# Episode 121 – Pinball Fondlers **Source:** Head2Head Pinball **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2019-12-16 **Duration:** 127m 26s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://www.head2headpinball.com/2019/12/16/episode-121-pinball-fondlers/ --- ## Analysis Martin and Ryan C from Head to Head Pinball discuss the Rick and Morty pinball machine reveal by Spooky Pinball, covering pricing ($6,995 base, $7,520 for Bloodsucker Edition with purple trim), playfield layout features (horseshoe lock, pop bumper instead of slingshot, portal mechanic, 10 adventure modes), and voice work by Justin Roiland. The hosts debate pre-order FOMO strategies, limited edition pricing tactics, and the broader importance of theme/licensing in pinball location earnings versus hardcore player appeal. They also discuss how current themes like Rick and Morty and South Park outperform thematic-weak games like Dialed In and Black Knight on location despite poor reviews from competitive players. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Rick and Morty will sell out despite the reveal video not being exceptional — _Martin and Ryan both agree 100% yes it will sell out; Ryan says 'the hype train is still in full effect' and the video 'didn't scare enough people off'_ - [HIGH] The Bloodsucker Edition ($525 premium) effectively lets you jump the production queue and receive the machine 6-8 months earlier — _Ryan states: 'The do-you-want-it-now edition is the Bloodsucker edition. The do-you-want-it-in-six-to-eight-months-from-now edition is the other one because basically you're paying to jump the line.'_ - [MEDIUM] Spooky plans to alternate 50-unit batches between direct orders and distributors during production — _Martin clarifies unclear Spooky communication: 'they said possibly they'll make 50 of theirs first, then 50 distributors, then 50' but notes uncertainty about whether this pattern continues throughout full production_ - [HIGH] Theme/licensing is the primary driver of location earnings; hardcore player preferences are secondary to general public appeal — _Extended discussion showing Ghostbusters, South Park, and Simpsons earn well on location despite poor hardcore reviews; counterexample: Dialed In and Black Knight perform poorly despite being Stern titles because they lack mainstream themes_ - [HIGH] Justin Roiland provides voice-over for multiple Rick and Morty characters including Rick, Morty, Mr. Meeseeks, and Mr. Poopybutthole — _Confirmed in video description and hosts' discussion; Ryan verifies by looking up character list_ - [HIGH] The Floobelcrank is actually the captive ball mechanism, not the horseshoe lock as initially thought — _Ryan corrects mid-discussion: 'By the way, the Floobelcrank is actually the captive ball. It's not the horseshoe at all.'_ - [MEDIUM] Iron Maiden does poorly on location despite being a Jersey Jack game with heavy music theme — _Host states 'Iron Maiden does terrible on location, too' and notes 'When we stick it in a row of Sterns and Iron Maiden's doing the worst'_ - [MEDIUM] Majority of pinball machines are now sold to home users rather than operators — _Host states 'the majority of machines get sold to home users these days' but this is stated as general knowledge rather than from official source_ ### Notable Quotes > "I'll be completely honest here. If this was an unlimited run like Total Nuclear Annihilation, I would not be ordering because it goes against my mantra of, you know, seeing what you're going to get before you get it, being comfortable with your purchase... I'm throwing that all out the window because I can't be bothered missing out and being upset about that." > — **Martin**, ~17:30 > _Reveals the psychological pressure of FOMO and limited edition tactics on even skeptical buyers; core industry tension between principles and market anxiety_ > "It's almost like you feel coerced against your will. Like you're forced into this situation to buy it, which is everything that you're against." > — **Ryan C**, ~18:45 > _Direct criticism of Spooky's release strategy and pre-order timing; articulates community concern about manufacturer pressure tactics_ > "The video can't do it justice because I think the best thing and what Scott Denise understands is he understands the connection that a person playing the pinball machine has with the pinball machine, right? He understands the light show that needs to happen when something important happens." > — **Ryan C**, ~20:10 > _Acknowledges Scott Denise's design philosophy and the limitation of reveal videos in showcasing actual gameplay experience_ > "Guys and girls that bring videos to pinball machines, don't make your pinball machine look clanky and like, you can't show, even Stern does this, Stern does it really bad, don't show things wobbling that aren't meant to wobble." > — **Ryan C**, ~42:00 > _Criticism of video production quality across the industry; suggests Stern's reveals particularly undermine machine quality perception_ > "I think Rick and Morty is the South Park pinball machine of today in that it is such a cutting-edge theme, so current, that it should earn really well because people will walk past and go, oh my God, I love Rick and Morty. Here is my quarter." > — **Martin**, ~65:00 > _Frames Rick and Morty as location revenue driver despite competitive merit; acknowledges theme as primary earning mechanism_ > "It's only $6,000, really. Yes. And then there's $525 on top of that if you want the Bloodsucker Edition." > — **Martin/Ryan C**, ~12:30 > _Reveals psychological pricing tactic: $6,995 presented as 'less than $7,000' while additive costs accumulate to $9k+; meta-commentary on industry pricing strategies_ > "Spooky can get away with this but it doesn't make me feel good about it. It's the weird thing, you know, like I feel like they can do this because it's Rick and Morty and I'm a sucker but I feel like if it was any other title that would be my excuse to say ah that's kind of not cool." > — **Ryan C**, ~15:00 > _Acknowledges IP strength as justification for pricing/FOMO tactics; indicates community awareness of preferential treatment based on theme popularity_ > "Themes are important. Yeah, I mean, you can see, like, how... Yeah, I mean, like, and then you can see, like, games that really don't have themes do terrible on location. Like, like, Dialed In is a terrible location game." > — **Martin/Joe**, ~70:00 > _Core thesis: theme/license is primary determinant of location success, overriding game quality or ruleset complexity_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Spooky Pinball | company | Boutique manufacturer releasing Rick and Morty pinball; employs Scott Denise (designer) and uses P-Rock control system; first major licensed game release strategy criticized for FOMO tactics | | Rick and Morty (pinball) | game | Spooky Pinball title, $6,995 MSRP base, $7,520 with Bloodsucker Edition purple trim variant; features 10 adventure modes, Justin Roiland voice-over, portal mechanic, pop bumper instead of slingshot, Floobelcrank captive ball | | Scott Denise | person | Designer of Rick and Morty pinball; understands player-machine connection and light/sound design philosophy; creates custom music in addition to licensed tracks | | Justin Roiland | person | Voice talent for Rick and Morty pinball; provides character voices including Rick, Morty, Mr. Meeseeks, Mr. Poopybutthole, and other show characters | | Martin | person | Co-host of Head to Head Pinball Podcast; Australian-based; initially hesitant about pre-ordering but ultimately planning to order due to FOMO; skeptical of limited edition pricing but rationalizing purchase as 'idiot' decision | | Ryan C | person | Co-host/guest on Head to Head Pinball Podcast; has watched Rick and Morty series; provides detailed playfield and feature analysis; critical of reveal video quality and Spooky's pre-order timing strategy | | Joe | person | Co-host on Head to Head Pinball Podcast; hasn't watched Rick and Morty; discusses location earnings and theme importance; mentions conversation about Ghostbusters earnings | | South Park (pinball) | game | Historical pinball title from early 2000s; poor ruleset and limited callouts but strong location earner due to theme; referenced as comparison point for Rick and Morty's location potential | | Black Knight Sword of Rage | game | Stern pinball with heavy music theme; performs poorly on location compared to other Stern titles despite having thematic appeal; license limitation (only to pinball fans, not mainstream audience) | | Dialed In | game | Stern pinball with phone/mobile device theme; performs terribly on location despite hypothesis that phone-using audience would play; example of theme failing to drive location revenue | | Iron Maiden (pinball) | game | Jersey Jack Pinball game with heavy rock theme; reportedly performs poorly on location despite music and theme; indicates license and soundtrack insufficient for location success | | Total Nuclear Annihilation | game | Referenced as unlimited-run game; challenging for new players; mentioned as underperforming on location despite being Stern title; volume setup issues on location machines noted | | Ghostbusters | game | Top location earner historically; hardcore players don't prefer it but general public plays it repeatedly regardless of gameplay quality; theme-driven revenue example | | Simpsons | game | Referenced as strong location earner; decent earnings despite not being competitive favorite among hardcore pinball players | | Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle | game | Spooky Pinball title; $6,495 MSRP; referenced as pricing comparison point ($500 less than Rick and Morty); band license (non-music focus) | | Sunshine Laundromat | organization | Location referenced as not providing free play credits, affecting how top players interact with location machines vs. casual players | | Pat Lawlor | person | Legendary pinball designer; referenced as creator of 'Lawler license' design philosophy; mentioned regarding Black Knight comparisons | | Stern Pinball | company | Major manufacturer; criticized for poor reveal video production (showing wobbling/instability); makes games like Black Knight, Dialed In, Total Nuclear Annihilation, and others discussed | | Wayne (Mr. Pinball) | person | Australian pinball operator/importer; possibly importing Rick and Morty stock; imported TNA previously; mentioned as potential unofficial distributor | | Pinside | organization | Pinball forum where discussion of pre-order confusion and Bloodsucker Edition advantages continues; mentioned as source of 'circular discussion' about theme appeal demographics | | Zach Manny | person | Video production specialist; hosts suggest he be hired for quality reveal videos instead of in-house production (implicit criticism of current industry video quality) | | Interglow | company | Custom art provider for Rick and Morty pinball along with HDLCG | | P-Rock | product | Control system used in Rick and Morty pinball; hosts debate whether mentioning system specifications is necessary in game feature lists | | Bowen Kerins | person | Rules designer credited with work on Rick and Morty (mentioned as having designed Archer/Iron Maiden); implied expertise in ruleset complexity | | Jersey Jack Pinball | company | Manufacturer of Iron Maiden pinball; referenced in location earnings discussion | ### Topics - **Primary:** Rick and Morty pinball reveal and features, Limited edition and Bloodsucker Edition pricing strategy, FOMO (fear of missing out) and pre-order psychology, Theme/licensing importance for location earnings vs. hardcore player preferences - **Secondary:** Playfield mechanics and layout analysis, Voice talent and audio production (Justin Roiland), Video production quality in manufacturer reveals, Home market vs. location operator market dynamics ### Sentiment **Mixed** (0.55) — Hosts excited about Rick and Morty game design and theme but frustrated with Spooky's release/pricing strategy, pre-order timing, and FOMO tactics. Appreciation for Scott Denise's design work tempered by criticism of reveal video and pricing model. General acknowledgment that theme strength guarantees sales regardless of game quality, creating tension between personal values (waiting to see final product) and market pressure (buying limited allocation). No anger but clear ambivalence about manufacturer practices. ### Signals - **[business_signal]** Spooky's strategy of using IP strength to justify aggressive FOMO pricing and pre-order tactics; hosts acknowledge awareness that this pricing would be unacceptable for non-blockbuster themes but unavoidable for popular licenses (confidence: high) — Ryan: 'Spooky can get away with this but it doesn't make me feel good about it... they can do this because it's Rick and Morty and I'm a sucker... if it was any other title I would say that's not cool' - **[community_signal]** Pinside forum ongoing debate about Rick and Morty's target demographic (young people, millennials, Gen X, or just 'left-of-center humor' enthusiasts); uncertainty reflects broader community skepticism about demographic positioning for animated comedy theme (confidence: medium) — Martin: 'Pinside... circular discussion has continued... who is this theme for? Some people say young ones or millennials or Gen X or boomers... it is a theme for people that have a little bit of left-of-center humor' - **[sentiment_shift]** Despite unexceptional reveal video, community hype remains strong due to IP strength; pre-order pressure creates cognitive dissonance among informed buyers who recognize FOMO tactics (confidence: high) — Ryan: 'the hype train is still in full effect' and 'video can't do it justice'; Martin: 'I'm throwing that all out the window because I can't be bothered missing out... I will buy it because I'm an idiot' - **[competitive_signal]** Location earnings driven primarily by mainstream IP recognition and theme appeal rather than ruleset quality or competitive depth; hardcore player preferences secondary to general public foot traffic monetization (confidence: high) — Extended discussion of Ghostbusters/South Park/Simpsons strong location performance despite poor hardcore reviews; Dialed In and Black Knight weak on location despite Stern pedigree; hosts conclude 'only themes and licenses in the real world do well on location' - **[design_philosophy]** Scott Denise emphasizes experiential feedback (light shows, sounds, player connection) over visual presentation; reveal video intentionally minimizes these elements, explaining disconnect between video reception and anticipated gameplay experience (confidence: medium) — Ryan: 'Scott Denise understands the light show that needs to happen when something important happens... The video was, hey, look, we really did get the sounds... buy it' - **[licensing_signal]** Band licenses (Alice Cooper, Iron Maiden, potential Slayer) operate differently from TV/film/entertainment IP; bands retain direct control and grant permissions easily, but mainstream audience appeal varies; non-mainstream themes (Iron Maiden, Slayer) underperform on location (confidence: medium) — Discussion of band licenses being 'complicated' vs. 