# Episode 106 - TWIPY + AGDQ = Long Episode **Source:** Eclectic Gamers Podcast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2020-01-13 **Duration:** 131m 38s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://soundcloud.com/user-465086826/episode-106 --- ## Analysis Eclectic Gamers Podcast Episode 106 covers 2019 podcast statistics, listener demographics, and a deep dive into pinball playfield design terminology, specifically Italian bottoms. The hosts discuss growth metrics (42.5% increase in annual plays), top episodes, and audience composition across countries and cities. A significant portion focuses on Dennis's newly published article about Italian bottom pinball design, clarifying terminology and atypical variations as the community prepares for Rick and Morty's release. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Eclectic Gamers Podcast experienced 42.5% growth in annual plays in 2019 versus 2018 — _Dennis presenting verified podcast statistics from SoundCloud analytics_ - [HIGH] Episode 100 (Centurion) was the most popular 2019 episode, featuring discussions on pinball displays, Walking Dead Raw Thrills arcade game, and BlizzCon 2019 — _Dennis discussing verified episode performance data_ - [MEDIUM] Pat Lawlor favors asymmetrical Italian bottom layouts with varied in-lane configurations across sides — _Dennis discussing Lawlor's design preferences based on personal research and observation_ - [MEDIUM] Steve Ritchie maintains consistent Italian bottom designs across his games since Flash to provide familiarity for players — _Dennis citing Pinball Magazine interview with Steve Ritchie_ - [MEDIUM] Rick and Morty pinball by Spooky features an atypical Italian bottom with a center pop bumper — _Dennis discussing Rick and Morty design and Spooky's permission to use photos_ ### Notable Quotes > "There's a reason Hardcore History only puts out like two a year... It's a great show by the way. Check out Hardcore History. It's my favorite podcast. It's nice to have a favorite podcast that only puts out a couple of times a year." > — **Dennis**, ~48:00 > _Illustrates discussion about podcast format and frequency; highlights preference for quality over quantity_ > "I lean into [being wrong] a lot as I'm going down on the discourse... That's his thing. It's a perfectly valid thing." > — **Tony**, ~15:00 > _Commentary on Zach Minney's entertainment approach and communication style_ > "We're more niche than a standard video game podcast would be or a pinball podcast would be, and that's what we accepted going into this." > — **Dennis**, ~12:00 > _Self-aware positioning of the Eclectic Gamers niche as mixed-gaming content_ > "The goal of the Italian bottom is being met... that's why I gave it its own category" > — **Dennis**, ~95:00 > _Key clarification on Italian bottom design taxonomy and what constitutes variations_ > "I feel like I need to write it [the Italian Bottom article] now before we start a whole new wave of people thinking that anything that doesn't have two symmetrical slings is not an Italian bottom" > — **Dennis**, ~85:00 > _Motivation for publishing clarifying content due to anticipated community confusion from Rick and Morty's release_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Eclectic Gamers Podcast | organization | Mixed gaming and pinball podcast hosted by Dennis and Tony; reaching 106 episodes as of January 2020 | | Dennis | person | Co-host of Eclectic Gamers Podcast; pinball writer and analyst; maintains podcast infrastructure | | Tony | person | Co-host of Eclectic Gamers Podcast; video game focus; recently moved to new office | | Zach Minney | person | Co-host of This Week in Pinball (TWIP) with Dennis; known for shock jock entertainment style | | Pat Lawlor | person | Legendary pinball designer known for asymmetrical Italian bottom designs | | Steve Ritchie | person | Pinball designer known for consistent Italian bottom implementations since Flash | | Nick Baldrige | person | Guest host on Eclectic Gamers in early 2019 discussing Quaynock Carnival | | Jason Knapp | person | Guest host on Eclectic Gamers Episode 98 | | Eric Hoek | person | Provided playfield layout photos to Dennis for Italian Bottom article; attends Texas Pinball Festival | | Spooky Pinball | company | Boutique pinball manufacturer; developing Rick and Morty pinball with atypical Italian bottom design | | Rick and Morty | game | Upcoming Spooky Pinball game; features atypical Italian bottom with center pop bumper; motivating clarity in Italian bottom terminology | | Raza | game | Deep Root Pinball prototype reveal discussed in Episode 101 | | Walking Dead Raw Thrills | game | Arcade game discussed in Episode 100 | | Paragon | game | Pinball game containing detailed Italian bottom definition in IPDB notes; designed with Italian bottom layout | | Flash | game | Williams pinball game; Steve Ritchie established consistent Italian bottom design philosophy from this game onward | | Wheel of Fortune | game | Pinball game with atypical Italian bottom featuring center post and switch configuration | | Roanoke Pinball Museum | organization | Interactive museum in Roanoke, Virginia; 65+ machines from 1932-2018; sponsor of episode | | This Week in Pinball | organization | Pinball podcast co-hosted by Dennis and Zach Minney | | IPDB | organization | Internet Pinball Database; missing formal glossary definition for Italian bottom despite having detailed notes in some machine entries | | Pinball Magazine | organization | Published interview with Steve Ritchie discussing Italian bottom design philosophy | ### Topics - **Primary:** Podcast statistics and growth metrics, Italian bottom playfield design terminology and variations, Rick and Morty pinball (Spooky) announcement and design - **Secondary:** Pinball designer philosophy (Lawlor, Ritchie), Podcast format and audience demographics, Pinball community terminology and standardization - **Mentioned:** Podcast hosting platforms and listener distribution ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.78) — Hosts celebrate 42.5% growth and successful episode performance. Discussion of Italian bottom design is academically engaged and constructive. Some light frustration about terminology confusion and documentation gaps, but overall collaborative and enthusiastic tone regarding Rick and Morty's design choices. ### Signals - **[community_signal]** Spooky Pinball actively engaged with content creators by granting permission to use Rick and Morty promotional photos for educational articles (confidence: high) — Dennis notes: 'Spooky gave me the permission to use their Rick and Morty photo, which I really appreciated' - **[design_philosophy]** Steve Ritchie maintains consistent Italian bottom designs across games specifically to provide familiarity and predictability for players who prefer consistent layouts (confidence: medium) — Dennis citing Pinball Magazine interview where Ritchie discusses not wanting to vary Italian bottom because 'people prefer to have it' and it feels familiar - **[market_signal]** Community confusion about Italian bottom terminology is growing, with Rick and Morty's atypical variation creating need for clarity on what constitutes an Italian bottom vs. variations (confidence: medium) — Dennis explicitly states: 'I feel like I need to write it now before we start a whole new wave of people thinking that anything that doesn't have two symmetrical slings is not an Italian bottom' - **[community_signal]** Italian bottom terminology lacks formalized documentation in major pinball references (IPDB, general internet sources), with only scattered sources and circular references (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'There's hardly anything that defines Italian bottom on the Internet. There are like four sources, and most of them are just referring back to others... IPDB doesn't have in their glossary definition for Italian bottom' - **[market_signal]** Rick and Morty pinball adoption of atypical Italian bottom with center pop represents potential design shift that could confuse community understanding of Italian bottom category (confidence: medium) — Dennis emphasizes concern about Rick and Morty establishing false precedent for what constitutes Italian bottom design --- ## Transcript This episode of the Eclectic Gamers Podcast is brought to you by a new power rising in the East, the Roanoke Pinball Museum in Roanoke, Virginia. Oh yes, my precious. The Roanoke Pinball Museum is an interactive museum dedicated to the science and history of pinball. Go to them. Their mission is to cultivate curiosity in science, art, and history through pinball while preserving and honoring its role in American culture. Yes. But you don't have any friends. so go to the museum every day except Monday. It has over 65 machines with models ranging from 1932 to 2018. It's a very open-ball museum, and we want it! Rawr! Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is a snowy Sunday, January 12th. This is episode 106. I am Tony. I am Dennis. You made it, though. I made it. I made it through the mouth. You did all right. Yeah, it's real easy. I put on my snowshoes. I grabbed the St. Bernard and my spear, and we came, you know, hiking through. killed a couple cave bears, hunted a mammoth. We're going to have some steaks later. It's all good. That's nice. That sounds like fun. Yeah. I didn't do anything. I know. I'm a village dweller. A farm. You're a first-level farmer. You know, they had one of those aptitude assessments when we were in middle school. that we had to take. And when I took it, the number one thing it told me I should be was teacher, which I thought I have no patience to, even back then, I thought I have no patience to teach people things. And then the number two was farmer. I can't. I can't even see it. You can't see me with a little stick of wheat in my mouth? Yeah. I'm going to grow me some soybeans. I grew up around farmers. You might be surprised. The corn don't talk back, except when there are children in it. But, all right, well, it's been a couple weeks. We had our last episode was jam-packed with you talking about video game progress, and we went through our year-end review on Pinball. And so here we've got a whole bunch of stuff to go through on. You know, our anniversary of the podcast is actually at the end of January, which I think will be the fourth now. Probably. Because I believe we started in 2016. Right. And so, but we always do some recap stuff during this episode because calendar years are just much more convenient for looking at snapshots of audience stuff. But before that, I guess, at least for my introduction, I have a few corrections and things. So I'll say mine and then you can say whatever you've got. And then we'll roll into the podcast statistics before we go into pinball and video games. So, first correction, Zach Minney, who I co-host Twip with, he did write in to us to note that I was wrong regarding Stranger Things. I mentioned that the outer right orbit would exit out. It could either exit into the Pops or exit orbit all the way around out through the left orbit. That latter part is not true. it actually just comes back from whence it came. It comes back out the right orbit after it's done in the POP section. Oh, okay. I thought I'd seen it differently when I was trying to watch the stream that Jack Danger hosted for the first reveal, but I was incorrect on that, so correction there. All right. Nothing wrong with that. Well, other than the fact that my statement was wrong, there was nothing wrong with it. Minor technical error. The next thing is a clarification. So this wasn't an error, but this was Joseph Barlow wrote in to tell us about some games We talked about Rick and Morty. Right. And that magnus that you could hold in. Yep. The timed magnus. But I couldn't think of other games that had a magnet that you could hold in to magnetize it longer, or any of you tapped it, you just got a little burst. Grand Lizard's like that, though. Hopefully Rick and Morty has as good of a soundtrack as Grand Lizard. I hate Grand Lizard so much. He also said Jungle Lord is another example. I didn't even remember Jungle Lord had a magnet. I didn't either. I've played it a number of times. I was like, okay, well, okay. Well, so thank you, Joseph, for the clarification. We do appreciate it. Also, there are a couple new pinball podcasts, so I want to give alerts for those that don't. You're looking for new stuff. You're tired of us. There are other options out there. First one I want to note is called This American Pinball. There's a link to both of these in the show notes. This American Pinball. So I'm assuming the name is a play off of This American Life. Do you know This American Life, Tony? Yes. I like This American Life. Then you'll love This American Pinball. I've only heard the third episode. I liked it. It's really well put together. And it seems to be a monthly. Yeah. So there's that. And then there is, and I believe the proper name is Macho Pinball Podcast Pinball Podcast Vlog Show. Hosted by... Oh, yeah! Yes. That's what it is. Macho Man. Or someone trying with a... I don't remember Macho Man enough to assess that the impression is good. Most comments I see say the impression is not that great, but the spirit is there. And so there's that. So Macho Man is hosting a pinball podcast. I will note that, and so far, they've all been around three minutes long, and he's put one out like every weekday since the first one. And so anyway, I did hear the second episode on which he did ask for me to leave Zachminny, or as he calls them, Zach Meany, and join him so he can complete my training, brother. So I was torn on how to interpret this. I mean, it's very kind of the macho man to ask for my involvement on his show. And I do like that his statement clearly indicates that Zach failed. Well, yeah, obviously. With his very Palpatine-esque offer here. No. But on the flip side, it also suggests that I need more training. So I guess everyone loses except Macho, who wins. I guess that's how it works. So anyway, that's all I have for intro updates from me. Mine are nowhere near as fun as yours. It's nothing anybody cares about, so we can just keep going. I mean, nobody cares about my work stuff. Nobody cares about, I mean, all I've done that I would normally talk about. We're going to talk about most of it in the video game section, so I'm just going to leave it until then. I got moved. I'm at my new office. I'll move. That's good. Yeah, they ended up – we had planned for me having roughly probably 400 to 500 square feet out of 175. It is a tight fit. It's like desk, filing cabinet, filing cabinet, other desk. That's it. That's some – somebody needs to work on their mast. Well, no, I was more than happy with the math when I saw the calculation for the rent payment. It's not even half what I budgeted. No, it's excellent, excellent pricing. So that worked out pretty well. All right, well, yeah, we'll kick it on over to the 2019 podcast statistics then. Statistics. You love them. You love numbers. I guess the first thing we should go in. open with is growth. Was there growth for Eclectic Gamers podcast in 2019 versus 2018? The answer is yes, though we did not have an episode this year that eclipsed our top episode from last year, which, to my knowledge, is still our top episode of all time, which was the Deep Root interview episode with Robert Mueller. That's no surprise. No, no. There are a lot of non-regular listeners who just tuned in because I think that was the first audio interview that Robert participated in. However, our annual plays for the year were up 42.5% versus 2018. That's hefty. It is. It's far more than I thought. I actually thought we'd be flat. I was going to say down, but not really down. I thought the average plays would be relatively flat to last year because we had quite a bit of growth in 2018. And, again, we're on the smaller side, so I'm not surprised. I mean, we still would, in theory, with pinball people alone, have room to grow. But it's a question of how much is that actually attainable given that we are mixed gaming and that will turn off a certain subset of people that only want to hear pinball. They'll never accept us as a podcast. That's true. And so our audience, we're more niche than a standard than a video game podcast would be or a pinball podcast would be, and that's what we accepted going into this. That's what our audience will be. So I was really surprised to see that. I would assume most of it, a lot of it comes from your increased hosting of Twit probably helps more people coming to hear you