# #127 Steve Ritchie - The Classic Pinball Podcast

**Source:** The Classic Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2025-04-17  
**Duration:** 140m 49s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/george272/episodes/127-Steve-Ritchie---The-Classic-Pinball-Podcast-e31lagg

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## Analysis

George and Dave recount their experience at Tentastic, a major pinball show, discussing encounters with industry figures like Steve Ritchie, venue logistics, gameplay experiences with unreleased titles, and a technical troubleshooting incident with The Hangover pinball machine. They cover Thursday through Saturday activities including seminars, free play access strategies, board sales, and LED lighting upgrades from Mitchell Lighting.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] The premium pass at Tentastic allows entry to the free play hall one hour earlier (10 a.m. vs 11 a.m.) with minimal lines, enabling players to try games multiple times — _George speaking from direct experience at Tentastic, specific time references and personal practice_
- [HIGH] The Hangover pinball machine experienced a hardware issue where a flipper button lock screw fell out, shorting the select switch and forcing the game into Spanish language mode — _George and Dave discussing the troubleshooting process, including research on Pinside and eventual discovery by game technicians_
- [MEDIUM] Battle Stations is a head-to-head pinball game that may become commercially available — _George played the game at the show and observed it at a booth, speculated it might be from Myth Pinball_
- [HIGH] Mitchell Lighting produces LED bulbs with real glass appearance that direct light left and right rather than up, as an alternative to Comet bulbs — _Dave's extended conversation with Mitch and personal testing of the bulbs in his machines_
- [HIGH] The Tycoon Room at Tentastic had unique games including Portal (not releasing until summer) with restricted 40-minute play windows on Saturday afternoon — _George's direct observation and attempted gameplay at the show_
- [HIGH] An Ozzy Osbourne cover band performed at Tentastic on Friday night with a guitarist who is particularly skilled — _George attended the performance and spoke with a band member's relative about the musicians_
- [HIGH] Steve Ritchie was present at Tentastic and sat at the bar with George, though conversation details remained private — _George's direct account of meeting Ritchie at the bar during dinner time_
- [HIGH] Brian Soares designed and was present at Tentastic with The Hangover machine — _George and Dave encountered him in the VIP room on Friday night_

### Notable Quotes

> "Buy the premium package from Gabe so you can get into the free play hall at 10 a.m., one hour earlier than everyone else. Very few lines, got to play a lot of stuff multiple times."
> — **George**, ~15:30
> _Practical advice for attendees seeking to maximize gameplay time at the show_

> "That ship sailed a while ago. No, I don't think so. So it's a good conversation with him."
> — **George**, ~10:00
> _Reference to Scott Morash conversation about attending karaoke after abstaining_

> "Hardware became the software problem."
> — **George**, ~47:20
> _Key insight about The Hangover's hardware issue masquerading as a software bug_

> "I'm putting them in because of the direction. They do what I want."
> — **Dave**, ~59:00
> _Preference for Mitchell Lighting LED bulbs over Comet alternatives based on light directionality_

> "I don't like when people do that. Yeah, but I should know him because I know him from JR's from like 20 years ago."
> — **George and Dave**, ~9:30
> _Recognition of Scott Morash after initial non-recognition incident at the bar_

> "It's like an oddity, kind of like Stern Orbiter 1. It's an oddity. It's kind of cool for a couple games, but I don't know if you'd play a whole bunch on it."
> — **George**, ~3:00
> _Assessment of the Pinball Circus remake as an interesting but niche game_

> "There's already too much delay of game in all the new models. That's the one thing I don't like."
> — **George**, ~52:45
> _Critique of modern pinball design philosophy regarding gameplay pacing_

> "You can't be torquing them in. You've got to be careful putting them in, taking them out."
> — **Dave**, ~59:45
> _Practical maintenance advice for LED bulb installation to avoid damage_

> "It's like the Star Wars cantina."
> — **George**, ~44:00
> _Description of the bar atmosphere at the show venue_

> "So basically wound up buying a whole bunch of box of bulbs from him, you know, and he gave me a nice little show deal on them."
> — **Dave**, ~56:30
> _Dave's purchasing decision based on field testing and vendor relationship_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Steve Ritchie | person | Legendary pinball designer, encountered by George at the bar during Tentastic |
| George | person | Co-host of Classic Pinball Podcast, attended Tentastic as press/badge holder |
| Dave | person | Co-host of Classic Pinball Podcast, attended Tentastic, conducted board sales and LED bulb purchases |
| Brian Soares | person | Designer of The Hangover pinball machine, present at Tentastic with his game in VIP room |
| Mitchell Lighting | company | LED lighting company run by Mitch, produces premium glass-appearance LED bulbs for pinball machines with directional lighting |
| Scott Morash | person | Main pinball repair technician in Maine, encountered at karaoke bar Thursday night, mentoring younger repair apprentice |
| Ryan McQuaid | person | Pinball player who defeated George in Battle Stations head-to-head game at Tentastic |
| Robert Gemp | person | Owner of Hall & Oates business, purchased The Wiggler machine from Mitch |
| Dave Golden | person | Friend of Dave's, purchased circuit boards and rare Mata Hari playfield to set up board repair test fixture |
| Victor | person | Circuit board manufacturer/vendor operating as 'Dumbass' on Pinball forums, sells WPC boards and test fixtures |
| Lynn | person | Previously appeared on George's Classic League, created remake of Python Angelo's Pinball Circus game |
| Joshua | person | Owner of 1947 Playboy EM machine with custom sound triggers at Tentastic |
| Jim Swain | person | Tournament coordinator at Tentastic, consulted for technical support on The Hangover issue |
| Tony Zizek | person | Head of machine repair crew at Tentastic, diagnosed and fixed The Hangover flipper button lock issue |
| Paul | person | Friend of George's who attended Tentastic, preferred gameplay to waiting in lines |
| Maureen | person | Accompanied George to Tentastic, played Uncanny X-Men and other games |
| Tentastic | event | Major pinball show venue with free play area, VIP room, Tycoon room, tournament lounge, and entertainment |
| The Hangover | game | Pinball machine by Brian Soares displayed at Tentastic, experienced Spanish language lock issue caused by loose flipper button screw |
| Battle Stations | game | Head-to-head pinball game at Tentastic, potentially upcoming commercial release, George played against Ryan McQuaid |
| Uncanny X-Men | game | New pinball machine at Tentastic with side-mounted flipper and mini flipper, Marvel licensed, unique layout |
| Portal | game | Pinball machine in Tycoon room at Tentastic, scheduled for summer 2024 release, had restricted 40-minute play windows |
| Myth Pinball | company | Possible manufacturer of Battle Stations game, formerly ran pinball tournaments at Allentown until Levy took over |
| Pinside | organization | Online pinball forum where George researched The Hangover issue trying to find solutions |
| Gabe | person | Tentastic show organizer who offers premium pass packages |
| Bruce | person | Tentastic attendee and fan of Classic Pinball Podcast, approached George at the show |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Tentastic show experience and logistics, The Hangover machine technical troubleshooting, LED lighting upgrades and Mitchell Lighting products, Gameplay impressions of unreleased/showcase games
- **Secondary:** Industry figure encounters and networking, Circuit board repair and refurbishment, Show venue amenities and food service
- **Mentioned:** Entertainment (Ozzy cover band) at the show

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.78) — George and Dave reflect positively on most aspects of Tentastic, expressing appreciation for venue improvements, game quality, vendor interactions, and entertainment. Some minor frustrations with game availability, crowds, and technical issues, but overall highly favorable tone throughout the show recap.

### Signals

- **[event_signal]** Tentastic implemented early-access free play hours (10 a.m. vs 11 a.m. for premium pass holders) with minimal crowds, allowing experienced players to thoroughly test games multiple times before general attendance surge around 1 p.m. (confidence: high) — George's detailed explanation of premium pass value and specific timing of crowd buildup
- **[product_concern]** The Hangover machine exhibited Spanish language lock issue on Friday night caused by loose flipper button lock screw shorting the select switch, requiring playfield inspection and overnight repair by Tony Zizek's crew (confidence: high) — Detailed troubleshooting narrative with root cause identification and repair timeline
- **[technology_signal]** Mitchell Lighting produces premium LED bulbs with real glass appearance and directional light output (left-right rather than omnidirectional) as superior alternative to Comet brand bulbs for pinball restoration (confidence: high) — Dave's extended product testing, vendor conversation, and purchasing decision with detailed technical comparisons
- **[machine_intel]** Portal pinball machine displayed at Tentastic with summer 2024 release window, featured in restricted-access Tycoon room with 40-minute play windows on Saturday (confidence: medium) — George's observation of game in Tycoon room with explicit timeline restrictions and seasonal release date
- **[gameplay_signal]** George expresses concern about excessive delay-of-game elements in modern pinball designs, citing specific frustration with Princess Bride's multi-minute story sequences requiring simultaneous flipper presses to cancel (confidence: high) — Explicit critique of modern game design trends affecting play experience
- **[content_signal]** Tentastic featured live Ozzy Osbourne tribute band on Friday night with positive reception from attendees, particularly praised for guitarist performance and authenticity (confidence: high) — George's detailed account of attending performance and enthusiastic fan interaction
- **[market_signal]** Dave conducted significant circuit board sales at Tentastic, offloading repair inventory and refurbished WPC boards to multiple buyers including Pennsylvania collector and friend Dave Golden, generating substantial revenue from show transactions (confidence: high) — Dave's narrative of pre-show online listings, multiple buyer interactions, and significant sales volume
- **[community_signal]** Steve Ritchie's presence at Tentastic and informal bar conversation with George demonstrates continued active engagement by legendary designer in contemporary pinball community (confidence: high) — George's account of unplanned bar seating next to Ritchie with discussion of private conversation
- **[gameplay_signal]** Uncanny X-Men received mixed impressions for its unconventional offset flipper design and mini-flipper mechanic, with appreciation for thematic integration and play speed but skepticism about owner appeal (confidence: medium) — George and Dave's gameplay impressions with specific mechanical observations
- **[rumor_hype]** Battle Stations head-to-head pinball game potentially entering commercial production, observed at booth during show with strong playability feedback (confidence: medium) — George's gameplay experience and speculation about commercial viability
- **[personnel_signal]** Scott Morash, established Maine pinball repair technician, actively mentoring younger technician as potential successor/apprentice to ensure business continuity (confidence: high) — George's observation at karaoke about Morash bringing 'young Padawan' to train and retire transition
- **[restoration_signal]** Dave implementing selective LED bulb upgrades (lower playfield, kickers, slingshots) rather than full-game installations to balance aesthetic improvement with cost management (confidence: high) — Dave's explicit strategy explanation for bulb placement and budget considerations

