# BDYETP 68: Opening a Pinball Venue, Weird Al Updates, The Next JJP, New Game Impressions **Source:** Bro, Do you Even Talk Pinball **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2022-05-15 **Duration:** 132m 56s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/buffalo-pinball/episodes/BDYETP-68-Opening-a-Pinball-Venue--Weird-Al-Updates--The-Next-JJP--New-Game-Impressions-e1ihgtf --- ## Analysis Ryan Zlomak, co-owner of Skillshare Arcade in Syracuse, discusses opening a pinball venue during the pandemic with a novel business model: weekly free-play nights and event rentals rather than traditional vending. The conversation explores challenges of building pinball culture in smaller markets, the economics of location-based pinball operations, and why competitive tournaments alone cannot sustain a venue. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Pinball machines rarely generate primary revenue at locations—food, drink, and other entertainment typically drive profitability — _Ryan explaining why traditional vending models fail: 'when you make your money 12.5 cents at a time, it takes a lot to pay off a brand-new Stern game'_ - [HIGH] Skillshare Arcade opened October 2021 with a model focused on events, parties, and weekly Wednesday free-play rather than traditional coin drop — _Ryan: 'October 2021. Okay, so you've been open not quite a year now.' and detailed description of Wednesday 5-9pm free-play model_ - [HIGH] Syracuse is a much smaller market than Buffalo with lower baseline pinball awareness—most customers are either new to pinball or haven't played in 20-30 years — _Ryan: 'The majority of our clients are people who either have never played pinball before or have not played pinball in probably 20 to 30 years'_ - [HIGH] COVID-era commercial real estate collapse allowed Skillshare to secure affordable venue rental (reducing costs from ~$4,000/month to $1,000-$1,500) — _Ryan: 'A place that would have cost you $4,000 a month to rent might be $1,000 or $1,500 at that point'_ - [HIGH] Competitive pinball tournaments cannot sustain venues financially even at larger scales (Pinberg with 1,000 participants could not break even) — _Ryan: 'Pinberg was this like life altering competitive experience with a thousand people, 1000 people were involved in that venture and they still couldn't make it cash positive'_ - [HIGH] Skillshare Arcade has 20-25 pinball machines and ~5 arcade games in their facility — _Ryan describing the venue: 'a venue that has...like sort of arcade-like LED lighting. And it's got 20 to 25 pinball machines in it and another, you know, five or so arcade games'_ - [HIGH] United Vending Service (Skillshare's parent company) maintains ~150 vending locations across an 80-mile radius in Syracuse area — _Ryan: 'They have about 150 locations spanning about an 80-mile radius'_ - [MEDIUM] Local news cycles increasingly favor negative content over lifestyle/positive stories due to click-based revenue models — _Ryan discussing Syracuse.com: 'writers are paid based off of the number of clicks on their articles...to put that in perspective, it's not the 40,000 or 50,000 that are interested in reading about the Russia-Ukraine incident'_ ### Notable Quotes > "pinball will always be an uncontrolled variable...I never know when a plastic is going to break. I never know when a solenoid is going to fry." > — **Ryan Zlomak**, mid-interview > _Explains why event space model appeals to him—ability to control 90% of operational variables_ > "when you make your money 12.5 cents at a time, it takes a lot to pay off a brand-new Stern game" > — **Ryan's business partner (quoted)**, early-interview > _Core argument against traditional coin-drop vending model economics_ > "The goal is not to make money. The goal is to build pinball culture, and you have to have money to make sure that it's sustainable." > — **Ryan Zlomak**, mid-interview > _Articulates philosophy balancing profit with community building_ > "if we took the energy that we spend researching pinball culture and drama and mechanics and advancements in history, if we took that and we decided to invest that energy into researching the stock market, all of us would be independently wealthy" > — **Ryan Zlomak**, mid-interview > _Self-aware commentary on pinball enthusiast obsession_ > "Buffalo is a way bigger market than Syracuse is...you guys, like, have done so much work to build that culture into the framework of the city" > — **Ryan Zlomak**, mid-interview > _Acknowledges Buffalo's superior position as a pinball market due to cultural infrastructure_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Skillshare Arcade | organization | Pinball venue and event space in Syracuse, NY; opened October 2021; 20-25 pinball machines; operates Wednesday 5-9pm free-play model plus party/event rentals | | Ryan Zlomak | person | Co-owner of Skillshare Arcade; former founder of Syracuse Pinheads; operates pinball venues as business and community builder | | Syracuse Pinheads | organization | Pinball vending operation founded by Ryan in 2016; closed before pandemic; operated 13 machines across multiple Syracuse-area locations | | Buffalo Pinball | organization | Pinball venue/operator in Buffalo, NY run by Kevin Manning and Nick Lane; larger market with stronger existing pinball culture than Syracuse | | Kevin Manning | person | Co-host of 'Bro, Do You Even Talk Pinball' podcast; operator in Buffalo pinball market; longtime friendship with Ryan from Swords of Fury machine | | Nick Lane | person | Co-host of 'Bro, Do You Even Talk Pinball' podcast; involved in Buffalo pinball operations; recently traveled for Weird Al stream | | United Vending Service | organization | Vending company owned by Skillshare's business partners; operates ~150 locations across 80-mile radius in Syracuse area; purchases all new-in-box Stern Pro models | | Pinberg | event | Major competitive pinball tournament/festival with 1,000 participants; unable to break even financially despite scale | | Syracuse, NY | location | City of ~150,000 people; historically known for salt production and Carrier air conditioning; recovering from recession; smaller pinball market than Buffalo | | Stern Pinball | company | Major pinball manufacturer; Skillshare rotates newest Pro models through venue via United Vending's purchasing strategy | | Rush (Stern game) | game | Recent Stern pinball release mentioned as being in rotation at Skillshare and other Syracuse locations | | Mandalorian (Stern game) | game | Stern pinball title mentioned as available at Trapper's Pizza Pub in Syracuse area | | Godzilla (Stern game) | game | Stern pinball title; mentioned as example of $7,200+ new machine cost in venue context | | Swords of Fury | game | Classic pinball game; bonded Ryan and Kevin; Ryan owned one that Kevin now possesses | | IFPA | organization | International Flipper Pinball Association; Skillshare has hosted 3 sanctioned IFPA events | ### Topics - **Primary:** Pinball venue business models and economics, Building pinball culture in smaller markets, Alternative revenue streams for pinball locations (events, food, non-pinball activity), Vending vs. owned-location models for pinball operations - **Secondary:** COVID-era commercial real estate and venue affordability, Competitive pinball tournaments and sustainability, Marketing and local media outreach for pinball venues, Pinball machine maintenance and operational challenges ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.72) — Ryan is optimistic about Skillshare's success and the event-based model, with genuine enthusiasm for building community. However, he's candid about challenges (market size, competitive pinball economics, media coverage difficulty, industrial location), showing realistic awareness rather than blind enthusiasm. The tone is thoughtful and educational rather than promotional. ### Signals - **[business_signal]** Competitive pinball tournaments cannot sustain venues independently—even Pinberg with 1,000 participants could not break even (confidence: high) — Ryan: 'Pinberg was this like life altering competitive experience with a thousand people...and they still couldn't make it cash positive' - **[business_signal]** Traditional pinball vending models are economically unviable due to low per-machine revenue and high maintenance costs (confidence: high) — Ryan: 'when you make your money 12.5 cents at a time, it takes a lot to pay off a brand-new Stern game' and his experience closing Syracuse Pinheads before pandemic due to IRS/cash flow issues - **[business_signal]** Skillshare Arcade represents novel venue model: event/party rental-focused with weekly free-play rather than traditional coin-drop vending (confidence: high) — Ryan describes Wednesday 5-9pm free-play model paying one price for unlimited play, rest of revenue from birthday parties, family reunions, bar mitzvahs, baby showers - **[community_signal]** United Vending Service (Skillshare parent) maintains robust new Stern machine rotation across 150+ locations, supporting competitive play infrastructure in Syracuse area (confidence: high) — Ryan: 'every time a new and boxed Stern come' [incomplete but context shows they buy all Pro models]; machines visible at multiple locations including Trapper's Pizza Pub - **[market_signal]** Syracuse is significantly less developed pinball market than Buffalo, with minimal baseline awareness and vending infrastructure requiring education-focused approach (confidence: high) — Ryan: 'majority of our clients...have not played pinball in probably 20 to 30 years' vs Buffalo's established culture; Skillshare must reach casual families via Facebook groups rather than pinball enthusiasts - **[market_signal]** COVID-era commercial real estate collapse enabled affordable venue acquisition, reducing Skillshare's risk profile significantly (confidence: high) — Ryan noted venues dropped from ~$4,000/month to $1,000-$1,500, making the event space model feasible to launch - **[market_signal]** Local media increasingly skews toward negative/sensational content due to click-based revenue models, making positive lifestyle stories harder to place (confidence: medium) — Ryan noted Syracuse.com article about Skillshare got 8,300 views vs 40,000-50,000 for Russia-Ukraine coverage; took 6 months to secure first local article despite strong press releases - **[personnel_signal]** Ryan transitioned from vending operator (Syracuse Pinheads) to event space operator (Skillshare) with new business partners from United Vending Service (confidence: high) — Ryan: 'I partnered up with two killer business partners at OpenSkillShot in October' 2021; United Vending Service owners now co-own Skillshare --- ## Transcript All right, coming up on this episode of Bro, Do You Even Talk Pinball, we've got an interview with Ryan Zlomak, co-owner of Skillshare Arcade in Syracuse, New York. We also have a whole slew of news to catch up on since we last did a podcast. And then finally, we're going to do a review of Williams' No Fear Pinball from 1995. All that and more coming right up. Double Super Jackpot! I need a room. I need a room. I want targets I can hit. I need a suit. I need a double. I'm Jeff, my wife. That's right. And now, the Hall and Oates of Pinball Podcasting, Nick Lane and Kevin Manning of Buffalo Pinball. Whoop-boom-shakalaka. Good morning, afternoon, evening, whatever time it is for you guys. Welcome back to Birdie Even Talk Pinball. It's been a little while, but, you know, we had some life to live. You know, I went on two trips. Left my state twice in a month. It was crazy. Nick, what have you been up to? I went on at least one trip, probably got COVID. Feeling good. I don't even know when's the last time you even did a podcast. Was it like March? It was right before Weird Al. Right before I went to Texas for the Weird Al stream. So March? Was that March or April? I don't remember. Time doesn't matter anymore. That's all I know. Correct. But we've gone from hoodies and pants Carl Weathers to T-shirts and cargo shorts Carl Weathers. So things are really turning around. Things are looking up. Summertime's almost here. And we've got a great show for you ahead. So before we get into that, why don't we thank our partners? Make you want to do the honors? Yeah, all right. So our premier partner for a number of years now is PinStadium Lights. We love Penn Stadium lighting kits. These are app-controlled iOS, Android lighting kits that will illuminate your entire pinball machine. I find that for whatever reason, even though there's a million LEDs in pinball machines these days, they are still incredibly dark with bad spotlights, no good GI to illuminate it. So in many cases, you're going to want to get a Pins Stadium so you can see your game. Also, I wanted to say great customer service from Scott at Pins Stadium whenever I had an issue. Use coupon code Buffalo. Save some money. Save 10%. That's pretty significant. So Pins Stadium lights. Our other partners, which we want to show some love to, is pinwolfer.com. I don't know if they were a partner in our last podcast. I think so, but PinWolfer is an upgraded full speaker kit for your pinball machine, and especially as there's so many music machines out there, I feel like that's where it really shines. You want this in a music machine to get the most out of it. So easy to install. I did my own install. So that is pinwolfer.com. Happy to have them on board. And, of course, flipping out pinball.com. If you're going to buy a pinball machine, I swear to God, go there. They are the best. Best customer service. They raise the bar, which is not hard because it's sucked every place else pretty much that I've dealt with. But Zach Menny is incredible and his wife, Nicole Menny, is really good at just taking care of you. Highly recommend. It's easy. Go to Flip N Out Pinball when you're ready to buy your pinball machine. Titan Pinball, longstanding supporter. I just unpacked a package from Titan Pinball. I got some new silicone rings. I got those nice cabinet flipper protectors because I'm getting some new machines, so I wanted that. They've got a coupon code of Buffalo, so they have 10%. You've got PinballEDU. Go to pinballraffle.org, buy a raffle ticket, support charity, and maybe win a brand-new Stern pinball machine. We've got Pinside, pinside.com. That was like one of the first pinball websites I ever went to when I got back into the hobby in September, October of 2010, and I was just there yesterday. You know, so it's probably the longest consistency in my, you know, pinball history here is pinside.com. We love them. Comet Pinball, the OG of making your pinball machines lit up. Pairs nicely with Pins Stadium. If you've got any condescension in your pinball machines, still, rip those fuckers out and put in some Comet LEDs. And then last but not least, Jersey Jack Pinball, makers of the most beautiful pinball machines on the planet. And I heard I think they're coming out with their new game soon, maybe in a month or two. All right. That's the old rumor. Before we get into our interview, if you're watching live, type hashtag win in the chat, and that will enter you to win some swag from Skillshare Arcade. And joining us from Skillshare Arcade is the co-owner, Ryan Lomac. It's a location out in Syracuse, New York. They launched during a pandemic. Ryan, how are you doing, man? Good to see you. I'm doing well. Thanks so much for having me on the show again. I'm slowly hitting all of the Buffalo pinball little venues Yeah so if you watch The gameplay streams we do Usually on Thursday nights for the Brody Even Pinball Show Ryan's been on a few We did Alice Cooper right and Alien Any others? Yeah I've actually got I have the Alien stream playing on our TV in the back Oh nice In case I move out of frame and you really want to see how bad All of us played that night We did much better on Alice Cooper when we all teamed up and got the wizard mode. That was cool. So, yeah, I've known Ryan for, I don't know, like six, seven years. We were trying to figure that out before the show. A long time. We both have an affection for Swords of Fury. That's where we first bonded. He actually owns my old Swords of Fury. and he's a former founder of Syracuse Pinheads. Is Syracuse Pinheads still around? It's still going. We still have our lifestyle brand products. And then you've since expanded. So in that, you used to with Syracuse Pinheads, you used to operate pinball machines, right, in other locations? Tell me how that works. Yeah, sure. So for those of you who are beaming in from places other than central New York. Syracuse is like a little small city, you know, about 150,000 people that was known for its salt production and our, you know, production of air conditioning units from Carrier. And like most upstate New York cities, is trying to recover from some recession that we had well before I was born. So that's not a great breeding ground for pinball machines and for amusements just in general. So like