[community_signal]** Portland identified as robust pinball hub with high location accessibility and strong casual/competitive player culture sustained over 15+ years (confidence: high) — Alan: 'Portland's a big pinball city it has been the entire time I've lived here for the better part of 15 years'; mentions many machines on location and Ground Control's 20+ year influence on arcade culture
- **[design_philosophy]** Classic games praised for intuitive rule teaching (Attack from Mars); modern Sterns criticized for complexity requiring external education (40-page rule sets, 'college degree' effort) (confidence: medium) — Alex describes Attack from Mars as teaching him rules through gameplay; Alan notes 'modern sterns have very complicated rule sets even for long-time pinball players'
- **[market_signal]** Skill plateau effect at ~6 months of play when beginners transition from blaming themselves to blaming machines, driven by watching Twitch streamers and Pinside exposure (confidence: medium) — Alan: 'there's some like level where it's like oh you've been playing you know all the terminology now and you're gonna suddenly start noticing like these little things because you've been watching twitch'
- **[community_signal]** Hosts explicitly distance themselves from tournament culture despite competence; prefer high score chasing and friend-based competitive play (confidence: high) — Alex: 'alan and i we're not big tournament guys we just like playing competitive pinball in a different friendlier way'; Alan: 'i want the grand champ score that's what i play for... i want to like kick your ass and set a high score'
- **[technology_signal]** Online leaderboards fundamentally flawed for pinball scoring due to machine variability; community moving toward location-specific rather than global score ranking (confidence: high) — Alan: 'that's why online leaderboards are an inherently bad idea for pinball' and 'we're all playing the same game' (implying scores within one machine are only comparable)

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## Transcript

 Thank you for watching. Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Wedget Pinball Podcast. My name is Alan, I'm one half of the Portland Pinball Bar Wedget, of which the podcast is named. I'm joined today by my co-host, Alex the Waterboy. What are we talking about today? Today we're going to be talking about some advice for players newer to the hobby, and specifically those kind of getting into the hobby on the location scene, I guess, going out playing pinball in its natural habitat, which is in the wild. And it's going to be some kind of pitfalls, stuff we wish we knew when we were first getting into it, and just some kind of advice that we want everybody to know. Episode is titled, So You Want to Play Some Pinball? Oh, we're sticking with that? I just called it that because it's because of mousing around and it's always like you want to mouse around or whatever on the little alphanumeric display. That's funny. I think it's good. We'll stick with it. So You Want to Play Pinball? So you want to play pinball, do you? Do you? So yeah, I figured we'd start with just kind of talking about how we kind of got into pinball. A lot of us listeners and just people in the hobby played pinball growing up, but we probably had some moment where we came back to it as an adult. I don't know a lot of people that kind of like played it and understood it as a child. So like, yeah, me personally, my wife, Megan, who I've mentioned on the podcast a few times, she's a great sport and she liked pinball back in the day, but we would play it occasionally and we'd go to barcades and stuff. I never really knew what I was doing until one day a friend of a friend asked if I wanted to play a game with him. And I had no idea at that point that you could play two player. And I just remember like that was the first thing I was like, holy shit, like all these like it was probably been a year of me and Megan visiting barcades and we would just take turns. And you see that still. I mean, that's a common thing. Oh, I see it all the time. I see it happen all the time at our bar all the time. It's always tough because I don't want to be like the kind of like the tool that's going over and like mansplaining unsolicited advice. but I always do. That's one thing. If I see a couple trading off, I will usually go out of my way to tell them, press the start button twice. It'll make your lives better. Pay attention to which player it says on the screen and it'll just be so much more fun. It's immediately like, okay, you don't have to remember a score. You're actually competing in lifetime, which is what I'm all about. Yeah. We should start that off. My wife, Casey, who works at Wedgehead as the bar manager, she specifically mentioned we should mention that because she sees it all the time. uh we get a lot of casual players that come in or people that are new to pinball and they don't know how to play a two-player game so i mean a lot of people that are listening to a pinball podcast you're probably beyond this point but in case you're not yeah press the start button for as many people as you want to play usually up to four there's a few games like six million dollar man they play six player yeah or the big dmd sagas yeah or the dmd sagas yeah just press start and then you alternate balls yeah that's one thing i just am like don't be afraid to tell other people that if you see them that might not know it or your friends that I guess that's one thing if if you got friends you're going to take out make sure you show them that because it's just something that actually makes a big difference it doesn't admit it's you're gonna have more fun what about you how did you get on get into pinball I was living here in Portland I had moved here on a whim and I was working at a restaurant in downtown and I was a closing cook and I had time during the afternoon and there's a big barcade pretty much the biggest I think oh can't say the name barcade oh no yeah oh no the big corporate entity will come after us but a place called ground control it's still here in portland and they opened over 20 years ago i don't know the exact date but they basically influenced a lot of like the different arcades and bars that you see across the country now a lot of people got inspiration