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## Transcript

 Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast. My name is George. His name is Dave. Hello, Dave. Hello, George. Welcome to Tax Day in the United States. While some people get pinball money, others get the bill. We have two terrific interviews in this podcast, Steve Ritchie and Rebby Hardy. But first, we're going to go to the start of Tentastic on Thursday night, our first seminar. Dave, do you remember what we did first? I do. We both got corralled by Dave Marston from the show and said, hey, you're with the press. Come on. Press goes over here. Let's go. Come on. Come on. Where are we going? Thank you for saying that. At least it didn't come from my mouth. Come on. Come on. This way. This way. I said, where are we going? Come on. He said, okay. It was like 6 o'clock. The show was just starting at 6. It's like, people are going to be here already for a seminar. It's kind of quick and early, but okay, we'll go. And got brought in the room and said, no, you guys sit right here. Sit right up front. It's like, okay, all right, I'm good. Then all of a sudden I see Lynn, who I know. He was on my Classic League years ago. And he's got this big arcade-looking thing, and he's ready to do a seminar on it. And there we are. Well, he basically did a remake of the Python Angelo game, Pinball Circus. He did, yeah. Did you, over the course of a frantic couple days, get to play it? Never got to. I played it on Saturday with my friend Jim. Interesting game. I only got it around that whole cacophony of spiraling rails and stuff once and I played it a couple times so that was kind of disappointing, other than that pretty cool different I don't know if that would have any kind of commercial success did you play the original at Allentown a couple years ago? no because they had it there and I played that one It was fun for what it was. It was interesting. It's like an oddity, kind of like Stern Orbiter 1. It's an oddity. It's kind of cool for a couple games, but I don't know if you'd play a whole bunch on it, but it's a neat oddity. Yeah, so that was the beginning of Thursday evening. Didn't we just kind of walk around and play a couple things? I don't remember anything else really noteworthy on Thursday night, do you? Not really noteworthy. I was beat. I mean, it was a car, right. You had a long drive, you know. Wait, no, you know what? That was the night. No, that was the night of the karaoke, right? Karaoke was that night. That first night, yeah. It was. Thursday was karaoke night. So that was interesting. I met up with, so Maureen and I, we want to go out for dinner. She said, we should probably stay here and hang out. And so we said, well, we'll just go to the All-Star Bar there, which is, you know, decent food, pub food, what it was. And I've been off the sauce for a while, trying to be a good boy for Lent and for, you know, keep the doctors happy and kind of, you know, just lay off the sugar and the carbs and the beer. So I did. It's like, well, I might as well, if I'm going to break this deal, it's pretty close, I'll have a beer, possibly two. but I said well I'm going to wait a little bit and then I heard this really tall guy now I'm tall when I have to look up to somebody they're really tall so I said he looks kind of familiar but I don't know he started singing what's that song Maureen sang you know this song I want to say what's Lou Rawls famous song what song Lou Rawls oh you'll never find Oh, that one. He sang that? He did. Was he any good? I'm going to need you. That one. He was actually pretty good. It's like, all right. I was ready to say, you know what? I want to go sing that, too. I'd like to sing that song, too. He's a tall and deep voice, so it works out well. So then we were sitting on one side of the bar. The bright white LEDs from where they're going to do the concert area for the concert that are coming up for the weekend, they were running in our face. ago. I don't want to sit. Let's sit on the other side of the bar. There's a couple seats over there. I see someone just paid a bill. Let's go on the other side and look at those freaking lights and be protected as well by a wall from all the loud... You're sure this was Thursday night, not Friday night? I think it's Thursday. Pretty sure, yeah. They were setting the band up on Friday night. No, no, no, no band. This was the hotel. Hotel bright LED lights. Oh, oh, oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, it's the atrium lights. Oh, because the band had some pretty bright lights. Those were fine. Those were like regular lights. These ones were the annoying bright blue, I don't know, stupid lights that were kind of converting everybody into these days, and they're really bad for your eyes and cause cataracts and stuff. So not a fan of that. So we sat on the other side, so we don't have to look at that. And all of a sudden, the same tall guy who was right near me, he's like, hey, you're in my seat. And he's looming over me. He had this weird look on his face like he's ready to punch me. He's ready to start a fight. And it's like, okay, dude, here, you can take my seat. I don't want to, you know, whatever. It's like, you know, just coming off the show Reacher, and, you know, going through my head, Reacher's a big guy, tough guy, and this huge tall guy, he kind of met his match. So I just said, well, I know how Reacher wins, so I'm going to try to not go the same way. So I'm going to acquiesce and just be like, oh, here, take my seat. I don't care. You don't even know who I am. It's like, no, who are you? I'm Scott Murdy. Wait, he said that to you? You don't know who I am? Yeah. We didn't recognize him. I didn't recognize him. But that's kind of weird. I don't like when people do that. Yeah, but I should know him because I know him from JR's from like 20 years ago. Oh, so you didn't remember him. I remember him. Okay. But after I looked at him again, because also he had this weird look on his face like he was ready to frickin' punch me. Because he was half in the bag. So it's like, I don't know where this guy's going to go if you're that frickin' cocked. You know, I don't know what's going to go on. You know, I'm not going to argue with someone that has a couple beers in him or whatever. You know, cause a problem. So anyway, so it was Scott Morash. And he's actually, you know, one of the main guys, if not the main pinball repair guy in Maine. and I say, oh, yeah, now I remember you. It's like, you piece of something. He's causing all kinds of agita. It's like, all right, now I get it. So then I say, oh, I'll have a beer. So I had a beer at that point. Then I went to two beers, and that was it. But he was like, oh, I'll buy you a shot. I was like, no, I'm not doing a shot. No, no, no, no. He's going to be a good boy. That ship sailed a while ago. Sailed a while ago. No, I don't think so. So it's a good conversation with him. he's bringing a new, a young Padawan in, because he wants to retire from it, so this younger guy was with him and he was teaching him the ropes and so forth, so I was like, oh, I need to get one of those too, but so it was a good conversation, decent karaoke, it was kind of fun listening sometimes, sometimes it wasn't so fun listening you had to block your ears, but you know, it was a good little bar thing. So that was your Thursday night? That was Thursday night, did I do any pinball that night? I don't think, I didn't play a lot of pinball for this whole time. We went in and we played. I don't even remember what we played, but it doesn't matter. It wasn't long. We weren't in there long. They were talking about the free play area and everything. Do we play in the free play or play in the club room, you and I? Do we play Evil Cunning Evil that night? You know what? Thursday night is not coming to me. It's been too many days. All right, Mitchell from Mitchell Lighting. Mitchell Lighting, when did I hear about him and you? Was that Thursday or Friday? No, Friday because I picked up my stuff on Friday from him. But we're getting there. So let's not jump ahead. Unless there's anything on Thursday. If it was Thursday and we're saying it on Friday, so be it. Nobody else is with us. They can fact check us. Who cares? Compliment to the hotel. The hotel did a really nice remodel of their restaurant area. I was pleased to see that. My advice to all, buy the premium package from Gabe so you can get into the free play hall at 10 a.m., one hour earlier than everyone else. Very few lines, got to play a lot of stuff multiple times because there's never anybody behind me. So in some cases, I played a game four or five times. People say, well, you know, I don't want to go to an arcade to, you know, spend a buck and a half, two bucks a game, learn how to play a game. As I've told you a million times, this is the show to come to. 10 o'clock to 11 o'clock. Doesn't really start getting busy until the afternoon around 1 o'clock, because people take a half day, bring their kids, etc. and so forth. So, plug for the show. I think bring a game or get a premium pass. You get all access that way. Bringing a game, I think, gets you in early. And I think if you're... Yeah, whatever pass it is that gives you access. It's only one hour on Friday. They don't do it on Saturday morning. They only do it on Friday morning. So that's when you make hay and get to play. If you're there to play all the new stuff, that is the time to do it because this show did get crowded and it got crowded quick. I'll go over to the Tycoon Room in a little bit. That place was packed all weekend. I wish I hit the Tycoon Room earlier on Thursday, which I wish I went in there like I should have, because... They had hours like a regular arcade. They didn't open up when the show opened up. I think it was on... Actually, it was. It was on Friday morning. I was done around 11 o'clock with the free hour where nobody else was in there other than badge holders and press, etc. So, I went over and sat outside the tycoon room, and finally somebody came over to me and said, hey, dude, it doesn't open for another hour. I'm like, Somebody told me it opened at 11 o'clock. I didn't check the time. So I went back to the free play area and, you know, jammed through there. You were a busy boy when you got to the show on Friday. Yeah. The commercial, if I recall, because that's kind of when I saw you for a little bit and then I didn't see you for a lot of it. Yeah, I was wheeling and dealing. So I have, you know, over the years, I've just been, you know, I used to be repairing boards more and that kind of thing, repairing the old stuff, especially the Williams stuff. I still repair the, you know, I repair the Bally stuff a lot and some Williams stuff I do. But overall, if there's a better MPU out there or a combo MPU driver out there for this older stuff that's going to hold up more reliably than a repair, I'm going to, you know, sell the customer that as part of my pinball service I do. And therefore, I wind up with a whole bunch of used boards. Some are actually still good. Some have a couple problems. So I basically listed a whole bunch online for the show. And I got a couple people reaching out to me. And one guy from Pennsylvania, and he wanted a whole bunch. And then our other guy, a friend of ours, Dave Golden, he wanted something. He wants to get his own test picture set up. He wants to start taking that on and doing a little board repair, maybe for people or himself, or maybe he has a little side business. So he's going to use Victor, who is, I don't know why he calls himself Dumbass on pinball, because he's anything but a dumbass, really bright guy, Victor. and he sells all these really good boards for WPC and all the stuff, test fixtures he sells that he makes himself. So he's buying all much of his stuff plus the boards I sold Dave. Plus I sold Dave a rare Mata Hari fully screened CPR playfield from several years ago, but they stopped making them since. They only make the inkjet version. So I sold him that too. So he got a bunch of boards and a playfield. The other guy from Pennsylvania got a metric ton of pinball boards, a lot of System 11 stuff. And he was happy. I was happy. So I made bank this weekend, you know. Like I said, we kind of broke ranks. And I was saying to Janice, you know, I think a lot of people, well, maybe not, would think that you and I would have hung out a lot more at the show. And we did for a fair amount. But we did a lot of stuff on our own, too. True. True. I think we're coming to, I don't know if I should introduce this here or just kind of tease it, but our first encounter, you were sitting with me, weren't you? And I made the hair comment to Steve Ritchie. No, I wasn't there. Oh, so who was with you? Maureen? Somebody was with me. Maybe Maureen, maybe it was Janice there, or she wasn't there. No, she wasn't there. Somebody was with me, and I made that comment. So that was the beginning. We'll just leave it at that. Yeah. Can you remember anything from Friday? I have one notable from Friday. Say the notable and it'll refresh your memory. Well, it was for me, not for you. It was my second encounter, or maybe it was my first encounter. I don't know. I don't remember the order. But did you get to play that head-to-head game called Battle Stations? No, I didn't. I saw people playing that constantly, and I didn't get to play it. That would have been fun for you and I to play that. Again, time ran out. But I played that on Friday. I played against Ryan McQuaid. You remember him? Oh, right, yeah. So I took a picture, I have it, of Steve Ritchie and Ryan McQuaid playing. And then I said, hey, can I play? And Ryan said, yeah, you can play me. And he just wiped me around the floor. That is probably going to become a commercial game, believe it or not. I wish I remembered the guy's name, and my apologies. But all you've got to do is remember the name of the game, Battle Stations. Head-to-head pinball. I saw the guy in Myth, Myth Pinball. Does he make that? Was that his game? Because he was sitting right there. Well, probably, if that's the name of it. Because I know. You remember. Well, no, I know the guy that does the Myth, you know, that's his business name. But he was running pinball tournaments forever at Allentown until Levy took over and did his own thing with it. But he was running tournaments there. and then he went into, I think, doing pinball speaker lights and other pinball add-ons and mods and so forth. So this might be his game. I don't know, but it's right in front of his booth. Well, it might become commercially available. I forgot one thing. I met that guy, Joshua, who had that 1947 Playboy. We talked about it briefly in the last show. Okay. He put all kinds of sound triggers in that thing. Um, no flippers. I tilted it every time I had a ball. So, cool looking game, but not much in my opinion of a player. Where was that located? Uh, way in the back corner of the free area. Um, along the back wall. Okay, where the other EMs are. Yeah, back there. Um, so we're getting to, we're getting to be around dinner time. Um, I only, I had breakfast, had no lunch. I'm like, okay, I'm hungry. So I'm going to go over to the bar and plop my rear end down. But something was going on before, so I think I had to come back, or maybe that was Saturday. But regardless, lo and behold, guess who sits next down? Sits down next to me at the bar. Mr. Hare. Yep, Mr. Hare. Steve Ritchie. And the funny part about sitting with him is, you know, I knew who he was, obviously. So, yeah, we had a chat. but several of the people around me, he was like Joe, I don't know who you are. And I'm pointing like, do you know who this Joe is? Because he can't hear. Right. A couple of times I was talking in his ear, he was looking forward, he didn't even flinch. So I don't know if he's just annoying me, I mean, you know, whatever, or ignoring me. When I say annoying me, no, ignoring me. Right. Yeah, he is a character. I'm not going to disclose the things we talked about. That's private. But he was fun. Sitting at the bar, this was pretty cool. So the guy who owns the business, Hall & Oates, Robert Gemp, he was there at the bar. Oh, I wasn't talking to him. Well, he bought The Wiggler. Oh, okay. Didn't we play The Wiggler? Yeah. I played it. Yeah, the one that's all restored, the nice one. Yeah, the one that had all the refrigerator lights in it. Yeah, yeah. So we'll get to Mitch in a minute. Yeah. That was Mitch's game. He sold it to Robert. I guess they're real good friends now, so whatever. It was fun to meet him. He was with a woman. I don't know her name either, but she had a sweatshirt on that says Nana, so you know who you are, Nana. That was a fun couple hours with him. The bar was fun. Nice. The bar is always fun. It is always fun. Yeah, it's like the Star Wars cantina. So are we going to get to the part now where you broke something? Yeah, sure. I think that was on, that was Friday. That was Friday night. It was Friday night, yeah. So. Yeah, you first. So we go into the, it must have been Southern New Hampshire pinball room, right? Was it there or was it in the Extra Ball Lounge? Oh, no, no, no, no, no. It's the VIP room. Okay, yeah, so the VIP room. So we're in there. and there's the hangover and I see Brian Soares is in there who made the game and I know him so I'm talking to him a little bit so let's give it a shot so he's playing it so he said oh try it out so I press the start button and it starts saying hola, welcome amigo it's like what is this why is it in Spanish I don't know let me turn it off again let me hit this button here it says choose English or Spanish so same thing over and over and over again it's like and George says you broke his game and I I go man Dave you broke his game and Brian was kind of a little freaked because you know it's Friday night I guess the game went you know through the day but you know he's got a full Saturday and we'll get to that in a minute because that's a whole other story I had never met Brian before. What a nice man. Gracious. We'll get to that in a little bit. I said, let me go down the hall to the tournament lounge and ask Jim