in our, you know, we have some great vendors here. I partnered up with one of them. But there was no great places to play more than one or two machines at any location. You could go to a pizza shop and, you know, eat your fair share of garlic knots and play two games. But after that, there wasn't really any, you know, anywhere else to go. Like, you were limited. So I started Syracuse Pinheads in 2016 at a comic book shop, and it was a vending location where I could have, I think I made it up to 13 machines at one location of all eras from electromechanicals to modern solid states. So we did tournaments there, and then I partnered up with the Silver Ball Saloon in Rochester and Now Here Pinball in Cortland and Voltage Video Games in Syracuse and a couple other locations to give pinball offerings at venues that didn't have them or sort of enhance the pinball offerings there. And I closed it due to some glorious IRS tax rules. It was a good decision to close my business right before the pandemic hit, which ended up being kind of a blessing in disguise. But while I just had some downtime and sort of, you know, I guess pinball maintenance or whatever you want to call it, I had been debating a number of other sort of business models that might function a little bit better, and then was able to find two killer business partners at OpenSkillShot in October. So you opened it in October 2021? October 2021. Okay, so you've been open not quite a year now. Talk to me. So I feel like, you know, as you join this hobby, you get into it, you know, you start thinking about, oh, I could put a pin here and make some money. And then maybe you start thinking about, well, should I turn this into a full-fledged business and open a location? Talk me through the thought process of why you decided to, you know, open your own venue and what have the benefits been so far and maybe some of the challenges as well? Yeah, I guess I'll start off by just saying that, like, I think in especially when I look at like pinball media, a lot of the focus that we have is on competitive pinball and like sort of homeowner culture. And then the, the vending or location side of things tends to be sort of like the second class citizen of like pinball conversation. So a lot of times, a lot of people just sit there and think about how easy it is to maintain equipment at their homes or, you know, they go to their friend's house and they play stuff or they have a really good vendor who, you know, has a million games on location and they just think that, like, you know, hey, I put games on a location, it will instantly generate revenue. And having gone down that path with a number of businesses and seen just since 2016 my own, you know, business sort of struggle with maintaining locations and things like that or other locations that opened up and struggled through a pandemic or whatever, the realization to me, and maybe this is an ignorant statement or just a statement that shows that maybe I need to think about this differently, is that in all the business models that I see that are successful, pinball is not really the thing that makes money, not the thing that generates revenue. You know, it has alternative perks, and there's a lot of good that can come from opening some sort of pinball establishment. But, you know, as one of my business partners says, when you make your money 12.5 cents at a time, it takes a lot to pay off a brand-new Stern game. So when it came to, you know, me looking at other models, like I was looking at the Sanctum, you know, they're sort of open one day a week. They have low overhead. They have people who are really devoted to putting in a lot of time to making sure games are maintained. And then they put a lot of time and effort into tournaments so that when they do big ones, they're, you know, they're huge. They're not just some sort of little, you know, one-tier tradeoff. Or, you know, looking at most other barcade models, like the arcade part is the part that keeps people there, but the money that you're making is typically in food and drink. So I had that in my head, and I don't, you know, personally don't have any interest in kind of dealing with liquor licenses and opening a major kitchen and just thinking about putting in six figures worth of income to open a business. So I was thinking about alternative ways to sort of make money. and with pinball. Let me be clear. Like the goal is not to make money. The goal is to build pinball culture, and you have to have money to make sure that it's sustainable. But the thing that I was interested in is the fact that we don't, you know, when people try to gather around pinball machines, you know, usually the social endeavor is the part that keeps people there and keeps people excited. So when I came up with the model for SkillShot, we're open one night a week. So every Wednesday we're open from 5 until 9. You pay one price. Everything's on free play. Pay as much as you want. If you want to order food and have it delivered or you want to bring your own meals, you can do that. We have snack and soda machines in the back. But that's sort of for the casual player who's interested in getting their pinball fix for the week. But then the rest of our business is based around parties and events. So we rent our space for whatever you are interested in. So, you know, we've done birthday parties for 4-year-olds and 8-year-olds and 17-year-olds. We had a rocking 50th birthday party here a couple weeks ago where they just, like, were over the moon about it. We had a family reunion. We've had a bat mitzvah. We had a baby shower. Like, we want to be a resource where people feel that they can come in and experience arcade culture but really focus on kind of celebrating with their friends because that's the part of the experience that people have missed in COVID. So as, you know, we were mulling these ideas around the thought of what are people missing? Well, people are missing shared experience. What do we want to do? We want to create a business that is focused on arcade culture but is also going to be sustainable. And those two things kind of came together to make SkillShot possible. That's awesome. So you have the pay one price, play as much as you want, free play kind of set up. How does that differ from because you were doing like a shared coin drop before when you were doing Syracuse Pinheads? How's that work out? How has it been going so far with that differentiation? It's been going great. Like, I think the, you know, like a lot of, I get a, it used to be about once a month, somebody would reach out to me and say, hey, I'm thinking about a barcade. Like, can you give me some advice? Or, you know, hey, I've got this business model. If you just put the gains in, we'll take care of everything else and everybody will make money, which is cool. Like, I'm glad that people are socializing these ideas. But when it comes to just being a traditional vendor, you know, as I've looked at a million different vendor models, quantity is really what makes those models function. You hope for some big accounts, but you end up having a lot of little accounts. So if you can get your equipment, whether it's ATMs, vending machines, pinball machines, or whatever, into 100 locations or 50 locations or whatever, and each of those locations spits off 50 bucks a week, then you start to generate enough revenue to live on. And pinball machines, as we all know, are very heavy. They're hard to maintain. They're really expensive. So for me, it was about making sure I had a finite number of locations. And when you're then splitting that revenue with whoever you're with, you know, so I was at a bar. I was at a, you know, sort of an amusement center. I was at a video game store. I was at this comic book shop. All of a sudden, you're making just enough money to replace the solenoid that burnt out the week before. and it's not a whole lot of liquidity. And the other thing, too, is that people, especially if you're thinking about getting into vending or thinking about putting machines on locations, you really have to think about your relationship with the location you're going to be at because they change one variable in that room and it could change the way in which your equipment's handled, the amount of access people have to that equipment, and it changes your entire relationship with that venue. you know case in point like I left one day it was my first game on location Kevin this is what started our friendship was I had a swords of fury I left and I came back the next day and my machine had been completely shifted and moved without my notice or my permission in front of a window where it was just going to get a ton of sun bleaching and a bunch of problems and somebody had come in they had read an article about me they had claimed they know me they said oh Ryan would be fine with this and they had moved my machine to another location that would be more convenient for them. And that's an issue, you know, that's a vendor issue. Like that's a relationship issue. And those are the types of things that you deal with when you're, you know, when you're a vendor and we can go down that rabbit hole of horror stories later. But the nice, but for me, it's a matter of like, you know, I said this in another interview recently that like pinball's hard. Like we always talk about that. It's the thing that pops up all the time. Like the game is difficult. They're hard to move. They're hard to maintain, but we love them. We all have a personality quirk that like drives us toward the insanity that is pinball. So I know that pinball will always be an uncontrolled variable. I'll be able to figure out how many different things I can do from a preventative standpoint. But in the end, I never know when a plastic is going to break. I never know when a solenoid is going to fry. I never know when a switch is going to go out of alignment. I never know when the building is going to get struck by lightning and blow something up. Like we never know these variables. But as I was sort of meandering and figuring out what SkillShot was going to be, I was really excited about the event space idea because I could control 90% of the variables. I can control what clients I decide to service, who I let into the venue. I can control the spacing and the placement of my games. you know, I can control a number of different assets that I wouldn't be able to have with a traditional vendor relation. And, you know, one of the sort of perks of COVID, if I can try to, you know, put a positive spin on it, is that the commercial real estate market really started to tank. And that meant that there were a lot of options to get into different venues for a much more affordable price than you would have. You know, a place that would have cost you $4,000 a month to rent might be $1,000 or $1,500 at that point. And being able to take that risk of, you know, we need X amount to survive per month is much easier to swallow when the numbers are subdued than getting into a place and, you know, paying the high ticket price for your equipment and the high ticket price for the venue that you're renting. And then just the high risk of having pinball machines on location. So since we've had our own space, it's been great because I can control it. I'm here on a Saturday morning. We don't have a party today, so I can just kind of enjoy it. I can go around. I can fix things at my leisure as opposed to my previous ventures where you're trying to fix a game, and you've got a four-year-old poking your leg while you're trying to solder something. So this is, to me, a much more low-stress environment. Well, it's also you've got all your games in one spot now, and you don't have to drive all over the place and you know there's just the logistics of that um having to spend your time driving all over collecting coins and you know nick nick knows this well too right like um you you've got it all in one spot and i know uh nick's crew has kind of consolidated a little bit post-pandemic too so it's like you know you got to factor all that in when you're considering a location and a business model right absolutely and you also have to add the other thing you have to ask yourself is like one of the reasons like i like touching base with nick once in a while just about his venture is because Buffalo is a way bigger market than Syracuse is. You know, like in Syracuse, we, I will say this. I think the majority of our clients are people who either have never played pinball before or have not played pinball in probably 20 to 30 years. The amount of people that walk in and are like, oh, my God, they still make these things? What's your newest game? And I'm like, oh, well, Rush is over there. That just came out a few weeks ago. So, you know, people are surprised by that. Whereas, you know, I think Buffalo is a fascinating case study because you guys, like, have done so much work to build that culture into the framework of the city. So that when you're, you know, putting locations, you're putting things at new locations and you're building substantial locations, people are already sort of familiar with what this whole pinball thing is. Whereas in Syracuse, it's a lot of education. It's a lot of getting people sort of up to speed about what pinball is. And also just taking a step back, like we're immersed in this world 100% of the time. Like if we took the energy that we spend researching pinball culture and drama and mechanics and advancements in history, if we took that and we decided to invest that energy into researching the stock market, all of us would be independently wealthy. But instead we decide to, you know, like figure out who has the best pinballs that are the least magnetic. Like we solve those problems instead. Yeah. So let's talk, you know, you talked about, you know, the difference between Buffalo and Syracuse and, you know, promotion and things like that. And you and I had a pretty interesting conversation recently about getting the word out. How do you build a location as a place that people know, not only among the pinball crowd, but among your local folks who are going to support you year round? Because you can run big tournaments like the Sanctum and get people to come in for their big 24-hour tournament a couple times a year. But the people who are nearby are the ones who are really going to sustain you year-round, right? So talk to me about, you know, because that's part of your role at Skillshare, I understand, is building that community around your location and trying to get the word out. So talk to me about what you've been doing there. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, getting – I'll be honest with you. Like when I was doing Syracuse Pinheads in 2016 to 2019 or whatever it was, And it was, I found it a lot easier to get people on board and, you know, familiar with the venture. And just, you know, I guess to paint the picture a little bit more clearly, you know, I'm currently sitting in our space. I'm sitting in Skillshare. It's this, you know, when you're inside, it's a venue that has, you know, like sort of arcade-like LED lighting. And it's got 20 to 25 pinball machines in it and another, you know, five or so arcade games at any given time. um you know we have like an assortment of craft soda in our vending machine and um you know overall like a very friendly vibe um but when you stare at it from the outside we're in an industrial section of town um when you you drive by it you're we're right next to the largest uh billboard sales group in the city and there's another gigantic battery warehouse nearby and we're on the other side we're near an art like an air force base so we're in a very industrial area of town that has high traffic but isn't exactly the type of traffic that's going to just swerve off the road to go get like a cool lotto from Dunkin Donuts or something like you would find in other areas of the city. So, you know, I think one of the things that's kind of worked for and against us is that we've, you know, like the culture of this place is a little more industrial and you have to sort of be willing to enter an environment that doesn't feel like you're entering Chuck E. Cheese. We don't, you know, we have parking, but it's not like, you know, you're not going to come in and see like animated bands playing. It's just, you know, like it's not big and crazy and, I don't know, colorful from the outside. It's just sort of an industrial building. So, you know, for us, it's been interesting kind of getting the word out to go back to your question that like historically, it's been really easy for us to connect with, let's say, the lifestyle section of our local news periodicals or to get specialized Facebook groups to kind of host, you know, what we are and what we're doing and get really excited about it. And part of that, I think, is the fact that, like, now what's changed is that in our news cycles, negative news is making so much more money and collecting so much more data than sort of lifestyle news and excitable news and happy news, which may sound a little bit dramatic, but when, you know, like Syracuse.com, for example, is our sort of main news periodical. They run the Post Standard, which is our newspaper, and a lot of their writers are paid based off of the number of clicks on their articles, at least from the way I understand it, that's how that business model functions. And to do a piece about, you know, a bunch of people who are opening an arcade party space is going to get a decent amount of traffic. I mean, they did a piece on us a few weeks ago, and I think last I checked, like, 8,300 people had, like, watched a video of me ranting for two minutes, which I guess a lot of people are watching live on Twitch right now. But, you know, to put that in perspective, it's not the 40,000 or 50,000 that are interested in reading about the, you know, the Russia-Ukraine incident right now. So it's been really hard for us to kind of grasp into that news cycle. You know, it took us about six months just to get Syracuse.com to write an article about us. And as Kevin can attest, I write pretty bomb press releases. So I don't know what I was doing wrong. But, you know, we've connected with them. We send out press releases. I think the other thing that's really changed, at least for our market, is that everybody needs to make a buck. And we used to have a really prolific lifestyle newspaper called the Syracuse New Times. And since Syracuse Pinheads closed and Skillshare opened, that news periodical no longer exists. And it's been replaced with another really cool periodical called What's Hot, which is run by some people out of Cortland who are very, very nice. But they are, you know, basically an ad sales-based free news periodical. So those places where you'd have that mix of free content, which normally we would be able to be a part of, and paid content, which is what a lot of people are, you know, are picking up, is more difficult to get into because you have to have that startup capital. I think the other thing, too, and I'll, you know, kind of digress on this point, is that the thing that makes our model different is that as I look at a lot of the other really successful pinball ventures around the country and the world, you know, most of them are making money on adult-oriented entertainment. You know, you've got your either hipster food approach or you've got your craft beers or whatever, and that's where the, you know, the real money is made in those ventures, we are a party space. You know, if you want to have a party and you want us to get a liquor license for you and, you know, us to have some killer catering and for you to have a full bar, we can make that happen. But in order to keep our costs low, we don't have a liquor license all the time. And our primary clientele is families. And, you know, like one of our greatest, you know, ways to get the word out to families is through a Facebook group called Eastside Moms. in Syracuse. And despite my appearance, I'm not an Eastside mom. So like getting into those sort of venues and being able to, you know, have a bunch of people who don't have families to get into a place where families find this appealing has proven to be a little bit of a challenge as people tend to be a lot more critical about who is owning the businesses and what their intentions are. And then also just kind of being a little bit more empathetic about the way in which they make those purchases because they're going to go to their sort of trusted social media venue first before they're going to hit up the, you know, the rando Facebook ad or Instagram promotion or, you know, sort of Google ad placement. Yeah, that word of mouth is so critical. So what do you, so we talked about, you know, your local, you know, Eastside Moms and things like that. Do you plan to do IFEA tournaments, competitive play? Because I think, you know, our audience excuse that way so they'd be interested in stuff like that or are you strictly focused on casual at this point and maybe do that in the future no i i guess in the spirit of the spirit of being open and honest um it's really hard to make money at competitive pinball um especially when we have a culture that feels as though the venue um should be making money in alternative means. And just, you know, like when I sit there and I look at, you know, some of our greatest involved ventures, I mean, Pinberg was this like life altering competitive experience with a thousand people, 1000 people were involved in that venture and they still couldn't make it cash positive. So if you're doing a tournament, you know, at your local pizza shop or whatever with 15 people, like maybe 30 bucks makes it through that, those machines, but 30 bucks doesn't buy a, you know, a brand new Godzilla for $7,200 or, you know, whatever the price tag is on that. And I'm just starting with that perspective because one of the things that I've really thought about is, like, how do we make sure that the competitive player is satisfied when they come to our venue? So as of right now, I think we've done three sanctioned IFPA events, and my business partners own the largest vending firm in Syracuse. It's called United Vending Service. They're awesome. You should check them out. They're at all the colonial laundromats around the area. They're at WonderWorks and Destiny USA. And they have about 150 locations spanning about an 80-mile radius, which is pretty impressive. But one of the things that they've really put a focus on, whereas a lot of other vendors have not, is they buy every single new in-box stern machine. Typically, you know, the pro of whatever the model is, but it means that we always have in Syracuse a rotation of whatever the newest equipment is. So right here I'm sitting next to Rush. If you head down the road a few minutes, there's a place called Trapper's Pizza Pub, which has Mandalorian and Godzilla at it. And you can literally just go across their entire pinball map, which they have on their website, and pretty much play every new Stern machine that's been produced, including Beatles and Batman and Elvira, between now and about 2012 when they started kind of reinvesting. So, you know, in regards to the IFPA thing, rather than just kind of doing a whole lot of tournaments and just, you know, trying to make it really Whopper-centric and getting people, you know, getting small groups of people excited about tournaments, what we've done is every time a new and boxed Stern comes out, we do a tournament that so far has not been sanctioned by Stern, But we tend to do a tournament that shows off that machine that is typically a match play tournament with sort of a limited entry. Last time we cut it off at 36 participants. But the thing that makes our tournaments different, and the part that I get really excited about it, is that there's some logistical stuff at tournaments that a lot of people don't really think about. It's just kind of the aspect of going to a tournament. Like I remember playing at Nick's house for the Buffalo Pinball Open, and being really excited that I made finals, but also being concerned that I hadn't brought enough cliff bars. So, you know, when it comes to, like, food and access to bathrooms and, you know, breaks and things like that, that's something we're really tuned into. So when we do our tournaments, when you pay your entry fee of $30 or whatever it is, that includes whatever is going to be available for prizes for our top four or eight or whatever we decide. It also includes breakfast for everybody. Like, we always want to make sure that people don't have to plan those logistics. Like, come here. We're going to give you, you know, bagels and cream cheese or whatever it is. And then we're also going to have, you know, I guess it would be a late breakfast, early brunch, and then kind of a dinner for people at the end of the tournament. So we can all just sort of, like, end it on a high note and eat some food and spend some time together. Because in the long term, like, as much as it's really exciting to, like, refresh your IFPA page and see if you made the top 1,000 or whatever it is, like, we come back to these things because we actually like spending time with the people who are there. Like some of my favorite moments at tournaments are, you know, while somebody else is playing and I'm learning about the person I'm standing next to. And we want to sort of cultivate that culture in tournaments. But that type of logistics takes a lot of time. So we're at a point where we do about, I think, we're probably going to average about four tournaments a year that are all going to be sort of, I don't know, a limited number of people, typically match play. We'll probably do a ticket tournament at some point. And I think we have a pretty big event coming up in October that we'll probably talk about later once that comes to fruition. Awesome. Yeah. Well, I think we've learned a lot. Nick, do you have any thoughts or feedback on this? I know you can relate to the Stern not sanctioning your events. Or, like, you know, tournaments with folks that, you know, the tournament culture, like, expecting 100% of the entries to go back to the players. And, you know, we've talked about some of this stuff on the shows before, But it's just making money in pinball is such a challenge, right? No, I appreciate that, Ryan. You're here to give your perspective because you've been in the space. You've tried a number of different things. You're able to – you have credibility, right, because you've done it. You've experimented. You're somebody who's passionate about it. And you're like, look, here's the economics of pinball, which we had that other episode a couple months ago. And I think when people tell me things who are in this industry, like your games are expensive, why are they a dollar? My first thought is fuck you, don't play them. And at this point, I've been in this pinball for 10 years and Ron you're saying imagine if you spend that time on finance I dedicated 10 years of my life I literally done everything I possibly can in this space and it gets very frustrating because there a lot of this is my favorite hobby There so much emotion around it which has driven me and I sure Kevin can relate and you can relate through a lot of bullshit because we love this and we want to get it out there for people to play. Pinball is a piece of Americana. There's something special about it, and we want to do everything we can to kind of carry the torch for it. So what I'm trying to get at is that I'm really glad you came on because instead of telling people to go fuck themselves, I'm just going to say, you know what, go listen to this episode. And then at the end you can hear me say go fuck yourself when you give me shit about what I should be doing or charging for a pinball machine. Thank you. There you go. Thanks, Nick. We did have a question in chat for Ryan. Pink Ninja Man wanted to know if you talked about the difference between having JGPs versus sterns on location. Yeah, Ryan, I don't think you operate JGPs. Correct me if I'm wrong there, though. Yeah, I don't currently. I guess what I'll say is this, is that, like, I think a lot of people get – well, first of all, thanks for the question. I appreciate that. And, Nick, I'll come back to your comment in a second. But I think one thing that a lot of people don't consider when it comes to starting locations, and I guess, you know, if I'm going to be the specialist of the day or whatever, which I'm really happy there's two vendors in this conversation because that almost never happens. But one of the things that a lot of people get really excited about is variety of equipment. You know, like, oh, come to my, you know, come to my shop and I have, you know, I've got Gottlieb Electromechanicals and I've got some, you know, System 4 Williams games and I've got some Data East DMD games and I've got some Bailey Williams games and I've got a, you know, my brand new Jersey Jack game and I've got these different sterns. That's awesome and that's well and good, but when it comes to being an actual pinball mechanic, most people tend to specialize. There's very few people who are going to be able to go through and repair all of these different areas of equipment to the same level. I'll be up front and say that there's times when I'm kind of faking it until I make it and then figuring those things out. So to get back to the original question, with another sidestep, As I've thought about what equipment to put here, I've been very adamant about making sure that I do series of things. So, like, right now I've got some old Williams solid states. I've got some old Gottlieb System 1 solid states. I've got some Williams System 11s, and I've got some Bailey Williams. And that's sort of the range of my equipment. Actually, I have some new sterns as well. But those are the systems that I feel really comfortable with, and I know what I can do. and when a problem comes up, I can fix it relatively quickly if it goes down for a customer on a free play night or during a tournament. When it comes to the idea of, you know, how do Jersey Jack machines do and how do Stern machines do, having talked with other vendors, the theme that I've heard is it's really location dependent, and that when you are at any sort of location, you know, like you can take the same game and put it one place, and it'll make nothing, and then put it in another location, and it'll make a killing. Like here, I realize these games aren't on coin drop, so it's kind of hard to determine, but I can tell you that like, you know, Dirty Harry, for example, is a game that people consider sort of like a B-level Williams game. And Gottlieb Totem is a game that I know they have one in Middletown at a location there. And it's a game that I only ever hear people talk crap about. But that Totem game is a game that I see a lot of first-time pinball players gravitate to all the time. And for people who have been playing for a long time, for the past two months, Dirty Harry is one of our highest-played games. And they're not games that you would sort of normally expect. So it's really hard to sort of determine who's going to win over what. I had, in regards to the Jersey Jack thing, I haven't made those investments because it hasn't, for my location, The idea of having the latest and greatest and most expensive doesn't actually equate to more people coming through to play in my venue. Like, I could have this entire place, like, filled with B-level games that all people on Pinside hate, and we'd probably do the same amount of business. Eventually, I think we'll get into the JJP market at some point, especially if the next game is Toy Story. But it's going to be years coming down the path. So for us, it's just been a matter of my vendor uses Stern machines. We have invested in some American pinball equipment just to sort of see how it goes because the price points are similar. And for me, it's about making sure that the equipment that we have is going to be easily maintained. Awesome. So I've learned a lot. I think the chat room has learned a lot. We've got some giveaways that you've kindly offered up. Do you have them there? You can show the folks who are watching. Ryan, I think he's going to come back to my comment. I want to hear what Ryan has to say really quickly. In 30 seconds. Before you get to that, hashtag win in chat to get in to win what Ryan has here, and then we'll pull it after he talks about Nick's comment. Yeah, no, I just want to say that, like, I think, Nick, everything you said is 100% true, and I think the tact with which you use, you and I have different approaches. That's a good thing. But the thing that I guess I just want to state is that, like, you know, as I mentioned earlier, like, as we talk about pinball and pinball culture, like the vendor is oftentimes like the last person anybody considers. But without the vendors, we wouldn't have this hobby. It would not exist. Nobody would be here if people weren't buying pinball machines in 2005 and 2008 and 2010. It just wouldn't exist. Gary Stern owes his entirety of his existence to people who were willing to take a risk on him and his equipment when we had our sort of different financial collapse. And if there's one thing I can kind of wish for the pinball community at large, I realize that pinball is hard. I realize it's taking your money. I realize that the clear coat might not be right. I realize that, you know, you get pissed off when your quarters have been taken by, you know, whatever your game. Or to Nick's point, when you show up and you go to play a new game and, oh, my God, this game was 75 cents last week. Now it's a dollar. This person is so greedy. Most vendors who are putting out pinball machines are operating at a loss on that equipment. Most vendors who are making money in vending are not making