# Episode 175 – Centennial Diamond

**Source:** Slam Tilt Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2021-10-27  
**Duration:** 138m 55s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.slamtiltpodcast.com/2021/10/26/episode-175-centennial-diamond/

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## Analysis

Slam Tilt Podcast Episode 175 features hosts Ron Hallett and Bruce Nightingale discussing the upcoming Delaware Pinball Collective with guest Joe Fox, covering venue setup, membership model, and operational challenges. The episode includes a detailed breakdown of tournament game play times at the Rochester Pinball Collective's Stomp event, resolving a dispute about Lord of the Rings game selection, and various co-op maintenance and management issues.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Delaware Pinball Collective lease is signed and set to open at 1100 First State Boulevard in Wilmington, Delaware with ~50-60 games in 4,000 sq ft — _Joe Fox states lease signed by five partners, dropping off to landlord for final signature, flooring already ordered_
- [HIGH] Rochester Pinball Collective (RPC) co-op has 47 games in 2,200 sq ft with 800 sq ft repair/storage area and currently has 3-4 outside games in for repair — _Ron and Bruce discuss current inventory and outside repair workload_
- [HIGH] Longest game at RPC's Stomp tournament was a 3-player Lord of the Rings (40 minutes), followed by 4-player Mandalorian (38:51), not Star Wars as previously claimed — _Ron provides detailed play-time breakdown with specific minute/second counts for all games over 30 minutes_
- [HIGH] RPC landlord attempted to lock building doors at 8pm citing vandalism, but no police reports filed; doors reverted to 10pm lock after pushback from multiple tenants — _Bruce describes landlord communication, police department verification of no reports, and resolution_
- [HIGH] Delaware Pinball Collective will be membership-based private club (capped ~150 members), open 20-25 hrs/week initially, with beer/wine license and snack sales — _Joe Fox details operational model, membership cap, hours, and revenue streams_

### Notable Quotes

> "I saw something about pinball machines, and I said, wow, I can't believe they still make them. And it then turned into a disease that we all have and love."
> — **Joe Fox**, ~5:30
> _Personal origin story of entry into pinball hobby; framing pinball obsession as inevitable 'disease'_

> "We're essentially open to the public situation... We're going to be just like Richmond in a private club membership... limiting it based on the fact of the space and what that could be"
> — **Joe Fox**, ~18:00
> _Key operational distinction: Delaware Pinball Collective adopting membership model similar to Richmond venue rather than public access_

> "We use an app called Team Up... a calendar type of thing. We can pick our times and we can actually have more of a life and enjoy it a little bit more."
> — **Ron Hallett**, ~21:00
> _Practical operational advice for managing volunteer scheduling in community pinball venues_

> "There's no police report... So you lied about that... The two days of vandalism happened on days that we weren't even there."
> — **Bruce Nightingale**, ~45:00
> _Documents landlord misrepresentation regarding vandalism claims used to justify door lock changes_

> "Nobody other than Bruce wants this game in the tournament... Your whole reasoning is flawed and wrong, but... if we can only get Batman 66 out of the tournament, that might be another one."
> — **Ron Hallett**, ~1:09:00
> _Community resistance to Lord of the Rings game selection in tournaments; acknowledges objective data contradicts subjective preference_

> "The longest playing game of the tournament. The final game, Lord of the Rings, a three-person game, took 40 minutes."
> — **Ron Hallett**, ~1:04:30
> _Key factual resolution of tournament game-time dispute with specific timing evidence_

> "Our customers do like the newer games of course... They see Mandalorian, they see Star Trek... game recognition... Theme is very big for people who are just walking in and seeing pinball the first time."
> — **Ron Hallett**, ~1:25:00
> _Market observation about casual player preferences driven by IP recognition and theme over gameplay depth_

> "We have a number limit. When the other members start bringing in more games, which they now are, me and Zach actually remove games to make the number more even."
> — **Joe Fox**, ~1:31:00
> _Organic growth strategy for Delaware Pinball Collective leveraging member collections to reach target game count_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Delaware Pinball Collective | organization | New pinball arcade/club being launched by Joe Fox and 4 partners in Wilmington, Delaware; membership-based private club model with ~50-60 games, beer/wine license, tournaments, and league play |
| Joe Fox | person | Founder/partner of Delaware Pinball Collective; local Delaware pinball enthusiast and tournament organizer; has been growing pinball collection over 5-6 years |
| Rochester Pinball Collective | organization | Community pinball arcade/co-op in upstate New York (second floor of historic piano factory building); 47 games, 2,200 sq ft play space, 800 sq ft repair area; operates ~47 hours weekly; hosts tournaments including Stomp series |
| Ron Hallett | person | Co-host of Slam Tilt Podcast; organizer/operator of Rochester Pinball Collective; based upstate New York; involved in tournament direction and game selection |
| Bruce Nightingale | person | Co-host of Slam Tilt Podcast; member of Rochester Pinball Collective; handles operations; involved in landlord relations and community management |
| Zach | person | Partner in Rochester Pinball Collective; co-owner of some games (e.g., Gambitron); located ~25 minutes from RPC venue; prefers EM games |
| Stomp | event | Tournament series held by Rochester Pinball Collective; tracks detailed game play times; recent event had longest games: LOTR 40min, Mandalorian 38:51, Batman 66 34:27 |
| Silver Ball Saloon | organization | Previous pinball venue operated by RPC members; now closed; location where certain games (The Bowler, Memory Lane, Sea Witch, Big Game) were previously housed |
| Mandalorian | game | Modern pinball machine in RPC rotation; 4-player game at Stomp tournament lasted 38:51, second-longest of the event |
| Lord of the Rings | game | Controversial game selection in RPC tournaments; longest play time at Stomp (40 min for 3-player, 36:17 for 4-player); subject of debate about tournament inclusion |
| Star Wars | game | Game in RPC tournament rotation; longest Star Wars game at Stomp was 30:11 (4-player), ranking 6th overall; Ron played but didn't notice it was longest |
| Batman 66 | game | EM/classic game in RPC; 4-player game at Stomp lasted 34:27, 4th longest; possibly next target for removal from tournaments |
| Stars | game | Classic EM pinball in RPC with heavy player preference; one player spends 3+ hours weekly on it; showing wear after 40 years of play; NOS replacement playfield available |
| Quicksilver | game | EM pinball; Ron is currently building one; uses NOS (new old stock) playfield; mentioned alongside Shitsilver (likely Quicksilver variant) |
| 1100 First State Boulevard | location | Lease address for Delaware Pinball Collective in Wilmington, Delaware; second floor office space, 4,000 sq ft, no elevator, lower ceilings |
| Team Up | product | Scheduling/calendar app used by Rochester Pinball Collective for volunteer shift management and member availability planning |
| Richmond | organization | Another pinball venue operating as private membership club; model being followed by Delaware Pinball Collective |
| Game of Thrones | game | Pinball machine; at Delaware tournament played for 40 minutes with top players (Jason Zoller, Steve Zoller, Andrew Pankos, Matthew Richards) |
| Rock school | organization | Music instruction facility in same building as RPC; located down the hall; serves pre-teens/teens; mentioned as potential source of vandalism perpetrators |
| JT Harrison | person | Local pinball player from downstate New York; contacted Ron questioning episode frequency (every 3 weeks) |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Delaware Pinball Collective launch and operations, Community pinball venue management and business models, Tournament game selection and play time data, Rochester Pinball Collective operational challenges
- **Secondary:** Pinball game preferences and player behavior in locations, Landlord relations and venue logistics, Classic/EM vs modern pinball game rotation strategy
- **Mentioned:** Volunteer scheduling and operations management tools

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.72) — Predominantly upbeat about Delaware Pinball Collective expansion and community growth (capped tournaments selling out, waitlists); energized discussion of tournament data; frustrated tone regarding landlord issues but resolved positively; friendly interpersonal dynamics between hosts and guest