speak without having Zach there to drag it down. You think so? Yeah. I mean, it could be. They do. They want to hear a more sane discussion. Right. You are a solid alternative to Mr. Shock Jock himself. which, you know, Zach, he's very I think he'll be the first to tell anyone that's his view of entertainment, you know, you gotta make it big like Macho Man you gotta be over the top, you gotta do hard takes, you gotta be really almost aggressive with it, even when it's wrong, you just lean into that a statement that I've been using a lot of as I'm going down on the discourse I lean into a lot and And that's his thing. It's a perfectly valid thing. That's not the approach we do here. No. I mean, we disagree, we disagree. But since you're less wrong about pinball than Zach is, we don't tend to disagree. Well, that's because I know things about pinball. Right. Yeah. Yes. It's very helpful to have some base of knowledge. One doesn't have to be an expert to be right. One just has to have a baseline of knowledge. So, episodes. I mentioned we have anything that performed as well as the Deep Root interview from last year. What was our top episode? Well, it was episode 100. Ooh. Centurion. Yeah. That's obviously the one where we celebrated hitting the 100th episode milestone. We didn't really do anything special. No, we didn't. We didn't ask people to give us audio. We didn't ask for congratulate. In fact, I had a few people message me after the episode aired like, oh, yeah, congratulations on reaching 100, Dennis. Yeah. Like, privately messaged me, and that was it. Yeah, no. I mean, we didn't do anything big because it's just so many people make these huge, insane deals over it, and it just seemed played out. Yeah. So, anyway, for episode 100, we talked about, we did the deep dive on our thoughts about displays in pinball. That's the one where we reviewed Pinball FX3's Monster Pack. Right. It's also where we discussed the Walking Dead Raw Thrills arcade game, and you went through a lot of coverage on BlizzCon for 2019. All things that aim are right at our base. Yes. A lot. Yes. All things. I remember when we did the stats in 2019 over 2018, we talked about, because we had a lot of guest hosts in 2018. We did. We talked about what was most popular with that. Well, I'm surprised. We only had like two guests this year. We had the episode way back at the start of 2019 with Nick Baldrige. talking about Quaynock Carnival, and we had him guest host. And then a few episodes ago, we had Jason Knapp back on to guest host. That was on episode 98. That was – he was the one – We've had one other guest. We have, and I'm blanking. Nick, when you brought me my Campus Free. Oh, yeah, our special episode with Nick Schell. How could I forget that? Where you guys surprised me. Where we went down to check out Jax 2 Open, the hit model star game. Yeah. That was so, I don't know if I mentioned it on that episode. I can't remember. But I almost didn't go with you. I almost went to the bathroom. I was like, I'll just go to the bathroom. I'm going to pee, but it's just open. I can't miss it. Which would have made that whole thing even funnier. Where's Tony? Tony, we need help. I'm sure I'm going to have to come up with something. Tony, the leg fell off. Help me. Help me. I'm driving the kids off the pool So of those three Naps episode was the most popular Which was easy to determine because actually Episode 98 was the second most played Episode of 2019 So we had that And then our third most Popular episode was These are all really close together And late in the year Episode 101 the one I so cleverly Titled Rosal Dozzle Tony doesn't get to pick the titles what happens is I mean you could I suppose but what happens is when I get done editing and I'm writing up the public show notes I just try and throw in a name and I either alliterate or I try and incorporate elements of whatever the episode was about and since we talked about Raza at some point it might have been late when I was doing these edits and I thought Razzle Dazzle made sense some of them some of them are really good Maybe the way you said that indicates that this was not one of those. But, but. I like Centurion. That's great. Centurion. Or that was a play off of Praetorian from Gladiators. But still. So that episode, our third most popular, was where we talked about the Raza prototype reveal from Deep Root Pinball. And also you went in depth on the Google Stadia launch. Yeah. So those are bests. But, you know, it's not all about winning. There's also losing that happens on a Collective Gamers podcast. So our worst episode, not including, as I've always excluded, the year-end review, because it's always right at the very end of the year, and so you get truncated stats, and it would always look like the worst one. Because I actually just, my snapshot is January 1 to December 31. I don't allow, even if the episode is, you know, people play into 2020, I don't count those in the stats. So Worst Episode was also a late-in-the-year one. It was episode 104, Beneath the Morty and Video Game Wars. So one of my not-so-good titles. And so that was the second-to-last show of 2019. So there could still be an issue that the tail wasn't very long impacting that. Now, the play numbers aren't terrible, incidentally, when I look at the play numbers. But other things was that episode was extremely video game heavy. It was, I think there was more video games than pinball, which is atypical. We're usually relatively balanced to pinball possibly being up to 70% of the episode. Right. So there's that. It was also released during the holiday period, which normally I see depressed downloads during periods where people are on a lot of vacations. So 4th of July, for example, is another time where you see the numbers just lag, at least initially, while people are not doing the work thing and not doing the commute thing. And then there was also what I mentioned before, the fact that the tail wasn't very long. So I just didn't have as much of a stat period to rely upon. So that was our worst episode. That was the episode where I was dying. Yes, but you were there. The worst episode wasn't my solo episode. It wasn't the solo episode. It should have been, but it wasn't. Oh, that was the episode before that, wasn't it? Yes, it was. Yes. So then the... Or was it? I didn't talk about the Game Awards. Oh, God. No. Why didn't I put it in my notes? Because of the shame. You're right. because the game boards were through them and it was most of the content but there was no content because it was just me okay, why didn't I write that down the reason why that one was bad is it was me doing it solo which has always been one of our worst performing episodes I have like one person out there who likes it when I do it solo and that's it the thing is there are a lot of solo people vomiting their opinion out podcasts and we're not designed like that and I don't think But there's not a lot in gaming, is there? Yeah, there's a fair amount. They're just not the big ones because nobody cares about that for the most part. Pinball is a small enough hobby that the solo guy regurgitating opinions out can be fairly popular, but most podcasts tend to run on a larger, more back-and-forth thing. Yeah, but within pinball, and I don't listen to all pinball podcasts, but very few do solo. Very few. Almost all are doing a duo host system, or they do like Pinball Profile and Backbox Pinball Podcast and rely on constant guests. Right. So there's always more than one person. A twip rotates guests. Yeah, yeah. It's just that formula, I mean, really, the only, I was going to say the only highly successful, that's not right. I was going to say, of all the ones I've heard, and I do listen to some solo ones, But the only one that I ever thought really mastered the format very well was Coast to Coast. Yeah. Just my opinion. That was the strongest. To me, the strongest solo performer podcasts aren't going to be in a situation where they're not in video gaming. Right. They're not in. Now, stuff like the History Podcasts are very strong solo podcasts. Yeah, yeah. Educational stuff like that. That's a very strong Those are very scripted shows Right It's designed that way Yeah So Because if they were ad-libbing history It would probably suck Probably I mean There's a reason Hardcore History Only puts out like Two a year Yeah Well even That's That's really rounding up For him right now At least it's going to get better It's a great show by the way Check out Hardcore History It's my favorite podcast It's nice to have a favorite podcast That only puts out a couple of times a year. That's true. Really easy to stay caught up. That's it. I still haven't listened. You still haven't. I still haven't listened. It's both high hours long. Yeah. It's a big thing. So, other breakdown podcast statistics. Top five listening countries for 2019. These are the same in the same order as 2018. USA, followed by Australia, followed by Canada, followed by the UK, and Sweden rounds out the five. Okay. Probably the Overwatch. players out there. I would assume so. Thor Bjorn. Ready to throw. Our top ten listening cities for 2019, in order, Chicago, Everett, which is in Washington, San Jose, New York City, Overland Park, which is in Kansas, Oklahoma City, Seattle, Dallas, Minneapolis, and L.A. So, some of those are pretty large. That's an interesting thing. That's like, okay, so Chicago, it's the heartland of pinball. So I guess all the manufacturers that are hanging on are every word. Right. They have hired dedicated podcast listening people. Sure. Their whole job is to keep the pulse, the pulse of the podcast. New York and L.A. are massive cities. That's not surprising. Everett and Seattle are both in Washington State, which is a major state for pinball. Overland Park is not too surprising because there are a few people that, out of guilt, listen to us in the Kansas City area, and some of those are going to be tagged. The way the stats will work is you don't get every little third-class city on there. So, Overland Park is one of our largest cities on the Kansas side of the border. Oklahoma City is a surprise to me, as is Minneapolis, because I don't know anything about this place. Yeah, I don't know either. And Dallas is pretty big, too, so Dallas makes it. So, I guess not too shocking. I do with the countries I want to make sure that our listeners from Sweden know that the Swedish Volhund is like my short list for the next time I get an animal because it's awesome I don't know anything about what you just said and neither do the Swedes if any Swede disagrees and knows about this dog breed write into eclecticcamerapodcast.gmail.com and give your thoughts on the breed so Tony can read about them they're awesome looking he thinks they're already awesome But I suspect, perhaps, that they can't be trusted. That maybe they only eat salted licorice, which I personally like and thus will not share with the dog. Salted licorice is good. It is. Some people don't like it, but they think that because they've never had it. Like baklava. And some people don't like salted licorice because they've had it. And you get to watch them running it to spit it out. We don't count those. Those aren't real people. So, sources of listeners. Our top website sources of listeners are most of the – I shouldn't say website because we're still talking about the SoundCloud stats. Most of our listeners who aren't subscribing via RSS. That's probably a better way to say it. So most people find us through Google, like anything. Right. Facebook is our second largest source. And directly accessing the podcast through the website we maintain at EclecticGamers.com, that's the third highest source. So people who have bookmarked the page probably. I seem to recall the website used to be a lot lower on that list. It did. It did. But I think a lot of people like it because it's all organized in a clean – I keep it pretty clean. Yeah, I know. The log format and everything like that. And if you want to play through a web browser and you don't want to – like you don't have a SoundCloud account, you might as well just bookmark the web page and click the play button through there. After that, I just note that Pinside has a significant number of referrals. We have a podcast thread, but sometimes we get referenced in the other threads, too. So I kind of have to group it all together. Yeah. Pennside's a big source for us. And Tilt Forums actually is a fairly large source as well, but it's not even half what we get from Pennside. And Tilt Forums is the much more positive forum, which is also not by design, but I think just by the nature of the people who have been there, it's much more competitively oriented, whereas Pennside's very broad. Maybe I should check Tilt Forums out. You might like Pill, especially if you want to read up on game rules and stuff. A lot of discussions on that. And then as far as the RSS feeds go and podcatchers, the apps that people run on their phones and tablets in order to listen easily to podcasts, which I do recommend if you have a smart device to try and do that because it keeps people who complain about podcasts being too long and stuff. Use a podcatcher. It'll pause for you and remember where you are, and it makes it a lot more consumable. That's what I do. So most of our listeners, like I think it's actually a majority, over half, are using Apple Core Media iPhone, some version of it. Wow. Okay. Yeah. So apparently they don't understand that Android's better. But we still love you. We do. It's okay. We do. We don't judge too much. Our next most popular app is Overcast, followed by Podcast Addict. That's the one I use. followed by Apple Core Media's iPad version followed by CastBox Podcast Player followed by your preferred app, PocketCast. That's the one I use. Followed by Stitcher Radio for podcasts. I've heard good things about it. Yeah. And then iTunes itself. So all of those that I've listed had at least 500 plays through the app. So those were all our major ones. But there are a whole bunch. Zune's even still in the list. So, why is Star-Lord listening to a Fennel podcast? I don't know. Zune's in there. Also, one of the things in there, AppleCore Media for iPod. Yes! Okay! Anyway, that's all the stats I gathered. I thought people might want to hear about it. Now we're being tracked on Smokes. It's like, oh, God! It's for smoke signals. We've got a translator app to put us in the Brian Morris code. Yes. So let's go ahead and translate from the statistical anomalies that are the Zune and move on over into pinball. Only a couple things, though. One's going to dominate our pinball discussion, obviously. The first thing is, I will note, I did finally write a new article. It's been, I think, over half a year since I did one. You have been kind of busy. I have. But nonetheless, now that I have a mechanical keyboard to motivate me with the clicky-clack, it's like, let's hammer one out. And I feel like I'm actually hammering one out. So I wrote an article on Italian bottoms, pinball design, lower playfields. It was a good article. I enjoyed it. No, you actually read it. Yeah, I did. I do have a link in the show notes for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. I thought it was interesting the, how do you put it, the atypicals, the list of some of the atypical bottoms. That are still Italian bottoms, but they're atypical. Right. Yeah. And that's why I wrote it. Yeah, there were some pretty interesting ones in there. I thought it was a pretty good article, all in all. Good. Mostly, feedback's been pretty positive, what feedback I did get. I'm more of a top guy than a bottom guy. Sure, sure. I understand. But the issue with the atypicals, as I noted, especially with Rick and Morty now coming out, and I thought I actually look back through my notes because I know this will shock people, but I organize in a very structured way how I do articles. So I actually have a folder for articles with subfolders by year with sub-subfolders for each article. So I look through my sub-subfolders before I start something new. I had started the Italian Bottom article in 2018, and I gave up. It was one of my quitter articles. It was like, oh. Like, I had last year, or not last, now it's two years ago, but in 2018, I had nine published articles. But I actually started 12. So there were three that, one, you read and said this is really boring, so I scrapped it. And then there were a couple others that didn't get as far. Like, the one Tony read was done. And yeah, I just was like, no, it doesn't work. I was skeptical. And