anything on pinball. People will disagree with that. I know Jack Bar in New York does quite well on his pinball machines. I know that Till out in Minnesota does quite well. But those are the rarity. Most people are using pinball machines to get other more liquid equipment into those venues. So be nice to your vendors. Be patient with your vendors. Understand that they're 90% time doing their best, and there are vendors who don't care about their equipment. Don't support them. You don't have to. But realize that if you take a deep breath and you look at the amount of stress and anxiety and money that these people are putting out there so you can play a game for 45 seconds, it's pretty substantial. All right. Well, I appreciate that. Thanks, Ryan. Go ahead and show off what we're going to give away here. Sure. So we've got some skill shot buttons, super exciting. So you can't really see this too great, but it says skill shot pinball arcade and event space. And the more important one, which is on Wednesdays we play pinball. For anybody who wins this who's local or knows anybody in the Syracuse area, we'll give you two free passes to come to ScaleShot on any Wednesday or any other special event that we do. I think in the summer we're going to do a couple one-offs. And then for Syracuse Pinhead swag, you'll get a drink koozie, so Syracuse Pinheads, and, of course, everybody's favorite, if you're not tilting, you're not trying. And then I'm going to throw in a few other little goodies as well. Continental U.S. only, please. Yes, because international shipping is insanity right now, and, you know, it costs Ryan an arm and a leg. It would be like, you know, 50 games of pinball to ship you a beer koozie and some pins. Absolutely. We could probably buy a better game at that price point. Yeah. Let's go ahead and pick a winner. And it is DOS Reboot. We'll go ahead and announce that in the chat. Congratulations, DOS Reboot. I will connect the two of you up after the show, and we can get you hooked up with all the goodies from SkillShot Arcade. So, Ryan, thanks so much for joining us. I hope you had a good time. And we'll see. I could talk to Ryan forever. He's an amazing dude. Definitely go out. Check out SkillShot Arcade in Syracuse, New York, if you're passing by. Where can folks learn more about you and the location? Absolutely. So we're SkillShot Arcade on Facebook. You can find us at skillshotarcade.com on the internets. I believe we're SkillShot SYR. It might be SkillShot Arcade SYR on Instagram. And if you're interested in reaching out to me more directly, I do Syracuse Pinheads. You can find Syracuse Pinheads on Facebook or at Syracuse Pinheads on the Instagram. And Nick, Kevin, I really just want to end this by saying I truly don't think that pinball culture would be where it is without the work that you guys do. And as you were going over your sponsorships, I was sitting there. I'm a schoolteacher, and I have an X-Men LE in my classroom. And as you're going over pin stadiums, Comets, Titans, all those things, I'm like, oh, my God. Like, these are all the products that, like, I save up for and I want to show off and I talk to my students about. And if the people who are willing to invest in you isn't a sure enough sign of the work that you're doing, I just think that, you know, people should once again take a step back and realize how much Buffalo Pinball is really helping to build up the culture. Well, I appreciate that, man. Kind words, as always. Thank you. I do have – we have to pull another winner because the last reboot is Canadian. So everybody else gets another chance here. So let's go ahead and draw somebody. It's BorgDog. I'm pretty sure he's in the U.S. Congrats, BorgDog. You are the big winner. Do me a favor. Connect me with DOS Reboot anyway. We'll find a way to make sure that they are well represented. Awesome. Well, I'll hook you up with both of them then. Thank you. Thanks, Ryan. Have a good day. Enjoy the rest of your Saturday, and we'll talk to you again soon. All right. Thanks for having me, guys. All right, man. Take it easy. All right. Nick, you ready to do some pinball news? I think so. All right, let's get our official intro here. Here's the tip. It's the latest pinball news. Show hunt. It's on fire. All right. So we got some stuff to go over. It's been a while. We haven't done a podcast in over a month. So let's start off with, let's go over here. So I've got some exclusive updates on Weird Al's Museum of Natural Hilarity. I got some info from Jerry at Multimorphic. He says they're scaling up. They're slowly scaling up. A post that he shared earlier in the P3 Discord said, we're good on parts for a while, still looking for more people to help turn them into games and machines faster. So far we've had better luck with friends of friends than random hires. Who knows? People near Round Rock, Texas, looking for assembly work. So I think like a lot of businesses right now, they're just finding people to do the work is the problem. They have the parts. They're starting to put them together, but they're coming together slowly. In this update that he sent me, he says, we're ramping up slowly, but we're ramping up. We're in a good place with parts right now, as we've discussed before, and we're looking for more good people to help with assembly. It seems like every storefront in the city has a Help Wanted sign up. Weird Al has been to multiple shows recently. TTPF Pin Brew Pin Fest end this weekend at GSPF Golden State Pinball Festival. So they had two P3s there. It's going to Pintastic as well. So if you're heading to Pintastic, you can play the P3 there. We're working through the rest of the software updates to make all the apps compatible with the Flipper Update Kit and motorized wall scoop assembly. Half are out, and the remaining will be out soon. Updated dev kit will follow. So he sent me a couple pictures of the assembly. in progress with those years, a couple of playfields getting put together. I got to click over here. There we go. I don't understand. Why doesn't Jerry just do what Stern does and send a half-fucking-working machine out to his customers and say, you fix it, you assemble it? That's what I'm meant to do when I get my Rush Premium is fucking take the goddamn thing apart and, like, put in protectors and change the goddamn scoop protector and move the baby posts. I'm, like, I'm looking at hours of work. I take that back. Matt Taylor is probably looking at hours of work, which I compensated for. But it's fucked up. It's good to have friends, you know. I was like, when we get this game, don't plan on playing it for quite some time. So are they not shipping with the new Scoop Protector in place, or are you putting a different one on? I don't want that Scoop Protector. Literally, the game was not designed that way. It literally blocks a piece of the shots, and also the ball is hitting the side of this exposed metal repeatedly. Those balls are going to get messed up. So, yeah, it looks terrible. It changes the game for the way it was designed. Based on the forums, it looks like Ninja makes some protectors that are generally holding up. I guess they had a problem with some of them, but they figured it out. So I've got my order in, and I was talking to Patrick, a friend of the show, Patrick. We just streamed his Halloween last week, and, you know, he was saying that things are a pain in the ass to swap it out. Like, you're looking at, like, an hour, you know, if you know what you're doing. So that's fun. Wow. Yeah, and then he's like, by the way, order all these other things from Ninja. Like, let's fix this shot where you get rejects. Let's fix the turn where, you know, it's just like you look at that and you get the game playing how it should be. And, again, like even just like moving the post so it's not a baby game, it's no joke. We're looking at a minimum of two hours of work on that game just to kind of get it playing, I would say, how it should play. yeah I played I played James' Rush with that upgraded protector on it and it's good that's what the game should have on it you know oh the ninja one? yeah for sure it's a shame that there's so much I don't know what the hell happened with their scoop protectors but oh my god it's amazing that the solution was some third party guy who 3D printed like scoop which I think is 3D printed and that's the solution like alright like great. I'm glad we have one, but it's just crazy. It is crazy. Yeah, so a couple more pictures of Weird Al. So these are the ones he sent me. So we've got P3s being assembled, because folks have ordered entire P3s in addition to the Weird Al playfield. And then cabinets being assembled. And then these are some pictures that he shared on Pinside. Those are P3 playfields. on the rack, camera PCBs for the UHF camera in Weird Al. So they're putting all those assemblies together. Look how easy pinball is, everybody. Everybody should do this. Look how easy this is. There's no overhead involved, no labor, you know. Man, I don't know why. We should start our own pinball business, Nick. Ryan was talking about, see, Ryan's smart. And, you know, the way he articulates things is like, you know, controlling all the variables, right? And, like, the amount of variables that are involved in creating a pinball machine is ridiculous. Just based on the amount of parts and the different distributors and then assembling it, like, it's insane. So God bless. God bless people who do it. You know, Jerry's a smart guy, so he knows what he's into. But these other yahoos, I love it. I love it. Yeah, they're doing it right, and they understand the challenges of putting all this together. You know, I spent a weekend with Jerry. You know, he hosted me in his house. We talked a lot. They know what to expect when they're scaling this up. It's just, you know, the market is so insane right now. You know, so they planned ahead and they had parts on the way ready to, you know, to get delivered so they could put all these machines together after the announcement. And now it's like the market for labor is so crazy trying to find people to put these together. and I think JJP ran into that and that's why it takes so long to get so many GNRs put out and I'm sure CERN is having similar issues it's not an easy business, you've got to design the machine put all the investment up front to design these machines then you have to write all the software make sure it's bug free assemble them in a way that is going to be reliable and then launch it, do all the marketing build all these machines after you get the orders in. Hopefully your customers don't get mad that you're taking too long. You know, it's... Very small margins. People aren't making a lot of money. No. And it also helps if you're not a criminal. That's a plus. Also that, we have some criminals to talk about later in the show. Alright. So there's your Weird Al update. On the JJP front, if we go over here, they are scaling down the end of the GNR production finally coming to an end. They said manufacturing of Guns N' Roses is not in its lifetime. Pinball is winding down for now. Don't wait for an encore order of your game today. Available for immediate shipping. So if you want a GNR go ahead and get one. But they've also wait where is it? Here it is. They're also putting some teasers out there too. This is a picture of some coils that are kind of like artistically shot to look like some flowers growing. and so spring is considered to be the season of new beginnings. Let's make this a season to remember. So everybody's speculating that it's Toy Story and, you know, we've got this over this. These are like the slinky dog slings, you know, it's like, but we don't have anything concrete yet, but it's, I think it's just like about time. We're ready for a new JJP game. It's been almost two years. Bring it on. I'm ready. On the American pinball front, um they're hiring and firing uh first i have to show you this because look at this so this is an announcement of Ryan McQuaid Ryan McQuaid homebrew developer of the sonic spinball uh pinball machine uh joining american pinball as their latest uh hire uh my favorite part of this announcement is that it has the fix in the photo and he doesn't need to be in that photo you realize like you look at the headline and he found a way to like he's like can you just put me in that photo, but it's about Ryan McQuaid. I don't care. I'm Dave Fix. Put me in there. I sell machines. Let's do it. Let Ryan have his moment. If you hired this guy, great. This is Ryan's moment. Dude, he's like Costanza on the beach from Seinfeld episode. Like a family photo. There's Ryan. I hired him as their newest pinball designer. There's Sonic Spinball, which has been out to multiple shows. I think it was most recently at Midwest Gaming Classic. Correct me if I'm wrong. But Americans have been doing a lot of hiring. They haven't been doing a lot of selling of pinball machines, it seems like. You know, they've got – It's okay, Kevin. You just hired a bunch of people. How many designers do they have now? They've got Nordman. They have Ryan. I mean, that Sonic game, I remember seeing him post a lot on Facebook. I mean, he looks like a talented dude. Like, that looks awesome. So I'm happy for him. The right-up pinball guys. What do you think of their strategy of bringing homebrew developers and bringing their games to market? I don't think they're going to bring Sonic's pinball to market. And they're doing that American Dream thing where homebrew developers can put a game together, and if they're selected by the hand of Dave Fix, their game will get put into production. What do you think of that strategy? I mean, it's interesting. Look at me. It worked for Stern. Like, they're arguably their best-selling designer right now. I don't even think it's arguably. It's Keith Elwin, and he had his homebrew game that he was working on for three years, and they looked at it, and they're like, yep, let's turn this into a game. So I could see that working. You know, it's just they've got to do the polish. Like with Valhalla, I think they're, you know, when I talk to James and I haven't played the game, you know, James couldn't wait to get rid of that game, right? Like he hates it. He brings it up even when I'm not even talking about it. And I think it's just like I think it suffers from not like the play field design, if I'm understanding James correctly. It just like the presentation is terrible, right? Like so, okay, you can't just run with it as is. You've got to give it that like we're a serious pinball company polish. yeah the you know elwyn i'm sure archer was great but he also had the benefit of having the stern team behind him and the decades of experience with folks like uh you know george gomez and everybody there all the software teams you know they have the resources to turn these into awesome games where you know smaller startups like american pinball their their bench is not as deep as therns right so you know they have to put all of their effort into whatever current game is happening. And then I think this happens with Spooky too. Everything goes into whatever they're working on. And then it's like, okay, we're done building those. We got to focus on whatever's next. And then the previous game gets forgotten. So I don't think, I don't have the confidence that you're going to have the follow-up in software updates in these smaller companies because they just don't have the resources to dedicate to these past games. Well, my thing is like, you've got a company like American Pinball and, And, yeah, I believe that they could put out a game that's not bad, but you can't – in the market, you can't put out a game, it's not a bad game, it's all right, when you're competing against Stern, who is just absolutely crushing it. And, like, I'm surprised people buy these games when there is superior games in terms of quality and build quality at Stern or even JJP. So I don't know how they make it in the market other than ensuring that they get, the right theme that people will buy no matter what, which is Spooky's game that they play. Spooky can put out crap games, in my opinion, but if they get the theme, people will buy it without even seeing or playing it. Even when a game is disappointing and bad, Spooky, when they announce the next one, if it's a good theme, they're going to be fine as a business. I don't know, man. I don't know. I think there's something to be said for the smaller companies taking more risks Right. With something like an alien or Legends of Valhalla, like different interesting layouts. I mean, even Halloween has a very unusual layout. Something that stuff that Stern would never do. Right. So if you're looking for something outside of the usual Stern, thankfully, they have Elwynn, who I think is pushing them to do a little more unique layouts and different things. Because for a while there, every for me, everything, all the Sterns started