from ground control here in portland so i would go there in the afternoons and i would play mostly video games that you would remember the simpsons stand-up arcade cabinet the x-men stand-up arcade cabinet dr mario the stuff that you would think and then eventually that stuff kind of wears kind of thin because there's no save points or saving your story like in a modern video game at home i got bored i went upstairs and they had a bunch of pins and i remember playing attack from mars and that was the game that went from like not into pinball to obsessed with pinball that's kind of a classic yeah i think it did a great job of Like, this sounds really dumb, but I'm sure everyone that's listening to this podcast who is a pinhead has had this moment of like you go from what casuals. Now we roll our eyes when we hear people go. I thought it's just slapping around, not letting the ball drain. And then you're like, no, there are rules. We were all at that point where we didn't know there were rules. We didn't know there were objectives. 100%. Like, that's what we were kind of joking about before we started recording was that I was always just mad that shooting the ramps wouldn't do something every time. Because all I knew was shoot the ramps. And you're like, once you realize that, it's like a catalyst moment. But for me, it was Attack from Mars, realizing, oh, I'm defending the Earth. I'm defending different cities on the Earth from this alien invaders. I shoot the saucer, right? I cleared two saucers. Oh, I get an extra ball. I can shoot the scoop for an extra ball. I learned how to light the locks, and I get a multiball. And I'm like, okay. So it was like even basic rudimentary rules taught me that there were rules and that there were objectives. And then I became obsessed. Yep, that makes sense. And, yeah, I guess that kind of was kind of glossed over it. But like the first thing on my list here to make sure if you're getting into the hobby, play with friends. Even if they're not good, playing with other people gives you an opportunity to kind of like step back, look at the game while you're not just fighting for your life. When you're new, you'll learn from them. If they are good, they can give you advice. But just even if it's just you and a buddy at a bar for the first time. Yeah, it's always better to be playing with friends. That's what pinball is all about, in my opinion. It's a great part about Wedgehead. I agree. I think it's important to play with other people. It makes it a lot of fun. I was fortunate enough to meet other people in town that were also into pinball. Portland's a big in-ball city it has been the entire time I've lived here for the better part of 15 years and it remains so we have so many machines on location but that also means that because they're so accessible so many average people that like aren't playing in tournaments or aren't like in-ball isn't their main hobby they don't have a game in their house or whatever they still will go out to their local bar and like oh I love a theater of magic or I love this game or like let's play the Sopranos and like they may not be pinheads but they like to play casually and they have certain machines that they do know some of the rules to, and they can play decently well. Yep, that's always funny when you find someone that doesn't really play pinball much, but they have one machine they can, like, actually play on. I love that. Because, oh, you figured this one out yourself, huh? And that kind of gets us into the next part, I guess you talking about Attack from Mars, was learning rule sets, which is something that when you first get into pinball, and a lot of, I think, the listeners of the podcast will kind of be like, okay, yeah, there's rules. You might not go out of your way to learn them. In my opinion, the best games are intuitive and you don't have to. But when you're first starting out, especially with the older games, there's almost always a card on the apron at the bottom of the machine or the flippers that'll show you some like basic stuff. On the older games, that's pretty much all you need to know. On the newer games, you can usually Google, you can find kind of quick tip or you can find an entire, you know, 40 page rule set for Venom. And that's one thing. Yeah. It's kind of like a joke with us, like learning like the modern rules. It's like it takes like a, you know, a fucking college degree at this point. But like sometimes learning that stuff will give you a bigger, you know, a better appreciation for the game. At least that was my experience with Venom. And we talk from a place of privilege living in Portland. But if you're in a town where you only have two pinball machines and you don't like one of them, I would say learn the rules on that one anyway. And you'll have a new appreciation. Agreed. I mean, every game you're going to enjoy more if you know the rules. And there's a lot of times, like Alex is saying, is like we're spoiled here in Portland with all the pinball machines on location. but if you only have even if you only have a few pins in your area probably going to be modern sterns and the modern sterns have very complicated rule sets even for long-time pinball players like even for myself oh yeah i mean there's sorry are you like i mean there's modern sterns that i've been playing since i've been into pinball or whatever playing for five years that i've won you know in tournaments on that i will realize five years down the road i have no idea like how the hell to get an extra ball or something i'm like i just get it by playing the game long enough And it's funny, you can kind of like force your way through shit, but you will have more fun, especially when you're starting out, if you have an idea of what you're doing. Especially if, like you're saying, there's two pins in a spot. Yeah. And you're like, one of them's like Stern Star Wars. And you're like, learn those rules. Complicated, but they're, I would say, unbalanced, in my opinion, towards certain things. But you're going to get, if you're looking at the high scoreboard on a Stern Star Wars on location, and you're going to be like, how the hell do people get in the billions? and then you and you read the rule set or you watch a tutorial yeah then you're like oh and you're like oh they had a 40x multiplier on the video mode