then when he said, this is really boring, Dennis was like, okay, that one's not going out. Those thousands of words, they're lost. Well, they're not lost on my hard drive, but they're lost. So Italian Bottom, I tried to start, and I didn't get through the intro. And so with Rick and Morty, I thought, I really, I feel like I need to write it now before we start a whole new wave of people thinking that anything that doesn't have two symmetrical slings is not an Italian bottom because it's not what it was about. Right. But when I try and do research on it, there's hardly anything that defines Italian bottom on the Internet. There are like four sources, and most of them are just referring back to others. So it's like, okay, well, we have enough because there's a really nice clean write-up from Knick, but it's buried in Paragon on the IPDB. IPDB doesn't have in their glossary definition for Italian bottom. So you have to find it another way. So given that, and Steve Ritchie in an interview with Pinball Magazine in an online accessible version also talked a lot about his modifications to the Italian bottom because he always does an Italian bottom ever since Flash. Right. And I remember reading that and reading that he doesn't like to vary his Italian bottom at all because he wants people who go up to his games to always feel that part's familiar because he thinks people prefer to have it. And clearly the manufacturers think people prefer to have an Italian bottom because they keep doing it. But it's gone beyond all of that now where we have a standardized lower layout where we don't even deviate from that. So it's not just having inlanes that are feeding the flippers. It's having the slings and the – but that wasn't what was meant. So that's why I was like, let's write it up and let's do some categories with some photos. And, you know, Eric Hoek supplied a lot of those photos because he takes a lot when he – he goes down with us to TPF. Yeah. So he has albums. Yeah. He has albums of playfield layouts. He takes a playfield layout picture of every machine we touch. Yeah. And so he gave me a permission to use any of the photos he had taken for that. So I just started going through, and I'd look through his photos and be like, all right, here's – I had plenty of Italian bottom examples in my own collection. Right. But beyond that, I was like, oh, here's an example of an atypical Italian. Let's use that. I don't need very many, but let's just use a few of those. And so, anyway, that was kind of how the article happened and why I was motivated to write it. And Spooky gave me the permission to use their Rick and Morty photo, which I really appreciated. That's nice, yeah. Because, you know, them, even though it's an Italian bottom, I don't want to downplay that that's not a, in a lot of ways, that's a risk to deviate and make that atypical with that pop. That's not happening. Because the normal from, in the article and stuff, the normal atypical you see is instead of two inlanes, or instead of one in lane on each side, one of the sides will have two inlanes. Right, right. Or both sides will have two inlanes. That's the typical atypical. And that's where I classified those as still typical lower layouts because the slings are still up against those inlanes. Right. I used a more neutral term, up against the start of the lane segments. But you would have this, Lawler loves this, Pat Lawler. He loves to do an asymmetrical Italian bottom. Okay. Where he puts more inlanes on one side than another. so with Kinnick and his definition about and you look back even before Paragon it gets weird because there were a couple versions of Paragon but an in lane on each side and an out lane on each side that's the traditional Italian bottom but having multiple inlanes or multiple outlanes if it's still feeding the same way every goal of the Italian bottom is being met that's why I gave it its own category and there are a lot of weird examples Like, people will ask, well, is – I just didn't have photos of them, so I couldn't use – I didn't want to go through a three-week process of securing photos. I've done that before. I hate it. But, like, Wheel of Fortune – well, how do we treat Wheel of Fortune? Like, to me, Wheel of Fortune is an Italian bottom, but it's atypical. Even though the layout – and you've probably never seen it because it's not – I've never seen it. I've only seen one in person once, but the reason it's still got an in lane on each side and an out lane on each side. It's got a center post. Okay, well, that doesn't change the Italian-ness. Right. But the center, it's interesting, though, because the center post to the left and the right of it where there's the gap, there are switches. So it looks different because there's a switch, a rollover switch. It affects the wheel in some way. And then the outlanes, once the ball goes through an outlane, there's an upper path drain and a lower path drain, each with its own switch, separated by a guide. So there, there's an incentive to nudge. So to me, that's enough to be atypical. But it's still Italian. It's still an Italian bar. This is an atypical lower layout. Interesting. Interesting. Because I know, like we spoke, the campus queen, most definitely not an Italian bar. Right. and in the EM era, non-Italians were there were a lot of Italians and in fact, Jon Norris, the designer with Premier, when he saw the article on one of the shares he posted and he said that he worked with people when he joined Gottlieb that had been around in the 60s when which I did not know he provided why was it called the Italian bottom Because Kamek noted that this was a request from a variety of European countries And he knew it was called Italian, but Kamek never said why it was called Italian. And the reason, according to Jon Norris, that it was called Italian, spoiler for those, well not spoiler, because this is extra, this wasn't in the article, was because Gottlieb had an Italian distributor, a big one of theirs, contact them and say, any design you do that doesn't have this Italian layout, I won't buy. Because our people don't want it. Yeah. And so, they just started calling it the Italian bottom, because if you wanted to sell to the Italian distributor, you had to give him an Italian bottom, or he wouldn't buy it. And then he bought a lot of games. So, he had a lot of pull. So, that sort of stuff, just really interesting to me. I always like this. The problem is, the history's, the legacy of pinball, it's getting harder and harder to find stuff that hasn't, like, I don't like to write about something that's already been done. But now, all the low-hanging fruit's going away. It's getting hard. Like, I'd love to know, who were the designers for Playmatic? Who did all those games? I don't know. The company was out in Spain. And even with my little Spanish, I can remember. You'd think I'd do better after four years of it. But I don't know any documentation. Like, where's the documentation? Where are the people I can ask? Road trip. I don't know. Road trip. Yeah. Yeah. We'll hit that before we go to TPL. We'll go. We'll just fly over to Spain, do some research, fly back to Dallas, and we'll just drive home. Yeah. That's fine. Easy. That's easy. Speaking of easy, let's go over the Twippies. That was easy, actually. That actually was pretty easy this year. The Twippy voting is open right now. It's open through January. So I do have a link in the show notes to the ballot. For anyone who has still not yet voted, go ahead and vote for what you think is the best and the favorites. As we have always done, we'll go through our picks on this stuff. And, in fact, I was going to go ahead and open up the ballot so that I could also list some of these choices. Other than the ones we chose? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's going to be really clean through the games because other than a couple of weird, I shouldn't say weird, there are a couple of exception categories that exist. But by and large, it's pretty clear cut. Okay. So for most of these categories, the choices are going to be Stern Pinballs the Munsters. And we're going to do the best. We're going to do the game ones first because that's the order in. Right. So, Stern Pinball's The Munsters, Jersey Jack Pinball's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Stern Pinball's Jurassic Park, Stern Pinball's Star Wars Home Edition, Suncoast Pinball's Cosmic Carnival, American Pinball's Oktoberfest, Stern Pinball's Black Knight Sword of Rage, and Stern Pinball's Elvira House of Wars. However, there are some exceptions, like the Medieval Madness remake from Chicago Gaming Company shows up under light show because it had a new light show. There's also, I believe, on artwork, you have the option of the Star Wars comic edition. Because Star Wars pinball, non-home edition, came out a couple years ago. But because of that artwork, it gets qualified to be eligible for that. So just bear in mind, we're not going to read them all out for every category like that. I just wanted to make note of all the games that are really in consideration because of that logic. So, with all that said, let's go ahead and start it off with the first category, which is, what is the best theme? And they note, this is based off of theme only. Which actually makes this kind of hard. Right. So, you're really just being asked to assess, like, what's the greatest theme, or at least greatest theme for Pinball, without judging how well it was or was not integrated. So, for me, it was pretty easy. Star Wars is the biggest franchise of all time. So Star Wars Home Edition, by default for me, has to be the best theme. For no other reason than it's Star Wars and people love Star Wars. I considered it. I really did. It was number two on my list. My number one? I went with Jurassic Park. Which was number two for me. Right. Because of just the popularity and the nostalgia factor that it has, just like Star Wars has. So I think those two are Running neck and neck On the decision And I'll be 100% honest I flipped a coin between them Really? Interesting Well they are both mega blockbusters Because Jurassic Park lives on now through the Jurassic World Soft reboot Now If it had been A Mandalorian themed pinball machine That's the perfect Star Wars theme Right there Well yes Yeah, the Mandalorian and the, yes, we know it's not really Baby Yoda. Baby Yoda is the hotness right now. It is the new hotness. The memes are the greatest. And, in fact, Stern Pinball on their social media has been teasing stuff regarding Mandalorian. Are they trolling or do they have it? We don't know. We do know that Stern has a long history with doing properties with Disney. Oh, man, that'd be awesome. But obviously not just them. Jersey Jack did Pirates of the Caribbean. That's a Disney franchise. But still, the legacy of the good franchise. The good franchises. Yeah. I'm assuming that the listeners could hear my eyes roll when you mentioned Pirates of the Caribbean. Well, and Stern had that one too. They just had it first when it was relevant. Right. They had it back when it mattered. Yeah. So the next category is best animations and display. So for me I went with Black Knight Sword of Rage I really like To me it was a huge step up It was Amazing I took it as the same Just because The hand All of the various monsters you fight Are just Shai-Halud Everything The pimp slap when you danger and tilt. Oh, yeah. All of that stuff, it's just next-level interesting without just being, hey, we ripped off movie clip assets. Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, I think that one was an easy one. Yeah, it wasn't a struggle for me. Best light show. So this is the interaction of the bulbs in the game itself. So I did go with Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory by Jersey Jack. I think light shows have always been something that Jersey Jack's been pretty strong with. They use a lot of color-changing RGB. I'd say, I think, I haven't seen Rick and Morty's light show yet. Scott D'Anesi with his Total Nuclear Annihilation is, like, the best light show I've seen in my life. Right. But that wasn't up this year. So given that, while I don't like, it's weird because I don't like the lighting on Willy Wonka. It's too dark. Like, I think it should have GI that's always on and just white. I think games should have that, and even TNA doesn't do that. But that said, what I've seen it do with its RGBs I thought was the most impressive, so I chose Willy Wonka. This is one of those where I think we were real close because Wonka was my second. I did go with Black Knight. Ah, okay. Mainly for the little stuff, the flame, the little. Oh, yeah, the Burning Castle. The Burning Castle. That's pretty cool. All that. Stuff like that is what moved it over because I'm one of those people, like, you talk about art. You don't really ever notice art. It's there, but it's not something you really know. The light show, it's there. And my general rule on the light show is as long as it doesn't piss me off, it's fine. Right, right. And the thing is, is Wonka's light show pisses me off. Yeah, I tried to factor in that. I wouldn't be so mad at Wonka if, as a 403 club, it wasn't in such a dark lighting condition where I'd lose track of the ball when the light's in, the game dimmed. But it is. So I tried to look past it. I didn't. I didn't even try. It's like, that's my whole thing. If something has a really cool gimmick that moves it up even higher, as long as it doesn't actively piss me off, it's a good lecture as far as I'm concerned. And that was the thing. Because of how I've played Wonka and everything, it annoys me. So I couldn't put it up on top. Best toys and gimmicks. This one was easy for me. It was Black Knight Sword of Rage, the knight toy. It's awesome. Oh, yeah, that flail. That flail is amazing. I like the whole mech. I like the shield that gets lifted. Everything about it. That's why it's my number one, too. Everything about that is awesome. Yep. Best theme integration. For me, this one was pretty easy. I chose Jurassic Park. I get that for some people. It's probably controversial because they did not put, like, the movie's not in there. So it's telling its own story. That might bother some people. But the story it's telling about, all right, the animals are loose on the island. You're trying to rescue the workers. You're trying to recapture the animals. I think it feels like you're in Jurassic Park. It does. That's why I did the same. For me, and compared to everything else, I mean, Black Knight would have probably been my second because it does feel like you're on a journey to battle the Black Knight. I kind of downgraded it a bit because there are so many things like the Hydra. It's more like you're fighting a bunch of monsters. I've never gotten to face the Black Knight. So to me, it's like he's making remarks, but it's not as well integrated as Jurassic Park was. Yeah, no, and I did Jurassic Park 2 for the same reasons. It is a game that very much gave me the feel of being in that story. Best music and sound effects, I went with Black Knight, Sword of Rage. How could you not? Awesome. I mean, I guess if you got really annoyed with the heavy metal Anthrax track, you might not like it. But for that alone, I was like, nope, it feels epic. I love the sound. Yeah. And the sound effects are cool. The clanks of metal when you hit the shield and stuff. I really like the sound package on it. Now, best call-outs. I probably maybe should have gone Black Night because it's Steve Ritchie doing the Black Night again and it sounds really cool when he says stuff. But actually I ended up going with the Munsters on this one. I just thought that I don't know the show super well but from what I did watch some clips on YouTube to familiarize myself. I thought the Raven callout was really cool. I was surprised the one John Borg was actually the one doing that callout and I think the callouts they integrated otherwise from the clips in that one actually fit the theme really, really well. I can see it. So in a way, it was almost like it took more chances than Black Knight, which was, oh, we'll just have Steve Ritchie do it again, which is the only answer, but it was also the obvious answer. To me, they were very, very close, but I decided to give some Munsters love here, so I voted Munsters. As a question, so you voted Munsters, but where would you have put Elvira? Because with the call outs and the new scenes and all the others. They're all really close together. Here's actually where I tried on Light Show to set aside the bias