'music' licenses; hosts note Iron Maiden weak on location despite music appeal, hypothesize Slayer would similarly underperform because 'not mainstream' - **[market_signal]** Limited production (approximately 750 units based on Spooky's typical model) with Bloodsucker Edition creating queue-jumping incentive; 50-50 split between direct sales and distributor channels announced but execution clarity lacking (confidence: medium) — Martin explains: 'you're paying to jump the line' and notes confusion: 'they said possibly 50 of theirs first, then 50 distributors, then 50' with uncertainty about full production pattern - **[market_signal]** Reveal video quality criticized as substandard compared to industry best practices (Willy Wonka cited as near-perfect example); widespread manufacturer problem of showing mechanical instability/wobbling that undermines product presentation (confidence: high) — Ryan: 'don't make your pinball machine look clanky... don't show things wobbling that aren't meant to wobble... Stern does it really bad' and suggestion to hire external video specialists like Zach Manny - **[market_signal]** Rick and Morty base price $6,995 represents $500 increase over Alice Cooper; Bloodsucker Edition adds $525 (presented as $750 AUD); total easily reaches $9k+ with optional add-ons, raising questions about sustainability of three-tier pricing model (confidence: high) — Martin: '$6,995... $525 on top... you could get this up to nine grand easy' and Ryan's frustration: 'it just doesn't feel super duper happy about my purchase' - **[announcement]** Rick and Morty pinball officially revealed with detailed specifications: $6,995 base, Bloodsucker Edition $7,520, 10 adventure modes, Justin Roiland voice-over, pop bumper instead of slingshot, portal mechanic, mega seeds collection system (confidence: high) — Extended playfield feature analysis covering horseshoe lock, Floobelcrank captive ball, anti-gravity device, multiple ramps, Smith House, portal gun, SLAM save mechanic - **[product_concern]** Questions about translite artwork quality; photographed with trees in background creating unintended forest aesthetic; overall artwork coverage sparse (5 main elements on translite) despite vast Rick and Morty universe content possibilities (confidence: medium) — Martin: 'they took horrible photos... trees in background... could have done more... so much stuff in the Rick and Morty universe but only five things on that translite' - **[business_signal]** Manufacturers learning to prioritize home market (now majority of sales) while balancing location operator needs; Rick and Morty positioned as theme that appeals to both home collectors (willing to pay $9k+) and location casual players (draw from pop culture recognition) (confidence: medium) — Joe: 'majority of machines get sold to home users these days' and discussion of manufacturers 'realizing this when it comes to first-time players having themes or their first licensed game' --- ## Transcript you're listening to the head-to-head people podcast find us on facebook email us at Welcome, everybody, to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. This is episode 121. My name's Martin, and with me... The guy who hasn't watched Rick and Morty yet. Oh, I can't believe you haven't watched it yet. I know! That's why I didn't feel bad about missing last week, because you guys were nerding out about it. I was like, ah, this would have been awkward. Like, you would have been like, wow, were you excited about this? And I'd be like, no, got no idea. No, not really. And it wasn't until after that I realised we nerded out about Rick and Morty so long ago, like a year and a half ago, not even thinking that it would ever be a pinball machine. And yet, here we are. And I've actually had a lot of people reach out to me that have started watching it and enjoying it. So, well done to all those people. Not Joe. It's on the to-do list. We're so far behind on shows. Oh, so am I. And not to go on about my hiatus that starts in a week's time, but there is so many things I need to catch up on. And the first thing is going to be I'm going to come up to speed on Stranger Things and we'll talk about Stranger Things later. Segway. There's a bit of a rumor we want to talk about. So, yes, get excited. So, I don't know if you want to skip forward, guys, but we are going to talk about the hot rumor about Stranger Things. Big market tease. There's a couple of rumors we're going to talk about in our I Heard a Rumor section. So, yeah, let's do that. But let's continue talking about Rick and Morty. What up, my glip gloves? Ryan C. in the motherfucking building. Hey. How did you get in here? What's going on? Well, I'm using time travel, which apparently they don't do in Rick and Morty. They do interdimensional. No. Well, that's bullshit because he said, because I've started watching Rick and Morty from the beginning, and he said something got some interdimensional from the future. Like, it is. Sorry. Okay. But yeah, Rick and Morty's been revealed now, so what you recorded before is now irrelevant. We're going to... It's completely irrelevant. And we're going to talk about the actual stuff that we've seen now. Okay. Okay. So, yes. Sorry, Joe. Sorry, Joe. Everything you said, Joe, has been deleted. Yeah. We didn't talk that much about Rick and Morty because all we'd seen at the time was the underside of the playfield and somebody had drawn on the top to give us an indication of what the upside would look like. But now the reveal has happened and we know a lot of stuff about Rick and Morty now. So much stuff, Marty. Well, we have to know this stuff because in X amount of hours, I don't have any last hours. Do you have to order it? And I'm like, is it enough info? Yes, I guess it is. Okay. Well, let's go through the info, and then we'll get to the end, and then we'll work out how comfortable you are. But here's what we know, first of all. It's going to cost $6,995. Schmeckles. I see what I did there. Schmeckles. I want to buy you boobies. How much? $6,995. Schmeckles. Schmeckles. That's a price increase. on Alice Cooper and Nightmare Castle. Yes, it is. Of $500. Let's pretend that it's less than $500 because $7,000 is too much. $6,995 is the... That's right. It's only $6,000, really. Yes. And then there's $525 on top of that if you want the Bloodsucker edition. And I've seen you on the forums, so I know you're there as well. I feel very weird about this, honey. I know. So my understanding is the Bloodsucker Edition is effectively the purple trim. Really, is it? Everything else on top of that is additional. So the light-up speaker grills, that's additional. Yes, the shaker motor, if you want that. Shaker motor. That's always been additional. The knocker is additional. The plastic protectors are additional. The butter cabinet is additional. So you could get this up to nine grand easy. Yes. So maybe we'll touch on it a bit later. The Bloodsucker edition is basically the do-you-want-it-now edition. Yes, because you get it first. The do-you-want-it-in-six-to-eight-months-from-now edition is the other one because basically you're paying to jump the line. If everybody jumps the line and you still might be at the end, I still haven't got a solid answer on what's happening with the Australian orders because are they all going to get clumped together so it doesn't matter? What if half of us order Bloodsucker editions and the other half order normal? Do we have to wait for the normal ones to be made so we don't get a real advantage anyway? Because I don't necessarily want to pay $525 US, which is about $750 Australian, on custom purple trim. As cool as the purple looks. If it means I'm going to get it six months earlier, then sure, I will pay your fee, even though it hurts me a little bit, Marty. Spooky can get away with this but it doesn't it doesn't make me feel good about it it's the weird thing you know like I feel like they can do this because it's Rick and Morty and I'm a sucker but I feel like if it was any other title that would be my excuse to say ah that's kind of not cool yeah I look I get this there's so many different sides from this and of course Pinside is still continuing to blow up and it obviously is advantageous to certain people. Those people that want the Bloodsucker Edition, they are going to make those first. They will get them first. And as you said, if everybody orders a Bloodsucker Edition, then everybody will have to do the 18 months or how long it's going to take. I don't think Spooky's going in this to try and stitch people up. I think what they're saying is we are going to benefit those people that pay more first. I'm just where's the line for that? I don't know but also there's a bit of confusion around buying directly from them and going through a distributor because what they said they said it's like a 50-50 split between distributors and buying direct but how many do you know that a distributor's got? They only have five and you reach out to your distributor and they go sorry I'm all out then you go to the website and they're sold out and then you don't get one. Yeah, it's a weird thing. And I don't think they said 50-50 full stop. I think they said possibly they'll make 50 of theirs first, then 50 distributors, then 50. But I'm not sure if that carries all the way through, or maybe I read it wrong. The other not worrying thing is that some people that aren't official distributors are getting stock as well, I think. Like, you know, like Wayne from Mr. Pinball in Australia. I don't know. Maybe he is an official distributor. I'll probably get an email in the morning to say he is. But I didn't see that on the forums or anything, but he imported some TNAs. I think he might be doing the same thing for Rick and Morty. So if it is truly 50-50, then half of that is, what, 375? Yes. That will probably go pretty quickly on the website, Marty. Well, okay, first question. We're going to get into everything that we see. Do you think this is going to sell out? 100% yes. Yep, good. Yep, I agree. I don't think the video blew everyone away but didn't scare enough people off and the hype train is still in full effect. And what I will say, and we're jumping all over the place here, the video can't do it justice because I think the best thing and what Scott Danesi understands is he understands the connection that a person playing the pinball machine has with the pinball machine, right? He understands the light show that needs to happen when something important happens. He understands the sounds. He understands all of that, right? The feedback from the pinball machine. What you saw in that video was a nothing video in terms of that. There was no Scott Denisey in that video. It was, hey, look, we really did get the sounds and we really did get the license and there's ramps. Cool? You know, buy it. Yeah, but that's all it was. People just wanted to know what type of machine is this going to be? and we saw enough. I saw enough to know whether I would put money down or not. I'm not, but, you know, that's all I've seen with Iron Maiden, Weird Monsters, with Jurassic Park. I just saw the game and went, okay, that looks like it's going to be fun. You can have my money. I'll be completely honest here. If this was an unlimited run like TNA, I would not be ordering because it goes against my mantra of, you know, seeing what you're going to get before you get it, being comfortable with your purchase, all that kind of stuff that I've preached on the person in the past, I'm throwing that all out the window because I can't be bothered missing out and being upset about that. So I would rather order it because I think the amount is limited enough that if I don't like what I see, I can just get rid of my order, sit down the track or buy the machine, have it for a while and sell it to somebody else and not lose too much money. Yeah, so that's it. I'm being completely honest. I don't like it. I don't feel comfortable. I'm still excited about the pinball machine, but I haven't seen anything that... But it's almost like you feel coerced against your will. Like you're forced into this situation to buy it, which is everything that you're against. Yeah, it's too soon. I thought, hey, it's going to be ready before Christmas, so they'll show the reveal. Then we'll have a gameplay stream or something. And do you know what I mean? was like, here's the reveal, here's the play field, here's our little video of the ball clanking around. You have to stay up to 2am tonight to buy it and you've got to possibly buy the Bloodsuckers edition, which you don't really, I don't know, it just doesn't feel, you know, I don't feel super duper happy about my purchase. But I will buy it because I'm an idiot. Okay, so you are going to be buying it at 2am in the morning? Yeah, but I can't bother staying up, Marty. Well, you're going to have to. I joined the fan club. I joined the fan club. I know. I feel like an idiot. I'm a double idiot. That was the first step. It's a slippery slope now. Anyway. So what did we see? So we've seen the layout. It's got, I'm going to call it the Kelts horseshoe. You feel me, sir? It does, right? It's a horseshoe with a scoop in the middle, just like Kelts. It's the Flooball crank, Marty. I was asked in my forums, like, where's the Floobelcrank? I'm like, the Niki Lock 2 is the Floobelcrank. They took up two dot points. Anyway, so the Floobelcrank, do you remember the episode, Marty? No, I don't. The Floobelcrank is that episode where Rick creates a universe for his battery, and people step on the Floobelcrank, and they go left, right, left, right. So that's what the lock is. It's like the ball goes left and right. Yeah, okay. It's cool. It's cool. It looks good. I find that interesting. It's got a magnus wave on the right, and that explains the two flipper buttons on the right-hand side of the cabinet. It's another lockdown button. Oh, my God. If they got the dude to make a custom call out, bagging Black Knight sort of rage, that would just be the most epic thing that could possibly happen in pinball. Anyway. Okay. Well, the big one is obviously the pop bumper on the left, as we knew, instead of a sling. Now, what's interesting about this pop bumper is it's only activated on the right side, I believe. Yeah, it's not like Paragon. Actually, there's so many games that have it. Yeah, Paragon. Was it the Beast Lair? Yeah, Paragon Clothes. There's other ones. I remember there was one in this, not in this, Pimberg Finals a couple of years ago, like the Final Four. but you can go all the way around and it can kind of be pretty crazy, but they've kind of moulded the in-lane around it, so you've basically got a circular slingshot, right? Yeah. Yep. A bit more random. Well, not random, because you should know where the ball's going to go based on the angle. It might end up being more predictable than a slingshot, right? I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. We'll see. find out. It's got the garage up on the left, which you get to via the upper right. Yes, I believe it is fed from the left ramp. Yes, it does. It comes around and drops down, and then bang, you've got the flipper there. One thing I saw is like a captive ball, and I don't know how you access that. Oh, yes. You access it via literally a... I should screenshot and send it to you. It's the weirdest thing. It's just like a rail, like a little steel rail that's in between two shots. And instead of putting a rubber over it, it's just the exposed steel, and you hit that, and somehow the kinetic energy gets transferred to the captive ball that is further up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not sure if I've seen that before exactly. Usually it's a captive ball, but this is something that connects to the captive ball. Yep. It works, apparently. Yeah, why not, yeah. There's a Smith House in the back. We saw that. There's a portal. Yes, yes. That's it. You're entirely impressed, Marty. Well, Eddie, there's the... No, I am actually. I actually really like the look of this. I think this will be a fun game. So as we kind of mentioned, well, we thought there might be a slam ramp that gets the ball into the portal. So what's happening is that to get the ball into the portal to go into a different dimension, you hit the portal, which I believe is kind of near the garage or in the garage, from the upper right flipper. The slam is to do, I believe, with the pop bumper. In previous spooky games, you spell save or something in the inlanes, and that allows you to save the ball if the ball travels through the left or right outlane, or the inlane if you're and multiple if you just want a 10-second ball save. This, I believe, I'm guessing, is different in that you spell slam, and then there's an insert pointing, I think, pretty much in the middle, like down the middle drain. So slam save. So I don't think you have to activate it. Maybe if it detects the switch of the pop bumper and the next switch is the trough switch, as in you didn't activate the flippers within a certain time period, then it'll give you the ball back. Okay. Maybe that's their way of some people saying, hey man, like you, oh my gosh, it was you last week. Like, don't do that. Don't do that, right? So he's like, well, if you can feed the left in lane, right? So if you can go left ramp, right flipper to the portal and that'll feed it straight to the in lane. Do that four times and you've got a save right there. Yeah. I don't know. Kind of counteract it. Anyway. Cool. What else do we know? So we know that it is mode-based. There are 10 adventures that Morty needs to go on. And I also believe that there's interdimensional travel as well, which you want to do because that's where you get to harvest mega seeds. Sure. Mega seeds, yeah. Mega seeds. I can't remember how many episodes there have been. It was the first episode, right? They were harvesting mega seeds and Morty shoved it up his butt. That's right. That's right. The belief is that your main goal is to collect mega seeds during your modes, and your incentive, I guess, is probably a playfield multiplier in the center of the playfield. But there's also a divisor there as well. Did you see that, Marty? Yeah. So I'm not sure how that comes into play, if you're going to be punished by maybe not finishing modes or punish some other way, but why would you have a divisor? That would suck if you're playing a mode and it's one fourth. But I'm just guessing. I don't know what else a divisor would be. Yeah. There's Beth, Jerry and Summer stand-up targets. We don't know what they do yet, but