that's a billion yep just funny i guess from there we're going to talk about some of the common things that you might think you know really well when you're getting into the hobby i think this is where we get into etiquette and this is what i want to talk about with new players it's very easy to get into something a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing yeah it's always been true and there's a lot of people that know a lot more than you that have been in the hobby a long time and some of those people are dicks and some of those people are gatekeepers but you want to keep in mind don't be a noob that goes out there and complains about silly stuff that you don't fully understand and i'll give some examples when you go out on location crying about tilt settings is just it's whack like i was pretty guilty of that it's i was too when i was two when i first started playing i was too another one that's a modern day thing that I hear a lot of online and unfortunately in person is new players coming in and wanting to know the pitch level of a game and uh I just want to say this here and we can touch on this in a different podcast maybe later about setup and stuff but like people set their games to different pitches full stop some places set them really flat some places set them really steep I think a lot of people get into a hobby they jump on pin side or join a facebook group which is great but you going to hear a lot of weird shit in those groups that are things like it got to be at 6 degrees of pitch yeah anything less or more than that is not going to play right that's why you're bad at the game that's why you're bad yeah a lot of like these things that people kind of like like to raise hell about when they're kind of getting into the hobby it's because they want an excuse for not playing well yes and i think the biggest thing to realize with pinball is we're all playing the same game that's why you can't compare scores from one machine to another that's why online leaderboards are an inherently bad idea for pinball it's like every game i mean you're playing it you gotta gotta make the best of what you have in front of you that's the fun part of pinball it's physical you don't have like any different excuse than any other guy when you play one metallica and you go to a different metallica they're gonna play different yeah very i mean there's so many variables that go into a pinball machine down to like the rubbers that they use what compound those are how steep or flat a game is how tight or not tight the tilt setting is and just how worn in a game is like if it's dirty or if it's clean and freshly waxed all those sorts of things but it's really like what you don't want to be is the person that goes around and blames the game and saying things to the operator or the other people in your league like oh this game isn't playing right because it's too steep right it's supposed to be 6.5 degrees and it's not the thing about it is that's complete bullshit because one it's about setup and people will set up the games as they see fit that all the legs come with levelers of which you can move them up or down about three inches right yeah so it's it's up to you to set them up how you want because there is no one number there is no perfect pitch for a machine to play and some games play better flatter some games play better steeper and people have preferences and whatever your preference is doesn't mean it's right that's what you need to realize like when you're new in pinball it's like your preference is your preference i have my preferences we set our games up at witchhead a certain way the way we like it but when people when new players especially come in and they're like oh what's the pitch it's too steep or whatever i go you don't know what you're talking about like it's that's just like your opinion yeah it doesn't matter people like submitting service requests because the bubble level isn't exactly in the center exactly you know like i've seen those bubble levels installed like with a quarter inch gap underneath them in the wood rail so yes what are we doing here well and not to mention the old bally williams levels that they used to use had just like six or seven lines on them there wasn't like two lines where the bubble's supposed to sit in between like you would think of a level yeah at least the modern sterns have like a clear level to read the old bally williams would just have a bunch of lines and they tell you what they're supposed to correspond to if you look in the manual but people still go well it's supposed to be in the middle of the level that's what i think you know it's like again these are things like you don't know what you don't know when you're getting into the hobby and part of the fun of pinball is complaining about the game yeah that's true like i don't want to say that you can't have fun and blame the game absolutely you tilt and you're like wow these motherfuckers like this like you know the game fucked me or like the ball rolls off and uh you know off at orbit and hits the top of the sling and drains out the side you go god this shouldn't happen why did the game do this to me that's all part of the fun but make sure you keep it as part of the fun right okay don't let it get actually to the point where it upsets you and don't use it as a reason to be like this place or this operator or whatever they're trying to screw me because that's not what they're trying to do i guarantee you we rely on repeat business we want people to play the games nobody every time you go and an operator sets up a game they set it up because that's the way they like it that's the way they like it to play especially when you're talking about a lot of hobbyist operators that are all pinball heads you're getting a lot of new operators out that are all pinball heads they're pinball players they start operating games because there's not games in their area and so they're going to set up the games the way they like them to play so they're not there to screw you they're setting up they're doing a lot of work and effort so that the games when they go out to that brewery or whatever and they coin up a game and play with friends or start they have a good time like for me i fucking hate floaty flat games i hate them like but if i go to a place games floaty is flat that's