of condition of my location experience. The bias crept through here. I could hear the Munsters call outs better. I can barely hear the Black Knight call outs at 403. and I can barely, barely hear Elvira's call-outs. So my order would be Munsters of Black Knight, Elvira, because I just can't hear Elvira half the time. If anyone's playing another game in there, I can't hear her explaining anything. Yeah. So it's sad, but volume matters. And I can always hear the Raven. So I can appreciate the call-out. That's a valid point. Right. I went Black Knight. I've played Black Knight in enough places other than there that I've heard the call-out. I mean, like you said, it's Steve Ritchie being the Black Knight talking to you. It's awesome. It's a right answer. Yeah. I can't dispute that. Best rules, I went with Jurassic Park. I think that's a given. Yeah, I think. I mean, people can make arguments. I just disagree. I will disagree with almost all of their arguments. Yeah, I just, it's, I mean, a lot of games have had good rules this year. I know monsters won't be, we'll go through what we think will win in a moment. Yeah. Because we'll be able to go through that. But, yeah, I agree with you. It was, for me, this was not a debate. Yes. Best rules easy. Jurassic Park. That was the first one that came to mind. As soon as I saw best rules, it was Jurassic Park was the given to me for this year. Best play field gameplay and layout, I went Jurassic Park. Yep. It's different, and it feels good to shoot. Yep. It's easy for me. There were some others that I could have seen. For me, Jurassic Park took the number one slot, but this one was closer than I thought it would be when I actually started. There have been a lot of good layouts this year. I like Wonka's layout. I like the pro version of Black Knight's layout. I ended up really enjoying Elvira's layout. So those are all strong. And actually, Munster's layout is pretty good, too. I think it feels good. If I was to list my top four, it would be Jurassic Park, Wonka, Black Knight, pro. I would probably, and then my fourth would be Elvira. Okay. My order would probably be Jurassic Park, for just layout. Jurassic Park, Elvira, Wonka, Black Knight. Yeah. Probably be how it is. My biggest problem is I'm still having a hard time separating the complete lack of rules on Elvira from just the layout. Right, right. The layout's fun to shoot. I enjoy shooting it. It's a lot of fun, but it feels, it's still not there yet. I think it has to possibly be a heck of a game, though. Best artwork. I ended up going with the Munsters. I really like the black and white art package. I do like that. That's the best art package on Munsters. I think the sales for Munsters, which started very strong, was driven almost entirely by the art package that Christopher Franchi developed. I agree. So for me, I thought it was the best art package I saw. I went with the Star Wars comic edition because I really liked the reach and the change. because everything we've ever seen Star Wars related has been so the same. The comic edition was so different, and I really appreciated that. It's convinced some people to go and buy it, whereas they just couldn't stand the old art. Yeah. No, I was not a fan of the Star Wars art, but the comic edition art I like. And then Game of the Year, for me, this was easy. It was Jurassic Park. And also, surprising, when you look, and I'm like, my plurality of choices were Black Knight. but for me it wasn't even close. Me too. Most of my choices were Black Knight, but I think at the end, between the theme integration and the rules and the gameplay, Jurassic Park is just so much superior. Because to me, those are some of the most important things. And they're superior to Black Knight for all of those. So, yeah, I think that's why Jurassic Park takes it. Yeah. So I'd say let's go ahead and run through these, in terms of our predictions of what will win. Okay. So on theme only, what do you think wins? This is the one you picked, Jurassic Park. I picked Star Wars Home Edition. I think Jurassic Park will win this. I think so. To me, it's going to depend upon the nostalgia showing for Wonka. That's a good point. I actually think Jurassic Park will win and Wonka will be number two. I think that's the most likely. That's where I think it will fall. I think that's the most likely. Animations and display. I think this is actually going to be won by Jurassic Park. Probably. I think, yeah, no, I think that's the most likely. It's got a really good animation package. It does. Wonka, again, I think will take second. I don't know. Historically, J.J.P. games have kind of cleaned up on animations, but I don't know. It just feels like clip oatmeal. Right. I think Wonka and Black Knight, or not Wonka and Black Knight, but Jurassic Park and Black Knight are both superior to Wonka this year. Yeah, I think this is a, just because of the way the clips are integrated, I think it doesn't feel as special. Yeah, and I don't think it feels like it flows as well. The clips feel more out there on their own. Best light show. I think Wonka does win. I do too. Best toys and gimmicks. I do think Black Knight wins it. I think so, but I bet you Wonka will be up close, too, if it doesn't take over. You don't think the T-Rex on the Premium will drive Jurassic Park up? I think it should, but I still hear too many people talk about stuff that they really like in Wonka. It still seems to have a big fan following with the elevator and the Godstopper and all the other stuff. I think it should be Black Knight with Jurassic Park as the second, but I would not be surprised for Wonka to be a tight second. Okay. Best theme integration. This is a hard one for me to call. Yeah, I think my hard problem here is I'm trying to think in other people's, the way other people think, and I know there's a lot of people who really like Wonka. I just think its theme integration and everything is terrible. I think it's okay. I don't think they did a terrible job with it But I think you see where the license really held it back I would say that I mean If more people played it Elvira might have a good shot here Oh, I think that would be a good one But given it's not a cornerstone And there are no pros I really don't think Elvira wins anything I don't think so And so given that I think Jurassic Park does actually end up getting theme integration I think a lot of people go Oh, okay it's a question of how many people are upset that there's nothing from the movie in which case most of those people will probably turn to Wonka but you've got this whole world the Jurassic Park Island experience is there and you've got the theme and you've got the T-Rex so yeah it's a tough call music and sound effects I honestly do not know I can't call it I have to guess I'm going to guess Jurassic Park gets it because of the theme music. Yeah. I don't know. Wonka stuck in a lot of songs. They did. And I... And Max is polarizing on Black Knight. I know a number of people actually thought they couldn't stand to play the game because they didn't like how in-your-face the music always was. It's just never-ending heavy metal, which they need a new hobby. Right. I was like, and how much do they like Iron Maiden? They might not have liked it either. That's last year's. That has been news. I have a hard time with this. Like I said, I voted for Black Knight because I think Black Knight's the best. I don't think Black Knight wins it. I don't think so. I think you have a valid argument for Jurassic Park. And I think there's a solid argument to be made for Wonka, even if I disagree with him. Best call-outs? I do think Black Knight wins this. I think so. I'd say... I don't know. Actually, I was talking to Zach. I don't think this was on episode. Maybe it was. He pushed back when I didn't think Wonka had a good shot. He's like, well, they have a lot of movie audio integrated as call-outs. And I was like, yeah, but I think the problem with Wonka is everyone will remember fake old guy narrator and how bad it sounds. And Jurassic Park's got the same problem with wannabe Samuel L. Jackson. It doesn't sound like Samuel L. Jackson. Right. And it just doesn't. Or the hunter guy doesn't sound like the hunter guy. And it's like, those call-outs suffer. So for that reason, I think Steve Ritchie gets it. I think so. Best Roles, I do think Richard Dreyfuss Park wins. I think so, too. In fact, I don't think it's going to be close. No. If it is, I will be kind of shocked. Yeah, I would be, too. I do think Wonka comes in number two with Best Roles, but I think you're going to see over a 10% gap between those two scores. Best Playfield Gameplay and Layout, I think Richard Dreyfuss Park cleans up this category, too. I think it's a given. Best artwork. I actually think Munsters will win this. I think that's like the one unifying thing that everyone likes about this game, is there's at least one art package that you can't complain about. I think my vote most definitely will not win this. I think it'll be probably in the bottom of the art package choices, because I knew that when I picked it. I actually don't think it'll be at the bottom. The problem is not very many people have seen the comic edition in person, so they'll not feel compelled to vote for it. Elvira's throwback art, some people might vote for it because they like it. Most people will probably say it looks dated. Johnny Crapp's art package for Jurassic Park was controversial. I think it looks pretty decent. Black Knight's art is actually really good. It is. Every one of the Black Knight art packages is solid. And Wonka doesn't win this. Oh, it's terrible. The Wonka art package was a complete failure. I think you've got a valid... I think Monster's probably done. I think it will. I mean, even if you didn't like the black and white package, they ended up putting out the color premium version. In fact, the original premium art package is what the pro art package is. Because Franchi liked his color scheme on that so much when they told them that Stern insisted on the black and white package. I like the black and white package a lot. I do. I mean, I'm not a big fan of the game, but I love the black and white pattern. But anyway, so the one with the color scheme that he really liked, Franchi went and moved over as the pro art. Right. Because he didn't think there would ever be a premium with color. So, yeah, I think that actually wins. And then game of the year will easily be dress. Should be. Yeah. So, let's go to the favorites and start working down our list here. So, we're not in bests anymore. We're in favorites. First category is favorite pinball Twitch streamer. The choices are, and the way they did this is there was already a write-in period. Right. And if there were, they tried to take the top ten choices. If there were ties, it got longer. And I'm assuming if there were less than ten write-ins, it was shorter. That's my understanding. So, for Twitch streamer, the choices are IE Pinball, JDL Pinball, Papa TV Pinball, Melbourne Silver Ball, Deadflip, Buffalo Pinball Pinball Undesirables Laser Los Chuck Wirt and Flip N Out Pinball Okay So I went with Flip N Out Pinball this year simply because I put more hours in watching that stream than any other It was hard math Deadflip was my number two I went with Deadflip because Deadflip was the one that I spent the most time watching this year by like an enormous percentage. Sure. So it wasn't even close. And I'll go ahead and do the predictions while we go down these. Yeah. Deadflip easily wins this one. I think so. He's got the largest audience. This will be the third time for him to win it. Yeah. So. All right. So the next category is favorite pinball podcast. The choices are Head to Head Pinball, Pinball Profile, Kaneda's Pinball, Loser Kid Pinball, Bro, Do You Even Talk Pinball, This Week in Pinball, Special and Lit Pinball, Poor Man's Pinball, Backbox Pinball, The Super Awesome Pinball Show, and Slam Tilt. Okay. So I went ahead and went with This Week in Pinball Podcast because I'm on it every other week. I went with This Week in Pinball Podcast. Who doesn't like me? It's the only pinball podcast I listen to that's not, you know, since we're not on the list. We didn't make the list. No Mixed Gaming made the list. There are actually a few other notable pinball-only podcasts that did not make this list. Oh, yeah. I went with them because they're the only one that I listened to. And Kaneda wins this again. Probably. He's won. He's third. It's generally safe. They've won two in a row to guess that they'll win third, as people are seeing now. So, favorite pinball YouTube channel. Now, here we've got TNT Amusements, Chaz's Arcade Gameplay and Restorations, Carrie Hardy, Straight Down the Middle, a pinball show, Stern Pinball, Pinball Mayhem, Papa Pinball, Emoto Arcade, and Flip N Out Pinball. My choice here, again, based off of, I believe, my number of hours or time spent, I should say, watched is, I went with Emoto Arcade because I think I watched her stuff more than anyone else this year through the YouTube. It's hard to say because a lot of times that's embedded in it. I don't watch much YouTube pinball, quite frankly. I left it blank because there's I think there were like three of those that I might have watched part of one episode of and that was it. And my prediction is another three-peat straight down the middle gets it again. Makes sense. That's my prediction. So, for the winners, they just didn't put out enough content for me this year. I told Zach too. I told him I didn't vote for it. I was like, you guys, you gotta put out more than like an episode every two months for me to consider you. Yeah. So, anyway. Alright. So, next is favorite pinball mod of 2019. We have the Deluxe Light Kit by Speaker Light Kits. There's Penn Stadium's X-Stream. There's Penn Woofer. There's the Amber Jurassic Park Shooter Rod that Stern made. There's the Chest Mod for Jersey Jack's Pirates that's made by the Pinball Mod Company. There's the Barbasol Can that's made by Flash. There's the Raptor Pit that Measel Mods made. And then there's Penn Stadium's Hover. I left them blank. I considered, but decided not to vote for the Amber Shooter Rod because I loved the idea. I've never actually seen it. Okay. Yeah, it's really cool. I actually went and looked at some of these online. And so I did go ahead, I went ahead and voted for the chest mod. Mostly because it actually restored something that a lot of people were like, why did this get stripped out of the final version? The opening and closing chest. So someone that, I hear it's a hard mod to install. Yeah, I bet. But it brings back something that people felt like they were promised. And so for that reason, I'm like, total hat tip to you. I don't have a prediction on who wins favorite mod. One of the Penn Stadium. It'll be Penn Stadium. That's my prediction. Unless Penn Stadium, because there's two, gets its vote broken up. I know, but I don't. My assumption would be it'll be Penn Stadium. So, the next category for consideration is favorite homebrew pinball machine. And we don't have ten here. So we've got Metroid, done by Arcade. Or maybe it's Arrrr. Sorry to roll the R's when you lead with an A. I don't think you're supposed to. Spaceballs the Pin by Wolf Marsh. Deadflip by Deadflip. It's not named yet. Undertale by Kelly Corcoran. And Castlevania by Justin Kalinowski. I think let me go with what I answered first. I went with Deadflip. It's the only one I have any real experience with. Several of the other themes I liked, but Deadflip's the one that I've actually watched and seen a bunch of stuff on. I did vote for Deadflip as well. I actually really like what he's done with the layout. I picked up for layout reasons. I did, for a time, follow Wolf Marsh's thread on his homebrew, and I think there's one other of these that I have a loose familiarity with. Yeah, I've seen more of Deadflip. There's some interesting stuff. I like what he's doing with it. So, yeah, I picked... And I think he wins this category. I think so, too. But I'm going to throw a caveat out there. This category shouldn't exist. Okay. I don't like this category. Do you not like the... I don't think there is enough outreach for homebrews, and not enough people get to see them or interact with them, to make it worthwhile as one of the choices. I sort of... I think this category deserves to exist, but it requires a lot more revision to how it's defined. With the right revision, I would be okay with it. Because I do think it makes sense to celebrate homebrew. I think that we need a few caveats in