good to have them in the game. Well done. Yeah, great. You're having Jerry helping you. What we do know is one of the modes is going to be Pickle Rick. So you had to do that, obviously. Yeah, for sure. I haven't read the whole book yet. Oh, come on, Ryan. Do I know stuff you don't? That is crazy. I just didn't read. Great. I think I'll read that. So, yeah. What else? Let's have a look. On the thing, on the reveal trailer, it talks about the play through features. So the interactive ship, it's a flying saucer on a spring. Okay. But apparently it's cool now to do stuff again on a spring. Like this is the thing that, you know, before it was, oh my gosh, I found a spring. I didn't even make up. This is like, ah. Yeah, but it's also illuminated inside. So it is kind of looks cool. It's got lighting inside. We've got the Smith's house, the portal gun, a portal, the slam ring. Mm-hmm. Flipple crane, Denise Lock 2.0, which is the same thing. two ramps and an anti-gravity device. We've got that. Game features Is the anti-gravity device the mega save? Correct. So the game features are Catherine Voice Over from Justin Rowland Rowland? Rowliant? Whatever his name is. So the ventures from the series are video clips and songs from the series additional music created by Scott Delisi come away for that a P3 P-Rock control system don't really need to know that intergalactic customer Sorry re-release the clip for money. What the fuck, guys? Okay, keep on going. Interglow did custom art and HDLCG. But it's like they're telling us gang features. It's the P-Rock system. Okay, sure. Yeah, yeah. Would you prefer it to be Spike or something? No, I just don't think you need to mention what the system is. The dot points would be lopsided if... Anyway. It looks good. It looks good. So, yeah, custom... The most exciting thing is Catherine's voiceover. Yes. You know, we heard some of it already. I guess that was just for the trailer. He does a lot of the voices. I'm sure we can probably get a list of all the people's voices that he does. I think in the trailer we heard Rick, Morty. Wait, yeah, Rick and Morty. Yeah, Rick and Morty. Mr. Meeseeks and Mr. Poopybutthole. Yeah, so I mean, I guess every voice that he can do will be in the game, but they'll probably still have access to other people's voices, like Jerry and Summer. Oh, my God. Just from the clip, from the show. It actually says, on the video, it says Justin Justin Roiland. Isn't that the show's name? No, it's Justin Roiland. spelling. Cancel all your orders, guys. They've got the wrong guy. It's actually a sound-a-like. It's not the real guy. We just... Oh my gosh, this week in Pinball, Jeff, if you're listening, we broke news. It's a sound-a-like. Cool. What else are you going to say about money? The art. The artwork. What do you think? Yeah, it's fine. It's good. It does the job. Yep. But the only thing that I dislike a little bit is the trans light. One, they took horrible photos of it where there's trees in the background, so it looks like they're flying into a spooky forest. I'm sure if you zoom in on it. Because they're out in the bush in Wisconsin, right? And the reflection is trees, like Stranger Things-style spooky trees. Anyway, but what I do like about that artwork is the screaming sun, which I talked about in the last episode, is in the top right-hand corner. So that makes up for it. It just kind of looks just like they could have done more. Like there's so much stuff in the universe that there's like five things on that train of light. Okay. So he does, I've just looked it up, so he does Rick Sanchez, he does Morty Smith, Mr. Meeseeks, and to my eyes, Johnson. I please you've got to put Antony Ice Johnson in it um baby I don't know is this I don't know if this is a good deal I can't see anything is this too high I don't know he's also the real fake doors salesman oh my god one of the funniest clips I've got to go tonight after this show I'm just going to watch the interdimensional cable shows one and two anyway he does he does a lot of those but I don't know whether they're going to do that. But he's also Mr. Poopybutthole, so... I'm sorry you don't have any bad memories of me, Marty. Yeah. There you go. That's it. That's it. Yeah, I'm excited. I mean, it's just a little bit apprehensive, but, you know, like, I want to see the... The thing that I know I'm going to like, I want to see that. I like that it's Rick and Morty, what I saw. The video, I don't know, like, the coolest video to ever showcase a pinball machine was Willy Wonka. Like, that was very close to perfection, where even my kids were watching it with me. I can't remember if I told you this, Marty, because I don't think I was on the podcast then. Both my kids looked at me, because I was watching the reveal with them, and they turned around and were like, Daddy, you need to order this, like, right now. and I'm like, why are you telling me that? And they're like, no, daddy, order it right now. And it was just like the music and the video, the way it chased around. Guys and girls that bring videos to pinball machines, don't make your pinball machine look clanky and like, you can't show, even Stern does this, Stern does it really bad, don't show things wobbling that aren't meant to wobble. Like ramp. Every time Stern does a video, they show a ramp and it wobbles. And it's like, no, you want it to look solid as a rock, right? I know. I remember the Elvira video where the cellar door went up and it lifted up one of the gargoyles. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, as I said, it doesn't matter in terms of spooky because they're pretty sure going to start anyway. But it's for the next title. For the next title, the one that isn't as hot as this, right? Just, I don't know, pay Zach many to do your videos. I don't know. By the way, the fluble crank is actually the captive ball. It's not the horseshoe at all. It's actually that. So there you go. Awesome. Well, thank you very much for interrupting. We're going to go back to other stuff that's not Rick and Morty. Okay. Thanks, man. See ya. I think the demand for this, the hype for this is huge. And, you know, not being a Rick and Morty fan, Joe, what do you make of all of that? no it's a theme that a lot of people love sounds good to me it's uh I mean it sounds like I'd like the show um oh you would love the show yeah so it's just a matter of finding the time so it's uh it's it's exciting and it's you know it's not an you know old white rock band you know This is finally a theme that's kind of current-ish or very current. So, you know, they're going for the youngins a little, which is nice to see. But that's what we were saying last week, and the Pinside, you know, circular discussion has continued, and it still really is, who is this theme for? And some people say, no, it's for the young ones or it's millennials or it's Gen X or boomers or whatever. But it is a theme for people that have a little bit of left-of-center humor. And that's all ages, really. Yeah. But it's, you know, I guess just because it's only recently existed, like it's new. So I guess just only in that respect that it's like, it's not something that, oh, this is from the 80s or, you know, like a lot of the other, like, it was a rock band from the 70s. So it's like, okay, well, at least this is something that's brand new. so it's uh now if only we get a south park game damn it well we got one yeah but like that was like one season worth there's like 20 now and it needs a nice modern one it'd be great it was also back in the day i don't remember that you know when south park became a thing and then all of a sudden they kept making all these you know video games that were all so dreadful so dreadful and And then 10 years later, they started making decent games. And I think the South Park pinball was kind of of that era where it was just bang the license on anything and it'll sell. Yeah, it is. And it's not like, I mean, the rules leave a lot. The biggest problem with the game is how limited it is call-outs-wise because it was the first season and there was only so much there you could do with, whereas now you have endless possibilities for it. Like, it'd be like Family Guy, where there's so many call-outs in the game, you could own it for many years and still hear new stuff. Yeah. I also think it was a, there was, obviously there was a couple of shots that just had gaping holes that were so easy to do. Yeah. And it was just, you know, ramp, ramp, ramp. And it was just an awkward play field. It was an awkward play field. It was a very limited, boring ruleset. Yeah, definitely. But great toys. and figurines and stuff in a great theme, it was a swing and a miss, unfortunately. But as people said at the time, when that was out on location, it was outselling everything because of the theme. And this is what we're sort of saying about theme being, you know, everything, I guess. And I would say Rick and Morty is the South Park pinball machine of today in that it is such a cutting-edge theme, so current, that it should earn really well because people will walk past and go, oh my god, I love Rick and Morty, here is my quarter. Yeah, exactly. And even that South Park game, which is cheap, and like you said, a lot of people, like hardcore pinball people, don't like that game, but that game still crushes on location. Same thing, like, you put a Simpsons, like, Davey Simpsons out, I've heard that that also earns decently, too. So it's like, some of these themes just, good game or not, people still play them just for themes. which is, you know, it kind of proves Gary Raitt. But people that are good players, unless you've got a location like Sunshine Laundromat that doesn't give you credits, like free games, the top players don't put a lot of money through these games because they get free games, whereas the general public are the ones that are just putting money through. And I had a big conversation about it last night, And it's still Ghostbusters to this day. It's still a top earner at most locations because the hardcore players really don't like it. I think that's pretty much said. But the general public just eat it up. And they don't know the difference between a short-playing game and a long-playing game. They just put their money and go, OK, that was a bit of fun for 30 seconds for three balls. I'm going to do this again because it's Ghostbusters. And it has all sounds and music. and it's Ghostbusters. So, you know. Themes are important. Yeah, I mean, you can see, like, how... Yeah, I mean, like, and then you can see, like, games that really don't have themes do terrible on location. Like, like, Dialed In is a terrible location game. Yeah. They were thought that, oh, well, people have phones and this is about a phone, so they'll want to play. No. It didn't work out. No. It's like, oh, people have got mum jeans. This game's got mum jeans. Surely we can get the Mums Wings crowd in here. That's right, yeah. Traveling Panthers and something like that. But also Black Knight, from what I've heard, is not a big earner. Yeah, because it is. It's a license, but only for pinball people. It's the same thing with Dial Down. The bubble in the bubble. Yeah, it's not a license, but it is a license. It's a Lawler license. So it's, like, only themes and licenses in the real world do well on location. And, like, even TNA doesn't do that good on location either because, you know, for one thing, it's super brutal for new people. That's true, yes. And, you know, outside of, and a lot of times if you come across it in the wild, sometimes it doesn't have the volume up, which would be, like, the main reason to play it. Yeah, that's a positive. So I think that a lot, I think all the manufacturers are really realizing this when it comes to, I mean, Americans having seems like their first themed game or their first licensed game. So I think they've seemingly learned. So, and, you know, this is Spooky's first real kind of licensed game too. So I think. Well, you've got Alice Cooper. Yeah, I mean, like non-music. non-music. Yeah, yeah, fair enough, fair enough. Like, those are, I don't know if that's considered, like, a license, as far as, you know, in the way that we think of licenses in pinball, whereas, like, you know, you have your Avengers, or your, you know, whatever, like, big ticket theme or show or whatever, whereas bands are just kind of, you know, although bands tend to have some of the best stuff, because they own their own stuff, so if you want something, they'll just give it to you, and you know, they're in control of everything. So you go like, I want that thing. And they go, well, sure, you can have it, because I own it and I can give it to you. The other ones are a lot more complicated. Speaking of bands, I know I'm just putting two and two together. Not that this is a real thing but if you think about Black Knight and everybody been talking about the fact that they want a Slayer pinball machine which fine I mean it another rock band it a heavy rock band If Black Knight had been Slayer, I think that thing would have killed. Maybe. I mean, even though it has got the heavy music, so why not? Yeah, I mean, but I don't know, because Iron Maiden does terrible on location, too. So, it... Yeah, I also heard that last night. That Iron Maiden's not a big deal. Yeah. When we say terrible, I still think these machines probably out-earn a lot of the older, you know, even Bally Williams and older, but we still sort of compare it to the hit. It's compared to all the other ones that are out there. You stick it in a row of sterns and Iron Maiden's doing the worst, you know, and then probably Black Knight and those ones where it's just like... Yeah. It seems like a lot of these, like Slayer, there's a small vocal that, like, I want this, but, like, it's not mainstream. Like, Iron Maiden is not seemingly very mainstream. So this is the balance that Stern really needs to, well, all of them, I would imagine, really need to factor in, and that is the home market versus the operator market, because they're now, from what we still hear, the majority of machines get sold to home users these days. So they've got to make a game that appeals to the home user but also makes money on site. So when you get that right, and I think obviously we're talking about Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park at the moment is earning gangbusters from what I've heard and the home user of which I am is still totally in love with this game. They get that right. But you don't always get those two things right. And it'd be curious to see what happens with their next title, which we will talk about later. Yeah, because, I mean, like, that's the thing. Like, that's one of the few titles that serves both masters, right? Like, that's an evergreen outside game and then collector's game. Like, I'm saying, like, well, you know, we sell more to collectors than we do location. Like, yeah, I wonder about that when it comes to, like, you know, chicken and the egg there. Like, well, if you catered to location and you made a theme that was ripe for location, would it sell more? If you, you know, you did a current big band or you did, you know, another, you know, like a Rick and Morty type theme that is really big with the kids, with the younger generations and stuff like that. Now, if you put one of those out, would that kill on location? Then you say, well, it kills on location, but it doesn't do well in the collectors. Well, can you, can't you have both of those in your portfolio? You know, can you put out a location game and then also have collector games and both still be successful? but you can but it then comes down to the license itself because if there is a license I just think they just did really well with Jurassic Park and I think Jurassic Park getting the original license because I'd imagine that would be a different asset to Jurassic World and the current movies just obviously different actors different studio perhaps a different company made I don't really know But you don't then have to pay an extraordinary amount for a license because you know it's going to cater for the home user and operators. So, you know what I mean? Really? That's pretty much what it is. So, they just put everybody into that world. So, you feel that you're in Jurassic Park. You don't need the actors. You don't need the vision from the film because you're in Jurassic Park. And, you know, I don't know this for a fact, but I have a pretty good idea. Like, have you ever seen a Jurassic World arcade or anything like that out in the wild, whether it be slot machine or anything? Like, I've never seen a Jurassic World themed thing in the wild. I've seen a lot of original stuff, But I don't think that Jurassic World holds as much attention as Jurassic Park does, especially if you're not going to get your Chris Pratt. People who think