Swain if he knows anybody. In the meantime, Tony Zizek and his crew of merry men who were repairing machines, the alarm went off. I guess it wasn't until the next morning when I went down there, I don't know what time it was, I see him folding the game up and everything, and I'm like, hey, what's going on? Oh, we got a photo shoot later, so the game's done. So I still, it's Saturday morning, I still haven't played the game. I don't think you did either, did you? I haven't either, no. No, I didn't. I didn't. So we're there, and I'm like, oh, okay. You know, and my friend Jim came in early, and, you know, we walked around and played a bunch of stuff. did you ever get on Evil Dead? Never got to play it. That was busy. That was super busy. The lines started forming for all this stuff, and I was with my friend Paul, and he said, I don't want to wait in line. I don't get to play pinball that often. I just want to play pinball. I don't want to wait in lines. So we're going to go into Tycoon area there, because he's got a lot of unique games. He's got the Portal game in there. That's not coming out until summer, so people I guess the different shows get they get 40 minutes on Saturday afternoon when I tried to play it yeah I was saw the big line I was waiting no they had a velvet rope waiting for people to play it's like I'm not waiting it's like I want to play it but not that bad so that's the other games I finally got in on Uncanny X-Men interesting game I got to play that a little bit for a new game well you and I played that didn't we or did we no no you played it and told me about it no I told you to go play it because I'm like I want your opinion so go ahead continue. Yeah, so I kind of like this. Maureen and I are playing this unique game, unique how it kind of comes down to the side and it kind of goes down, a little flipper down below. It's, uh, has some cool toys on it. It was kind of fun for a different game. Would I own it? No. No, I wouldn't either, but a lot of people don't like those offset flippers and then that mini flipper weird thing on the left-hand side. But as far as fast games go, that thing races. yeah I thought it was a pretty exciting game to play I thought it was interesting I liked how it coordinated with the comic book from Marvel Comics and so forth it was interesting so yeah it was a decent pin to play even though it would have been cool to try I wanted to try to play I never had to play Princess Bride yet because I like the movie I heard about that game that'll go on and on telling you a whole story about a whole book you could be there for I don't know several minutes to a half hour listening to a freaking movie when it's like, you just want to play pinball, you got to hit both flippers together to cancel out and play the game again. Things like that. There's already too much delay of game in all the new models. That's the one thing I don't like. Did you tell the audience, we kind of left it again, we go off the exit lane and come back on to the interstate. Sure. We never told people what the fix was for Oh yeah, so we found out what the fix was. I think it's in the interview later didn't he tell the interview wasn't it in the interview later we're going to reference I thought that's where I heard the fix it was probably not yeah so what happened was he found out because I was looking online on Pinstine I was looking up he was stressing out about it I was trying to help him by research research research no one else had this problem so it's like okay I guess it's on us to figure it out so but neither one of us we didn't lift the play field up and we should have because if we lifted the play field up we would have found that the flipper button lock screw that holds the button in. That somehow fell out. It shorted out the select switch on the flipper, which made it always want to be in Spanish. It would never let you get to that menu to make it in Spanish. No. It would just automatically go there. It befuddled quite a few people for quite a little bit of time until somebody finally looked and said, hey, look here. Look here. But you really had to do a deep inspection, that's not a common problem. No, you really had to open the game, if you opened the game, it would say, aha, there it is. So, we never opened the game because we thought it was just a software problem. We didn't think it was going to be a hardware problem, but hardware became the software problem. So, that was an interesting, I'm going to put that in my back of my mind for whenever it happens again. So, that's Friday. I think just before that, you were was it Friday when I got all my bulbs? I think so, from Mitch at Mitchell Lighting. And I turned you on to him, and you sat with him for, like, what, an hour? An hour. You said, Dave, you've got to meet this guy. You've got to meet this guy. So I said, okay. And I started talking. He looked really familiar to me. Like, I almost want to say I met him before. He just looked really familiar. So I started talking to a really smart dude, engineering type, you know, making automotive lighting. He's really into, again, he's like the John Day type, my type. He's a sales engineer for the most part. That's kind of his deal. But what he has, though, again, with John Day and me and him, is attention to detail. Like so much attention to detail, they just drill right down. They want this perfect thing, and they're going to take something to the nth degree. So, and I like that about him. So he's telling me all the different things on these LED light bulbs with their real glass. looks like a real incandescent bulb, and the light goes left and right and not as much up, and just the way it spreads light out and looks like a real incandescent but brighter. And he showed me some test pictures, and he said, play the lightning over there. It's in that game. He added also the Wiggler, but the Wiggler had the cool ones, which I'm not a fan of. But he showed me the warm white ones that are bright, and the lightning. I said, now that looks good. So I said, here, take a couple samples home. When you go home later tonight, try them in your games, you know. So it's kind of cool. He gave me a couple different lights from different things and little baggies. I said, all right, I'll try them out. So that night at like 1 a.m. I got home. I said, well, I've got to try these out. So I put them in some of my games. And I really like how they look really nice in stars. So I liked it. So all right, I'm going to go back. And he said, also, try these ones out for Adam's family on the colored condom bulbs they use in that game. I've got a whole kit for those. Try these out. So those are kind of neat, too. I tried those. Those look really good. So I basically wound up buying a whole bunch of box of bulbs from him, you know, and he gave me a nice little show deal on them. And I think what I'm going to do, I'm not going to probably outfit a whole game with them. I think what I'm going to do is just the lower half or where the kickers are and maybe up a little bit just where you need more light down below. That's what I did. I don't do them through the whole game. I use them where they're needed. And it does look, you know, I love it at the lower part, the slingshots and all that. It puts a lot of light down there. Yeah. It's pretty dark. That way I can be judicious with it and not, like, spend, you know, a boatload of money on, you know, the whole outline. Right, but they're LEDs, so they should last a long time. Yeah. And you've got to be very careful with these, though. Like you said. Yeah, I already screwed one up. Yeah, you can't be torquing them in. You've got to be careful putting them in, taking them out. But as long as you're careful with things, it's great. It looks better than the Comet situation. Comet does their own thing. Their warm whites are great, but they look better under an insert or a back glass maybe, something like that. Well, follow-up, I had them in my blackjack. Dislike them strongly on the play field. Like them in the back glass. Back glass pops. don't like. Cool whites. Looks like a refrigerator. Yeah, so you've got cool white Comets. Now, I wonder if you had warm white Comets, how you feel about them? Because I've got warm whites. I'm with Mitch. If I'm going to put something in, I'm putting them in because of the direction. They do what I want. I forgot one thing. We didn't talk about the entertainment on Friday night. What did you think of the odds of tripping? Oh, yeah. So, that was good. I mean, I'm kind of, I've been out of the heavy metal thing for a while and more into 60s protest tune stuff. I like the stuff from the 60s and that kind of thing these days. A little bit of 70s stuff, but I haven't listened to Ozzy in so long that it's very refreshing. I heard it fresh. These guys did a great job. The Ozzy guy looked like Ozzy. Here's the thing. I was coming out from the parking lot getting more parts to meet up with somebody or something. I'm coming in. This guy just comes up to me. I think he had a couple beers in him. He's not just talking to me. It's like, is he talking to me or talking to his phone, to his earbuds? It's like, oh, yeah, that's my, yeah, my, what was it? My cousin. My cousin is the guitarist. He's really good. He's the best part of that band. The other guys are good, too, but the guitarist kicks ass. The Aussie guy, he does pretty good. Most of the time he's on key, but he sounds and looks like him pretty much, and the drummer's really good. So he's telling me all about the band. They walk in, and the band starts playing, and he sits down with the groupies or whatever because he knows the band really well. And I was like really blown away. They sounded, they had the whole Aussie experience. It was really good. It was great. And I knew every song, but I haven't heard it in so long because I never played it. It's like, okay, now it was fresh again. So it was great. How about our super fan at that show came up to me and said, hey, George, how are you? I'm like, uh-oh. who is this? I'm going to tell you. I'm going to go, oh, no. I said, I apologize. I don't recognize you. Have I met you before? And he said, I'm Bruce. And he goes, hello, George. Oh, shit. Pardon me. I was like, oh, man. I felt so bad. But I'm making it up to you, Bruce. I did remember you after a few minutes. The mustache is pretty distinctive. So, nice guy. You talk to him. You've got to bail me out for a few minutes and say, oh, I think George needs a couple of minutes to collect his thoughts and figure out who the hell this guy is. Yeah, so I was talking to him. He said, hello, Dave. It was kind of neat. Now, I don't remember meeting this guy myself. Where did you meet him? At this show before or last year? I looked at him and I'm like, I do recommend. No, no. Like I said, I didn't recognize him the first time. Usually I recognize people, but... But you don't know where you've known him from. Do you remember where you first met him? No, I met him at the show at some point in time over the last couple of years. But he knew us. He knew both you and me. This show, Pintastic, you met him before. Yes, the Pintastic show. Yes. Okay. Yeah, we're kind of bouncing back and forth because I'm looking at my notes. I'm like, oh, okay, wow. That was fun. So that was... Oh, we're still not done. We went to midnight. Don't you remember what happened on Friday night? Hold on. We see all the people were watching the band, and we see this line starting to form at like 10.30. I'm like, what's all this going on? And the line keeps getting longer. We're down by the elevator banks in this hotel. And the line is probably, what, 40 feet long by this time? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm like, okay. Now's the time. And I was irritating, and I had been having a good time throughout the evening. I went to the front of the line, and I started, you know, talking him up. Hey, you're the front of the line. How long are you? And now I know Chuck or whoever was taking the money. He had a fistful of 20s. I never saw so much money now because most people, you know, they use their phone or whatever. Venmo. They pay with their face. Right, whatever. But that was a lot of fun. And that's a cutthroat midnight madness. Remember? 20 bucks. 20 bucks. Single elimination. Yeah, one match. Four people per game to go forward, to go back. Right. To go home. Yeah, it's four men enter, two men leave. Sorry, I don't know who won. Me neither. That's okay. Everybody's a winner, George. Right. But that was pretty cool. I don't remember that from years past. I thought that was pretty cool. I went and actually said hold on I'm going to count this line it's 100 people right and I said okay approximately 30 already got their did their money I started counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and all the way in I think there's exactly like 70 people left because I was going to tell if I reached like number 9 it's like by the way you guys here you are making it in they put 20 more people into the tournament so that was pretty funny trying to think what else Friday night was way too much fun for me it was way too much fun I tried to calm it down on Saturday so Saturday, like I said, my friend came we talked about, you know, played a bunch of stuff nothing really stood out but then came the real fun unless you did something before the real fun began. Yeah, the real fun. Didn't we, for Mitchell Lighting, didn't we go play the Evel Knievel with the lighting he did? You and I played that? Yeah, we played that at some point in time. I don't remember when. Yeah, because I think we did, for the Mitchell Lighting thing, I think it was those tried out, you want me to look at it? It's like, oh, yeah, I see the lighting on that. No, you played the game. It was cool white, too, though. It works on that game. It was cool white. I'm still a warm white fan. Yeah, and I know you are. Yeah, it just looks better. I mean, Push comes to show that I am, too. But in that game, it looked okay. You recorded that. I don't know how it came out, but maybe we'll put that as a bonus feature at some point in time. Yeah, I've got to listen to it and make sure that we're on good behavior. Are we almost out of time? Yeah, we've got about a minute. So why don't we cut bait and... Or two minutes. You've got two minutes remaining. Unless you have something quick, we're going to leave it at... we had an appointment to use the media room at 2 p.m. You and I finally connected not too long before that. And there was a certain someone who was walking into the building, and I happened to run up to him and ask him a question, but I'm going to leave it right there. How's that? That sounds pretty fair, George. And that's what's known as a tease. They know what's coming. Okay. I could actually give you a tease of what was behind the door when we opened the door up. Yeah, go ahead. All right so here the tease Let see It you You scared me Good Fear is our most primal emotion That was the guy behind the door, so we'll leave it there. Get better at this. How about that? I will play you my game. Folks, you're not going to believe this. I couldn't believe it last night. The man sitting to my left spent half an hour with me, gracious, funny, witty, and topical. Please welcome to the show, Steve Ritchie. Great to be here. Thanks for the opportunity. Where do we begin with this? I saw him in the hallway and asked him to come up and he invited us to his suite. Back up further. You saw him in the hallway. He said, hey, nice hair. And Steve said, what'd you say? It's just an illusion. Do you remember saying that? Yes, I do. I mean, I've said it often. It is kind of an illusion. You think I could get away with it? Say it again. You think I could get away with it? Probably. I'll give you the recipe later. Start us off, Dave. All right. So, Steve, what would you say, you know, your famous multiple games you've done, lost track of all the stuff you've done, what's your favorite game you've done? Everyone always asks me that, and I don't really have a favorite. I mean, hmm. I always say, what's your favorite to play, if you're going to play one? Right now, it's Elton John. I mean, because I have one, and I can play it, and, you know, I don't know. And often during a game, I don't follow all the rules that they write. I mean, they tell me about them, but I'm really not that great of a player, so I rarely get to the high-end stuff. But, you know, I enjoy playing Elton John. Well, I mean, I have a restored F-14 Tomcat. Nice. And it's like everything was replaced, including the cabinet and the back box, everything. It's amazing. It's beautiful. And this guy named Captain Neo. Oh, yeah, Captain Neo. Yeah. Yeah. He took my play field and kept it for six months. Wow. And he would apply a coat, a hard coat on it, and let it out gas for a month. And then it applies, you know, a little sanding. Oh, yeah. Then another coat. Six times he did that. Nice. So the play field is awesome looking. Anyway, my favorite game, I don't know. I don't really have one. I mean, it's like, you know, I, okay, I will walk up to Terminator 2 and I'll shoot it whenever I see one. I guess that's some kind of indicator. Okay. What about, like, your old school stuff? Like, your Firepower, Superman, that stuff? Oh, I loved them, you know, in the day. And I had them in a collection. I got one machine for every one I made, you know. You have every one of your machines? Not everyone. That stopped at Stern. How many machines do you own? I own five machines, and one of them is a Robotron. It's not that many. Okay. But I have a Captain Fantastic in my basement. Tall games won't fit in my basement, so I have three in the living room. My wife tolerates it. Nice wife. I have one of those. Yeah. Well, that's good. And that's the word I use. She tolerates. I have one right there. She actually works with me, and she likes pinball. So do you know anything? You probably know nothing about us, other than what we talked about last night, which was a couple of things. So Dave is a classic pinball restorer, also known as Dr. Dave, the pinball doctor. So what games have we? We have 126 episodes, and