what we're playing man right like if that's what's in front of me we're gonna play it there's no point in me bitching about it yeah or not putting up a good score or whatever and just be like this is bullshit this game sucks like don't do that it's a weak move and nobody wants to hear it especially because the people around you when you're new to any hobby they know you're a noob okay there's people that are either welcoming or not welcoming in any little hobby or community but people that have done something for a long time they know that you're a noob and they're and it's always fine you're like oh you're new this is awesome like welcome to the hobby or whatever but what people don't like to hear is you quote unquote educating them about the way things are supposed to be because you listen to a podcast or you're on a stream right if you saw you saw some threat on pin side say you needed to be at 6.9 degrees and now you're like that's why i can't hit that upper orbit shot on rick and morty it's supposed to be at 6.9 degrees in the immortal words of steve ritchie the best advice is just to fucking play better 100 what what rodsey says all the time my business partner who you've heard on this podcast is he always says the poor craftsman blames their tools and it's just about everyone plays the same game you're complaining about it everyone else the person that's on the high score list the person has the gc everyone else they're playing the same game as you and they're scoring a lot better than you so you can sit there and you can complain about it or you can get better and play better and that's really the best advice and the thing is is that just like we're saying now it's like we have a podcast we have our point of views but there are opinions just remember whenever you're on pin side a forum you're you're watching a stream or whatever that's their opinion we all have different opinions on pinball which is what makes it fun and dynamic but your opinion doesn't make it right yeah the way i like to set up games doesn't make it right it makes it right to me and i think that's kind of part of it is like you just kind of have to respect the operators to some degree and it's it's their game they're putting a ten thousand dollar toy out there for you to go pay 50 cents and play like quit complaining about little stuff i guess yeah just learning to kind of go with the flow man you know like take more accountability for the way you play and less about the game it's always fun to blame the machine and like i said earlier like i don't want to take that away from you it's fun to just be like yeah that game you know it's the game's fault right but it's really your fault yeah like always remember it's your fault i don't know to me it's always just a different opportunity to practice something or whatever like you find something that isn't playing how you think it should and it's like we'll get better at that because it'll make you a better player on the long run i will also say in that same vein the other common one is the game's not level like it's leaning left or it's leaning right yeah you will find games that are horribly horribly unlevel yeah we've played some of course like you will run into them and in some scenes you'll run into them a lot and it varies a lot on location location location but there's also there are people that are very insufferable because every game they play it leaves the left and it leaves the right right like it's no matter how level it is i don't know how many times i've you know i've noticed a lot of the people that complain about that are the same ones shoving games six inches to do a slide save yeah they wonder why the game's not perfectly level that's a great point alex and you're like huh so it's kind of funny it's just like owning a bar in arcade where we focus on pinball we see this a lot i've done the thing where i get on my hands and knees and i hand level all the games and i make sure so when somebody comes in they're like hey alan this game is not level i go okay i open the glass i put the level on there i let them look at it between the the bubble in between the lines i go it's pretty damn level to me yeah you're like what are you complaining about here you don't want to be those person that i do that to okay because i'll because i'll make a joke of it and we'll we'll have a good time but what i'm teaching you is a lot of these things are in your mind like a lot of the things you've been playing about in pinball are in your air in your head so focus on what's in between your ears when you're playing pinball like focus on how to get better as a player and there is a plateau point when you're playing pinball when you first get into it where you're not any good and then you start learning rules you start looking up rules you start watching streams or youtube videos or whatever good players and then you're like oh i know what i'm supposed to do or the first time you do something like the first time you get a super jackpot in adam's family or whatever and then you're like oh i should be able to do that again and then you don't we hit this plateau point and then that's when i see all this stuff where it's like well it must not be level yeah or the flipper's not strong enough or it's this or that it's like the six month point or so you know there's some like level where it's like oh you've been playing you know all the terminology now and you're gonna suddenly start noticing like these little things because you've been watching twitch or whatever in the game on twitch doesn't do this but the one at your bar does this yeah and you're like guess what neither of them are right yeah it's some of these things some of these things are true malfunctions but those should be obvious shot doesn't register flipper doesn't flip i mean there are some things that are worth bitching about when you're like oh my god this scoop's shooting it right between the flippers every single time but it's also funny when you play the game with your buddy and you're like well shit don't hit that scoop then yeah like how far can you go without in that scoop like it sounds like you shouldn't hit that scoop because it's like and that's where i'm always at i don't know even when you find a genuinely horrible game when i got into the hobby we would go seek out yeah i lived in a smaller