of Jurassic World, they think of him, and hopefully not the second movie. Although the third one apparently has most of the original actors from Jurassic Park. I've heard Joel coming back, that is true. But I would go out on a limb and say if it was movie-based Jurassic Park or movie-based Jurassic World, it would not be even close to as good of a game. Well, it's interesting to say, and side note, let's talk about Jurassic Park the franchise. Because really, if you think about the movies, I remember so many iconic moments from the very first Jurassic Park. I don't remember much from Lost World, and I don't remember much from the third movie. and I don't remember much from the Jurassic World movies either. So, again, they've done well to go back to the original and place us there because at least, even though you're not seeing the videos of it, you're reminded of what happened in that iconic movie. Yeah, I mean, I'd definitely say probably Jurassic World is the second best in the franchise for sure. You know, two was pretty bad, three was okay. Jurassic World 2 was awful I saw it, I just don't remember much of it I know that I saw it I saw it at the movies I can't remember anything that happened in it It's a blessing So much stupid stuff happened in that movie I spent the entire time just being angry and pissed off that things were happening and that made no sense I was just like, what? Again, it's like another amazing movie that they follow up with a garbage sequel Can't we just take a little time maybe on this stuff and maybe make something good. Yeah. I think they tried, from what I can remember, they tried too much in, what was it called, Fallen Kingdom or something? Yeah. Was that the one? Yeah. I think they tried many different things but nothing really stood out. No, and they tried, it was the whole, you know, family thing and it just, it just, it was all, it just all didn't make a lot of sense and people were doing stuff that was just so stupid that no one would ever do and it was like, oh God. Yeah, admittedly, dinosaurs aren't real. True, but they used to be. So, I don't know. Yeah, I guess they were 10, 20 years ago when they made that first movie. Right. Yeah, true. Been before that is, you know, 400 years ago. Yeah, that's correct. So, let's move on to one thing. So, what we also saw this week was just some accessories for Elvira. So the Shooter Knob and the Topper. Shooter Knob looks cool. It's like an evil clown face. Sure. Don't know how that fits into Elvira as well, but maybe I will because I'm going to play it tonight. It's probably on the game somewhere, I imagine. Possibly. And then the Deadhead Family Crypt looks like some stone golems and a, you know, headstone. What are the odds those golems jump? Wouldn't that be cool? that would be cool considering we've now got the Jurassic Park topper as the standard of what toppers are. The Jurassic Park topper? You mean Black Knight? Black Knight. Oh, of course I do mean Black Knight. I was going to say, I don't think there isn't a Jurassic Park one yet. No, there isn't. No, you're absolutely right. I mean Black Knight, but Black Knight is the standard. I don't know. It should be a giant T-Rex head that moves around. It's like Black Knight, but it's T-Rex head. Yeah, as I said, I think it's probably got the same mechanic behind it. So, you know, it'd be cool. If you've made it, reuse it. It'd probably cost them a lot to develop that thing. Probably, might as well get it. It'd be cool if these gargoyles jumped on the playfield. That'd be kind of cool. That would be very cool. I don't know. But I do get to play in, I would say, maybe four hours, I do get to play Elvira for the first time. Now, you guys are going to be hearing this after I've streamed it, but if you do go to Twitch, to Melbourne Silverball, you will see the VOD of me playing Elvira, and hopefully, I don't know, I'm enjoying it. Those people that I know that have played Elvira, and I'll preface this by saying the people that I know that have played Elvira that really enjoy it are not top tournament players because my understanding is top tournament players are a bit cool on it. I hear that it's hard to miss shots when they can. That's what I've heard. But we talked about that with Star Trek when we did that very, very good deep dive, that people say that the shots on Star Trek are too easy. So I think that makes it a fun game. Who enjoys bricking their shots all the time? Yeah, but, I mean, you want it to be a, I don't know, I guess a happy medium between the two. That's exactly right. And when you find that happy medium, you make magic and you get Jurassic Park. Yeah, I've heard from the people who play it that everything is backhandable, everything is safe, and that you can just hit the shots over and over and over again and it plays forever. Okay, so as a home user, as somebody that is not the best player in the world, that would be a great experience because you would actually feel good about playing. Like, you'd feel like a god. Oh, my God, I can hit all these shots, and I can see the game. And as we know, it's a Lyman rule set. Wouldn't you want to see all of what Lyman's done? Oh, absolutely. But I've heard that also in the same thing because, like, I've heard the same argument of why necessarily Lord of the Rings is not that great of a home game, because yes, you can have these really long games, you feel great and everything, but I've heard people say that they can't find time to play Lord of the Rings or long-playing games like that because they just don't have that much of a block of time versus they could go play, I think there's literally an example that someone told me, they don't have time to play it, but they could go play a couple games of Iron Man them the same thing, and then they can run off and not be in the middle of a game. So it's like having really long playing games at home isn't necessarily a good thing either, because, you know, sometimes you just don't have 45 minutes to spend on a game, or however long it is. Yeah. I mean, again, it comes down to how you set up these machines, because I have had some long games on my Lord of the Rings, but I don't see it as a long playing game. And also, my Star Trek isn't a long-playing game. Admittedly, I have it firmly planted on the ground, so you cannot move these machines. I've got the pitch set quite high. I've got outlanes out. So that's... It's how you set it up, is really what I'm saying. Got the rock in the cabinet, my mod. Weigh that thing down. Yeah, does that as well. Next thing as well. Now, we've seen... I just wanted to make note of this because it is also the person that did this. It's his birthday. But American Pinball, we talked about this, you know, they've got that new artwork that they did for, I think the character's called Amy. She looks like an aviation type person. It's now being released. It's colorized. You can get shirts and merchandise. It looks really cool. And the art has been done by Joel de Guzman, good friend of the show but especially good friend of yours and it is his birthday happy birthday Joel absolutely happy birthday I got to see this from like all stages of really I got to watch the entire process he would always show me stuff it looked amazing it's been really well done and it's really sad because now he can't talk about anything anymore Yeah Because you know That he's working for The Yeah The Board machine I believe He signed a piece of paper Which is amazing Yeah I know But now I'm just Excited for him And it's He's been trying And doing so much art He's done art For my series And stuff And various Tournaments here And he just did He did the art For the Pinmasters trophies We did Just last weekend And he's done stuff For Critical Hit and he does fantastic. Everything he does is amazing. So I'm excited to see him finally getting what's coming to him. Yeah, I do too. What I like about this is, now people will probably give me all these examples and say you're wrong because that happens all the time. The art style of this, and yes, I guess it's just a logo and it's for American Pinball, but the art style, it seems like this is now the Joel de Guzman art style. I feel like there's a bit of individuality here. Yeah, definitely. I think he has his own style, and it'll be exciting to see where it goes. Hopefully he gets the theme that he was excited about working on, so we'll see. Cool. Cool. Last bit of news before we get into a couple of rumors that I really want to talk about. But the first one, we did have Stern with their December Stern of the Union. The main thing that really stood out, and I knew this because obviously I've got a Jurassic Park and I've had to update my code, but for Spike 2 systems, it's now persistent. meaning that things like high scores and audits, like how many games it's played, now carry over from update to update. Woohoo! Which is very cool. Yes. You know, because I could tell my monsters and say, oh, you know, it's only had 200 games. Has it? Hmm. But can't you reset that anyways? If you really wanted to. Isn't that an option? You probably can. Anyway, I think that's cool. I think Stern are thinking about what they need to do, and that's being done. It's a minor bit of news, but it's out there. The main thing we really want to get to are a couple of rumors. So good. So good. It is so good. You're my protection on this show. While you're on your break, you need to work it. I will just come back with a hundred stingers. Yes. I just literally want to say a couple words, run a stinger, come back, one word, stinger, and we just become full production. And then we become a show, not a podcast. Then boom, twippy. Alright, the first rumor we want to talk about is Stranger Things from Stern. Wow, really? I had never heard that. Have you not heard that they're going to be doing that? Did you see that picture of that box that was clearly a box? Like, what the hell? What the fuck was that? Like, I'm like, I remember that popped into my head. Like, ugh, first pictured evidence of Stranger Things. I'm like, what the fuck on this has anything to do with Stranger Things? It's literally a stern box with something specifically put in front of the place where it might say Stranger Things. So it's literally just, look, a box. Yeah. Wow. You used the first image. What happens if it turns out to be true, though? That'd be hilarious. Oh, yeah, then the next one is like, look, now we moved a thing. Ta-da! We were right. Like, yeah, slow day for the paparazzi, I guess. Well, the thing of it is that my understanding is that Stranger Things is a lot more along the way than we think. Meaning, what I've heard is that December 23rd is going to be the reveal. and it's also going to be shipping. It is on 23rd, on Monday. Mm-hmm. That's the rumour. Don't they normally do it on Wednesdays? They do. But they do. I don't know. They can do things differently, can't they? Yeah, I guess Jack was busy on the Wednesday. So it's going to be on Monday. Yeah, for sure. So what I've also heard is that my big concern is that the whole upside down and all, I'm thinking, oh, are they really going to integrate it? Apparently, we're going to be happy is what I've heard. So did they completely take my blacklight idea? I don't know. My royalty checks rolling in. You're naming the credits or something. That works, yeah. Maybe. Yeah. Well, sure. I've had it mined in two machines. Sure, whatever. I was thinking about that. Yeah, well, I mean, who's heard that, right? I mean news to everybody right now yeah I mean there's literally one Houdini I think in New Robert Englunds and I have been deprived of playing it which makes me sad but yeah I haven't even heard it yet you know how much that sucks yeah they should have given you a Houdini so then you could just bring people over and just like play the clip and be like see yeah so going back to Rick and Morty I know we talked about this before but But it's going to be released, guys. And it's fine, Eddie. We all know that kind of stuff. Going back to the point I said before about the balance between home user and on-site, how do you think this will go on location? I think it will crush. I think it'll do really good. Don't you think? I don't know. I don't know because it's a very dark theme. Like, the game is pretty dark. Yeah, but there's a lot of comedy in it still. I mean, there's still... Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. But I also don't know whether they're going to base it on all three seasons or just the first season. Okay. Have you watched all three seasons? You have, haven't you? Yes. So what I don't know, I remember, and for those people that haven't watched it, just go and watch it. I'm spoiling something a little bit. So skip ahead if you don't want any spoilers. But one of the things that was really iconic from the first season was the coloured lights on the wall. Remember the Christmas lights? Mm-hmm. Imagine that as something that is on, like, armour on the actual machine itself. Power blades. Yes. You know what I mean? Like that kind of stuff. So, I don't know. What I think is, like, if you think about the sperm machines, they're colourful and they're bright. Mm-hmm. And they need to be because that draws people to the machine. Yeah, they're smart. I'm wondering whether they're going to make it a darker-looking theme or whether they're going to keep it sort of bright and colorful. Speaking of bright, you know, so, yeah, like you said, steering machines are bright. When do you think Jersey Jack's going to figure out that maybe they should brighten up their machines a little? Like, it's pretty ridiculous how terrible the GI is on those games. I know. Wonka is so freaking dark. It really is. I don't get it. I don't understand why that's a thing. Okay, but let's go back to our favourite Jersey Jack machine, being the Hobbit. I know. The Hobbit was bright. The Hobbit had lighting all through it, so it was actually quite... And remember, I had it next to all my stir machines, and it held its own. It was just as bright as the other stir machines. But then they've gone back to just not having a lot of spotlights. And I still know, well, I believe, that was, the machine was, is still the number one machine that people buy pin stadiums for. Yeah, next is going to be Wonka, but there's not even close to as many Wonkas as there are Wizard of Oz's, so that's probably not going to be a thing. So I remember when I was setting up for Flipout, for the tournament that I was doing, I said to Wayne, Mr. Pimple, I said, oh, look, when you're going over your machines, can you just check Wonka? Because I'm pretty sure the GI's out. but it's not. No. You know, quite honestly, I'm a little surprised that companies haven't just like taken out the GI spotlights, all that stuff and did more or less what they did with Star Trek, the LE, and then put a light bar in there like built in pin stadiums that are recessed. Like Kelts. That's exactly what Kelts has got. Oh, really? I haven't seen it. Yeah, well, I was playing it last night. Side note, just for everybody, this game is coming along so well. I actually really, really enjoyed playing it last night. Oh, you Australians are so cute. And I got to, you know, all these mega wizard modes. Not just because of that, but it does. And it actually has exactly what you said. It's got a strip of LED lights that are recessed into the sidewalls. It's exactly what I should take. Why the hell did the games not have that? I don't know. You think that you go, okay, well, what would that entail? Well, think of what the cost is of putting GI all over the entire freaking game and coding it and all this other stuff. You just put light bars on there and you can control the light bars. I know maybe you have a little less control with targeted GI, Maybe you could still keep that stuff in there, but not be used for illumination. Like, some of these games, it's just ridiculous how dark they are. And it's just like... Yeah. And, like, Jersey Jacks just have no excuse for those. Like, as expensive as those machines are, like, come on. Like, you can't put better lighting in there? Thank you, Jesus. Well, I don't... I would say that they're not looking at it as a win. I think they're actually producing it the way they want to produce it. And, you know, I know, yes, it is quite dark. But really, people haven't complained too much about it. Really. You can still do what you need to do. You just can't play it in a dark room. Yeah, I mean, we played it. It was in an EPL finals in a dark room. And boy, the whole bottom half is you just can't. It's just really bad. How would you be with Solid State and the M's then? Because they are really dark in those situations too. But it's not like you don't have this contrast of super bright LEDs, colorful LEDs, and then the darkness. Like, there's a constant of only a certain amount of illumination, so it works, instead of, like, these bright, flashy lights on darkness. So, like, I don't know what it does. But that's why I brought up Hobbit, because they obviously can do it, because Hobbit is quite bright. So, I think it's intentional. I think it's just the style that they're going for. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know. They really love those light pillars, or whatever that they use. But I don't think that they actually give that much light. No, they don't disperse enough light, really. So, anyway, I think it's fine. I think Wonka is fine. If you want to put pin stadiums, do it. But I just think it is what it is. So, back to Stranger Things. So, have you been bugging Dwight this week about if he's working on Stranger Things? Because, I mean, he has to be the one on Stranger Things, right? No. Okay, so we're going to talk about the fact that I caught up with Dwight Sullivan this week. Dwight is such a nice guy but let me get back to it he was never going to tell me about that kind of stuff and I didn't even ask in fact I said to him I don't want you to tell me because I don't want you to feel like you've told somebody and then it's out there and then you're worried about whether it's going to get out there and it does and I don't want to be the one that's like well I told you and now it's out there I just don't want to get into that kind of stuff so no I didn't even speak to him about like stranger things or what's coming up right it was just, you know, I'll talk about it because we talk about monsters mainly. It was a segue into more or less saying we think he's on code, right? Because he's got to be up. I don't know. Because I mean, Lyman's done code this, uh, Lyman, Keith, Timmy, so, I mean, he's the fourth guy up, right? He's two-one, for sure. Yeah, could be. Monsters was the last one and that was done a while ago. Yeah. It's either this or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It's one of those two. Well, yeah, that's the other one that we know, or we believe is coming out. So maybe. You're right. He has been on it. But we only did just get a massive Ghostbusters update. True, but I think that this has probably been in the bag for a while. Yeah, probably. I mean, like I said, Eddie's been working on this for, what, two years now almost? Yeah, I'd say so. Yeah. I don't know. It'd be interesting to see if it is more than if they do multiple seasons. Maybe that's why they pushed it this far. Because they're waiting for the third one to come out. Maybe. Yeah. Then there's expectations for it to be updated for the next one. Like, you know, Walking Dead was interesting because it really only, I think, had the first maybe two seasons in it. And it still wasn't even following a storyline. It just had elements like the prison from what might have been season two. Yeah, literally just names. look, there's prison, and then there's you know, Woodbury and there's just nothing about them, just words just there, like they had the fish tank with the heads in it, it was just an element from the show wasn't a storyline that they really put into the game I don't think there's been a game that's been made in the last, I don't know ten years that has less of the theme it was supposed to be about in it Yeah, probably. But still, again, I played Walking Dead last night, and it's such a joy to play, and I don't need to feel like I'm following a storyline in Walking Dead. I just need to feel that I'm in a zombie land, and it's dangerous, and zombies are attacking me, and there are places that I can go to, like Barn or the CDC, that are just elements within that world. That's kind of cool. That's all I need. Yeah, I guess it's Jurassic Park-y. It's kind of what I was just sort of saying, in that Jurassic Park works, not because you're, you know, arriving on an island and seeing dinosaurs for the first time, and then Nedry happening, and then... You don't have to follow the story. You just need to feel like you're in the world. And I think that if that was the concept, and that was what it was supposed to be from the beginning, it would have come out better. But since everything was pulled out from underneath them from the show, that it just kind of ended in the place it ended. They didn't have much resources to be able to, like Jurassic Park building, okay, this is from the very get-go. We have nothing from the show, and we're just going to try and do a Jurassic Park versus the game is shipping in a week, and all of a sudden they said we can't fucking have anything from the show in there, so we have to redo everything. like that that's like one of those things we're just like okay well it kind of is what it is and then you know quickly rip everything out and leave the stuff that's in between and make it look like it was always supposed to be there side note walking dead is currently 20 on the pin side top 100 way too fucking low yeah do you think spider-man is a better game no no way do you think Theatre of Magic is a better game? No way. Star Trek Next Gen? Uh, no. Dialed In? Now, mind you, these themes, a lot of these themes, I much prefer. Yeah, okay. Well, Dialed In. Dialed In. Do you think Dialed In is a better game? No. Yeah, I think so. Yep. Interesting. I just thought I'd point that out. I also think that The Walking Dead at 20 is quite low. Admittedly, it's 8.42 and And Totang, which is 15th, is 8.48. So there's not much between it, you know what I mean? Yeah. They're top 20 games. Yeah, Walking Dead's a top five game for me. Easy. Yeah, I would say so too. Yep. It's probably Lyman's best game. And that's saying something. That and ECDC. So many rumours. If I'm going to make that freaking thing up, I might as well use it as much as I can. Yeah, I mean, you could throw in so many other rumor-type things in there. Get some Adele in there. There's got to be more rumors. There's probably some Stevie Nicks something in there. No, I'm going to say some Fleetwood Mac. Yeah, for sure. Every time we use it, we have to add something. Then it just becomes the show. So I want to talk about Hot Wheels. So we heard for some time that people have been trying to get the Hot Wheels license for pinball. And the rumor this week is that it's going to be American Pinball's next title or a future title. We don't know whether it's the next or a future title. So let's talk Hot Wheels. Is Hot Wheels still a thing? Yes, it is. Not for me, but I know it is. You see it all over the place. Merchandise, well, it's everywhere. Yeah. Games. I... Yeah. What do you think about Hot Wheels for a pinball theme? Uh. Yeah. I don't know. I guess that's how you do it. I mean, look at Full Throttle. Like, you could do the same thing for Hot Wheels, and it's like, now each one's a car. Do not compare any games to Full Throttle, please. Thunderbirds? Thunderbirds? No. Well, okay, yeah, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I... My first thing I thought was, really? Hot Wheels? Is that the best thing you can get? Stick it in a Dave and Buster's. Well, okay. Right. So I then decided to do a bit of research about Hot Wheels. And I got educated, because I just kept thinking Hot Wheels was Matchbox. They're different, but they're now pretty much the same, because they're owned by the same company which is Mattel Monopoly is woohoo so and Hot Wheels started as they weren't replicas or like mini replicas they were sort of extreme versions like Hot Rod Cars effectively is what they started But then they become replicas And now not just little small little matchbox ones they are sort of replicas of cars And when I realized that, I thought, oh, shit, that stuff's everywhere. You go through any shopping mall, I'm using your language, but shopping center here, and you see those things everywhere. And I've also sort of looked at their company's performance in this particular division to performance over time. It is as popular as it's ever been. I think that as we get older, we move away from these things, which I still consider to be kids' toys, but they're also collectibles. Yeah, it's still pretty prevalent and pretty big. I love it when you speak my language. Right. Which language is that? I don't know. Whichever one I'm using at the time. A mall shopping mall. Yeah. We call them deserted buildings. Well, yeah, it's a problem all around the world, unfortunately. So, again, I was thinking about it, that if it's Hot Wheels, that's the license. Really what you're licensing is replica cars. So it effectively just becomes a car game where you can use licensed replicas. You can put Aston Martins in there or Ferraris or whatever it is because Hot Wheels license all those cars now. So you can actually just have this, you know, stuff under the glass where it is a car theme and it's a racetrack effectively. The more I thought about it, the more I thought, okay, this could make an interesting pinball machine, but I still don't know whether I'm loving the theme. I'm not connected to the theme. It's not getting me excited. It's not like a Rick and Morty type situation. It's like, okay, it's a car theme. Car games, pinball-wise, haven't really ever done all that well. No. But, I mean, when I think Hot Wheels, I think of, you know, the little cars with flames on them that have all these awesome tracks that you can launch them on and they do jumps and all sorts of, like, as far as, like, replicas of, like, real existing cars, like, I don't even, that doesn't even cross my, like, my mind of what I think Hot Wheels is now and what I see on commercials and all sorts of, like, the toys everywhere. It's all this, you know, all these cool tracks you can build and sweet jumps and all sorts of other stuff and launchers. And so, like, I picture it being kind of like a mix between, like, you know, those racing, like, you know, Cruisin' USA meets Mario Kart or something as, like, a game. Or, like, the, I mean, I haven't played it before, but, like, the kart, that kart game that, you know, P3 has. Where, like, you pick your, yeah, you pick your micro machine that you're playing with and you go on races. or you go into competitions where you do tricks and all sorts of stuff. I can see how that would be how younger generations would like it and gravitate to it. It's just not, you've got to get it in the places. Because that's a lot more specific to where you can put that than, say, like, I think a great, along that lines, a great theme would just be Lego. like just all the Lego movies the Lego, all the games like you could just do, everyone freaking loves that Lego Batman, Lego this Lego, yeah you ever seen any of those Lego movies? Lego Batman was amazing I have but they are the fallen kingdom of movies to me in that I've seen them I just don't remember them because nothing really stood out as being memorable yeah but I mean as a brand Lego is huge oh yeah absolutely I've actually played the Lego video games more than I've played more than I've I remember the movies Lego Harry Potter was awesome just letting you know I've heard they're all great I haven't played any Lego games but yeah like I think of more like oh that would be like if you're going to go for like that like, that demographic, because I think Hot Wheels is definitely, like, young. More younger, like, younger than any of the genres that any game has touched recently. So, like, that's pretty young. So, like, if you're going to go that young, then, like, go, like, Lego or, you know, something a little more prevalent than necessarily Hot Wheels. Because I think Lego, like, a Lego theme that adults would buy, like, for their kids and even just to have, because some of the movies and stuff like that, I can picture the collectors still getting into. I don't know about Hot Wheels. I guess mattering, this is like one of those things where it could be completely different in so many different ways, mattering what this thing looks like and what direction they take with it. It could be. It might matter like a really fast-flowing game, which you would have to, given the subject material. It could be really fun. and I've got to ask the question, do you think, this is similar to what we were saying before about the top 20 pin side machines, Hot Wheels, do you think that is a better theme than Oktoberfest? You know, it's one thing that American is, and they've been doing, is like they have very, like it's not necessarily generic, but like have a broad appeal like certain titles, where, like, it's very big. Like, I feel like their titles are, like, we're going to take a chunk of this market, and then we're going to take a chunk of this one. Like, Oktoberfest is for bars, and that's where people are going to drink, play pinball, and play games about drinking and pinball. So then, like, that's where that is. And then, like, Hot Wheels are like, all right, this game is for, you know, Dave and Busters. This is going to be, you know, we're going to put this out in, like, gaming centers, and this is going to get those kids. So, like, I feel like they, more than any other company, look at a specific market and say, let's make one for that place, and then we'll make one for that place. I don't necessarily know where Houdini fits. I think that was more just for people. So, you haven't told me. Do you think Hot Wheels is better than Octoberfest? I don't know. I mean, they both have their strengths. The only thing I know and understand Octoberfest is because I've seen it, I've played it. Hot Wheels, it's hard for me to picture what the hell that is until I see it and see how they've decided what direction they go with it. Because, I mean, you could take that in so many different ways. You could literally make a Mustang game that's the same thing, but you get to pick cars and their Hot Wheels. Or you could go in a, like you said, kart racing game or something like that. Those two things are so polar opposite of each other, but both could be a thing. So who knows? I was watching a stream yesterday, so I write APM All, So Raymond Davidson, number one player in the world. I don't know if you've heard of him. So I was watching his stream and they were streaming Mustang. And every time I see Mustang, and obviously we had it at the Flip Out tournament as well, I think it is a criminally underrated game. I think it is such a good game to shoot and play. I really like the rules. I like everything about it, except it's Mustang, which I'm like, oh, okay. I mean, Mustang was such a niche collector market in Australia. I don't get the appeal. And I think globally people don't get the Mustang license as well. It didn't do well here either. No, that's what I've heard, right? But just re-theme it. Make it faster than the fucking Furious or something. And erase the name of the person who designed it. Sure, that's another thing you'd have to do. But just that game is a great game. In fact, I played it last night, and I just really enjoy flipping that game. I would say that's... It integrated well. I would say that's probably one of his best designs. Sure. I would agree. Can he... I can't think of, like, the other... What are his cornerstones? Like, did he do Congo? No. Yes, he did do Congo. Okay, so I'd say Congo, Mustang. I can't think of anyone. No Judge Dredd, but that's obviously not in there. No. But then you've got... So for Stern, you've got, I think there will be three titles for Stern. So Ghostbusters was the other one and WrestleMania. And before you start bagging out WrestleMania, I don't think it's an amazing game. I think it's a bit underrated. With the latest code where they kind of fix the amount of time you're up in the ring at the top, I actually don't mind that game at all. Well, I mean, yeah, it's not terrible. as a person who, like, when that came out and I saw, you know, the WWE one, I'm like, wow, that, I have no interest in the current WWE. And then we're going to have a Legends edition. I'm like, alright, now you got me. Those are my wrestlers. Those are the ones I grew up with. And then they just threw them in the game and it was just like, oh yeah, it's Hulk Hogan versus the rest of the code from the original game. It's like, cool, I can play as Hulk Hogan versus Raymond Rains or whoever these other stupid people are. I'm like, yeah, that makes perfect sense. So you just have all these awesome people in the cabinet, but I don't get to fight any of them. And then on in the game, we just put this thing in the back that just plays loops of videos from the people you're playing as. Cool. So this is not what I wanted it to be. But, yeah, I mean, it's not terrible. I think the code, I think at this point they've just decided they want to pretend that game didn't happen. But, like, I think the code might have fixed maybe the stuff, but, like, the scoring on that game is so out of whack. because of the tag team. Like, who cares about the rest