feeling very samey. It's like, oh, here's two ramps, two orbits, Bastroy up the middle probably, and five modes and a couple multiballs in here calling it good. Now we're seeing a little more creativity, and the competition is pushing that too. So I think that it's good from that perspective, but I think that's why folks buy homebrew games because they want something a little different and interesting. Like you said, if it has a theme that they love. Say Weird Al, for example. I don't know if Stern would do Weird Al because I don't think it would hit the numbers they wanted. But for Multimorphic, it's perfect, right, because it's going to build their install base but not overwhelm them with orders probably to the point where they can't handle it. So it's like finding those teams that fit with the audience that you have. So I think that's why folks get into these smaller boutique companies. We really messed up. I don't know how – I blame myself, but when you were talking about what game we're going to review, why are we not reviewing Halloween? Dude, I don't want to hear it from the spooky pinball people, man. The game's a five on a good day. Let's give it a little more time because what will happen – I want all three of those spooky pinball people. Come at me, bro. Yeah. Everybody will say, well, the code's not done. You've got to wait until the code's finished. So we'll give it some time. Every release that Spooky has, they lose fans. Yeah. We'll let it cook for a little bit longer, and then we'll review it. But, excuse me, one sec. Back to American Pinball. Over here. Oh, they lost their top programmer. Josh Coogler is not with American Pinball anymore. they are I don't know what they're going to do so if they hire more designers they lose more software developers they need some software folks I think they're running low over there so they got the good with the bad when it comes to hires and fires here's a good one this is speaking of bad Nick have you seen these videos from Deep Root I'm gonna guess that you did not. No. Okay. Well this we're all gonna enjoy this together. So here we go Pulling out their playfield during their in cabinet playfield rotisserie if you can spin around The video's not showing up. It's not showing. That's my end, and as the chat is saying, so. What? Oh, you missed it. Did we? Yeah. Let me try that again. Maybe if I play it in line. Nope, that's not playing. Oh, my God. I'm so disappointed. Why is that? Hmm. Well, there goes my whole, there goes the whole reveal. Actually, if I do this. Let me, bear with me. Oh, it's too soon. We'll put it in here. Okay. All right. Let's see if this works. There we go. I don't know why you didn't have the Bum, bum, bum. Diddly, diddly, diddly, diddly, diddly, diddly. A little Kirby Enthusiasm thing at the end. That's totally what that is. Uh-huh. So there you go. There's Robert. If you're listening along at home, that was him pulling out the play field. They're showing off one of their many innovations where you could, like, pivot the play field on a rotisserie that, like, pulled out of the machine. And so he pulls it out, and it's pretty wobbly and janky, and then they go to put it back in, and it just will not go back in the machine. And in the meantime, there's a guy in the back with his arms up like, like, victory, like, he told, Robert told him, like, I want you to stand back here and, like, get really enthusiastic, put your arms up in the air, and he just kept doing it while this playfield was not going into the cabinet. It's just, it's so indicative of all of the failures of this company. It's ridiculous. But this comes to us from Nap Arcade. Let's see if we can, if I can, it's not letting me scroll down anymore. There we go. There's some good comments. They said, Nuovat says, how would it spin with the electronics connected? And the response is, Gordon nailed it one thing at a time, one thing at a time. Wildcat's got 337 little old ladies pensions went into designing that. What a fucking shit show. So true. So true. I have such, the more I hear about it deeper, the less I want to talk about it. And like, the more hatred. It's so bad. It's so sad. It's so bad. It's so bad. All right. So we can go back to, that was the main video I wanted to show you. There's some other pictures and stuff. That is, there's a play field. RGB LED. That's not, this is not updating. Bam. Why is this not... Come on, Firefox, you can do it. There? Okay. Is that working now? There we go. Okay. Is that going to work? He threw his curse at me. I love this. This is good because the listeners, which is most people, what is going on on screen? They're just showing a Playfield prototype. My favorite part of this is the plunge that doesn't go all the way around most of the time. That's pretty good. There's some RGBs. Oh, my God. RGB lights. Very exciting. Very exciting. Machinery Doing machinery stuff This all strikes me as Them putting together footage To try to get more investment Like showing off Like oh look at all this work we're doing Look at all these innovations we have We have all these machines that are doing cool stuff Like B&B routing and stuff You know this is probably the only time These machines were ever used just random parts. So, there you go. If you want to see a big pile of junk, you can check that out at NAP Arcade. But the video, if you didn't see it live, or you're not watching this on YouTube, you've got to see the video of him trying to put that play field back in the machine. It's a winner. Alright, so, speaking of startups and Kickstarters and things like that. This story dropped on April 18th. Dragon's Lair Pinball production to start in 2023. So this is a homebrew machine based on the Dragon's Lair video game from the 80s. And it's a cool looking game. The art looks really awesome and the layout is cool and I like the theme. I'm a fan of the old arcade game, so I was like, oh cool. I like this. I don't like that they're talking Kickstarter though. because they were talking about they had a poll on their Facebook group asking if people would back a Kickstarter for this machine. So there was a thread on Pinsight about it, to which I asked, do we even know if they actually had the license to use this theme, or will this be Predator all over again? So if you remember Predator, Skit B claimed to have the license for Predator from Fox. Turns out they didn't. They were building machines, and they got a cease and desist. So, Treybo69 from Pinside decided to cut right to the chase, and he emailed them. And they said, nope, they don't have it. And then, you know, two days later, Dragon's Lair Pinball Project has been paused due to lack of license. So, the group got – there's a post from a lawyer on the Dragon's Lair Pinball Group. This is not a licensed project. As counsel for Dragon Lair LLC the parties are instructed to cease and desist any use of the images content or other aspects of the Dragon Lair games and not mention of affiliation or license as these do not exist So ah busted Someone got busted Busted They couldn even get their scam off the ground It's a shame, too, because, like, if you want to make a homebrew game for yourself, make it. Right? And then if you want to, so they're doing it in a better order than Balarama, right? Like, he's made a machine. Here's a machine. if you want to bring it to production you've put all this work in, why wouldn't you secure the license before you started talking about Kickstarters and taking people's money? Dude, everybody has done it better than Ballarama. That's the lowest bar in pinball history. Look at Iron Galactus07 had a good question in chat. The question, has there ever been a successful Kickstarter for pinball? The answer is, no. There has not. Because it's an ill-conceived idea. It doesn't work. Yeah, you would need so much money for my Kickstarter to get a pinball company off the ground that it would never work. The only pinball-related Kickstarters I can think that did work were the ones for Fireside Studios getting the licenses to Pinball Arcade. But that's a whole different ballgame. They were an established company. They were already making these digital recreations of the games. And they just needed to run a pinball. It's not real pinball. It's a whole different story. It's a software. It's a whole different market. You're making video games, not pinball machines. But that's the apples to the fucking bowling balls. Right. Yeah. So two different, but that's the only pinball-related one that I can think of that actually did work. So you go, sorry, Dragon's Lair. Get the license and bring that game out, and then, you know, maybe we'll see. The other thing is, okay, you get the license, you get the Kickstarter money, who's building these games? it's so like we saw with the multi-morphic stuff earlier like you gotta buy all these parts and you have to put all this money in to build your inventory then you have to hire people to assemble them and then ship them out and customer support on the other side software updates it's not easy Kickstarter's not gonna get you there we're gonna change this podcast to pinballs hard because it's the same shit every it's like groundhog days these dummies trying to do stuff and not working and it's like it never ends it's never going to end kevin you realize this there's always going to be somebody who's like i got it i got i'm new i'm new and i got it i got i'm gonna do it that's it yeah and speaking of uh it's time it's the ballerama pinball feature list are you ready dude i didn't even do that on purpose all right so this was march 22nd uh hi long-awaiting pinball fans, at last the feature list is here for our game. Sure, it's not the game itself yet, but hopefully there will be enough you see interesting to keep us in mind for when we launch. That is what they wrote. Sorry. Hopefully you'll also see there's enough we're working on to understand it doesn't happen overnight. Get alongside us and ask questions, commenting on our socials, joining and commenting on our Facebook discussion group, or requesting a chat on our website calendar. Be part of the rest of our development journey, but above all, enjoy pinball. All right, are you ready for the feature list? No. Here we go. The feature list is here. Collectors edition specs. So they've got, like, the cabinet size. Who cares? 15.6-inch LCD backbox. That's, like, Stern size, I think, because J.J.P.'s, like, 27-inch. Back light art size, 20 by 20. Like, who cares how big your translate is? Who cares? RGB LED play field lighting strips. Cool. Everybody does that. RGB LEDs on all playfield inserts. It's got a headphone jack with volume control, 2.1 stereo sound. It's got black body armor. Oh, my God, this is amazing. Premium-coated 3M scratch-resistant playfield. Wow. Reflection-limited. So it's got Invisi-Glass. It has high-detail cabinet art. And four players. Four people can play the spinball machine. Four people. Oh, my God, such innovation. That's the LE. That's the collector's edition. Special features. Limited to 300 machines only. Number plaque in order of sign-ups. Get in early if you want that low number. Or choose the number if still available. Every buyer's name included on all machines. Most of the buyers prefer their name left off the list. Animated topper. Oh, my God. Variable backlight art. So it's got RGB lights behind their backlight, their translate. Four attack fighters, lit and semi-animated. Okay, whatever that is. Animatronic spaceship ball lock. Plunger with three skill shot choices. Oh, my God. Five spinners. Six flippers. Six flippers. Five spinners. Five. This is like, let's put more stuff on this machine, and that'll make it better. Twelve targets. One three bank two-level flipper targets. A pinball first. let's say let's parse that out it's a three bank two level flipper target so is it a uh is it like a drop target that is on there's drop targets on two levels and if you hit one they both go down i don't know i don't know one inverted drop back flip target okay two level bumper assemblies pinball first um two kickers up kickers sub training transfer Subway, up posts, magna grab, extension, upper playfield, two inner playfield scoops, six ball multiball, three released simultaneously on each playfield. That's a pinball first, ladies and gentlemen. Twelve pinballs, six balls installed, and six spares provided. Wow, thanks. Oh, we got fine print. You ready to read the fine print? It says, okay, now we would be silly not to include the clause that specification is subject to change at manual for your discretion. So here it is. But we will not lessen the complexity and challenge of what we provide. Only the combination of items. None of the pinball firsts would ever be omitted. If that doesn't stoke your confidence, I don't know what will. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, automatic fault finding and reporting, online and local, pinball first. Is it though? I think pretty sure Stern Connected Insider is going to do that. Inbuilt solenoid protection, total LED color balance control, online game updates, online control of your machine settings, online high scores in tournaments, or a system that gives you all the real advances. Oh my god. Like, think of it just like the online stuff. You have to have servers and maintain all that. No small company is going to be able to do all this. Alright. Some food for thought. One of the multiball challenges included how long can you keep three balls in both playfields? Tick, tick, tick. We can see what you're thinking, but during multiball flippers have only limited hold on time stay with us and be part of the remainder of our journey as we finish developing these new challenges oh yes and a name and sample bag box art is coming soon cannot wait ballorama everybody how hype are you make so hype he has nothing to say i really don't at this point like i just this is i see my life i'm just you know a little Hello, Doctor, it's my old friend moment as I just think about wasting a breath on this nonsense. This is stupid. So dumb. All right. Anyways, we'll wait for the pictures. It's just, you know, why am I watching a movie where I know how it ends? They had a website problem, too. They had a glitch. They weren't able to add people to their wait list. So they have 95 people on their wait list, but the website is having a problem, so they don't know why. But they're going to build in, you know. Bluetooth, the internet connectivity. Okay, yeah. But they're going to have online leaderboards and head-to-head play and all sorts of stuff like that. So there you go. Ballorama. Thank you, Ballorama. We love you very much. Please don't rip everybody off. All right. Let's give some first impressions of pinball machines. First impressions, big, bold letters. We're talking about games we played. First impressions, not a review. Okay. So I'll start off with Weird Al. I was still one of few who have gotten a chance to play it, unless you were able to see it at a show. Super impressed with this game, so I flew down to Texas to do the stream. When we got there, we went to the Multimorphic building, and I just got to play this game for myself. And I played it for an hour, hour and a half, and I was lost in the game. It was so good. Had me press on start again, trying to discover everything, figure it out. The guys were like, do you want us to tell you what to do? I said, no, I want to explore and experiment and figure it out for myself. And I just had a blast, man. It's packed. That upper play field has a ton of stuff in it. So it's a cool mix of, like, the digital play field and tons of interactive mechs. So it's got the UHF ball lock on there where you can lock balls in the camera. It's got the Harvey hamster wheel where you can lock balls in there, and they spin around, and it shoots out of there. There's the upper play field where you can do the baloney sandwich building, which is super fun. That's also where you shoot the UHF ball lock. I'm trying to think what else. All the ramps. The ramps do really cool stuff. So the right ramp, if you shoot it up there, there's a magnet on there that can either accelerate the ball off the ramp, kind of like Cosmic Car Racing does on the right ramp, or it can drop it back down the wire form. I like that it's got a cross-playfield wire form too that it gives you kind of some more stuff down low on the play field. And the art's really cool. The modes are fun. The modes make good use of the screen. Like there's one that I'm thinking of germs that's kind of like rocks where you have to like hit the weird L germs and then the walls go down and then you have a multiball frenzy after that. the uh i don't know man it's just super fun i i cannot wait to get this game i'm super super stoked um we're down i can't say enough good things about it and i uh the folks down there i can't say enough good things about uh the fine folks at multimorphic uh um they're gracious hosts and