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Delaware Pinball Collective facing operational constraints: second floor with no elevator, lower ceilings, limited commercial real estate availability in small state, high rental costs (confidence: high) — Joe Fox: 'Being a small state... limits the amount of commercial availability and puts it at a premium' and 'escaleras will be in high demand' for moving games
- **[business_signal]** Delaware Pinball Collective successfully secured lease for 4,000 sq ft venue in Wilmington with 5 founding partners, multi-year location commitment, organizing light liquor license and POS system infrastructure (confidence: high) — Joe Fox confirms signed lease, dropping off for final landlord signature, flooring pre-ordered, POS system being donated by member's employer
- **[event_signal]** Rochester Pinball Collective documenting detailed tournament metrics (play times to minute/second precision), using data to inform game selection debates (confidence: high) — Ron provides comprehensive breakdown: LOTR 40min, Mando 38:51, Batman66 34:27, LOTR 36:17, Batman 66 31:10, Star Wars 30:11 with game counts and player configurations
- **[sentiment_shift]** Lord of the Rings tournament inclusion remains controversial despite objective data showing play times comparable to other games; subjective preferences conflicting with statistical evidence (confidence: high) — Ron argues: 'Nobody other than Bruce wants this game in the tournament... your reasoning is flawed and wrong' backed by specific tournament metrics
- **[community_signal]** Organic community growth model for Delaware Pinball Collective: 5 founding partners plus external friends contributing games to reach target capacity of 50-60 machines (confidence: high) — Joe: 'A lot of guys have games and they need the space... it gives us the ability to organically grow... I'm putting 15-18 of my games there'
- **[market_signal]** Player base shift toward modern games evident through game rotation: Rochester removing classics (Bowler, Gambitron, Big Game, Sea Witch, Memory Lane) while new members add recent releases; EM games like Stars retain dedicated player base but limited broader appeal (confidence: medium) — Ron: 'Our customers do like the newer games... One guy plays Stars 3/4 of his visit time... game is showing wear after 40 years'
- **[market_signal]** Casual/location players showing strong preference for newer IP-licensed games (Mandalorian, Star Trek) over classic titles; game recognition and theme driving plays more than mechanical depth (confidence: high) — Ron: 'They see Mandalorian, they see Star Trek... game recognition and theme is very big for people who are just walking in and seeing pinball the first time'
- **[operational_signal]** Rochester Pinball Collective landlord dispute: false vandalism claims (incidents occurred on closed days), no filed police reports, attempted unilateral door lock policy change at 8pm, pushback from multiple building tenants led to reversion to 10pm (confidence: high) — Bruce verified no police reports with local police department; vandalism occurred Mondays and Wednesdays when RPC was closed; rock school threatened lawsuit citing shopping mall operating hours
- **[competitive_signal]** Rochester Stomp tournament tracking precise play times for all games, enabling data-driven game selection; debate over Lord of the Rings revealed subjective preferences unsupported by timing data (confidence: high) — Ron presents exhaustive timing breakdown showing games ranked 1-6 by play length with specific minute/second counts and player configurations
- **[venue_signal]** Delaware Pinball Collective adopting private membership club model (capped 150 members, 20-25 hrs/week) similar to Richmond, contrasting with RPC's public co-op model; membership controls capacity and operational sustainability (confidence: high) — Joe: 'We're going to be just like Richmond in a private club membership... we are going to limit it based on the space and what that could be and how many people we can fit'