of the game? You play tag team. That's all you do. The rest of the game is so meaningless that it's just so dominated by that that, like, I wish, you know, they'd revisit it and maybe, you know, clean it up a little. I mean, there's only one in New Robert Englunds that I know of. I have not seen that machine in years. Cannot say it. Well, it's because I believe Raymond won all of the LEs. Right? He won all of them. I mean, he sold them, probably. Yeah. So, I mean, I played an LE at Papa in Pimberg, but I've only played a pro, which was locally that's not available anymore. Well, which is better than the LE. Yeah, probably, because the LE pisses me off. Well, it's just that spinning disc up the top, which is so ridiculously annoying. Well, it's hard to do anything up there anyway. No, it doesn't make it worse. Yeah, exactly. It's like, well, maybe it'll throw it into the hole that I can't hit on purpose anyway. it's like sure why not do that so maybe maybe that helps i don't know i love it and you go oh i'm absolutely nailing it's gonna go into those flammers bang oh it's out the side okay yeah and it's always down it doesn't go to one of the nice returns it goes down the freaking hole and then swipes off the pop bumper and you're like god damn it and then you're like you go back up and like here we go it goes in the ring right down the middle you're like i just want to pin this motherfucker. This is what's funny about that, because literally there are two safe shots in that game, and they are the left ramp and the right ramp. And then, that's it, and then you're up to those freaking slammers again, and then it's in the hole in the middle. It's infuriating. But, I don't know, there's something about that game, I just quite like. It deserves to exist. I don't think it's as bad as people say it is. I think with code, it could be much more tolerable and a better game. I just don't... I think that they're just going to pretend it never happened. Maybe they'll re-release it as, like, I don't know, maybe they vault it as, like, MMA or something. I don't know. But... I don't think they will ever. No, I don't think so. But, I mean, the fact that they haven't vaulted Mustang makes me think that they're just not going to touch any of his stuff anymore. They haven't even vaulted Ghostbusters. Well, yes, but they did invest in new code. Yes, but that's not selling new games. No, I know. But also, I don't think it's necessarily the person that they're not going back to. I think those two games just weren't great. They weren't received well. They didn't sell well. So why would you vault it, a machine that just didn't sell well? Because there's no demand for it. No, but I'm, like, not, but, like, they have to realize that Mustang, people like the game, they don't like the theme. So, like, I would imagine, I would hope that George looks at that and goes, this play field is good, this can be a better theme, and all of a sudden we have a hit. So, like, I'm not saying vault it as Mustang. Vault it as something good. No, but that's kind of what I was saying about Black Knight in the future. Dave Volta reads Skinner to Slayer or something. Because all you've got to do is just, you've just got to get the rights to the license. The game's already there. Oh, yeah, just do a, you know, Shrek, whatever, for Family Guy. Right, yeah. So, look, we had, it's an old topic, I know, but that really, I think, is, is that really the only example that we've got where Stern has rethemed a game from Family Guy to Shrek? just the sports ones are the only ones they've done that with. Like NBA and NFL and shooters and all that crap. But that was really back early in the day. I think the last one, obviously, was Family Guy Shrek, which I don't even know what year that was. It was probably like 2012, 2013, maybe. It's a little shocking that they have... I mean, well, they've done all the Walt Nellies and Supremes type things. I don't know if that necessarily counts. But I mean, I know it's not going to happen. and even Keith doesn't think it out. 2007. I want an Archer, damn it. Iron Maiden Archer. Damn it. Yeah, I know. And that's kind of why I just don't think that I maybe feel that there's a need to... Well, probably because I've just got so many machines that they're working on, so many themes that they're working on. They're like, well, we don't really need to go back. If a machine wasn't a hit back then, maybe just leave it, rather than thinking, well, If we put a new theme on it, it's all of a sudden going to breathe life into it. You just don't know. Can Crusher, Primus, like, do we need those? There's got to be at least enough Archer fans as there are Primus fans. Yeah, I would say so. Like, come on. There's no reason, I guess it's a luxury, because they have so many good designers there that can make new games, so, like, why spend the time to redo old games? I guess is probably the logic that they're working on. Unless they, you know, the line's slowing down. And they probably might have, you know, a Tron premium or, you know, of these things that we've said that they should do, Allure the Rings or whatever. And it's just sitting there in a queue. And it literally only comes up when there's a lull. And then they go, all right, we need to keep the line going. Drop this. Which is probably might be why we hear these rumors that, like, oh, there's a Tron or there's this. And it's just like, those vaults are not planned, and they're in a queue, and literally when the line slows, they run to that queue, they grab the first thing in line, and then, poop, there it is. That's right. And then they're like, okay, we're probably going to get the Tron vault out at the end of the year, and oh, bang, Jurassic Park is massive. We don't need to do that anymore. Yep, so then that becomes whenever the next time is where they just need something. And I bet you they'd probably have a queue of that, lined up of, like, this is what we're going to vault, then that's what we're going to revolt, then we're going to redo this. And then there's no timetable, and it's just break in a case of emergency. And then, poof, there you go. Now you have a Tron Premium, which, damn it, they should make. Tron Premium. So what you're saying to everybody right now is stop buying new CERN machines so you can force them into needing to do a vault. That's what I'm hearing from you. I'm hearing no one buy a stone until they fucking vault Lord of the Rings. That's what I'm saying. In protest. That's right. You heard me. You heard me, George. Damn it. Make it so. It's going to happen eventually. It's going to happen. It's going to have to. Anyway, so Hot Wheels. I don't know whether we got really anywhere with that. I think it's too broad. It could be anything. It's not like a Stranger Things where you have an egg. Like, oh, that is in a box, and you can easily look and go, that is relatively what we know what that's going to be. Hot Wheels could be freaking anything. Well, and I think that's kind of where I went with the journey inside my mind, which I don't recommend for anybody to do, was that when I first... It's a bit clouded at the moment. Just one week to go, guys. That's all I've got. Anyway, so with that, when I first looked at it, I just went, what? Hot Wheels? Is that even a thing? And then when I started seeing that it is still a thing, I thought, okay, if it's a thing and maybe it's a license that I don't get, and, okay, so I started feeling like I was those people in the Rick and Morty thread that are going, oh, this thing sucks. Spooky, don't know what they're doing. It's a terrible thing. they're not going to sell any. Get off my lawn. Get off my lawn. So I realized that I became that person that just because I didn't understand a thing doesn't mean it's a bad thing. It just means it's not for me. Yeah. It's just got to be where I am, where I only judge gameplay for the most part. Unless it's a theme I love. Then it's when I get too personal with it. But I don't like Kiss at all, but I can play the game. I'm not a big fan of Aerosmith, but I can play the game. But I don't ding the games because of their themes I don't enjoy or like. So as long as it's good and as long as... The only thing I care about is that these companies keep going and they keep succeeding. That's the only thing I care about. As long as they're doing what they need to do to survive, good on them. Who knows? Maybe they're the one behind the aliens that's there's so much rumblings about it's coming back, it's coming back, and somebody's building it. Haven't heard anything in, like, a couple weeks. Damn it, that's something I want to happen. You got the play one, right? I did get the play. It's such a good game. It's good. It's a big surprise. Oh, if you want to talk about dark games, it is ridiculously dark. At least it's thematic in that way. Well, I guess you could call it that, I guess. I mean, you're in a dark. Sure. Okay, but if it's so dark, why did you put playfield art on it? It's true. I mean, I'm just giving it an excuse, obviously. I know you are. Your game should be dark, but... No, I know. Anyway. Shall we tick the top 100? I guess. I guess. Here we go. What do you want this week? Let's see. Let's see if I can pick one. Let's see. Well, now that we've talked about Walking Dead, it'll probably be Walking Dead. You know, it's pretty ridiculous how often that happens. I know. Let's go. I'm going to go circus. Full tear. Let's see what that comes up. 25. 25. Okay. Let's see what Google Lady is going to say to us today. I'm still hoping that where's that stupid pitch and bat that's in the top 100. I imagine if that comes up. It would be hilarious. That exists just to be like, fuck you, Pinside. Like, really? It's not a pinball. And it's in your top 100. invalidates this whole stupid list. Oh, no. I can't even find it. Slugfest. Yeah, Slugfest. Slugfest. Is it still in here? Did they finally, did they hear us? You don't want 80. No 80. You want 25. Let's see what happens. No whammies. Here we go. No whammies, no whammies. Stop. All right, here we go. Hey, Google, pick a number between 1 and 100. I missed it Alright Here's a random number 48 Ooh, close Congo Congo Oh my god See, we talk about Congo And he's Congo See, Google's always listening Now This is an interesting game for me Because You just don't get to see them That much You're like apes with lasers on their head Right And tournament players love this game And it's a case of Terrible movie great pinball, though I actually quite liked the movie. I remember... I remember... I forget when this came out. Do you remember when the movie came out? Well, the machine came out in 95, so I would say probably 94, possibly, or 95. Okay, so yeah, I remember when I saw that I was relatively young, and I went into it thinking this was a completely different movie than it was. Because if I remember correctly, it was a pretty gory like... almost a horror movie? Summer would be a lot of blood. No, I think you think it's better done. No. It's like these gorillas with mall people. Yeah, well, that's what gorillas do. Do they have lasers? Like these gorillas? Did they have lasers? Yeah, I'm pretty sure they had lasers. I think you're now thinking of Planet of the Apes, but, you know, they keep going. They don't have the lasers either. Kind of. Movie. Well, they have horses that they ride, so it's only one set of laser lasers. Literally, the first freaking picture I brought up is a laser and gorillas being shot with lasers. Yeah, but it's not gorillas with lasers. Well, they're both in the same picture, so technically. I thought you were saying that the movie is all of a sudden these apes became brainy and managed to get laser rifles and started shooting. Develop laser technology. Yeah. I mean, I haven't seen it in so long. Maybe they did use lasers at some point. I don't know. So what do you think of The Pinball Machine? Before going into the rules, do you like playing it? I do. It's really fun. I think that this is one of those games that if they had just finished off the game and put that nice cherry on the end, this would be a very all-time game. But its wizard mode is terrible, and the game kind of doesn't have that crescendo at the end that you hope for. But that's really the only bad thing with it, really. I mean, it's got pretty good rules. There's some weird rules. but I'm not a big fan of the gorilla under the playfield I'm just telling you yeah that's pretty bad I love it because like if there's one thing in pinball that you can do that makes you feel really terrible about yourself is not spilling Congo down there because it literally seems impossible like have I think it's happened to me once I'm just going to clarify it feels impossible not to be able to spill Congo exactly but in that That one time where you fuck it up and you go, wow, wow. I didn't realize that you could do that. Like, wow, I feel terrible right now. Yeah. It's the equivalent of the ball search of shame. You know, when you've been flipping around for a bit, but you haven't hit anything. So the machine starts going into ball search. Yeah. And you're just like, thanks, machine. I get it. Thank you. I get it. I'm shit. I understand. I suck. You don't need to tell me. Thank you. Yeah. Stupid games. And also, that's a lower play field that doesn't seem to last through tournaments either. A lot of times I've seen that either that's disabled or it's just, they just, I think a lot of times now it's disabled because that mech seems to not last. Right, okay. In big tournaments I've seen, like I remember it was in Papa or something, and they kept on pulling it up and then eventually they just disabled it. And like, we're done with this stupid thing. There's no purpose except for you flailing around and getting it anyway. So what are we doing here? Hilarious. So how are we going to play this game? We're going to click buttons, aren't we? Oh, yeah. Monkey's best friend. I didn't realize it's not a monkey. Oh, yeah. Save your emails, people. It's an ape. I understand. But it's a good gorilla. so yeah I mean this is one of those games that if the ball save is on even if the ball save is off this has some of the most magical ball saves that seemingly you get endless of like this is one of the kind of ball saves that like Star Wars should have where it's like it shoots into the play field you lose the ball and it's like oh it's okay we'll give you another one and like six later it's like really you should try and keep it in the play field I can't do this forever. Like, it'll plunge you, like, six times and just be like, all right, okay, come on. Come on. You can do it. Just use those big yellow things. Come on. But, yeah, you get tons of times normally to keep it in play because I don't know if it's a three. It must be a three-switch thing. But it's just hard plunges, and it goes into the skill shots there. So there's really two as far as the first thing you're going to be dealing with is the skill shot and whether or not the ball stays on. And even if the ball saves off, I think this is in the era that you can't really truly turn it off. Like, it's still there a little. But you can either go for, so there's like two lines of thought that I've seen on this, is that you can try and plunge the kickback, which is still one of the coolest games that you can do that on, which gives you, I believe, $20 million or $25 million for doing that. and then if you're lucky enough and it happens to come out of there and then go into the scoop then I believe you get like double the amount or something like that it's a special thing it doesn't happen that often so that's your first skill shot choice and then you have the roving skill shot choice that you can plunge into the side targets and I believe and over the course of a game I believe that those are worth more than the kickback one because it progresses, whereas the kickback one I believe stays 20 or 25 the entire game. Whereas those ones, if you can hit those, they keep increasing. So I think net, if you can hit all three of those, it's worth more than three of the other ones. But I don't go for those because those are a lot more dangerous. Although I think sometimes you can shoot for that kickback, and if it doesn't register right and the ball saves off, you're screwed. I think I've seen that somewhere. So once you get the ball in the play field, pretty much my strategy is I'm trying to get to multiball first, and the way you get to multiball is collecting diamonds. X amount of diamonds lights your lock. I want to say it's like every five diamonds or so lights your lock on the left orbit or the inner orbit at the top for the upper flipper. Important to note is that you can't stack locks. So if you get diamonds higher than the amount you need, you lose them. I mean, you get them. They're still in your bonus, but it doesn't build