city and would seek out any pinball machine that we hadn't played yet and you'd be playing some haggard copy of x-men with half the original incandescent bulbs burned down and shit totally you know i just always remember it was just kind of like a joke you're just sitting there trying to play and you're like well i don't care i'm just trying to beat my buddy while we get like hammered at this dive bar sure because you're playing the same even when you're playing bad you poorly maintain machines you're still both playing the same machine that's the biggest thing i always come back to with them all it's like we're all playing we're playing the same game that's again why i hate online leaderboards for penball or hate people trying to compare scores or any of that. It's hard to compare scores to other scores because unless you're playing the same machine, it means nothing. Yeah when guys post up on like Pinball Subreddit and they have some score on their Godzilla and you like was that five balls Was it three like what are you even yeah what I don settings what your tilt setting exactly I do the Jack Danger take the tilt bob off like and play it on your Twitch stream or whatever and I love Jack that's no shade it's just he knows he sets them loose you can set up beams however you want and you're free to do that sure don't brag about the score like that's the thing you or don't act like your brag about your score be proud of yourself we all play for high scores and market but don't but don't act like you've done something that nobody else has done or that you're somehow and i also think that anytime you're playing a home machine that ain't that ain't a real high score yeah i'm kind of with you on that it's it's too sus i mean it's just there's too many factors that you don't have to deal with and the fact that nobody else can come in and put up a higher score yep is it it's just not it just doesn't really mean much it doesn't that's why i would never brag about yeah just yeah i guess that's just kind of its own thing is just don't brag about scores on home games because it's like it's it's not the same thing it's a little bit corny it is it's just corny so we're just i guess this middle section now we're just about to do like this is shit we don't like well i think it's just about we're talking about like basics so like you're into pinball we're talking about like when you get the fever like we all got the fever and we were all dumb right like like i was dumb i complained to roads i was like oh man these games are too hard i remember he brought a whirlwind in that i thought was too hard too turned up and he was just like back come on he called me he called me a wuss and then like he proceeded to like i was like oh you can't really hit this upper flipper shot and then he would proceed to hit it three or four times in a row for the jackpot in whirlwind he's like what do you mean you can't hit it he means maybe you can't hit it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the game right and and i think that that's something that i wish i knew now to tell myself then because i'm sure i i was i'm sure i said prince worthy things all the time oh yeah man i'm sure i complained about he's not supposed to hit the sling when he goes around the orbit it's not supposed to do any of this shit but you learn as you play more that one every machine plays different people set games up differently there's nothing wrong with the way anybody sets them up you need to get over yourself and the best way to become a good player is to stop making excuses for your poor play you can start owning it 100 should we move on are you done with that section alan i think so for now this will be a theme on the podcast i think in the future like back onto the back onto more beginner specific advice i was gonna say feel out your local scene for like tournaments and leagues if they exist see what the vibe is like if it's something you're interested in that's a big thing when you get into the hobby everyone will be like if you want to get good start going to tournaments you don't have to do that no there's no rules to this shit you just got to play pinball to get good you do got to just play pinball and play pinball with a purpose and that's not to say you if you have fun if you have friends at the tournaments if it's a good scene in your town because it changes town by town by all means go to the tournaments hang out you'll learn a lot from those guys there's a lot of good players in tournaments but it's not something you got to do and it's not something that you need to feel bad about like not enjoying because it's a common theme for us on the podcast but alan and i we're not big tournament guys we just like playing competitive pinball in a different friendlier way i guess and with a lot less standing around i like to play with my friends we like to play what we call dollar games which you'll probably run into if you're in this hobby for any amount of time which is you're playing with your friends and you put a you put a buck as a bet on the game that you're going to play so it's like instead of playing like committing to a four or five or six or more hour long tournament in your local spot you could just play with a buddy and then you guys could kind of gamble one yep one dollar on a game or whatever and it's fun it's fun um and then the other thing is like i'm i'm a high score player like i want the i want the grand champ score that's what i play for to me a tournament doesn't scratch that itch right like it i don't want to beat somebody i don't want like you and i are playing against each other we're playing a match we both have mediocre games but mine's slightly better i don't feel victory in that yeah i feel like i won anything i felt like i played like shit and you played more like shit it doesn't hit yeah it's not really fun winning because you were slightly less shitty it's like when we play pinball i want to like kick your ass and set a high score yes yes and yeah that's not really to say that people that enjoy it like feel it out because it's like if if you're that type of person and that sounds like fun to you and it's it is a great way to measure your progress as a player because you get instant feedback you're in a group you're playing with these other players you either won or you lost or