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## Transcript

 I'm Beavis, dammit. My goal is to get some nachos. Right now. I don't care who in the hell you are. Nachos are two bucks. Oh yeah? Is that a fact? Well, I'm Beavis. And I'm a miracle or something. And I'm sick of all you people getting in the way of my natural power. Coming to you from beautiful upstate New York, this is the Slam Tilt Podcast, a show about all things pinball. I'm your host, Ron Hallett, here with my co-host, Bruce Nightingale. Oh, my God. Look at her butt. It is so big. She looks like one of those rap guys' girlfriends. But who understands those rap guys? Okay, that's enough. That's way too much. It's for Mix-A-Lot to start the episode. Welcome to episode 175. Wow. Yep. I still like Amaze. Amaze? We're almost doing like a three-week, like every three weeks now. Every three weeks. I like it. I like it. It's better. No, it's not. No? Actually, JT complained to me yesterday. JT, a person who no one listening knows who that is. JT Harrison, he's a local, he's from downstate New York, and he said, Why is it going on more anymore? It's like every three weeks I'm like, well, life's getting in the way a little bit more. Co-op's getting a little busier. I blame Bruce. I blame Ron. Ron's lazy. Oh, okay. He doesn't want to edit. I don't want to edit. But we're not alone this week. What? Nope, we're not. We have a guest. Who do we have? We have legendary Joe Fox from now soon-to-be Delaware Pinball Collective. Hey, Joe. Good morning, guys. Good morning. Did you know you were a legend, Joe? I did not. He's a legend in his own mind. In my own mind, and not even in my wife's mind, but just in mine. That's in everyone's wife's mind. Yeah. How's everybody doing this morning? Good, good. It is Sunday morning. We got everyone up early. This was a couple weeks in the planning. Joe had a vacation, and then we had some fun stuff going on between all of us. So it took a little while to get this going, but we have got it going. And Joe is going to tell us first how we got into this fun hobby. That's the softball question, isn't it? It is. So I've tried to keep it as short as possible. Well, essentially, five, six years ago, I was turning the basement into a, air quotes, a man cave, and I started Googling, you know, items to put down there, whether it be pool tables or whatever, and I saw something about pinball machines, and I said, wow, I can't believe they still make them. And it then turned into a disease that we all have and love. Yes. And you're even making it more of a disease. I am. I'm going to follow in the deadly footsteps that you and others that we know have followed into, and that is soon to be opening the Delaware Pinball Collective here in the lovely small state of Delaware. Yes. You have the same problem we have in Rochester. No vacation play? Well, no, and besides that, you are actually almost like landlocked because you have the water next to you. So you only have a couple inlets. You only have the west side of the state and sometimes the north, but you have nothing coming from the east, of course, unless they're boating in. Correct. And we are, I think, the second smallest state in the country. Yes. Which limits our capabilities of finding viable locations. But you are signing a lease. So do we have a location address? I do. It is going to be 1100 First State Boulevard in Wilmington, Delaware. So what was the building beforehand? The building is essentially, it's similar to what you and I talked about with your setup, is it's on a, well, I don't know if you're on the second floor, but we're on the second floor. Second floor. The second floor originally designated as office space, but was completely a revamped shell, for lack of better terms. The flooring still needs to be put in there, which is already ordered and ready to go. Well, you know, there's two downsides. Obviously, second floor, and we do not have an elevator. So, Escaleras will be in high demand for that weekend of moving in. And also is the fact that it has lower ceilings. So, I think our ceilings are standard, like, office size. If you pretend you're in an office sitting in your cubicle, whereas they're a little bit lower than we'd probably like to have. but it also gives it more of a cozy feel, I guess. And it's about... We're going to go with that. It's about 4,000 square feet. Nice. So bigger than us. A little bit, but well more expensive than you guys, too. Yeah. Ours is pretty cheap right now, and it will be for a while. So is it all going to be space for games, or is it going to be a repair area and office and... So the way it's laid out is kind of good because it has a back section that's then cut off that you have to go around the wall in order to access, which is going to be our, you know, quote-unquote repair center, whether it be that we're taking in outside games or that we're repairing our own games. Yep. Office, we're still trying to figure out where exactly that's going to kind of be. So it's going to be 98%, 97% games. Okay. Wow. The layout would allow for about 50 to 60 games. Okay. So you're right about with us on the count. We have 47 in 2,200 square feet. Wow, that's been growing up. Yes, it has. And we still have 800 square feet in the back for the repairs and storage and parts. And our repair area is pretty darn full right now, isn't it, Ron? Oh, I don't know. I haven't been there lately. Oh, Jesus Christ. that's that's you guys you guys are taking outside games for repair yes yes we actually have one two there are three outside games right now in the co-op and there will be four in two weeks okay i mean our biggest we started this search before covid in february of 2020 we were five four well at that time there was four of us sitting down and discussing the you know the pros and cons and what to do. Then COVID hit. We put it on ice for about a year and restarted talking about it again in March of this year. And then it became finding space. I mean, you know, you think, oh, well, Delaware is small. There should be, you know, tons of location and you're in the middle of COVID. So, you know, rents would be easy to find. With being a small state, that also then limits the amount of commercial availability and puts it at a premium, which is, you know, where we're at. And it took a lot of time and obviously looking at a lot of spaces and going through multiple reorders and just kind of holding on to the patience that we all could have to get this started. And a couple of times myself and some others maybe considered ditching the idea, just figuring, hey, it can't work here. But ultimately, we continue to pursue. And here we are on the precipice of, I mean, the lease is signed by the five individuals on our side. I'm dropping it off to the landlord tomorrow for signature. So by the time this airs, we're either going to cut this whole segment or it's going to be signed and the carpet, like I said, the landlord has already ordered the carpet. So hopefully we're talking about just putting all the, dotting all the I's and crossing the T's at this point. So you have five total partners, it sounds like. Yep. That sounds familiar. Yes, it does sound very familiar. And the games are all from all five of you? There's five of us, and then we have some outside good friends of ours that are part of our group that are also bringing in some games. The good news is in this area, a lot of guys have games and they need the space. So they're like, hey, I'll throw two games over there, and I'll throw a game over there, and I'll throw two games over there, and then it gives us the ability to organically grow. I mean, I'm putting probably 15 to 18 of my games there. And then, you know, it's just a sampling from everybody. The good thing is I'm actually taking out games, finally. That's good. Yes, it is. They're going back to my basement. Replacing them with the new titles that are coming out? New titles and also some of my other members who are the owners, of course, are bringing in games and buying used games. So they're actually increasing their numbers. So mine and Zach's numbers go down. Good. We're going to be a little bit different than you. We're going to share similarities like Richmond does with the fact that you guys are essentially open to the public situation. And you did that for different reasons for New York state laws versus we are going to be just like Richmond in a private club membership. Yes. However, not necessarily. So private club membership, we are going to limit it based on the fact of the space and what that could be and how many people we can fit in there at one time. open 20 to 25 hours a week. That might be a little bit lower in the beginning as we ramp up. And we're thinking about limitations of 150 members, which we obviously know they all won't show up at the same time. Yes. Running tournaments from there, running league nights from there. So it's going to be a little tougher. You guys are all pretty much close to proximity to the location, if I remember you telling me. Yes. I'm the furthest one away now at 25 minutes. It's actually me and Zach are almost exactly 25 minutes each. So I've got one member that's five minutes. Yep. I have three members that are five minutes, and then the other two are far. I've got myself at 25 minutes, depending on traffic, and then I have three that are an hour plus away. Oof. That's pretty hard. Yep. But we all know that going in, and we know that, for the most part, the closest people are going to be the ones that are going to be there in the beginning. And, you know, one of those is also our electrician, so he's going to be there. But I expect full dedication from everybody just as we planned. I mean, these guys are, you know, friends of ours. We've all been friends for years, running tournaments out of all of our homes for the last six years. And now just, you know, we are growing down here, which is obviously a good thing. I mean, we've been capping tournaments at 48 people. They're selling out in 30 seconds. And then, you know, wait lists that are 10 and 15 deep, even during these times. So we expect, obviously, more as this grows and bring in people that aren't just tournament players that just want to hang out on a Wednesday night and, you know, shoot the shit for 30 minutes while they play and