great to have me down there and uh it was really cool to see you behind the scenes so to see all the uh the the um the play field they were building and all the inventory they had and and then they posted like the week after the the stream that it uh you know they had even more parts coming in these massive bins so they're set with parts they just got to get uh machine to put these things together or uh staff to put these things together so uh they're coming together so hopefully i'll have mine soon and we can do some more streams but in the meantime you can check out the archive of the stream on our youtube channel uh buffalo pinball on youtube and check that out alright we've played some other games we played Halloween we can give some thoughts on that you wanted to review it but we can at least give our impressions right so you I was surprised by how positive you were about the game it seemed like you were having a good time with it I don't know how you got that impression well you said it shot great you know did I say great you said it was the best shooting spooky game I think Kevin, that's not saying anything. That's literally like... There's a difference between saying it's the best shooting spooky game and it shoots great. Maybe I was drinking a little bit, so I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so I've heard nothing but bad things about this game. Like people canceling their orders and sacrificing like $500 deposits just to get out of it. And then like with the current economics of pinball, it's like every game is like going up. and selling for more than you can get even while it's still in production, except for Halloween. And so my buy was really low on playing it, and I expected the game to be like a clunky mess, and it wasn't. I thought it shot pretty good. Excuse me. So, you know, the play field layout was fine. Like I think it might be their best shooting game. Again, that's not saying much. where it falls apart is just like there's quality control issues it broke during the stream of course it did the presentation on the game is absolutely terrible like the audio is absolutely terrible absolutely terrible in my book like the narration like the sound you can hear like the call outs and stuff like you hear the guy puffing into the mic kind of deal like it's just super amateurish. The video's super amateurish. It's just like a hodgepodge of clips from the movie. You start seeing the same thing over versus also animation that would be terrible for a mobile game. And then the rules were just kind of like zero for me in terms of rules. Yeah, it's just not... It's just, again, why buy this game when you can buy Godzilla or they just re-ran Deadpool or Mandalorian or Rush or potentially if Toy Story is good. Why buy that game where it's falling apart, it's got really just not good rules, terrible presentation. I don't know. The only answer is somebody who loves Halloween has to have a Halloween pinball machine. That's the only real compelling reason I can say I get that. I get it, but I don't know. I don't like it. It's not good. In a world where there's better competitors out there, it's a lot of money to throw at something like that. I first played it when I went out to James' a couple weeks ago. You had heard not good things about it. Saw the sales where folks were basically giving away $2,000 to stuff. They're giving their $2,000 deposit away to get out of buying this game. So I'm like, well, this must be a real disaster. So when I stepped up to it, expectations were low. And so first impressions were it's a really cool looking game. The art is really good on it. The play field itself is packed. It's got, I was like, wow, there's a lot in here, right? And everything in here looks really good. It's got sculpts on there. It's not, it doesn't look like cheesy 3d printed stuff. The one thing that struck me as super cheesy is the massive knife over the, the shooter lane that wobbles because it's only got one screw holding place. I was like, that's pretty bad, but I get it. It's like, you know, it's as nice from the movie or whatever. Full disclosure, Nick and I are not Halloween fans. We, I don't think either one of us have seen that movie. so um we don't have that driving our our uh perception of this game um i thought the upper playfields were interesting uh but and they're better than like i think of like rob zombie the upper play field on that not not real good um the shots on them are pretty cool i like when you shoot up and then you got to try to uh shoot the spinners and then shoot it all the way across So there's a lot to do up there, and it's an interesting layout. But, you know, my real concern with this game is the code. They have very limited resources with code. Sounds like they're doing some hiring, but they're trying to develop two games at once, Halloween and Ultraman, completely different rule sets with a very, you know, they've got Bug doing the rule sets. As far as I know, it's his first time doing rule sets on machines. They have Phasma, who is their main coder on this game, which I haven't been impressed with his other games. Like Rob Zombie, he did. I can't remember what other spooky game he's done. So I think that's where this game really needs help. If they could get the presentation and the code improved, I think it's got a shot to be an okay game, but I don't have the confidence that that's going to happen. Because, you know, with Rick and Morty, they said they were going to add more episodes and more adventures and things like that along the way. That never happened. Alice Cooper just kind of, you know, when they were done with that, they move on to whatever's next. And that's the reality of these small companies, man. They got to move on to the next game so they can sell a bunch more games and keep everybody employed. So they don't have the resources to invest in these old games. The game's been out for a while. You were playing. you legit tilted out of the game first of all this is fucking ridiculous there's not even a tilt warning sound that's like pinball 101 it's so weird like you play and there's no tilt warning you don't even know like what's going on because you're not looking at the screen and then you're like you've tilted okay so that's just like how the fuck is that a thing at this point it's not like it came out yesterday right but then like you found a bug where you tilted but you got to keep on playing, the game was letting you play even though it's like, so it's just like this is just like inexcusable amateur hour, like why would you buy these games? Like I don't get, like, these games are like for people who like, kind of like pinball but not like super like pinball, like nerdy like us, and they like the theme and it looks, like the game looks okay like sitting in a game room, I'm sure it looks okay, and I'm not shitting on somebody like that that's perfectly fine, I think that's how I would articulate to somebody, somebody I knew didn't own a pinball machine or wasn't as into pinball like us where we know stacking, right, or we talk about the rule set and stuff. And they're like, I'm a huge Halloween fan. It's like, yeah, what you need to know going into this is that the build quality is maybe a little questionable, but, hey, you might have a lot of fun with it. But, again, I'd be like, if you like some of the themes from Stern, I would just buy a Stern game instead, hands down. Sounds fair to me. Um, you didn't play Valhalla yet, did you? No, because James sold it off in the week. Thankfully, I got out there to play it before he's like, I got to get rid of this thing. I can't. Oh, my God. I've never heard him react to a game like the way he did with this. Because I stepped up to it, and I really liked it at first. I was like, this shit's great. It's, like, super fun. So, if you don't know, Legends of Valhalla from American Pinball, developed by Riot Pinball. It was a homebrew game that American Pinball brought in-house and decided to build. The shots on it are really cool, like the side ramp and the shot into the ship. It's an interesting layout that still shoots really well, and that's hard to do, right? The cabinet and playfield art is okay. it's comic book-y style like cartoony style but it's like the coloring on it isn't really well professionally done so it's kind of like middle of the road art wise the animations on the screen are horrendous you put animations in quote because if you think about Avengers where they had like a still image of one of the Avengers and it just like flies around the screen it's kind of like that but even worse it's like I always think of the one. There's one of the characters that you pick, one of the battles you pick, and it's just like this woman, and she shakes. Dude, is it worse than the animations on Halloween? Because Halloween tries to do that shit, too. It takes like a static image, and it just loops it around. It's similar, I think. It's similarly bad, but I think Valhalla is worse. Wow. Yeah, yeah. Alright, Spooky, there you go. There's a win. That's just my one for Spooky. So, I've only played it a handful of times so my takeaway was that's pretty cool maybe yeah i could see myself getting this this maybe this would be my first american football game because i like shooting it and the theme is interesting uh it's an original theme so it's gonna hold back sales but um at least it's like vikings and stuff it's like cool whatever you're having battles with norse gods and things like that cool uh but james was just like the rules are terrible on this game and he gets so he's describing to me like one of the things you have to do I'm probably going to get the specifics of this wrong but one of the things you have to do to get to the end of the game is roll over the inlanes at the top right and you have to do that a certain number of times before you can get to the end of the game there's no shot that feeds those lanes so you have to like build up Thor's hammer which is you shoot a certain like six combos to activate that and then if you shoot the shot and you activate the hammer and it doesn't catch the ball you have to shoot it it's like basic stuff like that he's been emailing with them and he's like he's not confident that they're going to get this into a place where any of this makes sense So, and there's these other modes where it's like, I forget what they're called, but you start playing and it's like, oh, you started this battle. So it's like, cool, I'm going to do this battle. And it doesn't, like, do anything. He's like, oh, they said it's just a mode to practice your shots. There's no, like, increasing value. There's no, like, jackpots in it. Like, rules that make no sense at all. So, again, I think software is such a huge part of the homeowner experience. Like, if you want to put this in a location and people play it a couple times and they walk away, it's fine. But if you're going to have this in your house and really get into these deep ruleset games, you're not going to find what you want out of these games. Val, how was your first impression? Buy Godzilla. Buy Mandalorian. Don't buy these other games. yeah that's professional advice so Neuvad I don't think Bowden's going to fix those rules because when you bring in a third party you know they're kind of like locked in their own world they've developed this game on their own and it's hard to get in there and you know exterior coders when you know from what I understand like he's coded this whole game nobody else at American Pitball can really code on top of what he's done. That's what I took away from that. Oh, Jesus. They don't have somebody who can fix this mess? Yeah, well, I guess it's just like he's coded it in such a way that I'm not a coder. I don't know. So I did BASIC when I was in elementary school. It's like if you comment your code and you write good code, then maybe somebody else can work on it. But otherwise, it's like this stream of consciousness stuff that, you know, only you will really understand how it all works. And it's hard for somebody else to get in there and fix it up. Well, dude, I mean, maybe American Pinball will hire you if you've got that background, because it sounds like that's more than what's over there right now. Yeah. There you go. So the API tester said Riot's code was complete spaghetti. There you go. Thanks, Stone Banner Flip. Oh, yeah, and then they had Josh Coogler, and they fired him, so he can't do it. So good job, Dave. alright so yeah Valhalla proceed with caution on that one it seems cool at first but maybe not maybe not so much alright we won a Twippy did we though? no we didn't really but thanks to everybody who voted for us in the Twippies we never ask for votes we don't talk about the Twippies it's just like whatever but the fact that enough people vote that we make the finalists every year is awesome and it means you guys value what we do and you appreciate the show and that's cool but we got we got the the participation award this year this is the first time they've sent these out to finalists because what happens the media creator categories are dumb because the same people keep winning all the time because they have the biggest audiences or the most ravenous audiences the people they can really get rallied up to go out there and vote so I guess this is their way of saying oh here Yeah, you too, I guess. Yeah, thanks for – it's nice that you guys have voted for us. Kevin and I make a conscious decision not to ask people to vote, and so it's a nice surprise when we still can get mentioned in that. And there's – I think I checked the other day, and there's – I think it's like 8,750 pinball podcasts. Yeah, so we're doing pretty good. We're doing all right. Appreciate that. Yeah. Speaking of the Twippies, I have a kind of principle of not criticizing content makers. I think I'm going to talk – so this is going to be filtered, but I'd be remiss not to say something about the Twippy Awards. I forced myself to watch it. I literally forced myself to watch it because I was curious from the red carpet on. I didn't even think I even got to where we got mentioned for the award, to be honest, Kevin. I had to give up. The entire thing was just very cringe. And I don't want to call out one thing in particular or one person in particular because I don't – I think people do things outside of that, and that's fine. But I think everything about that Twippy thing is an embarrassment for pinball. And honestly, I wish they wouldn't do it anymore. Someone who gives a lot about pinball, like if that's what you're going to come up with, you really need to look at it and watch it and be like, you've got to do better. Or don't do it at all. I think that's your and my philosophy with things, Kevin. It's like if we can't do a good job of it, it's like all or nothing. And it was bad. It was really, really, really painful to watch. Martha was getting upset with me. She's like, why are you watching this? It's like a test of wills. And I was just like, I can't fucking do it. I can't fucking do it. This is terrible. It was putting me in such a bad mood. So, yeah, please do better or don't do it. Like, it's a bad look for pinball. It's just the idea of awards for pinball machines every year is weird, too, because every category is the same, like three games, and Godzilla wins everything. There's so little. Well, we've talked about it in the way we've done the podcast. Like, we do podcasts once a month because that's, like, all there is to talk about. This industry does not produce that many machines. There's not that much content. Do we really need pinball awards at all? Like, do we need them? I don't think we do. If you're going to do it, keep it just for industry stuff. But it was just super unprofessionally done. Yeah. Like, it was just, like, done with zero self-awareness outside of, like, a small sphere of people who probably are patting themselves on the back and saying that was great. But, like, zero self-awareness. And it's just embarrassing. Embarrassing. It's embarrassing. As Coach would say from Letterkenny, it's embarrassing. All right. Let's move on. I handled that as best as I could. That was filtered. Yeah. Good job. Let's talk about game room updates. We've both got some stuff going on in our game room. So the most recent thing that I did was I got my pin vision for Tron. You saw Patrick's, right, the screen that goes in the back? Yeah, that's kind of cool. Yeah, I got mine yesterday. You got one? and I installed it last night. How much was that? It's, I think, $600. Oof. Yeah, it's not cheap, but, you know, it's less than a topper. I don't know. It does add something. Dude, don't get distracted by him. Now Gorin's not going to be distracted by that. So I installed it last night. Let's just say this would not be a nickeling and friendly installation. It's pretty involved. You have to pull the backboard out of your machine and then replace it with this