if you're playing four-player match play you're somewhere in the middle right and you get to play multiple rounds and you get to see how well you did versus how everyone else showed up for some people that's a great thing i do think that the overall blanket advice of like you need to play tournaments to get better i think is bullshit and you should know that going in it's like you don't need to play in tournaments to be good now we're going to talk a little bit here about ourselves but i will say that like we're both very good players i wouldn't say i'm very good but i'm okay okay so now for the podcast we need to cut the fake modesty right like i think in person i usually say like i'm not so good but i beat the best tournament players in town in dollar games head-to-head i could beat their high scores so to me i look at these players that are ranked in the states and i go they're not any better than me now i may not think like i'm a great player yeah but i'm like if if people think that they're a great player i'm just as fucking good as any one of them and you're definitely in that boat you were you entered a wedgehead tournament recently and how many people were in that tournament i can't remember 36 or something yeah 36 some very high ranked highest ranked players in the state were at that tournament you played for the first fucking five hours right and you were first in qualifying you were qualified first they were just about to split right they were going to make the final split where they were going to cut down to 16 or whatever and you had to be like hey i'm not actually gonna stick around because my wife has a holiday party and i'm gonna go to that right like and so you left and people were people were like what he's just gonna leave and you're an unranked guy you're not ranked by the ifpa and so all these people were there to get their last chance ifpa points before the end of the year so they qualify for states and get and you're just like all these points don't care right like and those people there was a lot of those people that are just like damn i didn't realize he was that fucking good yeah it is kind of funny that's i think part of the fun of not playing tournaments too is it's like nobody knows what to expect you're kind of a wild card so there's some enjoyment on that side of it as well it is fun to take some of those best quote-unquote best players that only play each other all the time because there are big fish that lurk in the in your local waters wherever you're at that don't ever play in tournaments and you won't know until one of them shows up and hands you your ass yeah the best guy in your town is probably some dude who doesn't go to a single tournament it's probably some guy that's just been like jamming on the adams family at the bowling alley for the last like 30 years yeah it's just it's always some guy like that i feel like i mean what you know i he might not that it's and it's just i don't know that's funny that's one thing that it's like so don't stress the tournaments too much they're great for what they are like you know some people love them and they can be an awesome entryway into the scene and it can be a huge thing for some people but it's just it's not the end-all be-all that i want to ask you if we're both saying like you don't need to go to a tournament to get good how do you get good play more pinball it's always play more pinball and that's like the biggest thing we'll kind of get into some other you know what i call supplemental activities here at the end like other things you can do to facilitate your hobby but it all comes down to playing more pinball like you want to get better play more pinball and going from here i guess the next thing i want to talk about was playing different games just the different kinds of games when you get into pinball a lot of us are drawn to the new stuff it's what you see you know when jack danger streamed every night it's what you'd see him playing it's got the cool themes everything's flashy the games it's the ones you see most often on the location but newer games aren't necessarily better and they certainly don't make you better players playing older games like playing early solid states ems the ass kicker games that you'll probably hate when you get into the hobby that's how you get better that'll teach you when when every single shot makes you fight for control of the ball again and doesn't deliver it back to your flipper you're going to get so much better at like ball control you know in a week of playing a solid state you're gonna have to fight for that ball more than you would a year of playing a modern stern and that's just it's like putting your you know your pinball skills your ball handling skills into a fucking time machine it's it's different and so when you're new to the hobby don't immediately shy away from games that kick your ass i think that that is very succinct and well said that's something that i preach to people when they come in and they see me play a game they're like oh wow i'm so new he's like you're so good at pinball or whatever and you're like it's like i've been playing for 15 years okay like it's not like i was always good and i will say that from firsthand experience when i got good was when i got interested in old games and the reason is just like you said those old games make you fight for control there's no safe ramp return to your flipper right there's no ball savers and there's no same lower play field standardization where the ball always has these inlanes and as the outlanes and the slings are this shape and size and they're in this place they used to fucking move shit around right everyone plays different they they play so different and you'll get flipper hop and you'll get all sorts of crazy stuff and it teaches you how to nudge the ball and track the ball when the ball's in the like the upper third yeah which is something that you never have to learn if you're playing a modern game dude you go play a two inch flipper like an early em and it's like you just want to get it up there and then you need to just be nudging the whole fucking time it's like that's how you play an em it's less about the flipping than it is about keeping the ball safety on the upper third it's kind of funny and there's so many games that people think are like oh these games