then run back home. So what days do you plan on being open so far since it's going to be 25 hours? So we expect it to be all day Saturday. You know, when I say all day, meaning maybe like a 12 to 6 or 12 to 8 type of situation. Tuesday, Thursday. I mean, we've been mixing around. We actually had a meeting this week to try to, now that we have the location, to firm up the numbers. You know, accounting for everybody's personal schedules as well. And like I said in the beginning, it might be a little bit lower just as we ramp up. We want to make sure that people can get there and that they're not just paying for something just to, you know, pay for something, that they actually get to use it. It can't be there 40 hours a week. We all have jobs. We all have lives. It doesn't work that way. But hopefully as we grow and become more and have more volunteers to work some of the hours and split the shifts, it makes it easier to have that open more. I will recommend one thing if you want a suggestion. We use an app called Team Up, which is almost like an attendance thing. So you can actually plan ahead monthly, yearly, of who wants to be off and who doesn't want to be off. Like a calendar type of thing. Calendar thing. But it's an app. We're doing now half days. We have three members in the morning or the afternoon and then two members at night. Or vice versa. But we can pick our times and we can actually have more of a life and enjoy it a little bit more. Yeah, that's actually something we were talking about doing and it's part of our meeting notes this week. This is just kind of firm up. It's like 80% of the stuff is all done by virtue of just getting the lease, and then the other 20% is probably the most amount of work, which is security systems and cameras and POS systems and things we're not even thinking about. Yeah. POS, you shouldn't need too much since you're not going to have walk-in that much. No, but you'll have memberships, and we're also going to be selling light snacks and beverages. Okay. We will have the ability here as a private club to get a light, what I would call a light liquor license, basically beer and wine. Yes. So that will be sales as well. So we'll need that for that purpose. Yes, totally. And one of the members, actually, that is his career is he works for a company that does POS systems for bars and restaurants. So he's essentially getting it donated from his company. Nice. That's even easier. We just use Square. It's actually for us. We don't have no liquor, unfortunately. I know some of my members would love to have it, but New York State sucks. It just sucks. So, Bruce. Yes. I hear you've had some issues going on with the co-op. Yeah. Some co-op chronicles, if you will. What's going on? Well, a week ago, Monday, we get a letter from our landlord stating that our building is an old piano factory. it was the biggest piano factory in the world that's what the letter stated? that's weird it always says that because it has actually letterhead on it and everything like that and it's now been converted into like a he calls it a shopping mall that's what the lease calls it as a shopping mall and the doors, they're automated doors on the outside they're lockable at 10pm so our doors lock at 10pm so all of our members and our people know that if it's on a Saturday, if you're going to go out smoking, you can't go out smoking. You got to, you know, people start walking out the door around 10 o'clock like, see you later. Are you coming back in? If you are, keep the door propped open, you know, because they're going to be locked out if not. So we had a letter Monday stating, first we got an email from our landlord, personal email stating that, oh, we were worried about ever since you've been here, we didn't want to go this late. The landlord said, oh, we're going to change it to 8 p.m. like whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa this is totally you know ridiculous we can't have our business shut out like this like oh well you know this is what's going to be because we've had some vandalism here okay what was the vandalism oh well it's been happening and you know we we're kind of thinking it's your place bringing it in because it's kids i'm like we don't have many kids coming into our place mostly it's adults or kids with family you know families oh no no it's definitely you guys. So I asked the landlord, okay, well, can I see the police reports? Well, he never got back to me, of course. But luckily, I'm in a town where I know everybody. So I went to the town hall. I went to the police department. Oh, by the way, what's going on with this? They're like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, can I talk to one of the officers or the chief? I know the chief. You know, I don't know the chief as well as I used to know with the Silver Ball Saloon, but we have a new chief of the police, but he's very nice. He's a great guy. One of the officers contacted me, like, a couple hours later. He's like, uh, there's no police report. Huh. Okay. So we went back to the place and said, uh, where's this police report you guys are talking about? Oh, well, we haven't filed it yet. Okay. So you lied about that. What days did these happen on? The days that it happened on was a Monday, which were closed. and a Wednesday, which we're closed on. So the two days of vandalism happened on days that we weren't even there. It's just local kids coming in and doing bullshit. And the problem is this place, who wants to take your money in for rent, doesn't want to do anything else. And they think, oh, we're just going to knee-jerk and do this. Well, the blowback has been not just from our place. A lot of other companies stay open late, and they've been screaming and yelling. And they finally got the message, and Friday we got the message stating, oh, we're going to go back to 10 o'clock because we're going to bring some video cameras in, we're going to put some signage up to deter all this. Oh, how nice. Isn't there like a rock school downstairs from you guys? It's right down the hall from you. Yeah, right down the hall. That's how I find the co-op. I just go to the rock school. Just listen for the music. Just listen for the music and follow it, and then you'll turn, and there you are right there at us. So my guess is they would have more pre-teen. Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. And that's what we said. We're like, is it interesting? And honestly, the people from the rock school, the kids, are very good. Well, not at music, but yeah. No, not at music, but they're good for the parents. At least the class that was there last time. Oh, it's bad. Oh, my God. Some are good. Some are bad. I don't understand why they all sing the oldest music possible. Just singing like House of the Rising Sun. Like, why would these kids care about that kind of music? They're all retro. Yeah. No, it's probably the teachers just old. Yeah, the teachers just saying, hey, you need to play this stuff. You need to play classic rock now. Yeah. So we got a letter, and then they said, oh, we're going to change the hour lock. So last night, they didn't. They were still set at 8 o'clock, so we were downstairs at the doors letting people in. We had like nine people, ten people come in after 9 o'clock, 9 to 11. Sounds like your landlord is awesome. Yeah, it's any landlord. They just knee jerk. They, oh, my God. And, you know, one of the rock school actually threatened. He goes, I'll sue your asses. Ooh. Because he says, he always puts himself, this is where I'm getting back to, as a shopping mall. So his exact email response, we saw the email response was, what shopping mall closes at 8 o'clock at night on any weekday? Or weekend. Yeah. And the landlord didn't respond, of course. That's his normal thing. That's his normal MO. When the landlord doesn't, like, he's all bolsterous when he first starts, and then when people start coming back at him, he quiets like a mouse. He's a keep-work-a-manda. He is. He should be on pin side. He should be on pin side. Like, he came in two weeks beforehand, and he came into the co-op, and he's like, wow, looks really good in here. You guys did a great job. And every time he comes in, he always tries to throw, like, you know, like, well, we need to do something with you guys. So the next time I see him, I'm going to go, nope, I don't feel secure enough with anything you plan on doing because I don't know if it's going to be, you know, safe enough. What does he mean he wants to do something with you guys? Like, he wants us to, like, you know, oh, I want to have a concert outside. Like, he had a concert a couple years ago outside the building. He hired a couple bands. What does that mean? He wants pinball machines out there while they play cotton music? Yeah. I'm going to say, no, don't feel secure enough. Too much vandalism outside. Yeah, too much vandalism. Yep, that's going to be just a total asshole. You know me. Yes, you are quite the total asshole. You know what you also are? What am I? You are wrong. No, I'm not. Yes, you are. I have proven this. I have proof. I have proof. I have proof. I'm springing this on him. I didn't tell him about this. He knows what it is. I'm not going to do any opinions here. I am just going to state factoids. That's all I'm going to state. Fact. The last. Okay, this all goes back to our argument on the last episode about during stomp, using Lord of the Rings and why you keep using this game. It plays too long. And your argument was that it wasn't even the longest playing game in the tournament. No, no. Nope, that's what you said. That's what you said. That's what you said. You're stopping already. You're not even letting me get started. You said it wasn't the longest playing game in the tournament. You said two games played longer. The Lord of the Rings. You said one of them was attacked from Mars. You said the other one was a three-player game of Star Wars. That's what you said. Okay? So, before I get into any other stuff, here are the longest playing games of Stomp. And I'll start at five. The fifth longest playing game of Stomp was Batman 66. 31 minutes and 10 seconds. A four-player game. Fourth longest playing. Batman 66. I think we removed the wrong game. 34 minutes and 27 seconds. The third longest playing game. Lord of the Rings. Four-player game of Lord of the Rings. 