place. One is, I don't like how they've defined public viewing too broadly. And that's why you've got examples like Dead Flip, which, again, I picked, and again, I find the layout interesting. It doesn't even have an art scheme on it, though. Yeah. And it's like, but then again, P&A didn't have an art scheme on it either. And they didn't need it. So I get that, but I think I would like to see it better defined as the game has to make a public in-person appearance at a show. But at the same time, compared to 99% of homebrews, Deadflip has the best overall view because more people have seen it. I would be amazed if more people hadn't seen Deadflips than any. I would be amazed if more people hadn't seen Deadflips than all of the others put together. No, and that's why I think it's a safe bet that it wins. He has the largest viewer audience in pinball because his audience is so beyond pinball. Because his brand is beyond pinball. Yes. He is his own brand. Yeah. And he focuses on pinball. And his dead flip, the dead flip, if we want to call it that, was about showing people, walking them through an experience of if they wanted a homebrew and doing it. You're going along the journey with Jack. So you have all these people that were seen and no one else documented to that degree as he did. So those things. But that said, we've been walking through his documentation process. It's not done. I'd like the game to be done. Now that I can agree with. And I think the issue is, and I don't know if we do it with a public unveiling at a show or what, but at some point you have to be able to leave it, I guess, leave it up to the home brewer maybe and say, They have to declare that their project is finished. And that doesn't count like iterative revisions. Right. People want to fix bugs and stuff. That's fine. One of the things is I think every single one of these – I don't know this to be true, so I apologize. Feel free to write in a correction if I'm wrong. I don't think any of these are coded ready to play. Like they have software that will allow them to flip. They don't have rules. They're not real games yet. I can see that. So you could say, well, should there be a condition that they actually have to have codeine? I don't know, because if someone homebrewed an EM, it'd be done when it's wired. Right. Because the scoring is that simplified. But these aren't at that point where I don't think they're even really giving points. It doesn't make sense. So, yeah, no, I think the category needs to be dramatically reworked. I also think that it's a little weird to recognize from scratch homebrew and not have a category of recognizing re-themed homebrews. Agreed. Because they are going through with the art and stuff. Yeah. And if these aren't, then I think we need to consider a recognition. I think they need to be separate. And they shouldn't be merged. No, they need to be separate entities. Yes. Because I think they're very different things. All right. Our next category is, and I don't actually say favorite, just as Rookie of the Year. Now, this was a really broad mix. And so the ballot actually says for what reason they qualified. Okay. Let me run through the list real quick. Don't worry. Don't worry. We'll talk about this. Poor Man's Pinball Podcast for podcasting. Brad Brad Albright for the art package he did on the Led Zeppelin homebrew, which you might recall Led Zeppelin homebrew wasn't in the homebrew list because that one of those re homebrews Tim Sexton for being a lead coder which was Black Knight Sword of Rage Jack Danger for his first year as a homebrew designer Joel DeGuzman for logo art. He's a new pinball artist. He did the new logo for American Pinball. Johnny Crapp for his first time doing a pinball art package, which was Jurassic Park. Randy Martinez for art package because he did Star Wars Comic Edition. Chris Fanchi for podcasting because he's now a podcast host for the Super Awesome Pinball Show. Loser Kid Pinball Podcast for podcasting because they're a new podcast. Lauren Gray for podcasting. She does the Backbox Pinball Podcast. And then Zach and Nicole Minnie for being new distributors. They took over flipping out pinball at the start of 2019. So in terms of what I chose, I chose who I wrote in, which was Tim Sexton as lead coder for Sword of Rage. I put Tim Sexton also as lead coder for Sword of Rage. That said, I want this category removed. It's got to go. This is the, without a doubt, in my mind, the worst category there is. I mean, it's not even close. It's, I get, and the thing to always remember with the Twippies is the Twippies exist to celebrate pinball. All that said, this is really broad, which means it's really vague. You have people that have no right to be in competition with each other listed on an award. Like, there's no rules here. It's chaos, total anarchy. The dogs and cats are living together in mass hysteria. But it's like I put on myself a condition that I will be, if there's a rookie category, I'm voting for industry people, which means I'm not voting for podcasters. I'm not voting for homebrewers. I'm not voting for distributors. I'm going to be voting for industry people, of which there were like three choices, two-thirds of which were artists. Right. Right, and honestly, in my personal opinion, as great of a job as Tim Sexton did, he didn't deserve to be on this list. Because he's worked for a year. At this point, this is literally, if you did this the way this counts, then obviously you should have given Joe Montana rookie of the year for winning Super Bowl XVI, even though that was like his fourth year in the league. Because it was his first year, first time he was at a Super Bowl. What about rookie quarterback for the Chiefs when he switched in his twilight years to being a Chief instead of a 49er? Obviously, that re-qualifies him to be a rookie. It's just like, okay, so we go, you look at this, and it's like, because that's the issue is like the rookiness of the rookies. All right, so poor man's was new. Okay. I don't know anything else they did in pinballs. So that's new. Brad Brad Albright, new. Joel DeGuzman, new. Johnny Crap, new. Randy, new. Loser Kid, new. Lauren, new. Zach, at least, has been in pinball for years. So that he's a distributor, I mean, he's in all of these other categories, some of which he's done for a while. So he's not new to pinball. Right. So that is a little awkward. Christopher Franchi has been in pinball four years as an artist. he also used to be a podcaster. He just wasn't in pinball. Right. He's been on a show for years. So that's not really new. Tim, in addition to being a competitive player for years, has been a coder on prior Stern games, so that's not new. Jack, definitely new as a homebrew designer, but as a pinball person, has been in it for years. Not new. Not a rookie. You see where... Yeah. No, I fully... So that's why they specify these categories. but these categories don't have anything to do with each other. Yeah. It's terrible. What sort of measurement, like, rookie in what way? Their contributions to the hobby? Like, how am I supposed to measure the contributions of Loser Kid Pinball Podcasts versus what Randy Martinez did in an art package? They're not, like, in an art package. Because one is talking about pinball through an audio medium, and one is a guy who did something for a very specific game that's never touched my life. So, you see, and they're not, the audiences aren't the same in a way. It's like giving awards to non-pinball stuff because you've carved it up too much. I would like to see, I know there is a panel that helped get rid of the trolley stuff. The committee. The committee, the panel, the whatever. I would like to see the rules on this. I'd like to see the rules on everything. I'd like to see a full listing of the rules that the panel decided to abide by when they chose everything. I think it would be good for TWIP to have a link on their page to a summary of meeting minutes or what. Right. Transparency sort of section that people can refer to. And obviously some of this stuff will be contained until after votes and such. And that's totally understandable. But those are good steps that could be taken. Right. because it solves some of the questions. Because I'd like to, I mean, based upon the way this category is running right now, I could sit down and in this year, 2020, I could start, I could sit down and design my homebrewed with me doing the art package, Babylon 5 pinball machine, and I could do the music myself, and I'll stream it all, which means should qualify me for rookie streamer, rookie designer, rookie artist, and rookie music guy. Minimum. Seems fair to me. Under these, yes, it would be. And I do think that in this ballot, they did a good job by listing the categories, so you clearly knew why they were a rookie. So I think they defined it, I think the way they managed the category was as good as they could do with the way this category is. This category just should go away. Solve all these problems and get rid of it. Somebody should have just stood up and said, just no. Just no. This is just the worst category. Let me put it, you know, even, I guess, for me, more bluntly. You do not need Rookie of the Year to celebrate pinball. No. It makes no sense. I just, it's just. There are several categories that we're getting to that I think are really dumb. Yeah. Well, we'll talk about that. This is my part of the worst. This one, I think you should just shed it. And only new people are up for it, so you're not really going to upset anyone. So get ready after this go. Yeah. Give the award. I think it would be better overall if they did it. Or if they want to keep a rookie of the year, they need to put some seriously harsh rules on it. Because half the people in here I don't think qualify. Who do you think wins this? I have no clue. I have no idea. My guess would be Deadflip. Yeah, Jack Danger. Yeah, I think he will, too. Again, because he's got an audience for his non-rookie stuff. Right. And they know to vote for him. He's promoted that the Twippy's out there. So just based off of math, I think he'll get it. I think that's the obvious one. I think so. Well, again, like we said, I don't think he should be qualified. Just like Tim shouldn't be qualified and Zach shouldn't be qualified. None of these. No, I mean, there are a few of these that I think are very clearly rookies in doing anything in the hobby. So I could see that if that was the definition, but it's not the definition. I just don't like this category. I just don't. I think the idea there is it's all from a good place. It's like, think about, for example, if Netflix is always going to win favorite streamer, a new stream. Which needs to be favorite streamer, not favorite Twitch streamer. Yes, yes. And Jax even commented on that. Why does it say Twitch? What about, there's another group that streams almost exclusively on Facebook. Papa TV at this point mostly streams on YouTube. Right, and there's other streaming platforms. Yeah, because, I mean, we could launch the EGP stream on Mixer and clean up if there was a separate category for every flavor. I get that exclusive deal with Microsoft, don't you? I'm the new ninja. Yeah. Call me Nanja. Nanja. So, yeah, I would just get rid of this. I get the idea, but if you're not going to do rookies by category, it's just way too broad to be meaningful. So it ends up, I mean, favorites are popularity contests in and of themselves, but this hodgepodge, it's too ill-defined because it's not defined. Right. That's my problem with it. It comes from a good place, but it's not. Next category would be favorite competitive pinball player. Delete it. I don't like this category either. I'll run through it. We'll do the pick stuff first here. So the list of names are Johannes Ostermeyer, Robert Gagnow, Keith Elwin, Escher Lefkoff, Alexander Kazmarchek, Holly Kashkiran, Bowen Kerins, Eric Stone, Steven Bowden, and Jack Danger. So my vote, which I don't remember, so I have to look. Sorry, Figaro. You voted for Bowen. I voted for Bowen, and not because of his competitiveness, but because he puts out good tutorials on how to play competitively. That's why I picked him. I voted for Bowden because he's the one that I've probably talked to the most. It was him or Jack, because those are the two I've talked to the most. Again, because of his Twitch audience, I'm going to guess that Jack would win this. category. It's a dumb category. Again, I get where it comes from. I think this was when Zach insisted on. Who, you know, Zach... Zach doesn't play competitively. It wasn't to advance anything he does, but yeah, the idea of recognizing competitive players. The thing is that I see people, again, another term that people misuse, but people say, well, yeah, Keith Elwin's a professional pinball player. No, he isn't! He's a professional designer. Pinball competition is a hobby for him. There are no pro pinball players. Get used to it. There's not enough money in the circuit to keep people eating. Right. Because you have to win first to get big money, and even Elwin isn't consistent enough to make a career of it. Right. This is how it is. And it's fine. And it's perfectly fine. This is like the most popularity contest of popularity contests. Well, the thing is, again, like favorite, why are they the favorite? Right. What's the measurement? Again, it wasn't like out of the top 16. Anyone, I wrote me in, in this. Yes, I'm my favorite because I feel best when I win. That was my logic. It was my logic. My logic is undeniable, is it not? You may not be. You probably didn't write me in. I did not. You sure? I'm positive. I could use another trophy. Sorry. Okay. I guarantee you, you're not who I wrote in I didn't write myself in either so that makes me feel better it just makes me feel selfish but that's okay so it's just like okay, it's like I like Steven Bowden for my interactions with him I like Jack Danger for my interactions with him I like Bowen for what he contributes for watching skilled play Elwin's the one I've gone back and watched the most video on so I like Elwin for watching just sheer control and amazing Pemberg finishes and stuff. But these aren't sports teams. It's not like I'm getting all my Don Battingly baseball cards here and following a player. So if that's what that is. I mean, this isn't even a. If that's what that is, there should be restrictions on this, like out of the top 100 or something, to be without following competitive players that go to a lot of big events and stuff. Yeah. By definition, to be in the top 100, you have to go to the big events. Right. So. Well, and then you start getting into the other weird questions. Like, okay, favorite competitive pinball player. Well, seeing as there's competitive pinball play separated by sex, should there be two different sections, one for each gender? Yeah. See, and part of this is I'm going back to the, Twippies are about celebrating pinball. what does being a competitive player give back to the hobby? It doesn't. Celebrating the tournament would. Celebrating the event. The player is playing for themselves. Their reward for that is money and trophies and whoppers. They don't need a Twippy because that isn't a celebration of pinball to me. It's just not. Because it's specific to the player, there's no giving. Everyone else is, not everyone else, but broadly speaking, most of this other stuff is giving back to the community in some way. The home brewer is showing you something new that you've never seen before. It's these games. We get to play these games, these events that we get to do. You listen to podcasts. You look and appreciate art. Competitive players play for themselves. Yeah. No, they should be gone. Yeah, I would get rid of it. Favorite pinball website. So the choices this year were Tilt Forums, Pinball Life, Marco Specialties, IPDB, Match Play Events, Stern Pinball, IFPA Pinball, Pinball News, Pinside, Pinball Info, and This Week in Pinball. I picked IPDB because I use it constantly. I picked IPDB because I use it constantly. I mean, it is the pinball website that I use the most. I probably spend more eyeball time on Pinside catching up on threads for tracking news or whatnot, but it would be more painful to me if IPDB went away. Yeah. I can't remember, other than my IFPA articles, I almost always lean heavily into IPDB for some section of anything I write because I need that resource. And Pinside has a database as well. It's not as good. Every time I have a question about something, or when we play 20 questions, or even just little things, I pull up IPDB constantly. Whenever