screen. There's a lot of wiring. Plus, I already have a lot of crap in my trunk. I have so many mods in that thing, dude. It's ridiculous. You relocate your – it's optional, but I chose to relocate my light cycle so they don't block the screen. And then what else did I have to do? Oh, there's a, you run a power cable to the service outlet. You install a board in the backbox, run a bunch of cables, and then you're off and running. Easy peasy. All the software is already in there. once you have everything connected and installed you just turn it on and it goes it's really cool man it is an awesome mod it's not an easy install but if you have a Tron my wife was asking me how much it was and I told her and she's like people aren't going to buy that people won't buy that don't worry about it people who have this game have already spent exponentially more than that in mods, most likely. And they're going to throw this one in there, too, so I highly recommend it. It's from 86pixels, Jimmy Lippum, and it's got animations from Stephen Silver, who does a lot of work with Multimorphic. He was the creative director on Weird Al and Heist, so check it out. If you've got a Tron, man, that's the one game I feel like you can never have too many mods in. And it seems to be the one game that people are willing to pay for mods once you put it in there. A lot of games you put mods in and people are like, whatever. People will pay more for a modded Outron. Cool. Check that out. That was my most recent project. I've been, you know, the rumor is that there's a new JJP on the way, so I've been thinking about what to sell to make room and money for that. It's going to be either Hobbit or Wonka, I think. But my son has started playing and he prefers Waka, so it's probably going to end up being Hobbit, which I would go the other way, personally, but if he's into the game, I'm happy to keep it, because it could go either way as far as I'm concerned, but it'll probably end up being Hobbit. So if anybody wants a really nice Hobbit, hit me up. And what else? I got 16 quintillion points on Guns N' Roses. Did you see that? Nick? Yeah. I didn't watch it, but I I saw the post, yeah. Yeah, speaking of bugs, I found one in Guns N' Roses. If you haven't seen the video, it's on YouTube, but if you play the Desert Demolition mode. So how this happened was I was playing the game to try to get through the game. So I was trying to play as safely as possible for progress, which is not how I normally play that game. I normally play it for big song jackpots and building a valley and things like that. So I was playing it differently than I normally would, and I was like, I wonder if you can time out this mode because there was a value in the lower left-hand of the screen that was decreasing. I said maybe if that hits zero the mode times out and then I can move on And what happened instead was it put up this massive value once it hit zero in the quintillions of points. So I was like, well, now I've got to see if I can collect that value. So I spent the rest of the night trying to, setting all that up, getting to the end of that mode and then I eventually got it and it gave me this ridiculous score. Like the most points that I've ever scored in a pinball game. but I've tried to do it since and it hasn't collected. It's given me zero for that value. It says score bonus zero or mode bonus zero, something like that. So there's some real weird specific set of circumstances that happen that let me actually collect that. So if you go out and you try to do it on your area, guns and res, it might not work, but you can try it. It's pretty fun. If you can get it to happen, it's super, super cool. The sad part is that scorebit failed during that. It got really confused and didn't save my score. So I was not able to show how ridiculous scorebit is by putting up 16 quintillion points as my high score. And then with them not resetting scores between code updates, it would have been really good. But I did put it on Pindigo at least because you can manually put your points in on that one. So come at me, everybody. All right. So I'll give two shout-outs. shout out to the pinball lounge in just northeast of Orlando Florida so like I mentioned at the top of the show we made two trips recently the first was to Multimorbic and then my family finally took a vacation for the first time in a few years we went to Orlando and one of the nights we had some down times and my son and I went to the pinball lounge to play some pinball awesome collection of games lots of you know Ryan earlier in the show was talking about having a variety of games in your location in this place. Definitely did. They had anything for EMs all the way up to the latest Sterns, JJPs, Spookies. They had Rick and Morty. They had Rush, which they had just gotten. They had Wonka, at least, for JJPs. But then we played, like, this game called Pharaoh, which I had never played. It was really cool. They had a Swords of Fury. They had Bally Williams games, some of the remakes, some originals. So really well maintained. great enthusiast-run collection there. So I was talking to one of the guys, and he said basically there were enthusiast operators that had this room. It's in a bowling alley. And they were operating all the machines in the bowling alley side, or in the game room side, and they ended up buying the whole bowling alley. So they run the whole place now. So it's a really cool spot. So definitely check that out if you're in the area. And, oh, the other thing was Atlas Pinball. So these folks reached out to us on Instagram. He's an operator and a screen printer in Boise, Idaho, Atlas Pinball. Send us some shirts. We feel like I'm a fan of the show. I want to send you some stuff. So this one's next. I'm going to get it to him when we see each other next. But nice shirt. If you need some shirts made, check those guys out. If you're in Boise, put some money in his machines. That's all for Game Room Updates for me. Nick, what have you been doing? You've been shaking up your lineup for soon, right? Yeah, so I'm going to start off with an apology. I'm not going to have time to stick around and do a review of No Fear, so it might be just a Kevin Reedy review or we'll do it next time. So I'll leave that to you. We're creeping up on a two-hour podcast, which has been a good one. I just didn't anticipate that, so I apologize. Yeah, so, God, it's been a lot. So I got a bunch of insider connected for my games, I got one for Deadpool and Black Knight and what the hell is it called? Led Zeppelin. So thanks to Zach Many. Again, good guy. By the way, let me slip this plug in there for you. I forgot about this. Listen, I don't care what distributor you guys go to, but if your distributor doesn't help you when there's a problem, that's their one job, right? Like if you need something from your distributor, you reach out to them. if they're not responsive and they don't help you, that is a fucking terrible distributor. And that's the experience I've had. You might be able to figure out who that distributor is. It's something I use for other games and another thing I do in pinball. I don't want to call out somebody in particular, but I just want to say that Zach has been awesome. And you don't know how good your distributor is until you need something, by the way. So let that be a good lesson for everybody. Yeah, so I got those. I put them in. It was easy to do. as people were saying, the stickers are really easy to take off. So good job. Whatever Stern used for their stickers, really like it. They're really durable. They come off easy. They stick on the new arch. So that was a total success. I decided, I don't know if I said this last time, I decided to sell Dialed In. I think it's going to get picked up from Matt Taylor, who's the local guy, next week. and then I just last week decided to sell Deadpool just because I wanted to mix things up. I've not been good about mixing things up in my library. You know, I've just been like in this accumulation phase, but I was like, I want to keep things fresh. And I've been enjoying Mandalorian Pinball because we've got one on route and we have one in my work office now. And the more time I spend with the game, I really like it, and I think that Dwight really crushed it on the rules. I think this is, like, his best game that I've played from him. There's more there in the game than I thought there was, so I think at some point we'll do, like, Mandalorian Pinball Revisited. Because I've got two pros I have access to, I decided to get the premium, because why not? So I'll talk in depth more when I spend some time with it, but I'm really, really liking that game. and the person who's buying my Deadpool, I guess this is going to be his first game. So what a great first pinball machine to have. I mean, Deadpool, it's like everybody has a Deadpool. It's a great game. So I think it's like a total win. And then I'm supposed to get my Rush Premium in June. So June could be a really good pinball month. You know, of course I'm going to have new and boxed woes. So, you know, there's going to be probably going to be a Rage Nick after I get those two games. But, you know, it goes to the territory. I think I caught everything. Oh, I'm supposed to talk about Insider Connected. Nick Kaiser asked me to talk about that. Yeah. So I like Insider Connected, but there's a huge caveat. I think the – I'm glad Stern's doing it. I find, Kevin, that, like, you know, I've got, you know, dialed in, which they have their own kind of version of using QR codes and stuff. I never – like, I never use that anymore. Like I never log into it, but I always will log into Stern Insider Connected, and I think it is like they were wise, even though you've got to spend money, they were wise to put that kit front and center because it's so on my face, it's so hard to ignore that it's easy enough for me to do. The problem that I have with Insider Connected is that this thing has been out since the fall, and they talked a good game about like, oh, operators can do this and that. So I've really been waiting for that functionality for operators because I envision being able to run tournaments. Well, not tournaments, but, like, you know, we had somebody in our community ask about doing a selfie league. And, like, you know how a pain in the ass it is to do a selfie league, Kevin. When times were good, people stopped playing in it, right? Yep. Like, plus there's, like, the coordination with the venue in terms of, like, getting to the market and hype it up. And you don't want to just do all that work for four people to play because then my locations look at me and say, what the fuck, right? Especially if I get them to give prizes and stuff. So I've been waiting to have the functionality in Insider Connected where I can have, like, a monthly tournament. And Stern's doing this. I mean, they're going to shows. I think they did it at, what was it, MGC two weeks ago where they were advertising that, you know, you log in, they had a leaderboard, and it shows your initials and keeping your score. Like, why as an operator do I not have that functionality? I think George Gomez had been talking in the previous about, like, being able to, as an operator, set up, like, hey, play, you know, Mandalorian pinball three times this week and you get a prize or, you know, you get this. And that's the kind of, like, creative stuff I want to do with my venues, and I've been talking about that with them because it takes a lot of, like, the legwork out and often for diminishing returns. And I just – I don't get it, guys. Like, I think Stern's really bad at this. I'm not sure why they released this thing when it's really premature. It only has achievements and nothing else. And there was a discussion. There was a Facebook group for operators and routers, and somebody posted about, is it worth getting it? And these things are $200 a pop. And the general consensus is, like, no, there's no ROI on it. Like, it's cool for, like, half a second. And then because there's so limited functionality in it that it might as well not exist. So I wish they were much better about their timeframes in terms of when they released it. That should have been around the corner. It should have been maybe a month later that functionality was there. It's clearly implemented. I don't know why they've not turned it on for the operators. And even that's pretty basic, but it gives us something. I wish there was more. Or at least communicate to the operators, when are we going to get this stuff? What's your roadmap for it? So, yeah, I'm disappointed about it. I have not purchased any for our business because there's no ROI on it right now. There's no – I don't want to push people onto this platform when it's so limited in just achievements. I will go through the effort of marketing and pushing it and educating the, you know, business owners where my games are located about the system when I can actually fully use it. And until then, it's just a waste of time, I think. yeah it's it from what i've heard it doesn't really increase plays on location right now any either so like even if you have it in a machine it's not resulting in more more coin drop uh for the people who do use it right so uh you can't you can't say yeah it's worth it because i i increased my plays 10 after i put it on the machine or whatever you know and if it doesn't dude, that has an operator, then what's the business case? Right? Like, why does it exist? You know, Doug Polka was saying, like, I didn't realize this, you could set it up so it will automatically download code at, like, a certain time, which is cool. I had a game lock up when it would try to download it from the Wi-Fi because maybe the Wi-Fi is not great. So I just still do it manually when I'm there to collect. That's something. You know, I can see, like, plays allegedly, but somebody was also saying those plays aren't accurate. So I really don't – as an operator, there's no reason to get this thing now. And that's on Stern. And, again, we're like nine months into this. What the fuck is going on, guys? At least communicate as a business owner because this causes problems for me. I have my business partners. They're saying, hey, why don't you do a selfie league? We had a league member reach out and say that he's interested in a selfie league. And, like, then I've got to kind of go through all this. and I'm happy to explain it, but the way it should be done is insider-connected. That's the answer to this, and especially with the tight economics going on now with pinball going up in price, less people going out because of COVID. I mean, pinball is down. I need a win somewhere, right? And I need them to throw me a bone, and the insider-connected can be that bone. That can help me get people engaged in pinball and get people playing it and facilitate running this. Whether three people play or 30 people play, it doesn't change the workload for me. I can do it every month if only three people played. I can still run that in some capacity. I'm not going to go through the effort until that's ready, though. Did you see there's a LinkedIn post for an insider-connected job? Well, that's scary. Because, like, what the fuck? Director of product management for Insider Connected? Well, they have, like, the bones of it created, right? Like, it's there. It's doing its thing. The physical kits exist. They're out there. It's connecting the Internet. Clearly they have the functionality where they're able to have multiple people log in and run a tournament and score. So I don't know. You know, and I think it's frustrating to not be communicated with because really in software and things like this, companies usually communicate with their customers. Like you think about a video game and there's like a roadmap for the development or if it's an early access, like what features are going to be added and when. And if there's delays, they come out and explain it. But CERN doesn't do that, so it leads to frustration. And when it comes out in the fall, you have the expectation that, hey, a month or two we're going to have this. We still don't, and there seems to be no end in sight. So, again, I would recommend to anybody who's an operator thinking about it, don't wish your money on this shit yet. If you have a home question and you want to get it, it still has super limited functionality. Like, adding a friend is stupid. Like, the way it works is stupid. Like, I should be able, if I know Kevin's name on there, I should be able to add Kevin, and Kevin should get a notification that we want to be friends on there. But that's not how it works. I have to manually enter Kevin's name. I have to make sure I get the capitalization right on Kevin's name, and then I can kind of just follow him. But Kevin doesn't know he's being followed by me. I have to then call him up and tell him my name or text him. It's just like it's really basic right now, and it can