36 minutes and 17 seconds. Second longest playing game of the tournament. Mando. four-player game of 38 minutes and 51 seconds. Longest playing game of the tournament. The final game, Lord of the Rings, a three-person game, took 40 minutes. And the Star Wars game you were talking about, which I found, the longest Star Wars game was 30 minutes and 11 seconds. That was six longest. And it was not a three-person game. It was a four-person game, which you were in. Really? I didn't even notice it. Yeah. I didn't even notice it. So, hold on. The game does suck. Your longest game was a three-player game of Lord of the Rings. That if you take the 40 minutes and you cut out. Now, most of the time with a four-player game or a three-player game group, in normal match play game plays during regular positions, people are usually walking up right afterwards. Now, if you take the time that people were walking all the way from the front of the building to the back of the building, because the game is all the way in the corner, and you take that out of the video part, it's another three minutes at least. Well, not to mention that we have a similar problem down here when we run tournaments. You just said that was the final game. So that means you had the three best players of the day playing. If they played stars, it might be the longest playing game of the day, too. Well, yeah, which would be five minutes. Which would be five minutes. And the game that was played with Lord of the Rings was two people got over $30 million, and the winner got over $100 million. You see, Joe, the problem is here. Bruce, no one wants this game in the tournament other than Bruce. Nobody. Oh, I agree. Nobody. Other than maybe Raymond, who was probably like, oh, I can still, yeah, because he could pick it. But there's been multiple instances between here and Silver Ball Saloon where you've had this game in and people don't want to play it. So your whole thing is like, well, then I want Star Wars out if Lord of the Rings can't be in. And your whole reasoning is that it plays super long, which it doesn't play super long according to the stats. Yeah. You literally don't want it in because you hate it. So I think of it this way. I take it as a win-win because other than you, no one wants Lord of the Rings in the tournament. Other than me and maybe Zach, no one wants Star Wars in the tournament either. So it's a win-win for everybody. I think that's the way it should be. See, there you go. I mean, your reasoning is flawed and wrong, but hey, now if we can only get Batman 66 out of the tournament, that might be another one. No, it does prove that there was other games right around it. When you have the best players playing that game. Well, don't have the best players playing that game, but how are you going to do that when everything's random? You know, you can't. I think when you have the best players playing any game. We had the same issue last weekend here. It was like, oh, well, Game of Thrones played for 40 minutes. Well, yeah, Game of Thrones. Jason Zoller, Steve Zoller, Andrew Pankos, and Matthew Richards. You've got to get all these great players. It's going to take any game and play it for an hour. Classics only. I'll take care of that. No 40-minute games of Doodle Bug, I'll tell you that. Wait a second. In the B Division, the last games I was picking was Stars. You're crazy. I don't know why anyone would pick Stars who wants to win, other than if they're so much better than you, you're just picking it to try to screw them over. No, Stars I like. I like Stars. Yeah, you're sick. We use Stars as a tiebreaker. when we need something to play fast and just get to the next level, or we use it as a consolation type of, you know, worst four people play a game on stars for 20 bucks type of thing. Oh, man. Wow. Wow. Because it's over. Yeah, at least they get paid. Well, the winner gets paid anyway. Exactly. The winner gets paid. Wow. But I am bringing games down back into the house, and I set up the bowler yesterday. Nice. The ball bowler from the Silver Ball Saloon and, of course, from my house previously is reset up. I brought home Gambitron, which is my Gambitron, not the co-op's Gambitron. Well, mine and Zach's Gambitron. That's the one that's a co-op. I brought home Big Game. I brought home Sea Witch. And last night I brought home Memory Lane. You brought them home? Brought them home. You brought them home. Well, here's the thing. Now you're getting rid of all the classics, so you have no choices but to play Lord of the Rings and Batman. There you go. See? Now you're saying my method. My madness. No, because... No. No, that's the opposite of the method that you're mad about. No, because Zach will probably bring in more EMs now. No, he can't. He can't? No, what happened? He's not allowed? He can't. No, because we have a number limit. When the other members start bringing in more games, which they now are, me and Zach actually remove games to make the number more even. Oh, how nice. So, I know Zach wants a certain game that he likes in there. He likes his EMs, which I have no problem with at all. I actually prefer a lot of EMs except for Far Out. Far Out sucks. Far Out is awesome. Far Out sucks. Man, you're so wrong. I'd rather have Flipper Clown. Okay. Or Volley, of course. Volley's the best. I'll take a Volley. Yeah. I want Zach to bring in Countdown. It's kind of an EM. It is kind of an EM, but it's still solid state. and it's better than volley in some ways because you do have to worry about the multipliers. You have to get them in order. But, you know, so with the members that had less games are now bringing in more. We go down in numbers. So Zach already has his next pin removal planned. I have my next two pins removal planned, and they're all older CERNs. Aw. Are you guys buying more older games? Is that why you're switching over and being able to take your older games out? But it's not even that. It's just what we're seeing from our customer base. Our customers do like the newer games, of course. Yep. They see, you know, Mandalorian. They see Star Trek. They go, you know, honestly, I think Monopoly's played more than a lot of other games there. Just like I've always said, you know, just people. Game recognition. Yeah, game recognition and, you know, theme. Theme is very big for people who are just walking in and seeing pinball the first time. Of course, you still have the people who want to play medieval madness. that kind of stuff. So, you know, that will never change. But we do have some players, like if I took out Stars, I think I'd have a riot outside of my place. Because people just go to that. I have one guy, he comes in and literally plays that three-quarters of the time he's there. Every time he comes in, he comes in every Saturday at 3 p.m., leaves at 9 p.m., and he's on that Stars for at least three hours. Sounds like a guy that likes a good ass kicking. It does. And, you know, now my stars are actually starting to wear. That's how bad it is. I'm getting chips in my paint finally. Finally after 40 years. I know, 40 years of beat. And I wax it like every three weeks, four weeks. And it's just, you know, it's fine. Oh, my. Oh, my. I wax it all the time. Oh, my. The good thing is eventually if I do need to swap out the play field, I have one. Does it have the right lettering and colors? It is an NOS. It's an NOS. You don't play that repro trap, you know. Nope, unless it's Quicksilver or Sea Witch. I have a Quicksilver being built right now. I have my Shitsilver now at the co-op, and we're putting it together. I just have to first do – I need help from our Australian friends. I'm going to take a picture of my Transformer and my Shitsilver, and I need you guys to try to help me figure out what the tapping is, because it's not a normal stern transformer. Is that the one that came from Ryan? Yes. Yes, it is. Good day. Good day, Ryan. Say, another bad accent there. Congratulations, Australia. You're now out of your 87th lockdown. Yeah, your 87th lockdown of 274 days. Wow. Jesus fucking Christ. Congratulations, guys. Welcome to the real world. We're all going to get sick and die. Welcome to the real world. Oh, does that mean Matrix is coming out? Yes. And I have now gotten my booster shot. I am now boosted again. You're fully, fully, fully vaccinated. Wait a minute. What's your underlying medical condition? Cancer. Oh, yeah. Oh, you win. Oh, yeah. You win. I win. Later, Space Invader. But here's the funny thing. Now the CDC wants to change the rules again. Now, all these people who have the vaccine, you know, from the first two shots, or if you had a Johnson & Johnson the first shot, well, you might not be fully vaccinated now. Now you might have to get that booster to be fully vaccinated. Really? They're learning as they go. I mean, listen, I give them some reprieve here. I mean, this is completely, you know, only two years in the making type of idea. And they're getting new facts every day. Yeah. Well, Bruce, it got rid of Cuomo eventually, so you should be happy. I am very happy. Okay. I'm not sure if that's what got rid of Cuomo, but okay. Well, no, it was one of the multiple things, unfortunately. It's like, what, groping women and killing old people. That's what got rid of them, actually, according to Bruce. I think the groping women was the push. That was probably the push. It was a hard push. People were not, like, really pushing it until, like, nationwide. It was pretty bad. Like, everyone down in New York City was like, he's not that bad. He saved our lives. He can grope a couple women. What? I was like, what the fuck are you people thinking? On to the next topic. Yes, Scott. There's a new Stern president. So what, Gary Stern? I didn't know Gary Stern has kids. No. Does he have kids? I have no idea. I have no idea. No, it's not his kid. Is it vodka? No, no. Is it Mr. Absolute? On October 14th, Stern Pinball announced the hiring of Seth A. Davis. As president, Gary Stern, the founder of Stern Pivot, will continue to serve as chairman and CEO, i.e. Seth's boss. Yes. Dave Peterson will continue to serve as vice chairman and EVP of the company. I think Dave Peterson was the investor dude. Yes. He's the money dude. Yes. So everyone is panicking here because he comes from Disney. Yes, and that's all