I know we've talked about you several times. Yeah. Don't go listening. Probably a bad thing. No. No. No, not us. Like those Pinside people. That's why I like a Foxy. They hate everything I've made. I don't think so. In the beginning, they hate everything. Who's that? Pinside. Pinside people. Yeah, I thought they're all fans. They feed all over. Really? I called John before they even saw it, or they found out. Oh, no. Anyway, a lot of them come back to me and said, I bought one. Right. Yeah, exactly. Were you involved in any of the negotiations with Elton John directly? Like song usage, images? Yeah, I mean, yes. Direct. So you met him in England or New York or Chicago? We dealt with a guy named Ben at his management. And Ben's company manages lots of bands, and he was great to work with. Ben was in contact with Elton's husband because Elton's always on the road so we couldn't get approvals for everything we had to send it to his husband and it's like basically everything we wanted he did and we asked for more speech calls and he also did those, amazing and his husband kind of coached him too which was kind of interesting We have it on tape and, you know, on how to say things. And it turned out really well. It's just they were very – they trusted us a lot. And I worked with somebody out in a heartbeat. So they're both pinball fans? They both like pinball? I don't – I think Elton John liked it in the early days, and maybe he still does. I don't know what he has. I don't know what his likes are. How about a nostalgic thing that, you know, we were so involved with it 40-some-odd years ago. Yeah. And it came back, and it's like, you want to do another game with me? And that's even better because it's his music. It's not somebody else's. Right. And in the beginning, I really didn't want to do it. There were other things that I wanted to do more. Oh. But after I thought about it and realized that he had a billion fans and so many good hit songs, you know, I just thought about it. but what I mostly thought about was this is a chance to be ultimately flamboyant in a pinball machine with lights, with sound, with everything, with the whole package. Best light show ever. Best light show ever. I played it last night. That's awesome. Well, this team that I'm on is absolutely great. They're great. Duncan Brown is responsible for most of the lighting, But Bill Gruff was the head programmer and got some work from Bill Katz. I'm sorry, Joe Katz. These are guys that work at Jersey Jack. And really, Joe Katz was on our team in the beginning, but it's like he kind of like, you know, he had to move on to another game. So, anyway, just a great team of mechanical engineers. Makes it easy, doesn't it? No. It's not easy. pinball is a pain in the ass folks to make, to build to get right I meant more working with people that you trust the people that you like it makes it easier pinball is difficult but it's like this is the first time I ever worked with that team so I'm more used to working with people at Stern or Williams now they're all integrated into different companies But I did work with Bill before. And anyway, it was just a great team. And we all wanted to make the best pinball machine that had ever been made. That's what our goal was. And maybe we succeeded. Maybe we didn't. I don't know. But whatever. I think it's a landmark machine on all fronts, from the mechanics to all the software and the sound and the light shows. It's pretty impressive. And the toy, the piano toy there, whose idea was that? That's my idea. You've got to have a piano. He's going to play the piano. I wanted the little Elton, too. Okay. But I have to admit, little Elton turning his head like that, it really wasn't for men. It was for the women who would say, oh, that's so cute, we have to have this game. Oh, okay. I mean, it wasn't there just because of that, but it was a factor. Yeah. Trying to get everybody to like what's there. Right. And a lot of people, you know, the, oh, John, I don't know. Oh, I didn't know that was him singing that song. You know, like I'm Still Standing or some of his other hits that they, you know, they're older and it's hard to remember. but it pulled people in, no doubt. Yeah, you probably got both. You got men and women involved with the game. So when you were making this game years ago, you wouldn't be using CAD software. You'd be using some old school by hand, placing objects in a play field and so forth, and now it's easier with all on the computer, would you say? or... The computer has nothing to do really with the difficulty of making mechanical things work. It's a separate thing. It's like that hasn't changed. It's metal. It's solenoids. It's motors. I'm saying like alignment, like certain shocks and whatever. Geometry of the place of what you're trying to lay out there. When you say it's easy, because now you can actually move things around in a software program versus before you had to actually do it No, you have to physically move things around. That's pain in the ass. That doesn't change. The computer allows me to draw on a screen, which is nice. And I can see all the layers of everything through the game, including the solenoids and the play field, everything that's above it, wires that cross, whatever. So I can see all that. And it doesn't help you build it. Okay. I know that these pinball programs, people play 3D pinball on their computer, and it approximates the ball and all the flow. So I figured you, the designer, would use the same kind of thing, watching the ball flow on a computer mock-up of it versus like a real ball flowing when you're trying to make the game. Do you kind of do that? We don't do that. And we never have because the dynamics of a ball in real life are totally different from software, and there's always some weird things going on. They're getting better, but there's not the tactile feedback. There's not the same vibes that you get or excitement you get of, you know, a 3D machine playing in front of you, you know, and you're there. You can feel all the movements in the cabinets and all that stuff. They tried, actually, a couple years ago, as you know, they made those games, and they just didn't sell that well. Right. People want the real deal. Right. Yeah. There's no easy way. Yeah. You build a game, you've got to make all the parts, you've got to make them work, and you've got to cut wood and make holes in the wood and mount it and paint on the ass. Yeah, yeah. But it's a good paint on the ass, right? Oh, yeah. I don't hate it. I just can't look at it and go, I'm going to be done with this in two weeks. You're not. I don't care who you are or what you're doing. You want to make a full game. It takes a long time, especially nowadays, because there are so many areas where we can have increased depth. like 1,600 LEDs or just rules that go way beyond what we used to be able to do, mostly because of the size of the program that we could contain in the game. So would you say it's like a three-month process kind of thing to do a game like that, like three months from start to finish or six months? Okay, I'm going to say something. I'm going to say something. Two years. I'm going to say something inappropriate. I've been sitting here listening, and you've used the term, and Dave just did, pain in the ass. Yeah. So I'm saying to myself, I always have to come up with a header for the podcast, but I can't use pain in the ass Steve Ritchie. Don't use it. Don't use it. You want to bang that a few times? It's not the story. I don't hate it, but you've got to learn to face the fact that your first attempt at something might not work. And it's really true with mechanicals. It really is. That's like getting the hands to move on the piano. That took me a while to come up with a good way to do it. And I was thinking of crank and something to make them go up and down. But I wanted to be in time with the music, and it just wasn't the way to do it. So we use magnets, and they are instantly on, instantly off. Software can talk to them and play the tune, basically, right in sync with the music. It does it. I did not know that. I watched that, too, because I've actually worked on one of these. Actually, people are playing this game so much, they call me up to do a little cleaning and so forth on it. And with the glass off, you can hear more. You can hear Elton go, click, click, click, click. It's like, oh, he's doing a tap dance. It's kind of cute. with the glass top with the glass top you don't hear it but the glass top you hear everything yeah that's the work of Bill Grupp and he had to go he had to spend a lot of time on that I bet it looks like it so help me Dave we are the classic pinball podcast we've just talked about Steve's recent game let's go back in time help me because this is your field okay name a game well Firepower is very famous okay we talked about that pick another one We can talk about it if you want. Okay, go. Okay. Firepower was, it was like, I wanted to make a multi-ball game because there wasn't any. There were some solid, sorry, electromechanical games that had multiple balls. Like, I'm thinking, what's that one from Valley Fireball? And a few others, you know. They had been there, but they weren't smart. And, you know, it was still like you drain and no memory. Right. Or whatever. And it would have been, you know, it was cool. And I always enjoyed playing that game in the multi-ball feeling. But I wanted to make it so that we could play that, you know, at least three balls simultaneously. So I ended up changing the ball lift mechanism. The Williams, you know, where you drain down. And the Williams had what looked like a track, right? It went up like this and down like that. And this end was fastened to the top of the play field. I mounted it underneath. And the ball was stopped by the cutout in the wood. Right, right. And the balls could stack there. And I found three switches and made wire forms to fit in that little space to actuate the switches. And they were leaf switches. And then one eject device, which I had to cut down and make shorter to bring the ball up to the play field. So once we had that, we had a way to control the balls. We would know where they were. We could put them out. And then we had to make holes to put them in. And we tried to make it equalized so that if the player had two balls in, at least the light would still be lit where he had locked the ball. If somebody else got multi-ball before you, they'd all be empty. You could put them back, which was decent. And the one off the plunger I'm especially proud of. Okay. Up and around, bounce off the target and go in the hole. Yeah. It was just cool. And Eugene Jarvis, a great programmer. I worked with him at Atari also, and I tried to get him to come with me to Williams when I went. I got a great offer from there, yeah. He did a lot of video game stuff, right? Oh, yeah. Mostly that was his claim to fame is video game more than pinball, right? Yeah, probably. Okay. He's made many more video games, no doubt. I think the Williams video game sound from that time period, is that him? Yes. That famous sound that even goes over to the bridging into the pinball machines, that certain Williams sound. Yeah. You know, that's him, you think? Is that his deal? Well, that's a big thing. I mean, Eugene made a program, a sound program, and I'm trying to think of the name of it. G-Wave. That's it, G-Wave. Okay. And there were errors in the code that, you know, whether inadvertently or on purpose, well, we used to have these binary switches, you know, like eight of them, and he would give me the box and we could play sounds and they were insane. I mean, they were weird. But his code was awesome. And that whole thing, that whole G-Wave thing, it produced a lot of real popular sounds. Anyway, that happened on Firepower. We both worked on Firepower for about a year, I suppose. And it was like one night when it was done as a whitewood. and we had fresh wood, everything brand new on it and working perfectly and we played it and we knew that it was going to be a big hit we just knew how many units were sold? I think around 17,000 that's right top 5? I don't know if it's right that's what I remember close is good enough that's like a top 5 ever close, not bad no, very good I have a question so you see a lot of games being remade again would you ever want a second try on a game because of the technology because of what you know today are you very happy with you're always satisfied with the product when it's done for the most part if I'm not satisfied we're not done that's it I like that. That's a great answer. Anything we don't like, we fix. We have to. Anything that doesn't work right, we fix. We have to. To the best of our ability. Things happen sometimes in production or whatever. Some parts might come in bad. Or maybe we just didn't play it enough to find out that there would be a problem with it. But we also learn to life test everything. Just leave things on for a million operations. That was my goal anyway. And it was a regular thing at Williams. I didn't invent that, but, I mean, I upped the number. I wanted a million operations. And when you say a million operations, that means? That means you have a kicker, and you connect it up to power, and it's talking to software, and the software kicks the ball out a million times. Okay, wear it down. So you build a proto that does that. Yeah, that's right. So durability, everything else you're saying, how far can this thing go? Let's beat the crap out of it. Yes, we want to break it. That's what we do. We want to break it. Yep. Okay. Okay. I'm almost, I'm pretty, Black Knight. Yeah. And that is the same thing. The first one? Thank you. The first one. Thank you. The first one. You made me a lot of money at my bar. Thank you. That was $150 a week back in 1987. actually Black Knight made a thousand dollars a week at the Broadway Arcade in New York City ever been there? yeah I've been there quite a few times is it still there? no, Steve Epstein is long gone he ran the whole thing he was pals with Roger Sharp that's how I met Steve through Roger anyway he loved Pinball the Bells And anyway, Black Knight was, I want to make it to a level game. A lot of people were talking about it, like Steve Kirk and myself. And I'm trying to think of who else. I don't know, someone else. And we were all talking about it. And I did it. I didn't let that game leave. No, and they never got tired of it. Because it's a great game. It was pretty fun. I had a problem with the fact that we had 35-volt flippers, and it could have used 50-volt flippers. It went up and down the ramps easier. You could still make the shots and all that, but not with the guts that they have today. If I want a hard shot, I can get a hard shot. I don't want to destroy the game, but I definitely want action and fast speed. So I've worked on a bunch of these System 3 and System 7 games, and I found a trick through an EE friend of mine, and we replaced the cap with a higher value capacitor on the power supply. It gives you a little more oomph to the flipper and so forth. It's nice. Jersey Jack did something like that just before I got there. Okay. I told them I don't want to build your games with flippers like they are. You've got to fix them, and they did. Okay. Fixed them before I got there. Oh, good, good. It wasn't me. I think a lot of people were saying that to them, and I think they made a decision to fix them. The good thing about his program or how he does it, he actually, in software, you can adjust on the fly how much power you want to give to everything, or everything's adjustable in that platform, right? Not on the fly. If you set it up, it'll remain in that power, and every single coil is like that in the Jersey Jack game. You can adjust the power in all of them. You can also screw the game up if you go crazy. Start breaking stuff. You always go back to default. Right. You can always go back to deep ball and start over again. Right. But it's not on the fly. How about a little fire scarecrow? Yeah, exactly. It could be done that way, I suppose. But to deliver a ball to a flipper and you're used to the speed that the ball takes off from the flipper, you don't want to vary that in the middle of the game because people depend on it. Right. Oh, it's doing that? Okay, I'm going to do this. You know, your brain kind of like sets up for a high-speed game. You're going to start guarding the drain better and more carefully and things like that. And also the sweet spot in the flipper, you know, that way it's either going to be over here or over here, tip or the other part. Right, but good flipper power spreads that sweet shot into a bigger span. Yes, exactly, yep. How far does the flipper move, do you think? Degrees? Yeah. Well, let's see. 37.50. That's your number? What's your number? I'm going to say about 40. Okay. The truth is it's 55 degrees exactly. Oh. 55 degrees. Okay. That depends on which manufacturer, right? In the old days, whatever, anything went. Now everybody's doing 55 degrees. So now it's standard. Oh, yeah. I mean, you want a different plunger. You can probably grab an old Williams plunger, definitely, and stick it in a stern game if you want to. So it's like they all deliver 55 degrees. Okay. Now, how did they come up with that number? By playing around a little bit, or how did they figure that out? I think it's, you know, I'm not a pioneer of that. It's like even the flippers on flash, which were multiple pieces. Remember that? It was disgusting. It was better than one-piece blipper. They had a bracket for the switch. Yeah. And the stroke switch. They had a separate pivot, you know. I just worked on them, so I get it fresh in my mind. I know. And an elevated coil and all this other stuff. It was ridiculous. But that's how they did it, and it worked. It worked okay. But that travel was 55 degrees also. So I don't know who established it originally. I've actually retrofitted, like, firepower and so forth with Gorgar's neck and thing with the Williams mech, the modern one, and you can throw it right in there. Yeah. And it works great. It does. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It worked really good. Yeah, it's great. So I've got a question. Yeah. What makes Steve run? What gets you up in the morning and says, here's how I'm going to attack today? I don't know. I still like making them. It's a big challenge, and I like to think about, okay, this is maybe the difference between me and some other guys. It's like I always knew that we had to sell pinball machines. I'm a salesman. We had to sell pinball machines. They're good ones. And that is the best way to have, you know, I mean, if you're not going to be a salesman, if you're not going to be concerned with how much money the company makes, pinball dies. It's died under, you know. Right. The rug pulled out from under me a number of times. So Williams in 2000. You know, well, pinball stopped before 2000, but anyway. Stern, same thing. Yeah. Crashed horribly. Gary fired everybody except for John Borg. What year did that happen? 2008. Okay. Because of Colm's family? Oh, is that true? Everything went down. Oh, I didn't know that because of the whole economic crash in LA. It had something to do with it, plus. The housing crash. Well, you know, if you take too much out of a game, you don't have a game anymore. Right, right. And that's a bad way to do anything with a game. There's too much penny-pinching going on maybe at that point. Too much bean counters. Too many bean counters. Too many bean counters? I didn't hear that. Bean counters. People who count the money. No, it's not bean counters. Just one is the initials are Gary Stern. Okay. It was a method. And the guy is a survivor, and there's a lot of things I respect about him. But I didn't like my games torn apart. I mean, my games, I make a game to win and make money and sell. I mean, when you start taking things out of it, it just reduces the attractiveness and everything else. Well, tell us, though, you're an artist, and you put this stuff in there for art, and he's kind of, you know, taking some stuff out of your artwork, too, right? I don't fool myself. Yes, I'm a kinetic artist. I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that. Just because I'm making something that it should be saleable. You have to make it saleable. And that is with great features, mechanical action pinball. That's it. And proven. It's been proven in the past it works. Absolutely. Who do you sell them today? I'm ready to buy. I'm selling my next game. But I don't really feel that way about it. I just feel like you have to understand, a pinball company doesn't make money. Pinball dies. That's it. I always tell my wife, you always want to be a moneymaker for a company, not a money taker. Yep. So someone like you, you're a moneymaker. You're always a positive ledger. Well, I try to be. It's the truth. It's something that artists really don't think about. Right. You're going to ask a starving artist. Right. And I'm not going to say all of them. There's plenty of smart artists out there. Greg Ferris is a smart artist. Right. He knew that we had to make money. How about Hunter Biden? What? How about Hunter Biden? Hunter Biden. Is he a smart artist? I have no idea. I don't even want to know. He's probably a smart ass, maybe. We got funds, Steve. That's okay. Have you found that out? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I like to jiggle the key. That's fine. You mentioned someone years ago, Duncan Brown. And I've heard he's an OG, original gangster. You know, I've heard him years ago. I think he was on Rec Games Pinball, maybe, in part of news groups. But I know he's in the business, but I don't remember what he, what was his part in the pinball biz? He was a great programmer. Let's start with that. He still is. And it's like, he's also a pinball historian. Okay. He knows so much about Harry Williams and a lot of other, the history of pinball. I bug him about stuff. Hey, what happened with this? And he actually put together a book of all of his old designs. And I bought one of the books from Duncan. He didn't charge me. He charged me what it cost to make them. Oh, nice. Okay. And George Gomez bought one, too. We both bought them because I just want to know the history more. I met Henry Williams. I knew him. And it was like he was a great guy. We met at this restaurant called the Red Robin in Chicago. And I think Gary Stern introduced me. Everybody from Stern, Williams, and Valley would eat there from time to time. It would just be fun. We couldn't talk about what we were working on. We could talk about everything else, have fun, you know, whatever. but that's when I met Harry Williams and he goes I don't know, Gary said okay Steve, this is Harry Williams and he shakes my hand and he goes hey Rich, how you doing? and I said really good Bill how are you doing? Bill's not my name and I go Rich isn't my name you're Harry and I'm Steve We had a laugh over that. That's great. It was fun. It was funny. I get a couple of his games, Harry Williams games, old Stern stuff. I get a bunch of those. I remember him very much for Flight 2000. He was in his 70s when he made that game. And it's like, hey. Yeah. Nobody else was as good as him at that age. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No one. Beautiful. I have that right next to Stargazer, Quicksilver, Flight 2000, and Stars. Yeah. four great stars altogether. Yep. So have you played much of those oldies back in the day? Of course. Okay. I mean, you know, okay, I started working at Atari, and it's like I played pinball when I was a kid always. Okay. My father was into them. He would take me to this place when I was five years old to play pinball. Where'd you grow up? San Francisco and Pacifica, California. Anyway, I played pinball, and I loved pinball. And it's like, but I, well, long story short, no, I'm not going to tell you. Come to my seminar. Okay. Anyway. There you go. That's good advertising. I learned to, you know, to make, you know, to, well, at Atari, everything was twisted. We'll get into that later. It just wasn't, you know. I know, the flippers were wrong. Yeah, you know, they got this wood this big. And I'm really, I'm pulled into the new pinball department as supervisor of the, you know, the lab that builds them. Okay. So I learned from a guy named Bob Jonas, and he showed me exactly how pinball goes together. And so he was from Williams. He told everybody that he was a designer, but he wasn't. He was a mechanical engineer. and he basically laid out a game and I would build it and the first one he did was Atarians, anyway we did Superman a lot of our shows focus on classic games so I'm ill prepared but we've done a number of your games you did Superman right? Yes, we did that. We did Fire. F-14 Tom Pan. We did Fire. We did Terminator 2. One thing about the Superman thing, you were the one that only, they got the flippers in the right spot. Everyone else was doing them off-center, right? Was that your? No, not everybody else. Just Harry Slater did Middle Earth like that. Okay. There was only one game like that. Okay. But they did ridiculously stupid things. I'll show you. Come to my seminar at 3 o'clock. Okay. Okay, ridiculously stupid things. And it's like, there was a guy there. We were trying to design a drop starter for Superman. This guy came up with one that was like, it weighed 12 pounds. Oh, boy. That's a lot of pounds. That's a lot. Yeah, that's a big coil. Somebody tied a rope to it and stuck it to his door and it said, The Marty Rosenthal Boat Anchor. Anyway, it was very hard to get them to agree to standard pinball parts. It's going for a broader reason. And that's all I'm going to talk about right now for that. I'm going to be mindful. You've got a seminar to do, I'm guessing, in ten minutes. Yeah, well, we've got a couple more minutes. Well, I'll say one thing. Since you mentioned, I remember you said you grew up in California, northern Cal, and that's where high speed came from because you said you were running a car. Oh, we did that game too. Yeah. And you was out running the cops, right? Hush the Eve was an experience, yeah. It wasn't about running the red light. It was about doing 146 on I-5. In what car? In my car. Which was it? Which was it? It was a Porsche 928. If you have the means, it's no choice. It was such a great car. Anybody that got in the car, it was like it turned you into a master driver if you could shift. I know. You have a big stick staring me out. Is it a four or a five speed? Four speed. One, two, three, four. And it didn go like that It was wrong One two three four five Reverse over there Oh yeah It was weird And that you know I have a three on the tree You got used to it. I have a three on the tree. Yeah. So, that's really old school. Yeah, the car was great. And, you know, I had new tires on it. And brakes and everything else were good. So, when they pulled you over. I had it for a couple months and I decided that I wanted to open it up and see what it would do. Okay. on highway i-5 which was a brand new freeway uh it's a famous freeway i run all the way up to is that coast that's the coast right yeah it's not actually it's actually in the middle okay it's through the central valley going up anyway that's where it happened and what did the police do what did they they get on the car sir duck your head okay we went over hill like this and my partner said there's a highway pullman. So I slowed way down. Maybe like 70. I think that was the speed limit. And we went like this and he went over the hill. And after that I opened up to 146. He came back around and nailed it. But he didn't catch me. He had a Mustang and the ticket said 120 plus. Nine cop cars showed up and we got to go. Okay, cool. Thank you Steve. And it was fun, guys. That was awesome. Thank you. Awesome. Also, I want you to know this. I never lie, and I always tell the truth, so vote for me. Okay, I like it. You got my vote. I will play the night. All right, so where we left off, I'll bring it in where we left off. Because we were at the hints we gave, right? and then a little quote. I'm going to do one more little quote here. You left your door open. I know. I like to encourage intruders. And there we go. So you explained, well, no, well, you looked in there, but I basically ended up asking Steve Ritchie in the hall to come do the podcast. and he quickly agreed, which I wasn't expecting. We walked to the media room and you opened the door and you said that guy looked like whom? Crazy Joe Davola from Seinfeld. And he does. He looks just... But you also know what the guy was doing, right? He was shooting a movie or something? Yeah, shooting a movie. Yeah, it's Mark Helms. So he's been shooting this movie for several years now. getting different personalities in there and trying to, you know, show different people playing pinball and that kind of thing. I've actually worked on his games years ago. He lives in Revere. I worked on a couple of his games. I think he had a whodunit and something else I think he had. Well, he should be nice to us because we basically surrendered our time to him, and he wasn't moving quite quickly. But we'll just leave it at that. I wasn't exactly enamored with him hogging the room. Especially with all the equipment, the wiggler, all the cameras, all the lighting, all the microphones, all the crap. He took some liberties with time. He took more than liberty. Yeah. He took advantage. And thank God for Steve Ritchie saying, oh, no problem. Come on. Let's go up to my suite. I'm like, now there's a good guy. It was great. Especially when he was, like, doodlesy coming along. Oh, I'll do a pocket video. He'd come right over, look me in the door, look inside there. He's like, you know, this isn't working. You know, forget these guys. You know, I get a hotel room, a nice hotel suite. You guys come up with me. We'll go to my room. It's like, great. We get a private, you know, meeting with Steve Ritchie, the king of pinball, in his hotel suite there. And, I don't know, it was fantastic up there. I guess he might have liked me the night before. Yeah, I think he liked your hair comments. as you said, Joel. Well, they all heard the hair comments. Maybe I can pull that off sometime. I've got to get the secrets off from Steve. So anything to add now that everybody has heard our interview with Steve and we're going to kind of tease our next one because everything kind of happened very quickly. And they all kind of relate to each other because that's the same room and the same... That's where the machine went that I said in the morning. So, you know, his hangover game was going out the door when I wanted to try to play it again on Saturday. It was gone for a good part of the day. Then I think the Wiggler came back in the room, and then our special guest for the interview was in that room. It was kind of cool. So we needed that room. Steve was near there. Our guest was in there. but we had to like, you know, shuffle things around. We were trying to find a table because all the crap from movie making was in there. There was no room for us. So we said, okay, you grabbed a table. We got a pinball dolly. A pinball dolly. We used that to set up the microphone. I like to use, they had a huge boom mic. I said, can we use your boom mic instead? That would be even better. But, you know, we didn't use that. But it was kind of cool. We had all the lighting and so forth and got the chairs ready. So it all worked out. We just had a little, you know. Oh, and he did take liberties. Oh, he did. He did again. Don't you remember? He's like, oh, while you guys are setting up, do you mind if I film something for two minutes? And the guy who owned the theater. Yeah, that was Derek. That was originally Gabe and Derek started the show way back about ten years ago, and I think they did it together maybe for two years. Then they parted ways amicably, and then Gabe brought in Dave Marston and Gerard into it instead, so the three amigos. And then Derek has been MIA for a while. All of a sudden he's back as a special guest, and I don't really know the whole story there, but I saw it. He looks really familiar, you know. So it was interesting seeing him at the show for 10 years. So he even held up us doing our next segment, which is with Rebby, which was actually quite good. And we definitely are not her audience, But it was, again, Brian, I'm indebted to him. He really pulled it off for us. Because I went in on Saturday morning when they were moving that machine. I said, Brian, were you serious when you said you guys would do the podcast? He said, absolutely. I'm like, again, caught me off guard. Usually you've got to fight for things. It was coming way too easy. Yeah, he sent me a text when he was trying to look for us. I think maybe we at that point were Steve Ritchie. We were Steve Ritchie. Yeah, right, because we were delayed because of all the, you know, Mr. Movies, you know. Originally, I'll tell you, I was actually supposed to be in that movie originally way back when. He wanted to do, he was doing a thing on Steve Ritchie. He needed a firepower. He's like, I have one that just finished up, but I had something else going on. I think I was going to go, I was going away somewhere for a couple days, and I don't know. But he reached out of the blue and said, oh, I really want to interview you and your game and this and that for the movie. And I said, oh, great, okay, I can do it, but I can't do it this weekend. It's going to be a couple days later. Oh, okay, well, get back to me. Well, he just blew me off, and he said, ring, ring, Mr. John Day. He heard John Day had a firepower, so he went to John's house and did it on his game, which is fine. And John deserves it. John's got a nice firepower, too. He's got the gift of gab, and he knows all about pinball. So I'm sure he had a great interview. And I want to apologize. Good lead in there. I want to apologize to Steve Ritchie. I got so excited when he wanted to talk about firepower again. I said, go ahead. Emotion was just over me, and I apologize for that. I should kind of help things and check. What made you say go ahead? What made you go ahead? I don't know. I was like, oh, okay, because he had talked about it before. I'm like, oh, okay, go ahead. Go ahead again. You know, I shouldn't have said anything, but a word took me over. Let the master talk there. Let him do his thing. Yeah, I know. I'm kind of excited. I'm coming clean, okay? I mean, we are a classic Tim Wall podcast, George. So you also brought this up, and I want to make sure that everybody understands it. We were caught off guard. I was. We had no prep for this. Zero. Dave, I knew you were going to carry us, but do you realize, guess how many games we've done his? Let's see. High Speed, Firepower, Black Knight, Black Knight 2000. There's four there. Superman, five. Five? Seven. Seven. Flash and Terminator 2. Oh, wow. Okay. So, I'll go through them all. Episode 73, Slash and Firepower. Number 58 is Terminator 2. 61, Black Knight 2000. 39, Black Knight. 37, High Speed. 