be something really good. And I believe it can be something really good. I believe it was Zach Mennie saying it can be something good. Curtis Gomez has said it can be something good. But right now I can't recommend spending any money on this product. Yeah. On one hand, I'm like, well, they've invested all this into this platform. They're going to stick with it and make it work. But at some point, they might just cut their losses and be like, all right, this didn't work. Let's move on. So it's so hard to know right now. So I think your recommendation is good in that, you know, it's like buying pinball machines in general. Like, yeah, you could buy a pinball machine that has incomplete software, but, you know, there's never a guarantee that it's going to get completed. So if you like what's there now, grab it. If not, then, you know, don't bet on the future because it might not come. Yeah, I personally don't see this thing going away, right? I think they are, quote, unquote, committed to it, but the way they're going about it and communicating it is really frustrating, and it should be more of a priority because this is not, like, a supply shortage thing kind of deal. This is software, and you've got it mostly there. So, yeah, don't buy it now. and give certain feedback while you're not buying it now. Like that you like it. Like it's not like a bad thing, but you like it, you want it. It's just like where's – you said you're going to deliver on something. Where is it and when is it coming? Just at least give us that much. Agreed. So a couple of quick Buffalo updates. We have league finals coming up May 21st. We're going to be streaming it here on the Buffalo Pinball Twitch channel. So if you want to see some competitive pinball action with some of Buffalo's finest, tune in then it's going to be 5 p.m eastern time on may 21st we've also got our team league has resumed which has been a lot of fun um i forgot how fun team league it was you asked me how the first night went i was like i really had fun so thank you to matt uh our league member for for putting that together it's been uh it's been nice to and and patrick yeah for uh um it's always nice when somebody else is like i want to i want to run this and nick and i could just go and play and have fun. So always appreciate that. So like Nick said, we'll get to the no fear review next month. And, but in the meantime, don't go anywhere because we have a brand new episode of Topper Talk with Gorin. He violated the rules and went way over his three to five minutes, but it's a good one. He's going to be talking with Ryan McQuaid from, well now we have American Pinball, but from Sonic Spinball fame about toppers. So yeah, enjoy. Thank you guys. We'll see you next month. Yep. Uh, be sure to follow us on social media. Uh, send us an email, talk pinball at gmail.com. Uh, if you got feedback or want to know anything in between, you're going to support the channel. Uh, Twitch prime is a great way to do it. No extra charge for, uh, supporting the channel, or you can straight up sub. If you want to do that, drop a PayPal, uh, donation, or leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform of choice. I lost Nick. In the meantime, until next month, enjoy this brand-new episode of Topper Talk with Gorin, and we'll see you next time. It's Topper Talk with Gorin right now. Let's all have some fun. This is about plastic on top of your pin. Go and buy one now. There's a topper here and a topper there. Here a topper, there a topper, everywhere a topper. It's critical to the gameplay experience. You must buy one now. It's your monthly fill of toppers right now. Topper Talk with Goran. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Topper Talk with Goran. The part of the podcast where Kevin and Nick give me about three to five minutes to talk about everything happening in the very active and profitable topper community. Now today we're probably going to go over three to five minutes. Sorry Kevin and Nick. But that's because we have our very first special guest, and that special guest is the new game designer of American Pinball, Ryan McQuaid. And he's here to talk to us today about his Sonic Spinball topper that he created for his very cool Sonic Spinball homebrew pinball machine. So let's head into the office and talk about that now. All right, so now here we are in the office with now American Pinball designer, Ryan McQuaid. Ryan, how are you? How's it going there? Good. How does it feel to officially say that you are an American pinball designer? It's kind of amazing. It was a long time, a lot of work to try to make it happen. And now that I've actually been working there since February, and it was a big secret that I had to keep because I signed all these lovely pieces of paper that said I would not say anything. And so it's a really, I don't know, liberating experience for it to be out there and for everyone to know about it, too. But it's really, really exciting. I love it. Well, that's awesome. And congratulations again. Thank you. So I figured we should talk about your awesome topper that you've made for your awesome homebrew pinball machine, Sonic Spinball. I know you've made a few different toppers, but I thought we could talk about this one this month. So I'm going to share my screen here with some images that you sent me, and I figured you could sort of start by talking through what the topper is. Sure. So, yeah, right here is the finished version powered off. So the topper for Sonic's pinball is the Chaos Emerald Shrine from Sonic 3 and Knuckles, or some people more know it as the Super Emerald Shrine, but it's there no matter what. so whatever. It's just like this little, it's called Hidden Palace Zone in the game. That's the name of the location. And you can see it's located inside a volcano on Angel Island in the game. And the little sky box that you can kind of see in the top right there is actually the opening, like the cone of a volcano. And that's the Death Egg that has crashed into it. so in this volcano is where the Chaos Emeralds are stored along with the Master Emerald which is the big one on the backdrop and they're in this little shrine thing on these ancient pillars with these weird feathery looking things kind of holding them up and when I knew when I was designing the game I knew I wanted to have a topper because as you mentioned previously that I've made a few toppers before so it made sense to me to make something that would track game progress and be able to be good for light shows. So each one of these emeralds has its own light behind it so it can light up and go along with the game progress and play light shows and everything. And then we also have a bunch of GI behind that. I think I've got the game lit up somewhere. Maybe not. I'm sure you do. So right there, that's you're toggling in between the concept arts that I use this. So this is a piece of fan art that I found that kind of captured what I wanted to go for. You can see it looks like a diorama. It's got like the floor and everything and it already kind of looks like a topper shape. And I was like, all right, this is what we want to go for, this kind of thing. And this artist saw those little petals as kind of leaves and I was like, oh, I like that that interpretation. But then I pulled up the original, so if you want to go back to the other one, which is the original game graphics. Yeah, right here. Those things look more like feathers or leaves or whatever. So I kind of did like a hybrid of the two. Those are actually, on the actual topper, pieces of fake daisies off Amazon. I bought fake daisy flowers and they were constructed with those like multiple layers of those things so they're like pinkish daisy petals that combined with a lot of epoxy I made them hold their shape like that wow very impressive what sort of other steps did you go through to making this copper a reality? I think I have some other photos here of the overall construction of the copper and the process you went through. Could you talk through that a little bit? Right. So I designed it in Fusion 360, which let me kind of get a good layout of everything and where I wanted it from the very beginning. I pulled in these little ancient column-looking things you see there from the website thingiverse.com, which everyone who's done any 3D is familiar with Thingiverse. They're originally these columns that are made, oh yeah, nice, I see that. Is that a Friso Mark 3 in the background there? Yes, it is. I see, so I grabbed these pillars that are meant for tabletop gaming and D&D kind of thing, and I thought they looked perfect. So I flipped them upside down. They're originally supposed to be, like, bottom heavy, and then, like, they get thinner towards the top. And I just kind of positioned them where I wanted them and then added the emeralds, which I bought off of eBay. The emeralds are actually glass paperweights that I was able to buy on eBay. They are glass. They're not plastic, which is why I'm so careful with it while I'm using it. So there you can see how I did a cutout in the back of the pillars for the little light boards. and in the back you can see that these are very heavy glass paperweights that are honestly quite scary so I scrape them up a lot on the bottom and I use a lot of epoxy to make sure they never came out and I haven't had any problems with them since but it's always still a little nerve wracking to move it around because I wasn't able to find plastic ones that I liked. I really like the look of the glass ones. So in addition to that we have the little stalagmites and those are also from like a similar tabletop gaming section of Thingiverse. Just a couple of different versions of it. Some of them are actually the same set just mirrored I think. I didn't really want to use too many of them. I just wanted to give them kind of an accent so that the bouldery look of the backdrop would look like it's just a continuation of that kind of so as you see it without the backdrop and without the paint and everything like it's a pretty simple topper right right like there's not a lot to it and the reason for that is because i was kind of scrambling to get ready for um expo and fantastic last year um i was doing a whole rebuild of the game at the time and i i only had like maybe an extra week like tops of like waiting for a few parts and um i just talked to my friend who does modeling and I sent them the concept arts and we're like, alright, yeah, we can totally knock this out in a couple of weeks as long as we keep it nice and simple. So it looks like really bare when you look at it like this, but then once we've done it up properly, it kind of really pops after that and I was really happy about it. Yeah, that's really overall with everything put together, it is a great looking great looking topper. I think you sent over one or two videos if you want to sort of take a look at those, see what it looks like lit up and talk through how it degrades it. So now that we're on the picture of the painted one, let me just stop on that real quick. I am not this good of a painter. I did not paint this. This was all painted by a friend of mine, Frank Shepard, who does a lot of D&D minis and other such. He's a modeler by hobby, and so I kind of gave him all that blank, boring-looking stuff and that concept art and said, here, have a ball. And he did an incredible job with it. So I just wanted to give him a shout-out for his excellent job. All I did for this paint job was go over the whole thing with, like, the little emerald-colored paint, like, on a paper towel just to give it an accent. Everything else was him. It really looks great. let me stop sharing the photos and I will start sharing the first video alright so we want to sort of talk through what's happening here right now the player is in zone select they're choosing their main zone that they want to play next and you can see as the player cycles through them it's it's got the emerald that they're going after blinking, and it's changing the GI color to match the zone that they're in. So right now they're on the cyan emerald, and that would be the ice level. And if they were to choose that, then that would be the one that they were going after. So this is just the way that it keeps track of your progress in the game. If an emerald is collected, it'll be on and the light will be solid. And if it's the one you're currently working on, it'll be blinking. It also is used for a lot of different light shows during the game. It's mostly mirrored. It has its own light shows, and it's also mirrored of the inserts on the play field. So if it has nothing better to do, like for lack of a better sense, if I don't have any specific light show running on the topper, it will do whatever the emerald inserts on the play field are doing, just as part of it. So what you end up with there is, say the boss is exploding, and those lights are flashing red for a minute. like that explosion is now all the way up onto the topper as well, and it also just fills it all in a little bit. So whenever there's not anything specific running, we're just mirroring those inserts. But it does a great deal to highlight the differences between the zones and makes it feel like you're in a different location, especially when the red one in the cyan one lights up. I don't know, I swear the room gets a little warmer when it gets all red like that. It looks really good. It looks really great. Let me attempt to share the other one here, the attract mode. Yeah, the attract mode just shows a few of the light shows that I made for it. I use them throughout the game as well, but for the most part, it's just running a light across them and a few patterns and stuff like that. All right, here we go. I got an attract mode here. Let me see what's going on. delightful. It really looks great in a dark room with everything slowly lighting up. How many LEDs is it per? It's only one LED per Emerald, but there's also 16 GI LEDs up there. Ah, that's what's doing it. Okay. All right. It definitely looks like a lot more than one. It is. It's a lot more than one. I mean, one of those lights is right up against the back of each one of those gems to use the whole thing as a diffuser, as you can see. But then the rest of it is more just for the ambience. And it also, especially during that little twinkle mode, you have little twinkles coming from down all below the, behind the stalagmites or stalactites. Which ones are on the ground? Stalagmites or stalactites? Which are those? I'm not really sure. One of our viewers, I'm sure, made the screen of a chemical, but I won't say. But it just gives a nice depth of the cave look to have the lights behind it like that. And it makes it look a lot busier than it is. Awesome. Yeah, well, this is a fantastic copper, and it really does seem like it integrates really well with the game and expands the overall world of of Sonic and theme integration. So thank you again for coming on to the show and chatting about this topper and sharing it with all of us. Thank you for having me. And thanks to the Midwest Gaming Classic judges for giving me the award for best mod for that last weekend. I didn't even know it was up for the award, but like I was telling you, I believe I was telling you off camera as part of a sound test, My game actually crashed a few times during the show, and people, I was around, so people were able to find me, and I would come, like, reboot it. And one of the times that I did that, I was going behind the machine to get a tool so I could open it up, and I noticed there was a little trophy, like, leaning over the edge of the top or about to fall down onto the glass. And I was like, oh, dear, what is this? This is going to be a bad time, and, you know, picked it up. It's, oh, best mod. That is great. And then I'm like, wait a minute, like, this is a custom game, not a mod. What's going on? And then I figured out, oh, you put it on the topper on purpose. I get it now. Apparently they just didn't do a best in show for homebrew this year, which is fine. But I just put it back in a more secure location for the rest of the show. So shout-outs to the People's Choice. I think it was People's Choice. I'm not sure if there were any judges, but I'm glad everyone enjoyed it, really. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. congratulations on that and congratulations again on now being a game designer for American Pinball and hope to talk to you again soon on Topper Talk. All right can't wait to be back. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode of Topper Talk with Goran. Tune in to the next pro show for another episode and as always get out there and buy a topper. Thank you for coming to my Topper Talk. All right, so it looks like he's going for a two. Oh, five of it. Working on his Zeppelin multiball locks. Oh, no. Thank you. _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 857525d5-13aa-4c85-a4e7-28f7b95e44bd*