we talk about a machine, especially an older machine, I'm there for pictures and flyers and everything. I use it all the time. I don't like this category either. I don't think so. This fits in the spirit. The problem is, like Rookie, it's just too broad. So, Tilt Forums and Pinside are discussion forums. Pinball Life and Marco Specialties, and I'm assuming the reason Stern Pinball is on here, are because of their storefronts. Yeah. Maybe Stern's on there because you need to download code. IFPA Pinball and Match Play Events are competitive tools. IPDB is a research tool. And Pinball News and This Week in Pinball are news sites. They're completely different. So, again, it's not apples to apples. So if they happen to all be web-based, it's nice. But, again, I think in this sort of case, you need to just be more specific. Like, favorite pinball forum, favorite pinball news source. And storefronts not needed. But they had it more split up last year, and it was terrible because nobody cared. That's the important thing. Right, right. Pinside just won. Nobody cared. Was it split up more? I thought so. I thought they had news separate from forums last year, I thought. Maybe. I don't remember for sure. I thought they did. Pennside wins this. But it doesn't matter. If Pennside wins this, this category shouldn't exist. Because, I mean, it is. Not as it is. I don't think it should exist at all. Again, at least I can see where running a valuable, like, running a website that provides content to the community, I see where that can be a celebration of pinball. But you need to make rules to it, like stores can't count. No. That's to sell stuff. That's not I mean, excuse me, this would be like comparing Reddit, Amazon, Food Network, and Pornhub all together in the same category. It's too broad. All right. So, next, it was favorite pinball publication, writer, or article. Fewer than 10 of these as well. Yeah. Shows you how little writing actually happens in this one. Now, let me say, right out the gate, I really like this category. Okay. You actually like one? I actually like this category. it's again it's a fairly broad blend of sort of sizes it always has been they did redefine this a little bit it used to last year it was written up like magazine article or other like book right now and so now they've got it so you can either celebrate a publication like a magazine celebrate a specific work they also listed article or you could just do the writer outright right which I get what they did I think it's better than it was to find. And again, I wouldn't carve it up a bunch because then you're adding a whole bunch of awards. A bunch of awards. It gets absurd. Right. And then you'll get to the point where you have things where there's like one or two people. Which is the risk with website if you carve it up. You start to get absurd. I think it's easier just to restrict things in that one's case than it get crazy. If you want to keep it. So the choices were Pinball Magazine. Pinball Magazine did not have a magazine out in 2019 but it releases like a monthly newsletter. So it's listed as four newsletters that it did. Then there's something called A Look at Seattle's Exciting Pinball Present and Sketchy Past, written by Brendan Kiley. I don't think I've read that. Pin Game Journal is a choice. I am a choice. I'm now spelled right in the list. Aw, finally. Yeah, apparently. And Coin Off Carnival, which was a publication that Nicholas Baldridge and Ryan Claytor did. And then I'm familiar with this, but I've not read it. Skillshare, which is a pinball zine that is out of Seattle. They actually have a podcast that kind of goes along with it, though they weren't very prolific in 2019 with the podcast. My choice here was Coin Out Carnival. Mine too. I really liked it. It's cool. It was great. It's cool. And I've had a number of people contact me about me being in this category, which it's nice, but I only wrote two articles. And I get it. There's not a threshold. There's not like a required density level, but I just didn't feel like I wrote very much. Right. Unlike last year, since it was article, not writer last year, you were broken up between all of you. And you had a lot of articles. Yeah, I had nine, I think, including the things I co-wrote. And so, yeah. Okay, so there's that. I don't know if it's like a mea culpa that people like. But here's the thing. How many people do you think are picking me because they know me from podcasting and not having even read my article? The vast majority. That's not the right reason to choose me. I know it's not. That's why I didn't choose you. That's right. Also, you weren't on the list when I voted. No, I wasn't. There was somebody whose name was kind of like yours. Probably a nicer version. No, there's no such thing. I'm coming for your niceness, Steven Bowden. It will be my title. Okay, so, and I think Coyneoff wins. I think so. I think they sold a lot, so I think they had a really good shot. I mean, they were at a lot of shows. I mean, Nick and Ryan split apart and did like a whole tour. So there's a lot. And Ryan's really promoted coin op online quite a bit for votes. So I think he's got it. I think they've got a very good shot. I do. I think so. Favorite pinball location. So the choices here were Einstein's. I'm not going to name the locations. Einstein's Pub. I'm not the citizen. No Quarter. The Game Preserve. Pinball Gallery. Pinball Lounge. Logan Arcade. What's Brewing, Titletown Pinball, the Pinball Palace, and the Pinball Asylum. I did not pick because I have not been in any of these. I picked Logan Arcade because I've been to Logan Arcade and that's it. And this is one of those things I don't think should exist because of the geolocation aspect of specific pinball bars and specific area. I just, I think it's a terrible category. I don't think it should be there. I think that's a good point. I'll say, I think Logan Arcade wins. They won last year. So that's going to be why I guessed that. This one got a lot of initial, when the Twippy ballot first came out, this was actually, this and Rookie, probably this more so, at least on Pennside, had the most drama around it. Because people were noticing it's not a single Seattle location. There's not, it's like, Pinball's Mecca doesn't have a location on it. Why? My only guess would be that there's so many they split. Could be. Or they just didn't, not enough people on the West Coast wrote in. Yeah. Is the other option. So, again, and that's all discussion about people who didn't notice the write-in period and all that. I get, again, I get the idea here. You're trying to celebrate. On paper, I like the idea because someone running a location that has pinball does give back to the hobby. So celebrating that makes sense. The problem I have with location is in the vein that you have. This is a worldwide award, and this is way too regional of a thing to really work, in my view. So you're basically going to have places that either have a huge volume of people because the cities are large, or airport hubs. Like, lots of people fly through Chicago. So, of course, Logan's going to be there. Well, and Jack Danger streams from there all the time. Sure. So it's even more widely known from that. Yeah. So I agree. I would get rid of this. Not because of who ended up on the list or anything, but just the fact that it'll always be... It's just too regional, I think. I think so. It's just too regional. Now, I'm okay with the next one, favorite pinball convention, because those are designed to attract lots of people to them. Yes, very much. So I like that. That's a category. Of which the choices are Replay FX, Texas Pinball Festival, Grand Ole Game Room Expo, Midwest Gaming Classic, Southern Pride Gaming Expo, Freeplay Florida, Pinfest, which is also known as Allentown, Chicago Pinball Expo, commonly known as Expo, Pintastic New Robert Englunds, and the Houston Arcade and Pinball Expo. I picked Texas, because that's the one I go to. Me too. Yep. And it won last year. The safe money is that it will win again. That said, I will not be shocked if either Replay or Chicago Expo wins because those are the big three. Right. It will be one of those. It's not going to be the Midwest Gaming Classic. No. Though I hear that's a great show, but it's not going to be that. No. So, yeah, I'm okay with this category. I like this category because it is a thing that's designed to be a draw from everywhere. I mean, we've been to TPF. How many fans have we met from Australia and from Europe and from, I mean, it happens all the time. Three. We've met three. We've met three. It happens. From Europe and Australia. Yeah. But, I mean, that's one of those things that it's designed to pull people in. So, no, I'm perfectly fine with this one. That one can stay. Favorite pinball tournament in competition The list of choices is Pinberg 24 hour battle at the Sanctum Final battle at the Sanctum IFBA Pinball Olympics 2019 which was held in Germany The Texas Wizards Tournament Which is at TPF The Space City Open The City Champ SF The Grand Ogre Grand Old Game Expo Nashville Tournament Pinball Asylum Annual Point Monsters New York City Pinball Championships, InDisc, and Bat City Open. I did not vote for these because I don't play in any of these. I didn't vote for any of them because I didn't play in any of those tournaments. I don't know how well they were. I didn't know anything about any of it that way other than just word of mouth and watching video clips and interviews and stuff. And, yeah, no, they all seem cool. I'm fine with this category. I guess I'm not really, but yes. It doesn't make any sense. by definition it makes sense. The only issue I have with it is it's the, let's just give an award every year to Pinburgh, because no other tournament is just approaches that scale. Right, right. No, no, no. I mean, that's valid. And I've had people ask me well, but because I'm like, well, it's got the numeric advantage and it's popular, so it's going to win. And I've had one or two people ask me, well, yeah, but if it wasn't popular, then even though it can support over 1,000 people, it wouldn't win. It's like, they wouldn't turn out to play in it if it sucked. Right. So, if we're assuming all these tournaments that make this list are good, then the one that has three times more than the next nearest one is going to win, like, statistically. It's going to win. Especially because of the fact that literally the vast majority of people who played all the other tournaments also play at Pembroke. Yeah. And they all love Pembroke. It's to such a degree that their podcasts, like, I think, Backbox Pinball Podcast, when they ask, what's your favorite tournament? They ask you to please not name Pinburgh. We just assume that Pinburgh's your actual favorite. I can see them going with that. Sure. What is your second favorite? That's a math thing. In that regard, as a category, this is not a badly designed column. No, it's not. It's not Pinburgh's fault. I get it existing. Or the panel's fault. Or anybody's fault that Pinburgh is just so big and so good. It's not Jack Danger's fault that Deadflip is the biggest strength. Well, it is because he built it. Right. But the point being is it still can make sense to say, oh, well, we should recognize something even if it's dominated by one. Right. So I get it. And there's nothing to say that there won't eventually be another that could compete with Pember. Do I think it's going to happen in the next couple of years? No. But it's always possible something could get to that level. I mean, on paper. I think it's realistic. Well, it's just because of the sheer number of games you need and the fact that there's a whole non-profit that happened to have a massive collection donated to it, and that's just... Right. That's... But, yeah, it should exist. And I'm always kind of like, I don't care about the category because I know who the winner is. Right. Maybe that's a better way to phrase it. But, yeah, it does deserve to exist. Favorite pinball league. This does not deserve to exist. No, it doesn't. The choices are Space City Pinball League, Dallas-Fort Worth Pinball League, Pinball Asylum, Tilt Studio Pinball League The Pinball League at the Pinball Lounge Nashville Pinball League San Francisco Pinball Department Cincy Pinball League Bells and Chimes, the San Antonio, Texas Division Kid Force Collectibles Pinball League Titletown Pinball And the New Robert Englunds Pinball League The reason why I don't like I didn't pick any of them because I don't play any of those And I think the winner is either The New Robert Englunds Pinball League because it's by far The largest in terms of players or it's bells and chimes because there are multiple chapters and they unify and they all vote for their one bell. Yep. Those are the two. I think you're right. The problem with leagues is that they're regional. They're super regional. Just like the locations. Even worse than locations, though, because at least locations can have, like, you were on a business trip, so you went to Logan. Right. You're not going to go on a business trip and join a league. I'm sorry, Tony. You're not. That's very true. You're just not. So, I've heard about people on a trip being allowed to play in a league tournament while the league was going, but they're not in the league. Right. Just, no. Again, it's from a good place. Leagues do contribute to pinball. They do deserve to be celebrated. They don't deserve to be celebrated at the Twippy level, because the Twippy level is, I want to say national, but it's worldwide. It's too big for that. Right. That's something that should be recognized on a regional level. And maybe that's something some areas could consider is doing regional awards, which would make sense for local businesses. It's like how city chambers of commerce give out awards recognizing local businesses. Right. That stuff matters to people. It matters. It should matter. But you don't go and you ask the national chamber to celebrate Big O Tire. Like, why would they? Right. They're not going to do that because then it's not fair to Big O because it's going to go to some business in New York City or Dallas or something. Maybe we should put together our own, our Eclectis, which are just for Kansas City area or at most Kansas and Missouri and Nebraska area stuff. Let's talk about that in a few months. That's actually an interesting idea, the Eclectis. I just like the name. I know. That's awesome. All right. Last category, favorite pinball topper of 2019. This category should also not exist. It's so bad. This is definitely a Zap category. This should just be included under mod, in my view. I agree. Especially since very few of them even get sold with the pinball machine. So it is an addition. No, it should be with mod. The choices are the Beatles topper, Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle topper. And I think in all these cases, if it doesn't say a business, it means it's a manufacturer-made topper. Right. Star Wars R2-D2 topper, the Munsters topper. Is that even out? I think that, yes, I think they got them in stock either in late November or December. Medieval Madness Remake Topper, the 3D Hologram Topper, which is third-party by Lighted Pinball Mods. There's Jurassic Park Topper that was done by Tilt Topper. And then there's the Black Knight Sword of Rage Topper. I did vote the Black Knight Sword of Rage Topper is awesome, so I did vote for it. It is so awesome. So it deserves to win this. But it should be in MOCs. It should be in MOCs. Yeah. So I'd go with that. So, I mean, that's it in terms of the votes. And we kind of went through everything that we thought that we'd like to see different on these various categories. So we're looking at, overall, with our discussion, just our rather lengthy discussion we actually had, we're looking at removing or substantially modifying six categories. And I think that's fair. Yeah. Because no one asked us. Well, yeah, but I mean, I think there's valid arguments for either removing or substantially adjusting all of those categories. And I'd like to end on some positive notes. So I do want to say I very much approved of the decision to get rid of the write-in categories on the final ballot. Yes, very much. It made life so much easier, so thank you for that change. I thought having the write-in period in early December made a lot of sense. I know a lot of people have complained online that they didn't see it. It was listed on Twitter. It's like, what advertising do you expect Twip to do for the, I mean, Twippies are really about people who read Twip. It