18, Superman. Done. All right. All right. What can we have to say about Rebby and... Well, I will say, so at 2.44, because we had to part ways with Steve at like 5 of 3. He had a seminar to do. At 2.44, I got a text from Brian on the Dr. Dave hotline, which he did not have with him. I had my regular cell phone, not my hotline phone. And it said, hey, it's Brian Soares. Revy and I were looking for you. That's 2.44. So I never got the message because it didn't have the phone with me. And he didn't have my other cell phone. So then I basically told him my phone or text him this in the future. So here's an unpaid advertisement. You heard Steve talk about it in the interview. If you want to see his presentation and or others that were at Pintastic last weekend, you can go to the Pintastic YouTube page, yes? Yeah, YouTube. Yeah, Pintastic YouTube. So, and he and all the other presenters, and I don't know what's out there because I've never watched it, but it's all out there. So, again, George pitches positive for the show. nice George ding ding for you and on top of that it's great that we actually were were the press in the front press booth there for Pinball Circus because he needed people to ask questions and I guess some of the audience was shy so I was like I'll be at Huckleberry so I went up and I basically and it's on it's on the it's on YouTube and I said yeah this is David from the Classic Pinball Podcast and I so I basically pitched our show too on there so that's on there and then I basically asked a couple questions. I think I asked one too, but whatever. That was a good start up. I wrote this down. How do you know Duncan Brown? It was a good thing you brought it up. I had no idea who it was. What brought that about? Because I remember listening to, early on in the late 90s, I was into Wreck Games Pinball way back when, before they even made the Clay repair guides, the Marvin 3 Fix repair guides that people were going to years ago. I used those, basically, to get into repairing pinball way back when. In fact, Clay put it out there in the 90s about, anybody have any thoughts about repairing pinball and things I want to compile? So I said, well, I got some ideas, but I'm by no means no expert at that juncture. I'm much better today from learning every day. But that was all part of that. and Duncan Brown was always posting in that news group as a pinball historian. I remember talking with him here and there about different things. He would chime in and so forth as a resident expert on stuff. So I remember seeing him there. Also, Ted Estes, I hooked up with him. He's another, I think, software guy for, I want to say, Williams back in the day or Bally. But I actually bought a, so he, you know, I wish I could remember the name in front of Steve. I was going to name Ted Estes because I bought a mint Stern Viper back glass off Ted Estes during that time frame, during the early 2000s, 90s, the late 90s, that he had hanging on his wall, and he just wanted to sell it. I got it, you know, like $150 or something. I still have it. I think you did a great job, given that we had zero prep for this, and we just kind of did it on the fly. but you're going to hear in our next interview with Reby Hardy, you'll hear a comment about that, which I tend to agree. Is there anything else we need to do with the setup for her interview? Anything else you want to talk about? Yes. The show, because we're coming to Saturday late afternoon, and then we still have a little bit of Saturday night. I went to bed early because we had, you know, we had another super long trip on Sunday morning. So I want to kind of finish up with her, play that interview, and then we'll come back for comments. How's that? Yeah, that's fine. I think the Steve interview stands on its own. You can basically listen to what we say. I basically off the cuff, I didn't leave anything prepared. I just basically went from the heart and just kind of went with what I know, and I asked him all kinds of technical questions. I think people are really going to enjoy it. You probably just heard it. I hope you did enjoy that interview. I think it went well. And hopefully we captured questions that other people have not asked in the past, especially when the first question I asked was like, what's your favorite game? It's like, oh, everyone asked me that question. Like, oh, I want to be like everybody else after the same question. So then I dug deeper. Okay, let me ask questions that someone usually wouldn't ask him. So I started going deeper. And I think he liked that, too, because he doesn't usually talk about that stuff as deep. So that was great. It wasn't like a boring interview for him. So I think he liked it, especially when you said, hey, we know we're running close on time. We know you've got to get out of here. And he said, no, no, I've got a couple more minutes. So he wanted to hang in longer, which is great. Otherwise, he said, yeah, let me get out of here, and he didn't. Well, I was just being polite. I know. You invite us to your suite. We do the whole thing. I don't want you missing your seminar. Right, but I'm saying. I'd have David after me again. Right, again. and he'd be choking you. He could have easily egged his cage left and taken the shoes to go like, oh, these guys are boring me or whatever. But he didn't. He said, no, no, I want to stay longer and talk to you, which I think was great that he did that. So you went right to the bitter end, and then he had to definitely skedaddle. I will say about the Rebby interview is I'm not used to, like, you know, she's a model, you know, very nice-looking model. I don't know. She's definitely attractive. Very. But also, besides that, she is like a celebrity in her own right, and more like, you know, Instagram kind of thing, and the Twitter thing. I'm not, I don't have any of that stuff. So I saw her setting up with this whole mic stand, phone stand thing that she put there, so that she was like, and she's this very, has a presence, because it's almost like she's always on camera for herself, and for her fans. She's like 3 million fans, so she's always on camera. she's always like ready for to present so to speak you know what I mean so and then she went live right away I see her phone going live so we were doing a live thing on her show as well as our show like simulcast you know it's pretty neat anyway she'll pitch all that stuff in there yeah you and I have said this several times in communication that it's a sharp contrast I'll take it a little bit more you have somebody who's been in the industry, an industry veteran for decades, you know, building games and designing games and doing everything that comes with it. And now you have her who's kind of wading into the waters. She's not quite the designer yet, but she's moving in the, you know, she's got the graphic side and, you know, Brian's the maker and she's the designer. I think that's a good way or a good explanation for that duo. How's that? Yeah, she's basically the graphic artist. She's the graphic artist. She's the one who comes up with the concept, the design, and all the graphics and all the, you know, basically this is what I want and here's how it's going to go. Yeah, I think maybe they collaborate and say, what's going to be the theme of this game and can you design it? First of all, can you do the, you know, what it takes sound call-wise and theme-wise in the game? and can Revy do the artwork for her? Can she pull that together, what she has? And then maybe, I think they even got people from the movie to come in there as well. I'm not sure if they did or not. I forget about that. Maybe the interview would say it. I forget. Folks, we're back. And you're not going to believe this. We don't have one. We have two. great interviews. I'd like to welcome not only a mother, professional wrestler, teacher, graphic artist, and model. Please welcome Rebby Hardy. Welcome. That's as good as an intro as I'll ever get. Thank you. First question. We're here at Pintastic. You've done multiple games for this show, and this year's is exceptional. We've got The Hangover. Folks, what a beautiful game. I'm just going to hand the mic over and let Revy talk about it. It is an awesome-looking game. She's here with her partner, Brian Soares, who I'll let Revy tell you what his role is because I'm still a little confused as to how he plugs into the Matrix. Well, how I like to say it is I kind of do the art and the concept and toys and stuff like that, and Brian is the genius. He's the programmer, the engineer, the guy that puts everything together, you know, what he likes to call the hard part. And then we collab back and forth about everything else, but the reception to the game so far has been so amazing. We're only on day two of Pentastic, halfway through the day, and we've gotten the most amazing feedback, just people saying how much fun they had playing the game. And I think the biggest compliment so far of the day that we've gotten is that no one can quite place what our donor game was, which to me, that tells me that it doesn't just feel like just a rescan or a re-theme, people throw that word around. It's my game. Well. I'm the family guy. Don't I look like that? That's right. He is. I'm so sorry to erase your identity. Oh, my God. We had a comment. I didn't know. Is that true? You don't know me from that one. Now that you say it, I get the aura. And these aren't the right classes. In the best way. I even have one. I really like it. But, yeah, it is a family guy. And it's really cool that people, they're so immersed in the theme and in everything that was redone with the game that they can't distinguish what game it really was. So that was really cool to hear that bit of feedback from the majority of people. But you pulled assets from all three movies, right? Yeah, so that was a lot of fun. I think the first one is, like, the most recognizable film, so there's probably the majority of the inside jokes and stuff are from there. But it really does have elements of every single game in the trilogy. Do you know anybody from the movie? I don't personally, but I'm thinking that this is going to open some doors to some relationships in the future. Because how could it not? I mean, anybody involved in the film not wanting something to do with getting their heads on this table would be crazy. Yeah, yeah. I think anybody would love it. So what's in store for next year? Oh, my God. The ever-looming question. You know, I feel like I just asked this question last year, and I said, oh, there's no plans, there's nothing going on. And then something always comes up. So you never know with us. I love a challenge. and I think literally, I can leave it at that. You just never know. You just never know. I need some history. How did you get started with you two collaborating on this whole thing? So we actually met on Pinside. Yeah, he had reached out about maybe doing a custom game because I was in one of the threads about mods, modding a wrestling machine or something, And he had suggested a custom wrestling game for my husband, who is a professional wrestler, Matt Hardy. And I was like, amazing, let's do it. And he was kind of throwing some stuff out. And I just immediately took over the project and started designing stuff myself and giving the direction and how I wanted things to go. And how we make pinballs today is kind of how this one started, you know, just me telling him I think this should be this and taking over and being crazy. and him, you know, maybe pulling back the reins every now and then and saying, that's too much or let's do it or whatever. So really collaborative. And it worked out to be such a beautiful machine and such a great collaboration that we were like, well, let's do it again. Let's keep going. So is your husband just the focus or is the brothers the focus of the game? Because I've never seen a picture of it. Yeah, it's called Expedition of Gold and it chronicles Matt Hardy's career. So inherently his brother's going to be in there because he's in a tag team. We actually had him record some of the call-outs for it, which was really nice. But, yeah, it's pretty much just from his very start to where he's at now. It entails collecting every title until you get to WrestleMania where you can become broken. So it really does mirror real life and his actual career. All of the artwork is, I had asked him, originally it was a surprise, but I ended up having to come clean before the project was done. but it's all of his favorite opponents. There's an Easter egg from his kids. Bray Wyatt is on there. EC3. EC3. Gosh, yeah. It was in their moment, sorry, I think it's their moment at coming back at WrestleMania. Yeah, the Rich F, yeah. Sam Old. So the wrestling stars from my day, Bruno Sam Martino. Yeah, the first name is Sam Martino. The Iron Sheik. That's the machine next to this one. That's my Royal Rumble. The whole movie? Royal Rumble, yes. Andre the Giant. Hulk Hogan, of course. Chief Jay Strongbow. Yeah, Chief Jay. I'm sorry, I'm going down memory lane. I'm old. No. Yeah, so that's how originally I reached out to her, was that I had the same Royal Rumble as her. It just so happened that the day I logged in, I was looking for some mods for my kids' wrestling game, and I think I was looking to do a video display or, I don't know, put some action figures, something on there. And all these guys were, I mean, honestly, they were geeking out. They're like, oh, I can't believe Matt's life's on here and they're saying all this stuff. And she's the first person that I've ever reached out to through, like, a DM on any platform. And I'm like, well, I'll just send her a message and see if anything else. Yeah, hope for the best. And then the next day came back and I get this, like, multi-page number again. And we just started going back and forth and I realized like how much of a like I caught like a do-it-yourselfer or whatever She is so she's very creative and Yeah, just kind of took off from there. How long has your husband been in wrestling? He's going on 30 years this year He started young though, yeah, he said he was like 16 or something. Yeah. Wow. Oh, wow. Yeah How long you've been married 13 years? 11? Well, we've been together for 11 years, but we're married 11 years. Four kids? Yeah. You're a busy mom. Yeah, so it's pinball in between everything else going on. Kids like pinball? They do, yeah. We've got seven machines at home. Well, you have. And they've played since they were little tiny babies holding them up. We've got Phantom of the Opera, Royal Rumble, Expedition of Gold. I have a Twilight Zone, Attacks from Mars. Who's got them all? Adam's family too, right? Oh, Adam's family. Playboy, Stern Playboy Oh yeah, okay Those are the ones I have right now but unfortunately I've run out of room Everybody's problem You can't get them anymore, there's nowhere to put them Find a way though I got about 70 of them Oh man, living the dream 13 Wow We're just double digiters I'm going to have to take over my husband's gym The gym butts up to the arcade and I'm like, one of these days you're going to have to work out in a smaller space because we're running out of room. He probably needs that, though, with his job. He needs, you know, to fix his cranks. Womp womp. Yeah. So I'm not a TikToker, but, man, you've got some following. Thank you. So why do people follow you? I know of you, but I don't know you. How's that? Is that fair? Yeah. I'm honest. It's funny because it's very much like a hodgepodge of stuff. It's not really a niche account of about one particular thing. It really is just my life, and there's so many different facets of my life. There's people who come who are wrestling fans. There's people who come because of the family content that I do with the four kids and the mom stuff. I have a viral series called Life of a Gothic Baby with my daughter, and a lot of people, probably the majority of people, have come from that. and my book spin off of that life of a gothic baby um then there's the pinball people then there's people who know me back from my work with playboy years ago so it really is just like a crazy mix of uh a whole a very broad audience and there's about nearly three million um on tiktok right now do you track your demo what's your sweet spot do you know i'm about like 60 percent favoring female, luckily. And I think the demo is like 24 to 36 mostly. Okay, so your demo just got bigger. Oh. We're this little train off in the corner. You're not in a 24 to 36 demo. Our demo is 90% 35 plus. We're boomer. The theme here is we're old. So you're a breath of fresh air, something a little bit different. And everybody, please don't take offense to this. So I sent a picture out to my buddies and they said, who is Revy? And I'm like, just go look her up. And they're like, oh my God, look at all the stuff she's done. So they're the older demo too. It's a lot of random things, but it's cool because the algorithm will match you to people who have your same interests. So even if I don't post primarily pinball content, when I do, it'll kind of connect me to people who like that sort of thing. So that's a really great way to meet new people in the community and find people who care about what I'm doing because it is very niche in the broad scale of things. How often do you broadcast? Well, I post every day. I go live maybe once a week. For example, I've been vlogging this whole trip. You guys will be on there. Oh, that's so cool. And you're also your homeschool mom, too. Are you homeschooling? I am, yeah. That's great. How does that go? How do you navigate that? It's great. I'm in the middle of nowhere. I'm, like, in the forest. So, you know, the closest target is an hour away from me. Wow. All right. So we are, like, pretty close to off-grid at this point. We didn't have Internet until a year ago, which is crazy. But, yeah, it's great. I love just that extra spending time with my kids. And they get your values instead of someone else's values. Exactly, yeah. I have a question. I have two granddaughters, and my daughter-in-law is thinking of homeschooling. Any advice? I would say just jump in. The thing that I say about homeschooling is don't try to be a replacement for traditional schooling. It's meant to be different. You're not meant to be in a classroom for six hours straight. take it at your own pace and don't try to copy traditional schooling because that will never work in a home environment and if you think it's too hard or I can't do it you can't think of it like that you do it at your own pace you do it what works for your family your own hours and you can do it if I can do it anybody can do it you don't seem like you're easily scared no I ain't scared of nothing you got a cape? a cape? yeah No big ass. Like a gentle man. Super mom. Mom. Oh, thank you. So with the homeschool thing, do you let them, so they have certain interests, and you kind of encourage their interests, like museums, let's go to a museum and do a homeschool thing, remote kind of deal? Yeah, absolutely. For example, one of them is super, well, they're all super into Pokemon right now, so we'll incorporate that sort of, you know, do the math, and what is the battle, and multiplication and stuff like that. Another one is super into animatronics. So that ties a lot to, like, robotics and the science behind it and different mechanics and stuff like that. So it's cool to bring