bye-bye-bye. And he worked with Disney Plus, all their streaming services. So they think this is the beginning of the end. He's been hired to make Stern Pinball, like, streaming services. Pay to play. Mm-hmm. What do you think? Why aren't you paid to play when you get there? You put a dollar in the machine, you're paid to play. Well, they're saying things like, let's say, Raw Thrills does. I know. Where you got, like, $40 a month if you want a game at a certain price. I know. I know. I equate it to, like, if you get a cell phone that's not from a carrier, it's a certain price, but if you get it from a carrier, it's cheaper because you're locked into the carrier, that type thing. I don't know. This is the way the world's going. I mean, unfortunately, you don't have to like it necessarily, but this is the way the world's been going with everything. I mean, we've all at this point probably are close to a ditch cable for some kind of streaming services, or we have those on top of our normal cable. And like you said, we're all thrills. You know, pay a dollar to play a big buck on it, pay $3 to play it, and you're enrolled in the monthly numbers, whatever it is. So it's just a matter of time before we're caught up to pinball. I agree. Sucks. It does suck. But, I mean, when that press release came out and you looked at the guy's resume, you could – You cringed a little bit. Yeah. You might as well put up a big, giant sign that just said, we are going to a subscription-based service. Yes, Cal, here we come. I mean, we don't like it because it costs us more money, and especially guys like you that have been in this hobby forever. But at the end of the day, this is still keeping pinball alive by them generating income. And if they weren't making money, there would be no new pinballs. So it's like you're caught between a rock and a hard place. Are they making too much money now? You know what? From a business standpoint, pull yourself out of it as being a hobbyist. Is there such a thing as making too much money? Well, the problem is, are you pricing out your customers? And your customers well that doesn seem like it Well you are pricing out a part of your customer base Sure And that possibly a problem when a recession hits or something else happens and your homeowner will then go away or tighten his belt a little bit. They can only do it when it's working for them, right? They can raise prices, and if people are constantly still buying, then they haven't raised the price high enough. Okay, so when was the last time Stern lowered a price? Never. Thank you. Thank you very much. And there you go. You know, I think it's just, again, it's the way the world goes. I mean, everything has been increased. Everything has surcharges to it. I mean, I had the guy here yesterday to quote me for doing some painting in the house. And he's from Sherman Williams. He's catching a total of 11% price increases from a year ago. Yep. But the problem is that's going to add to inflation. When inflation comes up, then it's – here's the only thing that hasn't inflated, my wallet. No, your savings account. Yeah. It's still off like three-quarters of a percent. It's a cyclical thing. Yeah, it's cyclical. I mean, it goes up, it goes down. It's just one of those things that the ebb and flow of the economy and the way we live in. Yes. So nothing more on the president? They've hired a lot of people. They hired also another guy for parts. He's now the new parts manager and service manager. so they're doing some more hiring, which is good. Well, they have to. They've got to keep it. If they're going to sell this many more games than they sold, they've got to have people to support them on one side or the other. I mean, unfortunately, with the passing of Chaz, who was a big part of that, they needed to add to that. They've got to at least replace him, if not add to it. Well, you know, I know one thing that didn't go up in price. The pen. Still $45.99. And that segues into Stern's latest offering, Jurassic Park, the pin. Dun, dun, dun. What do you think? At least it looked different than another Spider-Man Home Edition redesign. I like jump ramps. Jump ramp is cool. It looked more packed for a home version pin than the previous editions had. It looked better than Led Zeppelin. We'll give that. Yeah, pro, definitely. Yeah, exactly. I'm totally agreeing. Do you have to agree with me with that one? I have to agree with you there. It just looks, yes. The T-Rex actually can, it doesn't grab the ball, but it's in his mouth. It's like more than the pro does. Yeah. That was impressive. Yeah, I thought for, you know, Jack Danger's first thing, it's pretty darn good. Jack Danger of Dead Flip was the designer. Wason at Stern was the programmer. I think it's better than some of the games they've put out lately. You know, like, as I said, Led Zeppelin. Wow. Well, with the play field. That Led Zeppelin play field sucked to pro. It really did. Is it better than Star Wars pro? Yes. No. Come on. Whatever. Richie, I'm glad he left Stern. Wow. Oh, strong take. It is a strong take. Okay, let's write this down. Bruce thinks Dwight Sullivan should retire. Is glad Steve Ritchie left Stern. Wow. You are killing it. Bring it in. What was the last Steve Ritchie game that you think was admirable? Yeah, good. Star Trek. Okay. Was Game of Thrones after Star Trek or before? Yes, it was. After. So you don't think Game of Thrones was pretty? Premium sucks and the LE sucks. Well, the premium alley sucks because of the upper playfield and slows it down. But the rules are so – that was the beginning of the let's make the rules so fucking complicated. And then you only have one pathway to enjoy this game. I think Star Trek was definitely the best of the best. Yes. Like, he's like, how can I make the most flowing game I've ever made and just, like, rip off everything I've ever done and try to make the biggest flow fest humanly possible, and you get Star Trek. That was kind of a culmination, I think, for him. But then the rules got so basic almost, it became so much shoot the blinking light. I don't mind that. I'd rather have a shoot the blinking light than... Yeah, Bruce likes simple. Well, which rule will give me three times the max play field of this? What? Yeah, that's Game of Thrones. That's Star Wars. I know. I just felt Star Trek had no soul. Which is why you sold it before Spider-Man. Yeah, that's why Spider-Man is still sitting down there, because Jameson can make me laugh. He does. That's the only thing that makes that game really pop is the rules from Lyman. I do like the extra shot at it. It's a little tighter, which I do like also. Trust me. It was 1-1-A for me. Trust me. What is that? Trust me. It was 1-1-A. I didn't want to get rid of Spider-Man, but I really like Star Trek. I've owned Spider-Man four times. every time it leaves I'm like oh I really miss Spider-Man and then I get it and like two months later I'm like eh okay I've had enough yeah I know I've also owned Star Trek four times too so I've only owned one I am looking forward to playing Jurassic Park at Expo because that'll probably be the only time I will ever get to play it kind of like what do you mean no you won't? Are you getting one at the co-op? No there's one actually local to us our local pinball alley is getting one. What? You guys have everything there. It's ridiculous. Let me ask you guys this question. How many do you think they're going to sell of this game for it to really be worth them? That's a good question. They must have sold enough Star Wars to keep doing this. Not really, because they didn't really change their marketing. If you notice, the same flyer for Star Wars in the guy's living room with the fireplace behind him and everybody's standing around watching Dad score. Yeah, with kids. They haven't aged one pound. They haven't aged at all. Amazing. But I know my distributor, he didn't sell very many Star Wars to pins, and the only game he's sitting on that he has stock of right now is the pins. And when I talked to him last week, it was very low numbers of pre-orders for Jurassic Park as well. Now, maybe he's not the guy to talk to because he's the one selling to guys like us. Well, I think they're being forced. I think what they're doing to some of these distributors is, hey, you have to take so many pins if you want your number allotment of what you had before, you know, for your LEs and that kind of stuff. Right. I mean, this seems like the game where you put it in, you know, your local, you know, game room store, you know, game room depot or recreation depot that we have around here, and it's just sitting on the floor, and you hope you sell two or three to people that walk in and have zero idea about the full-spectrum pinball. And it's cheaper. Look at it that way. Or a Costco or something like that. Yeah. I don't know. But I guess the real question is, they spend all the time and resources to make this game. Is it lost money? Like, why? Is it making, are you selling 500 of these? Are you selling 500? I think the break point would have to be at least 500. So that's usually the break point we look at for some of these games like AP does. going as it's still 500, but for Stern, that number would have to be smaller, you would think, right? I don't know. You have more employees. You have more people in line. You have more time. Maybe it's got to be close to break even. It would be 500. And then what's the point of break even? Why would you? I don't know. Well, I think they're trying to make a niche where they're saying, hey, we still have the cheapest pinball machine around. Hey, they keep raising the price of the pro. Oh, God. Well, so does American Pinball, too. Well, not pro. L-E or whatever you want to call it. No, it's not even called that. We'll get into that. Yeah, another. We should have a new trivia game where you have to guess the manufacturer's name for their top model. Actually, I'll do that now. I'll do that now real quick. Ready? L-E. Stern. Okay. Very good. L-V. Limited version. American Pinball. No. What is that? That's spooky. No. Is that the Australian guy from Taiwan? Pinball Brothers. Ah. That's right. Collector's Edition. Jersey Jack. Jersey Jack. Actually, that's Jersey Jack and Spooky. Oh, they both do that? Yeah. Didn't they do that with the new one? I think they