was listed there. I don't really have sympathy for that argument. I get that the final ballot has been better promoted by people who have made the top lists. There are plenty of people. We shared it when the write-ins were available. We threw that out there on our Facebook, and a lot of people pushed it. So, like, I know Jack Danger did. So there's really It's not that you don't have an excuse It's just your excuse isn't really good If you're actually reading this week in pinball You'd know about all this stuff Maybe read it Maybe read it It's not like it's hammering you with a whole ton It's like a five minute read Get with the program folks So I like that change Yeah they made a number of modifications over time Yeah and it going to keep getting better I like the Twiffies I do too Overall I like the Twiffies Just like last year, there were categories I didn't like. They fixed some of them. They adjusted things. There's still some categories that just shouldn't exist. Yeah. But that's okay. Overall, I still think it's a great addition to the hobby. It is. And definitely versus what sort of haphazard ones coming before it, there's no reason why the Twippies should not remain the People's Choice Award of 10. I think they should. And so if other people are thinking about other, like, winning different award things, I'm all for it. But I'd say consider a different model entirely, because it would be very difficult to improve upon People's Choice approach. Right. We're getting suggestions to this stuff, But things like the committee and the structure that they've got behind it, it's a really good idea there. Yeah. No, overall, I think, other than maybe like some regional specific stuff or somebody going like an industry, that would be an interesting discovery. What would be the industry to do an industry one? Yeah. So. So, let's go to video games, Tony. Video games. Because we're going to have a long talk. This one's going to be, well, actually, this one has the possibility. It does. Let's just have to see. It might be a little long episode. I will. Yeah. All right. The first thing in video games is just a quick little note. Nintendo had a Direct. It was a Pokemon-specific Direct, which caused an enormous amount of backlash online, specifically from the Smash fandom. I remember reading that early last week now that a lot of people are like, oh, there's going to be another Nintendo Direct. and people are getting real worked up. Because there are characters that haven't been announced for Smash yet. Somewhere, I'm sure. They wanted a new character announcement. I get it. Like Poseidon or the Captain of the Titanic. They haven't been announced for Smash yet. But they're going to be in it. We all know they will. Yeah. But it was a direct that was Pokemon specific. The two big bits of news coming out of it was Nintendo is continuing their trend of converting games from old systems to the Switch and updating them. They're bringing out the two Pokemon Mystery Dungeons, Red Team and Blue Team, to Switch, which are originally from Game Boy Advance and the original DS. so those are being updated and brought to the Switch just like they recently brought a link to a past from oh yeah they're going full on into updating all of their old stuff to Switch Capcom style and the big announcement and one that did not really surprise me was they announced expansions for the new Pokemon title Sword and Shield what does surprise me is they announced two expansions and And for $30, you get them both. Okay. So it's not as, I figured it'd be $30 for a single expansion. Right. That's pretty typical, $20 to $30. But I actually wasn't too bad at $30 for both of them. You can pay for it now, and you get them when they release. One's due in like June, and the other in like October. They're adding a whole lot of Pokemon, new ones and old ones. and some of them are getting sniper rifles and all sorts of changes. So that's exciting for the Pokemon peoples. Yes. And that's about all I have there. Because it was only Pokemon Direct. Because it was only Pokemon Direct. The other big thing we had to talk about, which just finished late last night or very early this morning, awesome games done quick. And I guess I should note, and this will be a good lead-in on this, I did not actually stream pinball this last week. Normally, I take a weekday night, usually. Right. And I stream for an hour or two. And I didn't do it this week because AGDQ was on. I did share that out on our Facebook because AGDQ is this massive donation. They're GameStoneQuick or GDQ. They do two big ones every year. Right. Where it's a week-long, 24-hour-a-day streaming effort to raise money. Awesome, James. Games Done Quick is the one they do in January, which benefits the Prevent Cancer Society. And then in the summer, they do SGDQ, or Summer Games Done Quick, which benefits Doctors Without Borders. Those are the two main. And they do other little ones online all throughout the year. But those are the big things to watch. And just as a case in point, because a lot of people are really interested in doing good things with your hobby. Right. And we saw a big one a couple weeks ago with the 24-hour charity stream that Special and Lit did. And they on Twitch, similar, actually, I think more similar than they may realize, kind of like GDQ does. They did 24, it was only one day, but they did a full 24-hour pinball stream, brought in a bunch of different players, guests, you know, interviews, all that. And that effort was the biggest that I am aware of, the fundraising for pinball, which raised over $50,000. Now, a lot of that was due to there was a person who matched dollar for dollar. So, $25,000 of that came from one individual who was very generously doing a match. Yeah. Now, when we talk about the size and scale of video games, where obviously you have a lot of people with a lot less money than pinball people, pinball collectors can have, but you added a lot more volume. How did AGDQ do this year, Tony? This year's AGDQ was their biggest AGDQ. They beat last year's. And AGDQ is usually bigger than SGDQ. We should know. Because a lot of people are on vacation in the summer. Everyone's inside because it's snowing in the U.S. So it's like everyone on the north of the equator is just bundled up watching AGDQ. Yeah. That's what I did. A few years ago, I'd never watched until a couple years ago, and now I watch it. Like it and SGDQ. Yeah, I've got like a half dozen GDQ charity shirts that I buy to support. I didn't buy any this time. Yeah. I made donations this time. Yeah. I made a couple donations this time. But this year, they raised a grand total of $3.1 million. Yep. So $3,132,912.78 was the grand total on their donation tracker this morning. Okay. This was the 10th year. of Awesome Games Done Quick. And according to their, and last night during one of the runs towards the end, they crossed the $25 million raised since it started. Mm-hmm. So. Yeah, and it's just been, the records that they break, they're not old records. The volume of money has grown. Yeah. Precipitously in these more recent years with this. It's to the point where you know, know SGDQ and AGDQ are going to pass two million. Yes, they will. It's a, are they going to hit three? How far can they go past three? That's really where it's at. And it's interesting because it really, really, it's like it gains speed as the event draws closer to the end. It's like we were three or four days in when it hit a million. Right. And that's typical. That's pretty normal. And they do a whole bunch. I mean, it's really clever. They do all these stretch goals where it's things like, oh, do you want to see someone do this three-minute run of something as a bonus play of a game to show you how you can break through and get to the end? Yeah, glitch everything. It's like, no problem. $50,000 must be met. Yeah. And you have to, when you donate, you have to say, this money, my $20, is for that one run. You have to dedicate it to that. And they do it. In fact, my joke is. And maybe stuff like that throughout. Yeah. Yeah. And it works. and so they just, it's... I mean, they even do that for like naming characters. Naming characters, yeah. That's one of our votes for me and my oldest daughter. She wanted, because she wanted a guarantee on the Pokemon Sapphire run that Kyorga was named Magikarp. So we donated money to the Magikarp because we want to be sure that Magikarp was the Kyorga. Did it win? Yes. It was... That was one of those where when the game started, it was over $3,000 behind. And by the time they got to the cutoff for it, when they actually picked it up, it had pulled ahead by like $800 or $900. But, yeah. It is not unusual to see, oh, $1,000 donations, $5,000 donations. Companies, a lot of times you'll see a company go in and drop a $10,000 or a $50,000 donation when someone's speedrunning their game. It happens. Untitled Goose Game had that happen. They came in and dropped in $10,000. Subnautica had that happen. A Hat in Time had that happen right at the beginning. It is my favorite video game thing. It's just so different. It's not like going on Twitch. Almost all these people have Twitch channels. So they have a following. It's like, again, for our pinball brethren, comparing it to what Special and Lint did when they brought in people in the industry. They brought in people who had YouTube channels and other podcasts, you know, those sort of personalities. It's like that. These are all people that have audiences on Twitch that are brought in to do this channel. The thing, the unifying factor for virtually all of them is they're known for speed running. Right. Which is a very different style of video gameplay than what I do. In fact, what Tony and I do, what most gamers do, speedrunners call casual. Yeah. They don't mean it in a derogatory way, but they refer to it as playing the game casual. Playing the game casual could also be described as playing the game as it was meant to be played. Right. So these are people that specialize in a variety of conditions, because different games have different categories. Just like you might have a 50-meter dash and a 100-meter dash. They've got things like 100% clear, where you have to get all the main items in the game. No glitches. No glitches. So you can't cut through walls. Any percent where get to the end however quickly is possible. What do you do? And not everyone who plays a game plays all those variants. They specialize in what they like to do. The thing is, it's so different that it's really interesting to watch. And most of this stuff wraps up very quickly. Yeah. There are only a handful of games that go over three hours in the time block. And, in fact, sometimes what they will do is in the evenings, for people that are willing to stay up, that's when they'll schedule things like the RPGs that are still going to take five hours to win and stuff. Yeah, like the Final Fantasy VIII run, which was, I don't remember. I want to say that was like an eight-hour run. They changed this up, and I think it was really smart. While I could not keep myself up to watch Super Metroid Impossible, they used to end the event every year with a massive RPG. They do like the Super Metroid, and then they do like a five- to seven-hour RPG, which I think most of the audience went to bed on because it's too long. Too long to watch. But anyway, so I assume you want to run through some highlights. I was going to run through some of my highlights. I watched a number of games as well, so some of this stuff looks familiar to me. Now, I will throw out like my daughter's highlight, but it's always going to be the Pokemon games because she's a Pokemon girl, but also the Hat in Time speed run because she loves the Hat in Time. So, and it was a race, which means she loved it even more since they were playing it. Yeah, races are fun. Races are fun. My highlights, my first real highlight is from day one. It was the Binding of Isaac Afterbirth Plus. That was really good. And it was a modded game. Yes. It was using the R Plus 7 mod, the Season 6 of the R Plus 7 mod, which is a mod for Binding of Isaac Afterbirth Plus specifically designed for racing. Yes. where you go through and you play as seven characters. Yeah, you have to play, you have to beat the game as seven characters. Yeah, seven different characters. Right. And you get to pick the order in which you play them. Right. But for racing, it's good because everyone plays the same characters, they have the same stuff, and it's like, and they've got different rules that have been adjusted. Right. Like, there's a, like, one of your matches is guaranteed to get a rare item and, you know, you'll get, you know you're going to get a certain amount of good stuff. Right. To be fair, because it's such a roguelite that you can have terrible runs if there's no control. Right. And unlike a normal game, you start with a little indicator showing you basically where the boss room is. It doesn't show you how to get there, but it shows you where it is so you can rush through it. Right, right. So that was fun. That was a lot of fun. They didn't actually race that. It was just one guy playing it, but it was awesome. So just because, yeah, because Bionium Isaac is so item dependent. Right. He got such dramatically different builds, and he'd even re-roll some of his stuff. Even when he had good stuff, he would. Yeah. To show us different things. And so it was a good clinic on someone who really knew how to play that game. Yeah. I do have Bionium Isaac. It's actually my favorite rogue-lite, I'd say, of any that I've played. I'm not good at it, though. I'm not, yeah. I don't have Afterbirth. I don't have Afterbirth. I might get it, though, because there's been a lot of changes and balance changes, and it looked like a lot of fun. My next highlight was the Super Mario Bros. 3 100% race, which means no cheats, no warps. They had to go into every single major level. And that was a race that was very close, especially for two of the players. It was a three-person race. And I want to say their finish times was like one hour, 10 minutes, and like 40-some-odd seconds, one hour, 11 minutes, and like 15 seconds. And then like one hour, 14 minutes. Because one guy got some really bad luck. But it was a lot of fun to watch. Because normally when you see, especially, I mean, A, the nostalgia factor of Mario Bros. 3. But B, normally when you see any Mario Bros. 3 speed run, it is an 80%. And they're doing, you know, the warps and this and that. And you're looking at, you know, a 15-minute game. So to see it be a 100% race, that was pretty cool. My favorite on the races was, I'd say, was actually Mega Man X. I didn't watch that one. Mega Man X was a four-person race, and the reason was it just ended up that two of the players were neck and neck. Their difference on time was eight seconds, I believe. And then the other two that had more mishaps happen were neck and neck, and their spread in time was like three seconds. But the difference between the first place and fourth place was a minute four. So it was all really good. Oh, I saw the interview after that one was done. It just worked out. You actually had high stakes because a lot of times, again, like with the Super Mario's, where you still have the two people that were really tight. You know, once someone starts to, there's no catching up. Right. Sometimes the people covering it, who are the announcers, will try and hype it. But once you see enough of these things, it's like, they'd have to just like totally fail. And these people are so muscle memory. Right. They won't. Yeah, because I saw the interview after the Mega Man race, because that was the one where, like, the difference was, like, literally in one spot, two of the players made a trick, and the other two failed the trick. And that's what separated them. And that's what separated them. By, like, the 52nd. Yeah, and they were separate for the rest of the game. Yes. Yeah, I saw the interview afterwards. But what was nice is that it wasn't just one who didn't make the trip. Right. Or one who did. So you actually had two who were tight and another two who were tight. So everyone had a close race. Yeah. So that was fun. Oh, Fallout. The Fallout Anthology movie. I didn't know what Fallout Anthology meant. I didn't either. I wasn't sure. Did you blink during Fallout 1? Because if you did, you missed it. Yeah. It was like, what was it? Like six minutes. Yeah, six minutes to get through Fallout 1. I mean, the total run time was two hours and something. And most of it was four. And four was, yeah, like