real-world elements into their education so that they're not just, like, doing times tables all day, which, you know, it doesn't work for every family. Yeah, you deal with, like, limit the phone time with the kids? They kind of, you know, no phone, no computer deal? Or how do you deal with that? Well, they're not iPad kids, but, you know, your girl needs a break sometimes. Okay, right. Okay, okay. Here's a babysitter kind of thing. Yeah, every now and then, yeah. Okay. Interesting. When she needs to do the artwork. There you go. Yeah, that takes some time, I'm sure. Yeah. In the living room, let me sit with this play field for three hours, you know. Did you go to school for art? Like, how did you get into the artwork part? How did you? Back in the day, when I was a model, I used to try to edit my own photos because I didn't necessarily trust the editors and the photographers. So, I tried to get into that myself. And that was kind of my foray into Photoshop and Illustrator and all of the creative programs. I just kind of went from there. Okay. If I didn't ask you this question, I'd get reprimanded. What's the, what's the, what do you love about this show? I get, I get pummeled for not being rah-rah positive, so I'm going to give you the chance. Give me something really positive that Gabe and David and everybody else is like, okay, George, you did me a solid, thanks. you know, what I love about Pintastic is that for as many people that are here, it still feels like a community. Like, you just see so many familiar faces, and everybody is cool, and, you know, stuff like this will happen just on the fly, organically, you know? Like, you're just playing a game, and you see a friend, and you're like, hey, let's do this, let's do this podcast, let's film this thing, and everyone's really cool. I feel like at some of the other shows, it's a little more, standoffish people are a little more, like, I don't know, timid. But here the environment is just like kind of electric because everybody's having fun, having a good time, and just warm and open with people. I think that's so cool. What other shows have you been to? What was the one in Texas? CBF? Yeah. CBF? You bought the game? No, we flew down. That was when we did Ferris Bueller. We went down because it was when they held the actual Twippy Awards there. So we knew we were a finalist. so they had us come down and um you know sat through the whole award show i think it's just like the northeast mentality like everybody is like kind of no bullshit but still friendly at heart you know like people just want to hang out it's not like uppity you know sometimes at other shows they get too fancy and then there's like a sort of air of like like oh i don't know them and i want to talk to them i feel like everybody just hangs out here which is my favorite part Where'd you grow up? New York. Queens. Okay. It's far from there, man. Wow. Okay. So is North Carolina in the woods? Yeah, sure is. Okay. So that's where you are now? You're in North Carolina? Yeah. Okay. Middle of the forest. Yeah. You've been there? Yeah, I've been down there a couple times. Is it the forest? It's in the middle of nowhere. It's literally in the middle of nowhere. If you look at, like, Google Maps, it's just, like, green for miles and miles and then a dot, and that's my land. Like, that's our little compound. But you're in his where his family lived, right? Yeah, it's 100 acres, so we have a family compound. That's nice. You got chickens? No, I should, but really, I can't have one more learning curve of a new thing. I'm putting chickens in the mix. I don't know. No horses, no chickens, no bottle. No, not yet. Maybe once the kids get older, maybe get a few more games under my belt things slow down maybe I'll get into the chicken I moved to Virginia horses on one side I have horses on the other side I have cattle goats everybody owns animals so I don't have to own anything I just have to look around and it's really fun we have the space I'm gonna I'm gonna have to come to you for tips when it's time not me I'll connect you there's tons of people that I just watch I watch the parade nothing's like having your own chickens we went to an Airbnb recently They do some pinball work remotely and went down there. And they had chickens and everything else there. And she said, do you want to have some of your fresh eggs? The hosting lady said, sure. So she opened it up, and they were like, you do get the eggs. They were still warm. That's so cool. So no much fresher than that. And it tasted great. We had blue eggs this week. Blue chicken eggs They are blue They look like robin eggs Not the yolks though No no it a regular egg but the outside shell It not a green egg We not Dr Seuss Green eggs and ham. I mean, come on. No, it was different. I never saw a blue chicken egg. That's an Americana chicken. Yes, my wife Maureen knows the bird thing. So Americana chicken over there. So I didn't reprimand you. Are you taking over my spot as the animal expert? Last show, you were like, that's usually what I do. Oh, yeah, I'd say so, because we walked into the Airbnb, the donkey started braying. It's like, what is that? It was foreign. I'd never heard a real donkey braying. It's right there. I recommend you get those, too, when you get a chance. Oh, my God. See, so you found out. You've come to this classic pinball experience. It's just not about pinball. We go where we want to go. No, I'm done here. We do what we want to do. We're free range. Well, yeah, we're free range. We're a lot of free other things, too. Anyway, I don't know what else to ask you. I mean. I think something that's really interesting is how Brian ties to how he started with, like, mechanical stuff and all of your crazy. Whoops. All of your crazy patents and inventions and stuff. I think that's really interesting. and he never wants to talk about that. But it's crazy his jump from, like, medical apparatus to pinball. Like, if you can do a medical apparatus, I guess. You can rewire a pinball machine, no problem. So, yeah, I don't even know how many patents I have. Maybe, like, five or six. Do you personally own the patents? Well, through the company that I worked for. But you did them, right? Yeah, yeah. So, like, I've worked on, like, the world's first totally implantable artificial heart. I've worked on neuroimplants. worked on like ACL repair type devices, total knees, total hips. It's all been medical device. Okay. So when you do something like that and then you go into pinball, people are like, oh, my God, how can you do it? I'm like, you don't know what this guy has been through. Right. No kidding. Wow. I really don't talk much about it. I didn't know it. And I talked to you for, what, over an hour in the last few days. But I would never ask him either. That's not the commonality. That's not what we, you know, we're pinball and that's usually where it was. And, you know, we talk about kids and whatever else. But, you know, it's pinball centric. Yeah, but he truly is like the brain in the operation and I just come in and make it pretty. I met Brian years ago. How long ago? 20 years, something like that? Probably close. 15, 20 years ago. By Flash Gordon. Yes. At the time, I was only into Gottlieb Wedgehead. And so I had bought that from a woman I worked with, and, you know, it just, it was cool and stuff. It just wasn't something that I was. You weren't there. You were still on the EM side. You weren't really. That's all I was doing was EM. I just thought, like, the whole electromechanical thing was really cool. Sure. And that's what I was into, and I was really afraid of all the digital stuff at that time. And, yeah, so I sold it off, and I met you, I don't forget all the artwork, the painting that your wife does. Yeah, that's right. My wife, my IP artist, she's a fellow artist over here. She does all my touch-up work and cabinet and plate fields. Oh, wow. They're very talented as well. Yeah, they come out perfect, so I've always appreciated that work. Thank you. I'm just the cat wrangler. It does a good job of cat wrangling. It pulls everybody in nicely. Everyone has their strength. That's right. So you had those games up at Pinball Wizard. You had the EMs up there, and then he did really nice stuff. And then you just kept up in your game. Yeah. So, like, I – yeah. Well, so people don't know you did the Red Auerbach Celtics game. Yeah. That's a long time ago. I'll try to give you a quick history. Sure, yeah, yeah, history. Yes, go ahead. So it was, like, going way back to, like, 2006, I guess. That's when I got my first game that I restored. It was basically not allowed to bring in the house because it was all cigarette stained. It was a Gottlieb, I think it was Super Spin. Okay. And so anyways, at the time, I just stripped it down, refurbished it, and I had shown the guy that I bought it from, and he thought it was great. And he said, well, I have this other game that you might be interested in. I think he gave me it for like $75. dollars. It was like Williams, like four aces or something like that. And so I was like, what am I going to do? And so I made the Red Sox game and I was like, well, this is fun. So then I decided to make a Patriots one. And then that's when the, we were still new into pinball. So the line got drawn in the household and she said, look, if you want to, if you want to, you know, do any more, something has to go out. So I think I put them up on, was it a Boston Pinball group back then? BPA on Yahoo? And Sarah from... Pinball Wizard Arcade. Yeah, yeah, Pinball Wizard Arcade. Yeah, so she came down at the time. That's where your game was. Yeah, so she said, look, I want to buy both of these games, and I have a plan. She's like, I'm opening this arcade, and it's like 10,000 square feet. She said, I'll give you the other cabinets if you can make me a Bruins and Celtics. So I'm like, well, geez, somebody actually likes my stuff. So I made those, and I still didn't really know what I was doing back then because I was still new into pinball. And anyways, they got all of them, and they got placed up there, and that's how people started, I guess, following along. And I think who it was, somebody had me recommended that I start a blog site. So I started GameRoomPinball.com, and I just started kind of posting each one that I did. And then, you know, over the years, I guess I built up my collection by somebody would ask for, say, a Yankees game. And I'd make that, but they would give me like a Whirlwind or something, you know. So somehow it was like a barter kind of a thing for a long time. And then I met, I guess it was one big turning point for me was I met Robert Mooney. I don't know if you guys know him. He's down in New Jersey. Okay. So he wanted to collect cars and a lot of other games, and he wanted a Ferrari game, but he wanted it to look like it just came out of the factory. So he shipped me up a Gottlieb Sky Jump, and I was shocked because it was in beautiful condition. People are going to be upset that I'm going to modify it, but whatever. So I did my thing on it, but that was the very first game that I ever actually bought new legs, new coin door, new side. Because I used to just, you know, be able to stand paper and cleaning it all up. So that one came out very nice. And then, what was the next big one after that? I guess it was meeting Sarah, doing that. And then I did a game for a doctor down in Florida. He wanted a Bruce Springsteen. So I had used a Cactus Jax, and that was the first game that I ever put, at the time I was using MP3 triggers to, you know, play background music and things like that. The wiring was horrendous. But, again, I didn't know what I was doing then. So that was another big point. And then this one comes along, and, you know, I'm like, How about this one? Once she was interested, again, for another big turning point, it was, again, I was trying to push my wedge head. Or maybe, you want something a little fancier? We'll go to the Cactus Jack. Sure. And she's like, no, no, no. I want a modern stern. I said, I can't do that. You've got to do animation. You've got to go all the way. Right, right. She was relentless. And I said, all right, I've got to figure out if I can even do this because I'm not a programmer, mechanical engineer. And that's when I came across Pinball Browser. and we went back and forth many, many times. I'd try to explain what I'm finding, and she's not liking what I'm explaining. Right. Just do it. Get it done. You make it happen. She had confidence in you, right? There you go. She did, and she pushed me and pushed me, and then, all right, so I figured out how to do it, and we got it all, and then it was like even adding little things. Did she ever put you in the deadlock? No, I have been in the wrestling ring, though, at her house. Oh, you have a wrestling ring at your house? Yeah. We don't have internet, but we have a wrestling ring. We're prairies. There you go. So, yeah, anyways, we got through that game, and it came out really nice. I mean, there was another, actually, I think he reached out to you, I'm blanking out on his name. Who did the artwork for that game? The guy from Atlanta. Oh, yeah, Willie Smith. Yeah, so he did a lot of, like, cartoon artwork of wrestlers. She was big into wrestling, and I think he must have reached out with some artwork of her husband or something. And then, so then, I think she contracted him to do just some, like, character art. But then she did, she took a couple of those characters and incorporated into everything that we were doing. And, yeah, it was kind of a big hit. So I think we made, what, hardypinball.com? Yeah. And, yeah, kind of, I guess. The place to go now is custompinballmachine.com. That's where you can see all of the work and all of Brian's info and some of mine, too. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, so. Kind of a long story, but, yeah, so everything just kind of. No, that's it. It all fell together nicely. Yeah. Yeah. So what's your favorite wrestling hold? My favorite hold? A move, whatever. What's your signature move? Oh, well. Do one on George. Okay. All right, guys. Clear the table. No, no, no. Yeah, take a chair. Oh, my God. Well, you know, I've got to pay homage to that fan reader. That would actually be great. It would. There you go. Explain to them what that is. I don't think they know what that one is. You've got to get your opponent bent over in front of you, and you grab their head, and then you turn, and as you turn, you jump, and you jam them into the ground face down. Piledriver? Yeah, well, almost, yeah, but that's the twist of fate. it's like the finishing move I think that Matt uses wow, sounds a little dangerous no thank you we're a family I'm pushing Dave closer to you and I'm going to tell you why anything else we've taken up your time but greatly appreciate it is there anything else you want to tell our 35 plus audience well I would just say if you are interested in seeing the ins and outs of how to do a custom pinball machine. Check out my social media, Instagram, TikTok, at Revy Hardy. To see some of me and Brian's work, you can go to custompinballmachines.com or hardypinball.com. And check out my book, Life of a Gothic Baby. It is a book about negating negative stereotypes about spooky things in goth culture. Available on Amazon. Amazon. It is, yeah, Amazon or gothicbabybook.com. Okay? Awesome. We'll definitely check that out. Brian, last word. I think she got it all in. Okay. Good. Good. Dave? Anything? I think we're good. We made him nervous. Now he's scared to talk. Now I'm scared. He's afraid of that Swiss. I want you to do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. I got some money. Do it. Uh-oh. I'm in trouble. Anyway. I want to thank Brian. I want to thank Levy, Dave, Maureen, and George. The Classic Pinball Podcast. That's fantastic. Hopefully we'll have this happen in a couple days, folks. Be well. Thanks, everybody. Bye. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thank you. Thanks very much. Thank you. All right, so you know what that was? That was like a dog. It was a dachshund. You know why? It had a short pause. Okay, there we go. Look at that. What is wrong with you? What is wrong with you? So that's the interview we had with Brian Soares and Revy Hardy. I hope you enjoyed it. A little bit different. Dave is taking my position as the animal expert. We'll see how that goes next show. What happened? Okay. There's still time left in the day. I'm going to end it probably around 9 o'clock. So we got done. my head was ready to explode after two back-to-back interviews of concentration. I just needed some quiet time. I went and found a corner and then went and found the bar again, and that seemed to work out. But one thing I heard during the show, I heard from several people, a couple around the bar, actually, was they didn't think there were as many games in the free play area as in years past. I'd say that's true. I'd say they're definitely more concentrated on the newer stuff. There were banks and banks of new pins that you could buy. There were less, you know, older pins that people brought, I think. And then because you had, you know, the vendor area was taken up maybe one-third of that. The other third was taken by banks of new games. And the last third was games that people brought. but I will say to the show's credit that's not where all the games were anyway that's just one area, then you had the Tycoon room plenty of games there, you had all the different, home brews and you had the club room games so you just had to do a little bit of it wasn't all in one spot, you had to walk around to different rooms and say, oh wow, what's in this room I felt like a track star because you go from one end of the building to the other I must have done that on Saturday afternoon 20 times trying to wrangle cats Everybody got their steps in. I got my steps in. It was a healthcare show. Yeah, it was quite an afternoon. But I heard that. My thoughts on, you know, bringing games. You and I both noticed quite a few games where the rubbers were just black. Yellow rubbers, you know, yellow flipper rubbers, whole face just black. And it's like, I would be hard-pressed to bring a game. Sorry, I just would. I think if you're going to try to get people to bring games, you need maybe some more incentives. And the one I would offer up to you is come up with a specialty T-shirt that nobody else gets unless you come and bring a game. Yes, it's an expense. If you don't even want to incur that, give somebody the choice of all the, you know, tchotchke stuff you had behind the you know, behind the desk there. You know, hey, you can take your own t-shirt. I think people would be more inclined maybe to bring something. Maybe a swag bag with some candy and popcorn, you know, whatever. Well, I wouldn't say there was there wasn't really space for more games though, weren't there? There wasn't empty space. The games were all taking up space, weren't they? Yeah, it could have been. They could have squeezed some more in. That transition line where they pull the you know, pull the wall in. I think they could have wedged some more in there. But that's neither here nor there. You know, the long and short of it is we had this conversation as well. There's a lot more arcades than when this started. Yes, the draw, and I'll always say it, is all the new games. You can play them as much as you want. Fixed fee. It's definitely worth it. All the different rooms. There is more than enough to play. More than enough. Yeah, I'd say this show is more, I consider it more of a party show slash tournament show slash game playing show. You know, a little bit of stuff. You can probably make some, you know, pinball sales there, a little bit of that. Not really much of a swap. Well, the game breakers, like Bob Butch, I want to recommend him. Oh, yeah, Bob Butch, great guy. I did meet him. Yeah, nice guy. Very nice man. We sat next to each other at breakfast one morning. really nice guy, so he should get a shout out he seems to be fair deal Dan and really respects his customers so if you're buying a new game, I'll pitch he would be a good guy to go and say yeah, I second that, I bought plenty of not games, plenty of glass off him and I've also done some some dealings with him, he actually he, a lot of people know him so if I, put it this way, the guy I was selling a lot of my boards to was a person that he knew, said, hey, just bring your stuff to Bob. Bob will pay you the cash for them, and then I'll pay Bob the cash. So it was like a... Bob was the messenger. I saw Bob in the parking lot with a 20-foot truck, or no, Sprinter van, excuse me, a Sprinter van with a U-Haul behind him. He had a lot of stuff with him. His claim to fame, though, he said, is I want people to understand that you know, I'm a pretty, I take in used games. So if you don't want to deal with the general public, you know, he said, I try to be as fair as I can with used games. Oh, so that's what he does. So basically he takes in used games and restores them and then sells them? Or what does he do with the used games? I think he just takes them in on trade and he didn't say what, you know, how he sells them otherwise, but he said, I'm willing to take games in on trade. Oh, trade, not buy, trade. No, trade. So if you're coming for a new game, you have an old game, you don't want to go through the hassle of meeting with people, selling the game, they'll take it in on trade. Which I think is, hey, that's a great thing, I think. In fact, I think sometime we should interview him. He'd be a good interview. We have a lot of interviews. I did what you asked. I thought we would go for the triumvirate on the three interviews in one show. Yeah. Sunday morning, I grabbed some to-go for breakfast, and Jack Garaney was... Garaney? How do you say his last name? Jersey Jack. Jersey Jack. I put in his last name every time. I said, hey, Jack, if I asked you to do a podcast, would you do it? Yes. Okay, thanks. Nice. Does he know who you are? I've spoken to him. I don't think he would know me by name, but he knows me by face and stories. So, we have some common things. Again, you know, private conversations. Jersey boys. You guys are Jersey boys, too. Yeah, we're Jersey boys. But, yeah, we know some things and whatever else. Okay. He's a good Joe. We could have some fun with him. So, he's going to be there Saturday at Pinfest. So, I don't know if that's going to happen. I'm going to be there on Friday. But you can always make a phone call to the home office and say, hey, you know, Can we line up an interview and we can do it via Zoom? I'm sure that wouldn't be hard. We know Sideman. We know Mark. He's there. We know Steve Ritchie. He's there. So I'm sure between them all, if we ask politely, he would probably come on with us. Sure. Okay. And you know what's coming up. Harry Potter. Oh, yes, Harry Potter. He's going to be pulled every which way on Sunday. And you know what today is today, other than tax day, right? New game release. Of which now what? Come on. Where have you been? We just released one. They just released King Kong, didn't they? Yeah. Well, today is the official release. Of King Kong? Yes. The tease was on Friday. Oh, okay. Today's the release. They seem to be doing that now. Why don't we get to the end? I think we're almost there with the tournament, unless you had something happen between my decompression and us reassembling to watch the end of the tournament. because there's a lot of things to talk about with the tournament yeah oh yeah there's a lot of stuff to talk about with that let's see what else my friends from 40 years ago I got them to actually go to this Pintastic now so all five of them went one night and three went the other night it was my friend Keith's birthday so he used this as kind of my birthday party they're playing pinball in my honor so he got us the friends to go there so we met with them actually bought a couple games last time from them, and I sold them a couple years ago. Now he has a little collection going on because of Pintastic and myself. I really like playing in that New Hampshire room, the club room, and I think Bells and Chimes room has some good stuff too. But they had a lightning in there. It was really tough to play, but it had Mitchell lightning in it. Well, we played that. We played that with John Day. Yeah, so that was good there, playing that. Oh, John Day. He actually, this is, okay, this will tie back in with Steve Ritchie. So, he had there was a Steve Ritchie room there. So, all Steve Ritchie's games, people brought their restored, hopefully I think restored games in there on all the different titles he had and John brought the Firepower and John's Firepower was really nice. Oh, didn't we play that? No. Firepower? No. In his show? No? No, we didn't play Firepower. I didn't play it. No. Okay. So, but he got Steve Ritchie to go in there with him and say, Steve, play my Firepower. I was seeing a thing. So he said, okay. I said, oh, I love this game. He said, oh, this game, I'll tell you, usually I play a Firepower. They're kind of beat. This thing plays like new. He said, bravo. I said, I really enjoy playing your game. Oh, wow. I didn't hear that. That's great. So he signed some stuff for him and this and that. So John had a great thing with Steve. That's for John. So, yeah. I played the Elton John that was in there. I had a guy named Mike teach me how to play the game. He was really into it. So I'm like, okay, teach me how to play. So that was fun. Yeah, that's fun. I don't think I played anything else in that room, but I played that. I wish I would have known that was John's game. I would have played it. I really like there's a T2 in the free play area that is part of that electromechanical arcade thing down in Rhode Island. I think it's part of their group. But this T2, I really like the alternative trans light on it. It looked way more menacing than the original. It looked great. So I'm going to be getting a T2 in at some point. Someone's going to bring me this game, or I have to go pick it up to restore and then bring it down to their house in Chatham. But I'm going to, you know, see what his, you know, what his pocketbook is, let's say, and what he's looking to spend it somewhere. But I could actually go, after watching the different things that this person put on their T2, it's like, wow, I made a nice T2 a while back, but now with all the different stuff you can put on it. This guy was showing me all the things he did. I think, was it, whoever did it, I don't know if it was either Mitch or somebody else did it, but they bought all this different stuff from these different, like Newberry Comics, they bought some stuff from Terminator 2, and they put that in the game, and it fits perfectly in the game, different stuff they bought. They just take a Dremel to it, so they custom did stuff to it, but it came out great, So it's like, I'm going to take some leads off that and make a nice T2 if I'm allowed to do so. I have a couple of games we need to talk about. One, I know you didn't play it. I played it. Woof. Woof. You know what game that is, right? Woof. No, which is the Wolf? Final Tap. Oh. Yeah, that's the new Thunder Turrets. Thunder Turrets Part 2. and they say that that's not bad compared to the latest one which is Blues Brothers they are that is tic-tac-toe and I went into the tycoon room there and both those hands are turned up with a sign on them saying out of order oh no the other one, Abba yeah that was out of order too that thing was always out that's their stuff too right? yeah it's a dog no no no I think that's somebody else but that was down. They both don't, they look like they're just B-games. It looks like they didn't, I don't know, they just kind of threw them together, hodgepodge, no real effort. I don't know. It looks like something that a retailer would sell, not a pinball company. Yeah, like Costco. Right, but like a toy company, you know, high-end toy company. I don't know. They were just really sad. Ninja Eclipse, I forgot about that, and I didn't see that anywhere. I would have played that. That got a good, you know, got good heads up from people out of TPF or one of the other shows. What else did I play? Skate or Die, which was supposed to be in the homebrew area, was never on. So I didn't get to play that. And all the stuff that we said we were going to play, we probably didn't play because we just ran out of time. I mean, it's crazy how much, how fast it goes. Oh, yeah. I was like, I can't believe two days are flying by. It's like, you know what? I don't think I've laid my hands on a pinball machine yet. And this time I'm not even, I'm not working the show. I worked the show for the past ten years, and this time it's like, you know, I've got a vacation from that. It's like, I thought, okay, I'm just going to be doing some interviews and some podcasting, so that would be a little more of a light lift. But I found out that I still didn't have much time, but it's between me meeting different people, meeting fellow podcast people, and my customer base and podcast fans and friends that were there. I met somebody from the press for the first time, other than us. Colin from the Kineticist. I'm like, hey, who are you with? He looks at me and goes, who are you? So that was pretty good. That was in the tournament area. And I think we're getting to the final spot where we, all four of us, you know, Maureen, Janice, and you and I, finally ended up in the tournament area late. Yeah, not too late. 7.30, 8 o'clock, somewhere 9 o'clock, somewhere in that area. I don't really even remember it was early evening, how's that? yeah early evening, I will say one thing though before, rewind a little bit I enjoyed playing the Evil Cunning Evil we played because that was kind of a cool no, I liked that game so I was going to say, since the Classic Novel Podcast what old school pins did we play I mean you have a short list but I know, and we'll talk about the tournament thing too because I did put a card in the tournament I like playing the in the club rooms, the big game, Frontier, were fun. Evil Knievel was fun, Lightning. Wasn't a big fan of the blackjack in the corner there. That needed a little bit of help. No, that needed some work. I played it only because I bought one. Right. By the way, there was a blackjack, and it still is right now, on Pinstyne. You see that? For going for pretty cheap, it looks really darn nice. For... It kind of... Yes, I saw it. Let's just leave it at that. Was it $1,600? $1,600? Yes. Yeah, that looked pretty good. It would have saved me a little bit of work. Yes, it would have. Is that being polite? Yes, there you go. Yes. I get it. That's being polite. Take note. Yep. Take note. I'm not even going to use your name. Just take note. Okay. So let's get to the tournament. Unless there's something else there. Yeah, I think the tournament. Yeah, let's go to my card first. since I was first in the game. I forgot all about it. Yeah, I was first in the game. So basically, I wasn't going to play at all. You were above the line for so long. I know. So I basically said, okay, I'm going to play one. It's worth throwing away $20. What the hell? And since you're picking five games out of this whole bag, it's like, okay, I see a Hocus Pocus. I can do that. Raw Hide, yep. Stars, sure. I saw a Stern Iron Maiden, old school, like Pat Benatar. that went in from 1982. I owned that game. I owned two of them and I sold them a while back. I know that game. And what else did I play? Oh, Electronimo. I played Electronimo. Another great game I know. So I went in with knowing these games pretty well. They all played pretty well. Stars played pretty tough and that play is tough anyway but this one if Stars is tired at all, it's brutal. That game needs to be totally restored up and playing, you know, just so to make it fun, like mine is, by the way. But theirs is okay. I just didn't do that great on it. I got like $33,000 or something. But I almost flipped over the, I think I, yeah, almost, I got $99,000 on the Hocus Pocus, the Bally. Almost flipped it over. I flipped over Rawhide. You were on the top three on Rawhide, weren't you? Yeah. Oh, yeah, top three. I was up there on the other game. I had three really good games out of the five. The other two games weren't that good. So that kept me in the running. And then everybody else showed up. Right. For two days, I was like, wow, I might actually be in the finalists in this thing. Then I started to see everybody from out of town. As usual. That's why I'm not going to keep dumping money into cards. Just one card. Thanks. We'll see what happens there. Let's get to the four final people, and we'll go through who won and not. Unless you want to do a game plan. I don't know how much time we have. We have four minutes in this segment. Unless you want to go for another segment. Make the call. Yeah, let's see if we mop it. If we don't mop it up, we'll go for it. So the four players that went to the finals were Jason Zahler, Carlos Salaserta, Connor Mulberry, who I didn't know, and Liam Bradley. Long story short, this kid Liam Bradley is 13. Think of all the people that he eclipsed in this tournament. Raymond Davidson, Eric Stone. Oh, God, who else was there? Drawing blank. Bowen. Bowen, Karens. Yeah. Who else? We see Jerry. I forgot Jerry. Yeah, Jerry. Jerry with the hair. Who's the other guy? I don't know. It was a loose go. Who was who? I would say there was close to 10 top 20 players there. But I don't think Liam didn't take them out personally. No, but he ended up at the end. Right. He had to take some. I didn't go through the whole thing, but the long story short is Jason ended up winning. Carlos came in second. I was rooting for Carlos. I was rooting for Jason. I don't know who the hell he is, but he's a good player wherever he's from. And this kid Liam, we're going to give him the new name. He's the new kid. Jason's going to still be the kid but Liam is the new kid the new kid in the block he's just the new kid he probably doesn't even know who the hell that is he's quite a teen exactly there were some great battles I was watching Jason in fact it's on it's on Backhand Pinball's site Mark Patanud right Mark Patanud so he has a great Backhand Pinball Twitch channel and also on YouTube as well. And I watched some great battles. I skipped over all the ramp game stuff because I really don't care. But I did watch Jason playing Hocus Pocus, doing great work on that. I saw him kick ass on Iron Maiden. And I think he was doing some stuff on Rawhide. And then I was watching Eric Geddes and I think Joe Lemire, I think, battle. So there are a lot of people here. Anyway, I know we're coming close. I just want to make sure that I don't forget. I really want to send thanks out to Steve Ritchie, to, oh, my God, Brian. Brian Storrs. Reby and Brian. Yes. Brian Storrs. Reby Hardy. Reby Hardy. Reby Hardy. Sorry, I'm drawing a blank. I can't thank you all enough. I hope we see all of you soon. I hope everybody enjoyed this I had so much fun my smile hasn't left me since Saturday I'm flying high it was a great it was a great show really good show, it was fun a lot of good music good people a lot of good games to play it was a good vibe dates are already out there for next year go to fantasticna.com and the dates for 2026, I think, are out there, believe it or not. Already? Wow, that's quick. So we should probably sign off. We've got about 30 seconds. Yeah, everybody stay lit and tilted. Next show is going to be from Pinfest in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Dave is going to come to Virginia afterwards with his lovely wife, and we're going to have some fun. So we'll do some face-to-face recording. this is the Classic Pinball Podcast some of these segments have been pre-recorded stay lit, tilted, and of course asymptomatic well, it looks as if our time is just about run out just a little flip to tell them who the sponsor was who do you call when you want your pinball machine restored? Dave! Dave! Who? Dave! D-A-V-E! Yeah, Dave! Dave! Right! George, you don't know what you're saying You're under their control George, we've had it with you Say no rodeo, bro dad Hasta la vista, baby

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 7fb3ef4b-f51c-41eb-b6d9-3ff51a2696d7*