or help you get to your next lock. So there's kind of like a metagame of what you're supposed to do to get your first, get your multiball locks and in what order, and it's important to try and do it. So if it's in tournament, the first mystery award is going to be Diamond Hunt, which is a multiball where literally you just hit shots and they're all worth diamonds, so then you can build your diamonds. So the first thing I always do is I go left ramp four times, and that spells your map, and it'll divert to the left side after you've hit it enough. But the most important thing, yeah, sure, it lights map, and then you can hit the right scoop to collect your map award, but the big thing is that it spells Zinch, I think. is Zinch. What that means, no one knows. It's kind of like the seashells, I guess, on Demoman. Zinch means mystery. So, you spell that, and that lights your mystery. So, that lights your mystery, which, like I mentioned, was the diamond hunt. So, what I do is I shoot around the playfield, because I think you literally need, like, four or five diamonds or something like that. That lights your first lock. So, I will, from there, I will try and collect my map, and then I'll hit gray, and that tends to be enough to light your first lock. I collect my first lock, and then after that, I now have two choices on what I do to light my next lock. Either I play Diamond Hunt, which I mentioned, which is that multiball, which if it's in tournament, that will 100% be what you get for the first award. Then use that to light my next lock, or you can spell the first gray, which is hitting the inner orbit at the top that feeds you down to the dumb gorilla downstairs. So you just hit that four times, spell gray, go down there, flail around, get some diamonds, light your lock. So whichever one you choose to do second, whichever one you didn't do, you then do third, and that'll light all your three locks. So that's how you get into multiball, is the path I tend to take. Another way to do it is you can also hit the left orbit. You can go up top and spell Amy at the lanes up top, and then it's also a really cool mode. This has a lot of really cool modes in it for things that you don't see in other games. So you spell Amy, it goes into the little scoop up there, pops it up around this plastic loop thingy. Post comes up with the upper flipper, drops it there, and says, Amy, good gorilla, and it starts at 25 million, I think. And then you can use the upper flipper to hit the inner orbit, which feeds it back to the upper lanes. And then once it goes through an inner lane, it'll lock in whatever the countdown is. So it can be 20 million or something, you know, no matter how fast you do it. Or you can hit the super jackpot shot, which is a little inner loop that then feeds that scoop directly, and that doubles it. So you can get 50 million shots there, but that's harder to hit than the orbit. You do this. It gives you three chances at that. You do it, and it says, yay, good gorilla. And then you get to do it three more times, and it can be worth a lot of points. But also, after the third time, you get 20 diamonds, I think. so it's another way you can get a good chunk of diamonds map awards can give you good chunks of diamonds I think those are really the main ways to get diamonds in the game so you're going to be doing that to get into your multiball and so once you in multiball it pretty simple there two jackpots from one of the simplest multi There two jackpots lit You got the right orbit not the right orbit the right ramp which is really hard to hit through the bumpers around the volcano. That's worth a jackpot, which is the same, I believe, as the left ramp, which is a jackpot, which is way easier to shoot. And really all you do during this multiball is hit the left ramp as much as you can. and after hitting it like four or five times it'll start diverting it to the left and then you pass it over and then you keep doing that and then the person who does that the best wins the game more than likely I believe that if you do hit the right ramp I believe that maybe that maybe hitting them both or maybe just the right ramp will light a super which is the upper flipper in the super shot which I don't do it that often, but maybe it's a double jackpot or a triple jackpot or something. One, it's hard to see when you're standing there. The insert is hidden behind the plastic there. So unless you're tall, you can't see the little purple light being on. And it's also not something you tend to be doing because you're just left-wrapping. But that's really the multiball. Do you remember what the – have you noticed what actually lights the super? Hasai just realizing it's lit randomly? I've literally not understood about 90% of what you just said. That's how little I know about this game. You're asking me about a sleeper jackpot, what? I was here to talk about monkeys. You lost me at monkey diamonds. I don't know. Okay, so that's the multiball. Other things about the game is that, so, like, you know, I mentioned that the first gray award was diamonds. So if you spell gray a second time, it gives you multiball. So the one little weird thing that's with this game, when you're building your diamonds and you get into your first multiball, your multiball jackpots are based on your diamond count. So I guess technically if you get more diamonds than you're needed for their locks, you still get something out of it because it makes your jackpots worth more. but the thing with the second gray is that that you want to make sure you don't do that before you do your other locks because if you have a couple locks i think this is kind of like what it doesn't like um getaway where if you have locks lit if you have a couple locks in there and then you do the second gray that second gray is always a baseline and it doesn't take into account your diamonds, and it clears your locks. So that, I believe that's what that is. I don't get to it that often, but I'm pretty sure that you should play, you're supposed to play, maybe Raymond or somebody can reach out and tell me how wrong I am about this or Colin, but I'm pretty sure you shouldn't play your second grade multiball until you played your main multiball, because it messes with the locks or clears the locks or makes and not worth as much. That's one of those weird quirky things with this game. Another thing is that don't hit the satellite in the middle. If you happen to get into that by accident of just missing and it starts, trap up, because it shuts down the game for like 30 seconds or whatever the timer is and you can't play the rest of the game. And you definitely don't want to shoot that, so just trap up and time that out. That's the main stuff in the game, outside of progressing map awards and, like, your fifth map award or something like that, you get one of the coolest, if not the coolest, mode in pinball, which is, what is it called? Something fire. Rapid? No. What is it called? Skill fire? Skill fire, yeah. Where literally the game shuts down and all you're doing is plunging balls and trying to hit skill shots. So cool. Okay. So what was the super jackpot one you were wanting to work out, how you light it? How you light it? I think it's like, has, I, I, it never lights normally. It's because no one hits the right ramp. I think it's tied to the right ramp somehow. That's my guess. Is that in the main multiball? Yeah. Okay. So, off the top of my head, I think what you need to do is, is shoot a ball into the aiming saucer. The ball will then be fed back to the upper flipper with the super jackpot lit for approximately 20 seconds. That's, that's what I think. And I think you score the super jackpot for two times the jackpot back at the saucer, but only through the super score up at upper orbit. And I think if you score the super jackpot, it resets the timer. That's just... Wow. I can remember. Right off your dome. That was pretty good. I like the terminology you used, too. It's very... I was assuming where that came from. I guess that makes sense. Did you like how before you're going, oh, what's that? And I'm like, skill fire. And you're like, yeah. as though I would know what skill fire is. I'm literally reading a rule sheet. Well, I figured you knew of skill fire. I didn't. Really? Wow. Yeah, so I guess that makes sense with a super, or it's just kind of, because it doesn't happen that often, and then sometimes you'll just look up and it'll be lit, and you're like, ooh, shoot. So I guess it makes sense, because you have to get it into that scoop, which is just kind of hard to do in the first place, and then when you notice that it's going to feed it to the upper flipper, which then that tends to be when you're like, Oh, it's going to flip. Oh, hey, the purple light's on. Go for it. So, yeah, don't go for that, people. I mean, if it happens, sure, but don't go for that. So there you go. It's a fun game. I really like Kongo. I like playing it. Yeah. I just don't play it enough. There's not a lot of them around. It's got a lot of cool stuff in it. It's got the mines, the mine video mode thing where you get to pick different doors. One of them is if you pick left and just keep going left, to get all the way to the end to get a ton of points. Okay. It's one of those random things. You also have a boat video mode, which is terrible. Anything else? Yeah, you should play one just for Skillfire. Skillfire is, like, one of the coolest things. Well, I did go to a party last night, a Christmas party, a pinball Christmas party at Hashman's. Hey, Hashman. And they've got great machines. And, yeah, there was a Congo there, and I just didn't buy it for some reason, mainly because I played it at his place last time. I just wanted to get through all the other machines, but, yeah, I probably should have played it again. I do like it, and, yeah, it's good fun. Yeah, it's just one of those games that if there was a better ending to it, it'd probably be, you know, it's just kind of like the wizard mode. You get 100 diamonds, and then you get into a wizard mode where the upper play field is worth nothing, and the lower play field is worth something, or a little bit. but it's still not worth much at all. So I remember that because one of the tournaments where the bottom was disabled, literally the wizard mode did nothing because all the points were in the bottom. So it was just kind of like, I remember somebody was joking about it and like, yeah, I got to it and I didn't do anything. So, yeah, it's a good game. It's underappreciated. Well, thank you. So for my week in pinball, obviously the party last night was amazing. Thanks, Dave and Ray, for putting that on. Great collection of machines. They had a Jurassic Park Pro, which everybody was on. And I got to play Walking Dead, which I love. I had an LE of that. And Mustang, which I loved, an LE of that. Just great games. But the big highlight this week was, we sort of mentioned before, but Dwight Sullivan was in town. He was doing a tour. These people talking about coding in gaming and all that kind of stuff. So we actually put on an event, a tournament, called the Dwight Sullivan Cup. And you've got to see the trophy. I know you've seen the trophy, but someone made up a trophy. It was 3D printed. Apparently it took about 60 hours. And it's... You've got to see it. It has all the elements of Dwight Games in it, all sitting on the Iron Throne. Was that really? That was 3D printed? That looked metal. That was 3D printed. It looks amazing, doesn't it? Yeah. But we also did... I streamed the event, just Game of Thrones, and we managed to talk to Dwight for about 10 minutes and I just want to play the interview for you now. I've inserted it, but I'll also link you to the whole stream so you can watch the full unedited interview. So here we go. So we're playing New Code on Game of Thrones. I said to people before, I've not played the New Code. Not yet. What's it like an Australian word? Is that a wanker? Oh, they just call me a wanker. Is that too harsh? Yes. All right, so I need a better word. Yeah. It's like I'm going to whinge. I'm a fool. I'm whinging that you haven't played the new code yet. Okay. It's one thing to have Australian slang, but you've got to learn the context for it. I do, I do. All right, all right. So here's the question. The question is, why did you feel you needed to update Game of Thrones code? Besides the fact that people were whinging about it. No, it really did not have anything to do with the people whinging. It had to do with, you know, I wanted to make it, make new things on it, add more stuff. Somebody said, it might have even been Keith Ellen, like before he started working at Stern, he posted someplace that, that, you know, like there should be more button, you know, more button abilities. And I thought there should be more button abilities. And then I've always wanted Targaryens to be able to play the Targaryens. Why? Right, so... But my question is, why wasn't it there to begin with? So the Targaryens, because it's a dragon is on the game, so the original idea that I had, which might have been stupid, right? But the original idea was the toy was this dragon, and you're going to fight against the dragon, so you're never going to beat the Targaryens. Yeah, look, you're coming up. Yeah. I quite liked it. As I said, I haven't played the new code, so I think it's going to be really weird to be able to pick the Targaryen. Right, right. Because I'm so used to it. Right. Okay, so, but did you feel at the time that it was done, it was fine? Or did you have something in the back of your head? No, I had something... I wish I could do something more with it. Both. I always thought it was done, but I wanted to do more with some of the stuff. Yeah, okay. Was there anything that you liked in the original code that you had to get rid of? Let me think. No. You probably kept it all in there. I kept it all in and added more. What's the favorite thing that you've added that you like the most? Buying the multipliers with Lannister. Yeah, okay. That's the thing I like the most. It's controversial, but at my skill level, it's tons of fun, and there's lots of adjustments so that no matter what your skill level is, you can dial it back. Okay. When Dwight was on our podcast, the Head to Head podcast, which he was awesome, obviously go back and listen to it again, I sort of said I wasn't a fan of multipliers. I'm still not. That's fine. They don't pick Lannister. No, that's right. No, but that's what I loved about your response, which is, yeah, okay, fine. You know, you can't keep everybody happy, right? Right, right. So pick Fargarians and then you can pause the timer. Right. You can shut all the timers down for 10 seconds or 20. But when this code came out, it was not controversial. The new code? No, even the first bit of code. Oh. Because, and I'm dying with this, because at the time people thought it was, I would say complicated, but because you had so much choice, people weren't used to having that much choice. It was complicated, and there was lots of choice, and that's why I love it. There's been some talk tonight about what's my favourite game of mine, and it's hard for me not to say Game of Thrones. Well, I did tell chat before that I had spoken to you earlier, and you said that before Game of Thrones, Starcourt Next Gen was your favourite machine, but now you reckon it might be Game of Thrones. I think that's still true, yeah. Yeah, okay. So, the other thing that I didn't like about Game of Thrones, my first version, was the upper playfield. See, that was what was nagging me when I finished the game, was that the upper playfield wasn't fun enough. Yeah. And I always wanted to make that better, and I think we've succeeded now. Is that Castle Multi-Wall? It's Castle Multi-Wall. Yeah, because it's much easier to get now. Yeah, but it has its own multipliers, it has its own stuff. Yeah, the upper playfield's a lot more fun now. I absolutely agree with you on that. It was hard not for it to be more fun. Right. so and I've seen that the the feedback on the new code has been positive in particular tournament players are very happy with the new code oh awesome I don't see I don't my fingers not on the pulse of the tournament players I learn that stuff from you guys from I listen to podcasts and I try to figure things out so let's move on to I know we talked on the podcast but for those people that are watching now let's talk Ghostbusters sure because any day because similar in that it was unfinished business. Correct. In that you had to put it on pause and we know why because you had to do Star Wars and it took longer and all that kind of stuff. But now, there's just universal praise of the code. So, hey, you've got to be happy with that. I'm very happy. Yeah. Is there anything that you still look at it and think, oh, maybe there's