are coin flips because you'll plunge and you'll have a bad bounce and you'll get a house ball yep and those games are brutal but the thing is is like those skills transfer because your ball tracking in the upper third gets better when you play a modern game now and so you bring that with you but if you only play modern games you net it hard to progress because you never learn what you feel like you don really need to know like you don need to know those things in playing a new game you can get by with only nudging when the ball bouncing on the post going into the out lane if you have good enough shot accuracy which a lot of like newer players that have grown up playing the modern sterns like can just drill ramp combos and stuff you never need to fight for control of the ball yeah there's very few shots on most modern sterns that don't deliver a ball safely to some flipper you know like some of them and that's the games that i enjoy are the ones that don't do that like like black knight sword of rage or something where it's like you have to shoot this shit that is dangerous and you're like that's a good game that's how pinball should be game you're like yeah it's funny it's just that's i always get to put a bow on this is i always tell people play old games to learn skills and ball control yeah because it's going to be really hard to control the ball so when you get good at controlling the ball in those games it'll be it'll feel like riding a bike with training wheels when you play it absolutely it It feels easy then. If I just sit here and play nothing but like my Grand Prix or whatever, playing an old EM and then go out on location and just play a random modern Stern, it feels like the game has just been set to easy mode. Sometimes you feel like you can't lose the ball. 100%. It's just insane. And so that's a thing. It's also another pro of playing the old games is it's great for multiplayer because they go quicker. If you're playing with someone a different skill level than you, it really narrows that gap. So it just feels like a more fair fight for everybody. It's just, they're good for a lot of reasons, but we can kind of get into that in a different episode. Yeah, that's more different episodes, but I always tell people, you want to get good, play old games. Period. That's a good segue into kind of the last real thing I wanted to talk about was just different locations. Trying to seek out places that have a unique lineup is always fun. Don't just default to go in, especially when you're new to the hobby. Don't play everything. Play everything. Find games, use the pinball map. If you don't know what the pinball map is, it's the best resource that's ever been created for pinball. If you're off of the West Coast, you probably got to go to the Pinside map, which is the knockoff version created by Pinside. And unfortunately, what everyone in the Midwest uses. Are you serious? They don't have to use the pinball map? They don't use pinball map. Really? Not when I was out there anyway. Oh. I know. Maybe that was here. My West Coast bias showing. I don't know. I've always used pinball map. But yeah, Pinside also has a map. The pinball map is user updated. And so it'll allow you to search wherever you're at. So if you're traveling, you can find places that have pinball machines and other people will tell you what games they have there. And sometimes even the condition that's in or some other. Yes, it can give you some kind of idea what to expect. It usually will say on there like, oh, they're on free play with a $10 entry fee or, oh, it's 50 cents a game or whatever. So you know what you're getting into, which is really nice. So, yeah, it's an absolute fantastic resource. It's free to use and you should be using it if you're into pinball and use it to go play new stuff. there's been thousands of unique pinball machines that have been made and you're going to want to play all of them yeah like as much as you can it's always exciting to play a new game don't get stuck playing the same 20 sterns because that's what you know how to play and that's what you've seen played and you think you're gonna get your money's worth you're like dude a dollar spent on a game you've never played even if it lasts you 30 seconds is a thousand times better than a dollar spent on a game you've played a thousand times like exactly there's nothing wrong with liking a game and sessioning it but check out new games man it's the lifeblood man i always get jack to play a new game and then i guess one other thing just speaking on locations is places like wedgehead that are entry fee or you know we've got next level big place you kind of see it at some of the larger locations across the country are awesome when you're new and especially if they've got old games and you can sit there and session a solid state for whatever 10 12 20 bucks or whatever their entry fee might be a lot of big cities have them a lot of experienced players kind of will hate on them because they just for various reasons but it's when you're new to the hobby man there is no single better thing than an entry fee arcade because you can just post up and you can practice stuff it's it's amazing you're gonna be in that point where your fever is so hot your pinball fever is so hot that you you can play for four or five six hours a day and not even oh yeah and that's very expensive when you're not good at pinball so the free play arcade you're gonna get your money's worth but i would say even for that middle group of people that aren't expert players here's the other thing there's a lot of people that think they're expert players that aren't that good okay i mean that's the secret that we're going to let you in on so you think you're not that good hey there's a lot of people that aren't that fucking good or they're not that good all the time that's a big thing about pinball but i will say that even in the intermediate player the best way to learn how to do drop catches live catches tap passes dead flips any of those things is when you're not putting a dollar into a machine for a play and you're afraid to try something because if you lose the ball you're like you know like if you're like i could have just flipped and i wouldn't have lost the ball 100 and so those skills are very easy to learn on free play and a little bit harder to learn on