did. Because originally they had the, what was it called? Bloodsuckers. Bloodsuckers Edition, but then, yeah. But, yeah, it's just, why can't we just follow one? Well, they are following one pattern, just with a different take on the name. Different name, because they have to name things their own thing. Take on me. Okay. Take on me. Take me on. Okay, that's going to be too high. I know my limitations. I'm not even getting involved in that. Deluxe edition. American Pinball. Yeah, it's American Pinball. That's what they're going to call it. And that's new for them. They didn't have this for the prior game. That's correct. They were another one of these we will only have one version companies that eventually has multiple versions, just like Jersey Jack did. They said the same things. Yeah. Yeah. So does this mean Jack Danger is the new designer? He's employed by CERN. But you think this is, like, I mean, he did this on a contract basis. Do you think he's, like, the new, he's going to replace Richie? He's the new designer now? No, I don't think so. You don't think so? because we had the other thing we'll talk about. We had the Twitch hack. Let me see how much money he was making. Twitch hack, yes, where basically it was also their source code, all the new products they're developing, but, yes, it also had what everyone's making. I'm not going to say the numbers. That wouldn't be cool. But let's just say. He told everyone. Now everyone sees what I made. Well, yeah, he said I'm number whatever on the list if anyone wants to see what I made. Yeah, well, which I would have done too. It's like, because he knows they're all going to look. Of course. There was some confusion, I think, on basically the totals were for two years. Yes. And they were gross. Yes. And what that means, just pretend, but we'll use this. Say I made $2 million. Say I'm on the list and it says I made $2 million gross. I'm a really popular streamer, right? So that's like $1 million a year gross. Yep. Then how much you get is determined by your tier in the Twitch world. So they have three tiers. Tier one is 50-50. Tier two is 60-40. So you get 60, Twist gets 40. And tier three is 70-30. The consensus that I heard from all the other streamers I talked to is that Jack was probably in tier two, 60-40. So you can figure out how much he made there. So if I made $2 million on the list, that's $1 million a year. Say I'm in tier two, I made $600,000. Yep. So there you go. For sitting home, getting on the internet for three hours or two hours a day. To be fair, pinball streamers have to do way more than pretty much any of the video game streamers do. That's ways that he had his own place. He gets donated. Here's the interesting thing. Yeah. Here's the interesting thing I found. So who would you say we can agree? Deadflip, Jack Danger was the number one pinball streamer. Like no one's even close, right? Who would you say second? Buffalo Pinball. Yeah, okay. Buffalo Pinball. So I won't say numbers, but I'll say percentage. What do you think their percentage was of what Devin gets? Probably 34%. 34%. I wouldn't even have gone that high. 15%. Yeah, I was going to say 5%, but that would have been low. 15%. So when they say he's the king of pinball streaming, there's no one even in his league. Real House. No, not even close. And I didn't see this story And I'm looking at it as we're talking about it But where was he in relationship to The top streamer for Twitch period Oh he was 200th and something Yeah 270 I think it was 270, 273 I think his number was Gotcha He was below all the hot tub streamers Oh yeah If he licked his microphone he might have made more What a joke But I didn't know it was 15% I wonder who third was Yeah, I didn't. I didn't go too deep into it. All those other ones will probably be the less than 1% people. I mean, I'm sure I'm on the list somewhere. I'm probably, IE Pinball will probably be third, I'm thinking. I get confused where these guys all stream. Like, you see them and you click on links and you don't realize all the time where I don't realize what I'm on if I'm on YouTube or Twitch or, you know. Well, I have noticed, since we're talking about streamers, there has been a great consolidation happening recently. Like a lot of streamers joining the Pinball Network. I've seen streamers joining Buffalo Pinball trying to consolidate into like these mega channels. Sort of like everyone going on the Pinball Network. Yeah, for podcasts. Yeah. I mean, trying to consolidate resources, I guess you would say, and get more views. But aren't they really consolidating resources or not? All you're doing is making it so it's easier to click on one channel. That's all it is. You're not consolidating resources because guess what? you still have to have the same equipment. Is Buffalo Pinball supplying the equipment or TPN supplying the equipment? Of course not. No, but it's easier to find them. It's easier to find them. That's the only thing. It's not like you're saving money or saving anything. All you're doing is hopefully getting a broader audience. But, see, I noticed that, like, a lot of consolidation, people jumping. I think it was TurboGrafx, they jumped from the Pinball Network to Buffalo Pinball, and then the Pinball Network's just got a bunch of streamers that joined. Yeah, well, if you're only getting 10 to 15 people, you know, maybe you should join. If it's going to help you maybe get up to 30 or 40. I heard Stu was going to jump networks. Yeah, Stu was definitely going to jump networks. Unfortunately, he's been missing in action because ever since he got his ass beat down by Raymond. In Paris. He did join the Stern Insider Connected. He did? Really? Wow. Maybe he's got a bigger plan. Yeah, I think so. If you look out there, you'll see the Stu. I think he's at level sub-zero practicing. Yeah, sub-zero. Get over here. But, yeah, all right, enough of the Twitch chat. Well, Insider Connected, after all the stuff we said about how we probably wouldn't use it, I noticed at least me and you, Bruce, we joined. I have a problem with my account. I have a problem in that when I went to join, like, I was already a Stern Insider member. So I logged in. I wanted to log in to set up this Insider Connected, and my login no longer worked. Yes, I had the same issue. Yeah, and I did, like, okay, forgot password, and then it told me, like, my username wasn't even set up. So they must have blew away my account, which is kind of annoying. So I had to re-sign up. Mine thinks I'm an 8-year-old kid. They listen to your humor, so that's why. Exactly, they think I'm an 8-year-old kid. What did they do, Bruce? They think I'm an eight-year-old kid. Oh, yes. They are correct. I've emailed them three times for support. And what do you think I've gotten? Nothing. You have to ask your mommy to call us. I got zero. So you put the wrong birthday in. No, it would not let me change the birthday. So you put the wrong birthday in. It wouldn't let me change it. Yeah, but you put the wrong birthday in. You're not allowed to put any stuff wrong at the beginning of the process here, Scrooge. And I tried to change it. Yeah, can't change it. I know you can't. It was stupid. That was the power of Stern's. Damn eight-year-old. What's your opinion on the whole connected thing as a whole? I think it will work. Yeah, I think it's a good idea. It's an idea that makes people want to try to get the goals. What they have to do is actually, and we've talked about this privately, me and Ron, is if you get all the goals that you're trying, say Godzilla has like 55 goals. Let's just say if it does, and you get all 55, Stern should send you a free t-shirt that kind of thing because guess what you're putting a lot of money into this game and to their product that would be like a shirt like I beat Godzilla I bought a $9,000 game I should just get a t-shirt it should just come in a coin box well you used to remember you used to you have to fill out the form remember yeah you could send it in here's a question so Bruce you will have games or the co-op will have games there where the Stern connected feature makes a lot more sense. If you were strictly a home collector, would you get excited or worry about buying new aprons? No, I wouldn't do it if I was. If it was my home game, I'd have no interest in this. Ron? No. Speaking of new aprons. This is the main reason why I would say no. Well, after the whole, like, we couldn't get a price for like a month. which it gets old when you have George Gomez on there saying how great this is. How much are the kits going to cost? Well, that's not really my department. Really? Come on. Well, obviously it must have been his department because he's the one who made the announcement. It's going to be $200 for the kit. Which is not bad. Which a lot of people thought was going to be $300 because that was the price raised until the end of this year. So they figured, oh, that's got to be for the kit so it's going to be $300. So I was actually surprised it was $200. So think about it. An apron, a new apron is like $75. Yes. A camera, $10. Wi-Fi dongle, $10. So that's a really expensive Note board that comes with the kit, obviously. Yes. That will probably fry out in two years and you'll be at the bottom of the campaign. Well, it's also the exclusivity, right? This is not something you're going to be able to go buy at Best Buy or any of these other stuff. It's, hey, if you want it, this is what it costs. Yep. You know, not like JJP where it's like, okay, you need to get a Wi-Fi dongle. I found them on Amazon for $5. Yeah. So no big deal. But this is going to have to be exclusive. But, yeah, I'm not looking to change my home games. And I have a lot of those that are going to be connected. From a home perspective, it doesn't do anything for me. But from a location perspective, I can see any of the games I put at the collective probably adding these because you're going to have people that want them. Is it $200? Is there a different one for pro and premium? There is a different one, but it's the same price. That doesn't make sense. Because I thought they said originally, if you had a premium, you didn't need a new apron. You don't need a new apron. You don't need a new apron. You're just going to take the corner of the same one. So how can they be the same price? That's what I