half of it. Yeah, four was 50%. because it was just like, one was a joke. Two was notably longer, but still a very short game. Notably longer, but still like 15 minutes. Yes, yeah. He broke three really quick. Yeah, he did. I think he spent more time trying. He's like, I just need to pull this one trick off. And once I pulled this trick off, I think he spent like four or five minutes trying to get this trick to trigger right. And then once it triggered, he was just like, I'm done. And the New Vegas run was actually my favorite. It was awesome. All the little tricks where he had to... I got to go and judge them. All right. They've been found unworthy. I mean, like, because he did that little cannon where he, like, he'd shoot a grenade up in the air, and they'd jump, and it detonated just as he was, like, reloading, and it caused this thing, and he would literally just fly across the screen. Yep. Okay, well, I picked up those, like, nine places, so I'm going to do the same thing. Yeah, because we've got fast travel, but we have to visit the places first. I'm going to use the grenades a couple of times, I'm going to fly to where we need to go, and then we'll be ready. Yeah, just using glitches and stuff. That was amazing. And then the sheer hilarity of Fallout 4 and the fact that he had to pull out a prop while he was going through a slow point to explain, okay, it's just easier to show you. Here's this prop I pre-built to show you what I have to do in this area to do all this. Yeah, because a lot of what he did involved clipping and then the game reassigning you where you're supposed to be. But it worked different in Fallout 4 than in the other games. Right. He got out his prop while we were waiting for a cutscene or something to show us how it worked. It's just hilarious because he took like two and a half minutes to pull out this prop and show us exactly what he was going to do to save 40 seconds of game time. No, that was a lot of fun. I really liked that. And all the tricks, the glitches and stuff in Fallout 4 and the weird things they found, it was insane. It was crazy. There's stuff happening. It's like, how did somebody even find this? I mean, how did you even? That's the thing with games done quick, period, is a lot of these speed runs is you see stuff and it's like, who in the world found this and figured out what happened to make it repeatable? Yeah, they got communities. A lot of it lives on Discord now. Yeah. It does. It's impressive. My next highlight, which came immediately after Fallout Anthology. I did watch this. It was not a long run. Was the Outer Worlds any percentage run, which they ran in like sub-20? Yeah, his estimate was 25 minutes. I think it was like 14 minutes is what it was. It's like, yeah, I just built in a lot of padding in case something went wrong. Well, because they were doing a, the route he ended up doing was the fastest route. He built an extra padding because they were running a contest for three endings. And the ending, when the game started, the ending with the most money was the ending they would go for. And that was the fastest ending. Ah, okay. Yeah, that's what it was, is the other endings took a little bit more time. And then he also built padding in for those endings. So After that was the Mike Tyson's Punch Out Two players One controller And they were blindfolded so they had to play the whole game Off sound cues It was hilarious And they won, they did great And that was one of those bonus games where people It was a hidden bonus game Where people to throw money in to unlock And it didn't take very long It was just a lot of fun and it was hilarious because they're sitting there with one NES controller between them, one of them hitting A and B, the other hitting the D-pad, just listening to sound cues to beat everybody, including Tyson, in Punch-Out!!. Yep. It was pretty cool. I didn't see your Subnautica that you mentioned earlier. I didn't see Subnautica originally. I had to watch the VOD because it was one of the ones I was really interested in because I love Subnautica. It's a lot of fun, and it's so much to the point where after watching the VOD, I actually spent a fair amount of time just playing it. Not speedrunning it, just playing it for fun. Because to speedrun it, you basically have to have an entire map memorized. Because he would drop in the water and go, okay, I need to go, there's some wrecks over here. I'm going to go this way and go straight to everything. So, but it was interesting because he was able to, A, do it, and B, do it in such a way that it doesn't give any of the story away. Oh. Yeah, a lot of times with speedruns, unless it's 100%, it's usually, like, I still haven't started Outer Limits yet. And I was like, well, given he says he's going to beat it in 25 minutes, I'm not worried about having this spoiled because I'm not going to see the game. Yeah, and you didn't. No. You didn't see it at all. And the same way with Subnautica. He showed you some stuff and buildings and stuff, but he had spawn points for stuff memorized and patterns memorized and the map memorized. And he had places where you could clip through stuff memorized that he could go through and do everything. so he was able to beat the game and really barely even breathe on the story. There was one point where he goes, if you don't want to hear anything storyline-related to Subnautica, I need you to look away for two minutes. And then he said, okay, we're done. And that was like the only part that even brushed the story because there was no way to do it without, to beat the game without brushing that part. But that was literally it. Most of the rest of the run was without it. The Legend of Zelda Link to the Past randomizer. That might be my highlight. I couldn't watch it all because I had to go somewhere, because they booked three and a half hours. And I watched it all. And I guess he actually did finish. He did. Because I was like, man, I don't think he's going to finish when I had to go shuttle out my driveway. But this, it was, okay, so I was familiar with the randomizer. There are a number of classic games that are available with a randomizer option where you can go in and run this randomizer, and your map and your dungeons will all be laid out as you're familiar with, but what they do is the items that you need to make progress are randomly assigned instead of being where they always were. So you go into the dungeon that, no, normally this has my whistle that I need, and you open up the chest where the whistle is and you get a hat. Right. Now, the randomizers are designed so that the game is always winnable. So they'll never make it so you can't get to an item that would be necessary to get to another item. You can't have a loop on itself. So they're coded like that. But the big difference that was new to me was this crowd control mod, which you participated with. I participated. So basically, it took Twitch bits, and you could turn them into some coin currency. and then the coin currency could be used to provide things that either helped or hindered the player. Yes. Supposedly, there were things that helped the player in there. I saw someone send him some arrows. Yeah, there was some stuff. Some people did, like 10%. But, I mean, it had things where people and things would cost different amounts, and you could just pay all the coins needed to fully pay for something, or there was a pool option where you could, oh, I'll put 20 coins towards this, and everybody keeps pulling up, and when it hits the number needed, it would fire. And then there was a cool-down period, so you couldn't just chain him with one thing. But, I mean, there was stuff like Chicken Attack, where chickens would just fly around on the screen everywhere. Much more devastating than I realized. Yeah, especially because there's another one that people like to key up, so they will both win at the same time, which was One-Hit Kill, which means it doesn't matter how much life you have, One-Hit kills you no matter how much life you have. Yep. people sent kill commands, which would just straight up kill him. The character just dies. There's something with boxes or something. There are these enemies, little round bouncy enemies that would appear around him and move around him and try to move into him and block his movement. You could disable his whistle, which takes away the fast travel ability. Downgrade the weapon, his sword, so he loses all the sword abilities at the very beginning of the game with no charge or nothing. And you could also go a lot of times he was having to run on ice physics, so his character was sliding. And one that it's very hard to see, but was often, almost always in play, you could swap the controls. Invert, switch buttons, like the D-pad becomes buttons and the buttons become parts of the D-pad. And you could invert, or you could do both at the same time. And so, and the person running this as someone who was very, very good at randomizer. Right. So he was very trained. In fact, he was very familiar with crowd control as well. I don't know. It was the worst run I ever saw. Because when I heard about crowd control, and I'm looking at this, I'm like, I would never be able to survive the constant switching of the control, who does what, and somehow he's still walking. But, you know, someone would switch on him, so he'd try and open a chest and he'd drop a bomb on himself. Right. And there were times where they would swap the controls, like, as he was, like, getting ready to walk away from a cliff. The invert controls would hit just in time, so instead he'd walk off the cliff. Or so as he was, like, moving around to, like, sorting his inventory, so he'd drop something he needed. Yeah. Or he'd go and he'd open up a bunch of chests and he'd go in with 15 bombs and he'd need to blow a hole in a wall and then all the bombs were taken away. Yeah, because they did remove bombs. Yep. and he'd just be standing there not knowing what to do because he needs balls. Or he'd pick up the item he needed and he'd die before it logged into his thing. So he had to go pick the item up again. So it was a lot of fun. I don't know how much fun it was for him. I don't know. He was a really good sport and he was pretty fun. I'm sure they must have known going in other than they never used an audience of this size because the number of people watching on Twitch, I didn't look at that. It was over 200. Okay, I was going to say, except for the dead of night, AGDQ is usually over 100,000 people constantly. So, it's just It was over 200. You had people on Twitch doing this to him, and people in the crowd were doing it to him, and his own couch was doing it to him. They were monitoring. They were monitoring. I don't know. I saw some of those names listed, and I think a few of them were monitoring a little more aggressively than others. Also, So, a shout out to Pat, the most negative couch person I've ever seen. I have to wonder if he actually gets people mad at him because all he did was troll this guy the entire time. Well, not just that. He trolled the people with the donations. Yeah. He trolled, I mean, it was the most enjoyable ride. Yeah, people would send in a donation with a pun and he'd be like, that doesn't even make sense. What a terrible donator. What a terrible, we don't. we don't want your donation now. We have to take it to fight cancer. But we don't like you. You probably like this runner. He sucks. He's a bad person. He's just a bad person. Gosh, it would sure be terrible if someone just immediately killed him before he picked up the boss item. Wouldn't that be sad? I wouldn't be sad, but everyone else might be sad. Let's be sad together. It was pretty good. I enjoyed it. That was my favorite That was really good. I also really liked, and I liked this when they did it on the first one, the relay with Mario Maker. Yes. Because they did one a year or two ago on Super Mario Maker 1 with a four-person relay where they've got maps made, but the players have never played them before. These were hard. Yeah, like really hard. And they brought in top-tier Mario Maker. Because guys making maps in Mario Maker, they have fans. There are people that are known for this stuff with their own styles, like pinball designers. Right. Well, and it creates a feel because in the interview after, even one of the guys who had a really good run on one of the maps he saw blind is like, oh, yeah, I played every map that this designer made. I know him. He's my favorite designer. So I knew the kind of beats he normally puts in. That's why he did so good on the blind section of that run is because he had a good feel for that specific design. Stupid boom boom. I was cheering for the other team, and then I realized that boom boom had better players. So I was like, oh, my God. It still, though, was really close. It was super close. And there were several times where. Like two draws and then. Yeah. And there were several times where one team would be way ahead of the other one and then get caught on something. And the other team would finally get past what they were caught on. And then they would just blow past the section the other team was caught. It was really good. Not to mention the whole musical chairs fact that they have to stand up and rotate chairs for players. Yeah. No, that one was lots of fun. And then the final one of the night, which I watched half of before I fell asleep. Yeah, I didn't see it. It was Super Metroid Impossible, which is a modded version of Super Metroid from, like, 2006 that was designed to never be beaten. And the guy running it is one of, like, two people in the world that are proven to have beaten the game. And he's done it, like, five times, one of which was deathless. I don't know if Last Nights was deathless. I fell asleep. Right, right. But it was pretty impressive in the half of it that I watched. Yeah. It was an interesting choice. I did want to see it. It's just that it was so late by the time Mario Maker wrapped up. For those that don't, there are exceptions, which is good because it's getting a little tired. But it used to be that AGDQ and SGDQ always, like, their penultimate or ultimate game was Super Metroid. Yeah. It's one of the most popular speedrunning games there is. There's a high level of proficiency, and they usually put in all sorts of weird rules like reverse boss order, death list, something like that. And the reason was for a long time, as part of the charity drives, the one that got the most money put towards it, which now is much, much smaller on the list, which I think this was a good change, was kill or save the animals. Right. Which was, there's a room. It's faster to kill the animals, which means you just don't go to the room. Right. You let them out, you save them, and that used to be their big. Like a lot of the T-shirts were designed around. I have one, which is actually like a Grim Reaper Samus, which in Latin says kill the animals. And I wear it. I think people think I'm like really dark in the middle. They don't know what this says. It's just about animals. You've got to save the frames. You've got to save the frames. So anyway, it was a lot of fun. SUDQ will probably be July. Typically. June or July. June or July. It hits in the summer when kids are home, so they get a good watch. I'll watch as much of it as I can, just like I did with AGVQ. But I definitely recommend if you've not watched any of them, you can go watch some of the VODs. It's not the ones we've talked about. Or wait until summer and watch it. I've fallen so far behind on everything this week. Because that's literally, I would come home from work and I would fire it up. Watch a game that you know. Yeah. because even though you may never plan to speed run it, you might see some good tricks that make, like I took tricks from Doom 2016 and used it to make bosses easier. Uh-huh. I did that. Like BFG stacking. Oh, yeah. BFG stacking on Minecraft. You know what? It works. Do it. Yeah. It makes it a lot easier. Anyway. I've done that too, so yeah. Well, that's it. We've done it. We've covered everything. We'll be back in a couple weeks. We'll cover everything then. Probably. Or at least everything we're interested in. Until then, you can reach us at eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com or facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. We're available on Twitter, Instagram, and Twitch as eclectic underscore gamers. And until next time, I'm Dennis. I'm Tommy. And we'll talk to you then. See ya. _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 865f8612-f7c0-41b2-9b7c-e063276e8f24*