coin drop but you're going to run into both and and they're both great if you have only time for a couple of games go into a place where you can put coin drop in is the best yeah like if you only if you're only if you're waiting for a bus or something and you got 30 minutes you you're not going to want to spend 20 to go into a large free play arcade you're not going to get your money's worth but just when you're going to a free play spot which has a free play spot we charge 12 for the whole day uh and we have 22 pins of all eras when you come in we sometimes get those people like oh we're going to go to a movie we only have 20 minutes and i i was like yeah no that's not the time probably shouldn't pay for a wristband yeah it's like they're like do i have to play and i was like if you want to play pinball you do but it's like you should come back when you have more time and then they do like that's just the thing is it's like come back when you have more time we like to think that we're a destination pinball location we're a small location by some standards we got small space we have 22 pins we rotate them all the time and we do i think a damn good job of maintaining them so we look at it like we are a pinball focus spot and we think we're a destination to play great pinball of all eras so when you're going to come to wedgehead spend some time be there for two hours minimum and yeah i think that's a key thing when you're trying to get like getting into the hobby is like seeking out those places can be i was going to touch on some like supplemental things like other things you do when you get really into the hobby just kind of like like what you're getting into at home and then we'll kind of talk about what the next logical step is i guess but i was going to say pulling up like when you're learning the rule sets you can go find you know the papa videos with Bowen Kerins has tutorials on YouTube. There's a lot of Twitch streamers. If you're new to the hobby, you probably don't realize that people stream pinball like a lot now. A lot. It blew up because Jack Danger kind of pioneered it and then it blew up over COVID. Our buddy Jay runs a cool stream too. Johnny Demonic is like, yeah, the premier streamer here in Portland, Oregon. There's a few streamers in Portland, but Jay's a good friend of ours. We love his stream. I think all of us have been on it at one point or another. He does a great job. He has a good time. he's got a bunch of machines in his garage so but yeah it's a good streams are fun they're more fun than watching tutorials because you can sit there and actually ask questions interact with other people so i always think it's fun it's just something that i don't think some people know as part of the hobby and then past that i know a lot of people get into the hobby kind of get into the virtual pinball side of things we'll touch on that a bit more i think in the next episode but it is like a good way to learn rules if you can do it for cheap like playing the games on your switch or whatever when you're trying to learn the rules to monster bash that's fun don't put too much money into that don't put too much weight into virtual pinball it's not real pinball it's not real pinball the physics aren't right they're great for learning rule sets that's one that's it they're great for learning rule sets that's about it don't transfer your score on a virtual game to real life god that should be its own topic because you'll be humbled right yeah i think the next thing from there is like everybody wants to buy their own game and we're not going to talk about that today we're going to save it for a different episode but i think this one we covered so you want to play some pinball this is for the people that when you first got into pinball some stuff we wish we knew some stuff to avoid and just some general advice on how to get better and just why you should play old games and why you should play old games which is what this whole podcast is about i think really i think that's what we're realizing is every one of our topics devolves into us being like well you should probably go play some more old games you'll play a fucking old game you find the oldest goddamn game you can yeah grow up yeah quit fucking around with these goddamn tanker boys yeah so that's that's a common theme that we're realizing this was just meant to be an intro for people that are new to the hobby or just getting that bit by that pinball bug because we've been there everyone's been there everyone that's into pinball now or seemingly has been into it for a long long time that you'll run into they all were in the same position you were like just obsessed feverish oh there's this game oh there's this game you hear about these new games you're like i never knew they made they made a dirty hairy game i used to watch that movie with my dad you know like and all that kind of stuff so like that's an excitable period that's the best period of pinball to me like that oh yeah they're the best when you see someone that's actually excited about pinball it's awesome because eventually we all get jaded you do get jaded at a certain point so i think we love it and that's why we just want to try to help people out in that stage yeah but i think this was a fun episode hopefully y'all enjoyed it even the people that are longtime pinball heads maybe it gives you a a remembrance down memory lane of how you used to be or maybe something we missed something big cringe or embarrassing things you used to say to people that you could recall and you're like god you hate here and now out of new players if i disagree with anything we said or you have any suggestions or things we missed uh you know make sure to just send it all to alan's instagram account his favorite way to receive everything is on instagram no no don't do that you can send us an email at wedgeheadinfo at gmail.com if you have any comments about the podcast in general may want to be a host in the future or you have your own die on this hill game that you'd like featured send it to me and we can schedule something in the future but for everyone else thanks again for listening until next time go out play some fucking pinball have a good time okay good luck don't suck Thank you.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 78d1d894-d7c1-45fd-9b79-192ee07262e5*