something you'd want to do? No, I think we've pretty thoroughly changed the game and put it better across the board. Somebody tonight was telling me that they wish that the multiplier wasn't so easy. So I think if I revisit it, I will leave it like it is on default settings, but I will add an adjustment so that you can change it if you want to, so that you can just get the multiplier on the captain's wall and not the three bank. Yep. And then also in competition mode, it will default to you have to hit the captain's wall to get the multiplier. Right, okay. Right. Yeah, okay. You said, and a lot of people agree with you, that God mode or, you know, are you a god? And what was the... We're ready to believe you. We're ready to believe you. Yep. It's one of the best wizard modes ever. It is, yeah. It's lightning in a bottle. You, you know, you... Okay. You try to, you know, every single game you try to make your features as good as possible. But every once in a while something happens that is just beyond your abilities. Yeah. You know, yeah. But when did you know that that was pretty special? When... And also, when you had that two years that you had to break between code, did you know you were going to do that like that? No. Well, I did, but I didn't know. So I knew that I was going to try to... No. The answer's no. So the original plan for Are You a God was going to be you had to do something on every part of the game. You had to complete the whole game. And it was, but I took that idea and I made it Jedi multi-wall, right? So Jedi multi-wall is at the end of each wall, if you accomplish something that you need to accomplish, it shows you your progress and it leads, and I already did that. So then I come back to Ghostbusters and I'm like, well, Ghostbusters, I don't want to do that again. And I didn't like, I don't like, I didn't like the old, we're ready to believe you. So we threw the, we're ready to believe you out and we wrote it fresh. and I'm like, let's just make it about super simple, like, you know, we're ready to believe you and then if you complete it, whatever we decide it is, then you get, are you a god? Right. Okay. And so the other stroke of genius was changing the setting so you could have we're ready to believe you as a start. Right, right. Now, we, head to head, we lobbied for that and we reckon that you listen to us and we're going to stay calm on that. He won't deny it. Is it tempting to now try to do something like that to capture that moment that's so good that you want to give people the jump start to be able to do it? On future games or other games? Future games. Maybe. Maybe. There's some discussion about that. Yeah, okay. So I can't talk about it much. No, no, no. I understand. I don't want you to tell us the next five games so we can. It was lightning in a bottle though so you're not going to capture that very often. No, I get that. I mean, only keep all of it. You can't manufacture magic because it just happens. Right, right. But except for, unless you keep going. The guy's pretty amazing. He's done all right. Yeah, yeah. His hands are okay. Yeah. His toes are all right. Yeah. One of the things that we talked about on Head to Head podcast recently, and it was Steven Bowden, you know, from Fun With Boners, he was talking about score balancing. Right. And he was talking about how, you know, sometimes when you get like a super jackpot, it's worth so many zeros. You know what I mean? Right. and I made the comment that the more you make a machine complicated and the more you start stacking things together, whether it's modes or whether it's multiples, does that make it much harder for you then to start worrying about score balancing and how that can be exploited? Are you in your mind just thinking about the rules choreography, not necessarily the points? You have to think about both. But I never care about modifiers, and I don't care much about stacking and it's very similar. If each individual thing on its own is balanced for what you have to do, then I'm fine with you stacking them and getting more. Yeah, okay. Right. But then when you start adding multiplies and all that kind of stuff, that can sort of blow it up. It can blow it up. It can blow it up, but if it's balanced at 1x, then it's going to be close to balanced at 2x and 3x and 4x. Yeah, cool. Have you enjoyed your stay in Australia? Oh my God, I love Australia. I've been here... I've been here, yeah, it's my first time, and I've been here about nine days now, and I've been to Sydney, Brisbane, and now Melbourne. But it's not Melbourne, it's Melbourne. Melbourne. Melbourne, right. And awesome people, awesome food, you know, awesome scenery, right? I went on a Antonio Cruz, we went out and walked on a sandbar out from Brisbane, and it was fun. Awesome. Yeah, yeah. It was fun to have you, mate. Thanks for chatting, everybody. big shout out for Dwight, thanks everybody for watching and we'll get on with the tournament alright yeah, good luck to you alright, talk to you later wow wasn't that great, there we go Joe I thought it was great it's just really good, Dwight is such he's such a good person to talk to, he's very passionate what I really like about Dwight, and I don't want this to be an open invitation to everybody, but if you say to Dwight I don't like this, he'll go okay cool tell me why you don't like it tell me how it could be improved what would you like us to do in future he shut everyone down anyway i just yeah he's so nice you can't be horrible to him and he he's not i don't know he's just not precious about this stuff he goes okay cool i hear what you're saying give me an idea on how to improve it and i i had to leave relatively early and we then just started talking about Munsters. He's like, I wish you weren't going. I'm like, okay, let's go outside and let's talk Munsters. And we talked 15 minutes about Munsters and what I thought could be improved. And he was just absorbing all this information. It doesn't mean that what I'm saying is going to be then implemented. And he did mention that they haven't got code planned at the moment, but you never know, down the future they might revisit it. But he was just really excited to talk about ideas and what you could do and how you could make it more interesting, add these random elements, just enhance the whole experience. It was just such a good conversation with him. He is such a good guy. That's how you can tell he cares. Yeah, he does care. Absolutely. Because he's super passionate about what he does. So there's nothing, you might not like what he does, but you can never question his passion and how much he loves his job and the effort he puts into it. So you can never take that into a question. No, I know. But for a lot of people that are that passionate and they put their blood, sweat and tears into it, sometimes those people can be really quite upset by criticism. He's just not. He just says, okay, then tell me what. I like that. He's good. He's good. Yeah. Although it was a missed opportunity there. He didn't talk to him about board gaming at all. Why? Is he into board gaming? Oh, he's huge into board gaming. Oh, okay. I didn't know that. Had I known that, maybe I would have said, hey, board gaming's a thing. I know nothing about it. But Joe's into board gaming. You're into it. Maybe you two get together and talk about board gaming. I know. Yeah. We've been back and forth countless times about that. That's why I was trying to get him to come to... I was like, you should come to Pentastic and play board games. He's like, I need to do that. I was like, yeah. There you go. And I've already said it. Pintastic people. Hello. Dwight Sullivan wants to come, so... Yeah, make it happen. Make it so. And Martin, too. Martin wants to come. For sure. If you can fly me out, that'd be great. Yeah, that'd be awesome. You and Deep Root get together, do it at the same time. That's right. Perfect. That way you go. Yeah, I haven't been to TPF or any... You know, I actually was thinking about this. I've never been to a pinball show that wasn't... You should do it. They're fun. They're fun. I'm trying to get to TPF. Yeah, the thing of it is, though, if you went to TPF, you would just spend your time in the tournament and not see the show. So there's no point. Well, I don't know. Maybe I'll just suck. I mean, you know, I hear that there's something going on before the show that maybe I could do. I don't know what that might be. I don't know. Special announcement or something. Well, you know, you are obviously a top player. So you were saying, like, I saw before, you are 16th on the Stern Pro Circuit. So is that the final standing? There's no more events, are there? no that is so you're 16 so that means you get into the finals yep so I don't even know when that is I don't know you know I'm going I want to go I mean it's $600 so it pays for the trip so how can you not go yeah but I don't know when it actually is same thing with the world championships which I qualified for which I'm it's in the US again so I'm not going to mess up and not go this time thinking that it was too far away when it really wasn't and I ended up being there anyway not sour at all no doesn't sound bitter at all no perfectly fine yeah so yeah Dwight so there you go it's a awesome dude loves board games designed a board game fun fact did he really you did yep okay didn't know that have to look that up how was your week in pinball I know you've been doing you know tournaments and and all this kind of stuff what's going on So many tournaments. So now, see, this is where I get lost because it's like, now it's been two weeks. So now I've got to think, okay, two weeks of tournaments, what have we been doing? So, like, I guess the big thing last week was the pinmasters of New Robert Englunds finals. And that was a nightmare before it happened. But getting that, as I told you about, getting B Division to show up and play was unfortunate. And had to go. So, like, for a point of reference, I think they had 98 players in the series-ish, something like that. And we took 32 people to finals. Top 16 A, next 16 B. top 16 almost none of them dropped they might have been like one two maybe that b i had the deal with so many drops in b that by the end two people dropped the night before and by the end i was literally just asking anyone i knew hey do you want to play because i just want to fill it at this point. We had to go, like, 90 deep to flip me. I was like, I am never doing this again. What a pain in the ass. Like, if you're doing a final and you have to chase people to play, then clearly that segment of the player base is not that interested. So, uh, I don't know if we're going to do a B, and then also, so then after that, I don't know if we're going to do a B division next year because of just, it seemed that the appetite wasn't there for it. But, like, also find out that you can't submit points for that. So B Division can't be submitted for points. So that's another point. But as far as the event, the event went great. We had awesome trophies that Joel did. I qualified on the bubble. I beat Frank Romero on a tiebreaker on Target Pool. I then had two great games. I was in a group with Jerry, me, Bowen, and Kevin. and had two great first games, and literally I was like three or four strokes up on Bowen. I just needed to not get a 10 on Shadow, and I would have advanced, and I got a 10 on Shadow because I am a fucking idiot. And this is the biggest thing that I need to figure out what's wrong with me when it comes to tournament play is that this tunnel vision thing where you get, I get fixated on a specific strategy or I see someone do something and go, oh, that'll get the thing I need. I should do that. Like the first two balls, I locked two balls. So I only had two shots left for multiball. I then saw Kevin do battlefield for 70. I'm like, that's all I need. So what did I do? I went battlefield for the last three balls and did nothing. and I didn't I did not qualify but or I did not advance in finals but my friend Nick who's still getting everyone sick around here and we're still sick from he won so happy for him it was awesome and and it was some amazing play in there and then so at least I got to sit and watch that and not be but man for anyone who thinks that TDing and playing is easy and somehow an advantage how many times have I said it Oh, my God. No. It's not. No, it's not. It's super hard and aggravating, and I wish I didn't have to do both. But, you know, these are the things we do for people. Let's see. So then that was last week. And then this week, I was at Chuck's last night, and that was a knockout. That was fun. Got the playoffs, Cooper. Game's still aggravating. Nick won that again. Strike tournament. Didn't get any strikes. That guy. So aggravating. and then today I ran a Flipper Frenzy which is the first Flipper Frenzy I've run we did four it was a four hour Flipper Frenzy and we had it on yeah it was a lot of pinball it's one of those things it was a lot of pinball I think it was like 26 games, 27 games a lot of pinball so learned a lot about running it realized there was a phantom player at the beginning that was in there that didn't exist. I don't know how I put that in there. So that screwed up stuff. So, yeah, so then after it all went smoothly, after that, everyone loved it. So that was good. So that's pretty much my week in pinball. I know you have to go, so I'm going to wrap it up. Well, we are going to wrap it up. Just to talk about the competition. So we started the competition last week, and we asked everybody to write in for what they think the game of the year is going to be in the trippies next year. Clearly Wonka. Well, yeah. I would say 99% of them were Jurassic Park. Absolutely. Although a lot of them were like, oh, you know, Wonka's cute, but obviously it's Jurassic Park. I'm like, oh, yeah, kind of. I'm like, oh, yeah, and there was that cool Black Knight game, but Jurassic Park. It's even funny that some of them were just like, as if they knew that everyone was saying Jurassic Park, like, yeah, I know you're probably, Obviously, everyone's saying this, like talking as if they knew, which, you know, I guess you just kind of know. They're probably going to be. So, look, also a lot of people have been asking whether we're going to do the twerpies this year. We're not, but in honour of the twerpies. They're the opposite of the twerpies. We've done it the last two years. They're the worst things in pinball. So, in honour of the twerpies. So, this is the second week to enter into the competition. And then next week, we will be announcing the winners. But for this week, what I want you to tell me is what you thought was the worst pinball machine of 2019. This one will be fun. And the rules are it needs to have been released, as in delivered, in 2019. So not things that were revealed in 2019. They needed to have been shipped commercially in 2019. The worst machine of 2019. Please go. And I will tell you, we've actually had some things added to the prize list. For those people who were in for last week, set up in stadiums. Hello. Who doesn't want to set up in stadiums? We've got the Attack from Mars alternate translight from Brian Allen. He of Flyland Designs. So go to flylanddesigns.com. That's F-L-Y-L-A-N-D designs. We've got two head-to-head t-shirts We've got a head-to-head hoodie We've got a Loser Kid podcast cap Which I watched during the tournament I know So comfy And back from the archives of head-to-head pinball We got a voucher for Beard and Blade That's beardandblade.com.au What? Oh, you've got to go Check out beardandblade.com.au They are freaking amazing So we've got a voucher to give out from them. And obviously we've had some vouchers for Monster Bash and Creature Black Lagoon on the Williams pinball on IRS. I still got to do use my key. Yeah, there's lots of prizes there, Guy. Please, please enter. All you've got to do is just email headtoheadpinball at gmail.com with what you thought was the worst machine of 2019. We will read those out next week. have a bit of a laugh about it because it's not serious. These award shows are not serious. But just right here. Don't forget, if you are a Patreon subscriber which is serious and you're $3 and above, you will get double the entry. Money, money. Money. Give it to me. So, there you go. And as I mentioned before, one week to go and then I'm on my break and I'm looking forward to it. Depp is going to do a burnout on live TV. I am. Get out of here. Flip the bird on my way out. No, that won't happen. I love my people. They're good. So there you go. So thanks, everybody, for listening. Thank you, Joe, for getting back from your flip frenzy. And I'm glad it went well. And we will speak again next week. Thanks, everyone. Toodles. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 7be1ca3f-3739-4cd6-8b19-d463631875da*