said. That doesn't make sense. It should be $75 less for that apron that you don't need. Yep. Yep. Or Stern could say, actually, it was going to be $75 more, but we decided to sell both at the lower price. That's what they would probably say. Agreed. I'm right with you. The pro, you have to replace the entire apron because it's a plastic apron, and the premium has the little corner window. Yeah, you pop out the window, and then I think they give you the decals for the art, so the thing points at it. Here, look. And a sticker. You get a sticker on the speaker panel. Yeah, if you want to. But every game from Batman 66 and up. All the LCD games. Yes. They're all not ready yet. They're not ready, but they will be. I think they said eight games now, right? Yeah, which I haven't been able to find the list. Well, you see some backwards from most recent to oldest. Black Knight. Led Zeppelin. Elvira. Is one of the Black Knight ones, like if you have an LE, keep it on the upper play field for half an hour straight, and you get like an award? Yeah. And there's going to be giveaways. Giveaways. Giveaways, Bruce? Yep. It's turned 90 days of giveaways. Ooh. What can I win? You can win a 30-day giveaway of 10 insider memberships. On the 60-day giveaways, there's going to be 10 autograph-lit translates. That's what it's saying. And on a 90-day giveaway is three Stern pinball machines. Ooh. So all the tournament winners that win WWE LEs are going to get more WWE LEs? Yes. Here's the weird part now. So seven games are launched out of the 17. Can you tell me which seven? And first, of course, is Godzilla. So we already know that's one. So go ahead. Next. What's the other six? Mando. Okay, two. Led Zeppelin. Three. Turtles 4 Jurassic Park 5 Avengers 6 Who's the last one? Elvira Nope Black Knight Sword of Rage Nope Deadpool Oh, Deadpool How did I miss that? Yes, Deadpool That makes the most sense actually That actually makes the most sense Everyone wants Deadpool And they can't make him fast enough So, yeah I know If you can go We can just go buy a used one For 10 grand wow damn i keep looking i keep looking at these sales and then i look in the basement and i'm like do i want to make 10 grand on a game i spent seven on but i can't get it for 12 later on i'd have to i'd have to resolve myself to being done with the game uh yeah i i'm thinking of that when i look at my jurassic park yeah i sold all my le's slash premiums and bought all pros too early. Well, I sold them too early. I guess I bought them at the right time, no? Yeah. I'm looking at the difference between the kids right now. Well, while you're doing that, another subject here. JJP has another new designer. Yes. Whose game you will see sometime in 2025, probably. Yes, 2025. Steve's game's coming up. It's 2026. Yeah, so this guy's going to be sitting around doing nothing. Is Mark Seiden? Siden? Siden. Siden. Mark Siden. He did the Metroid homebrew. That was his calling card. They're looking for the next EFL one, I guess. Yes. So now they have a company that makes a game every year and a half. The two new designers. The two new designers. And two current designers. Well, the word is that Pat's retiring. Well, Pat's retiring. That would make sense. So still, three designers. His new song will be Toy Story. so congratulations Mark so here's a question so a guy like Steve Ritchie and Eric and Pat they're full time gigs they're getting paid their salary to be there and work on their games is Mark a contract? no it's full time I heard he was moving there he's moving there so JGP's got to be they're locking in for the long haul they're paying people Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, they are. Four designers are going to be paying per year. Wait a second. When did they release information about Guns N' Roses? October of last year. Yeah. And people are finally getting their games. Some people I know who ordered in October are just getting their games this month. Correct. Yeah, they better have a plan for more lines or something because... This is ridiculous. And we do have more lines, right? Because we just put Wonka back on the line again. Yeah. For a limited run. Yeah. LEs only. Right. I think they need to do Pirates, if anything. That would be the next launch. That's expired. That's expired. Yeah, that's done. That's done. With their parts. I think they could do it one more time. No. I think they have parts sitting. Yeah, but it's usually three-year deals. It's won since it's expired. I know. They're going to renegotiate something new with Disney? Well, the story was that the reason pirates stopped when it stopped is because they had no orders initially. They didn't order more parts like they did for Wonka or for Guns N' Roses. So that rumor's been back and forth for years. It didn't sell. It didn't sell. It didn't sell. It was terrible. I mean, that was – I seem to remember somewhere reading Keith P. Johnson saying in a post somewhere, Like, if you really wanted it, you should have bought it while it was there because where were you? Where were you? Something like that. Where were you? I waited for a year for Pirates. I canceled my order, and then I got a call from the distributor saying, hey, I got some sitting. You know, do you want it? And I literally went the same day when Jersey Jack was in Jersey, and my office was like an hour from there, and I just went and picked one up, and they were sitting in boxes. Now, you know. People are drooling over that. Yeah. I don't think they ordered more turrets. I think Wonka goes back on the line because they had Wonka parts and they're short on Guns N' Roses parts. Now, I have one thing. I'm just going to go totally off the subject. May I go totally off the subject? In a second. Dialed in. New code. Yes. And hop it. I was wrong. When they were Wi-Fi-ing all the games, I said DI would be last, and it was not. Nope. It was Erick the Lamb. They realized how awesome the game is, and they needed to get it done. This is true. But didn't they do those, like, three days in a row? Three games came online, dialed in, and it was in Hobbit, all big games? Yeah, but no, for achievements. But they already had Wi-Fi dongles. Oh, okay. I'm talking about just Wi-Fi. I figured that would be the last one they would do. I figured they would do Pirates before they would do that one. But I was wrong. It was the first game to have a Bluetooth. Yeah, it had the Bluetooth. And they're discontinuing the app. So you will not be able to, because we're going to assume you're going to plug the Wi-Fi card where the Bluetooth was, and you're not going to be using an app to flip the flippers anymore because no one really did that anyway. You could get a splitter. Yeah, I think there's two or three USB ports anyway. You could run extensions from the CPU down. That's what you had to do at Wonka. You had to run two. You had to run the Bluetooth, and you had to run the Wi-Fi. So you could do a third. Okay, Bruce. You said you were going totally off the subject here. What are you going to say? Joe Fox bought a couple of older Sterns this past month. I did? No, I didn't. I think he bought two nine balls. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I forgot. Oh. He forgot. Honestly, that was like two or three months ago now. Oh, really? Yeah, no, you're right. I did. It was so great he forgot about them already. Yes. So a guy listed on a Sunday morning in New Jersey. I live in Delaware, but I work in Jersey. He was like an hour away from my house, 20 minutes from my office. Sunday morning listed for nine ball, $2,500. Playfield's not terrible, but not great. He admits that it needs some work on the drop target bank, which I think I remember for years, Ron, you always saying they all do. And when I messaged him, I said, hey, I'm interested. Can I come check it out tomorrow, blah, blah, blah. and he proceeds to tell me that he's got a second one that has been completely torn down that he originally had the idea to rebuild or restore, and would I be interested in both. So I went Monday afternoon, and I bought both. So here's the funny thing now. There are two nine balls on Pennside. I saw one for $9,500. And there's one for $9,750. The $9,750, wasn't that the one from Ohio or somewhere that was completely already restored, New playfield, new light board. Sale pending. Yes. Holy crack. Holy crack. This is all your fault. You are the two to blame for this entire Stern Classic problem. I'm sorry. Actually, you shouldn't be sorry. It's actually a good thing. Because if you're holding on to all the old ones like you guys do, you could retire by Friday. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, that's got to be it. So when are you restoring your two to sell them? It's the best money. So I'm not doing any of the work. I've got a guy in Indiana who does my restore work, and he has a full-time job as well. So right now he is in the process of a Quicksilver for me and, drumroll, a completely brand-new Stargazer. Of course. Of course. So they will go out to him. I've got seven games that are between him and I that we've bought or that were local to me that he's going to go restore. At some point, I have two Flight 2000s in my garage for him. I have two Meteors in my basement for him. And I have now two Nineballs that will all be at some point soon going to Indiana for work to be done. There you go. Gary, Indiana. Gary, Indiana. Sorry. I totally think I want to hear Indiana. So, yeah, there'll be. I mean, honestly, it's probably going to be a year plus away before they get done, just based on his – I mean, he's got a family. He's got a job. It's, you know, it's a hobby. It's not like – he's not like a Chris Hutchins who does this as his mainstream job. So – and even Chris takes a long time, even when that's the case. He does. But, you know what, I've got the – the wiring harnesses are basically the gold of all these deals when you find them. is, you know, the parts if you need them, if, you know, you've got the slingshots, the mechanisms that you can't find anywhere, and the wire harnesses. You know, you can get new playfields. You can have somebody, a carpenter, build a cabinet. You can buy repro boards and have them all done, but it's the wire harnesses and some of the mechs that are basically the gold in these finds. I totally agree. That's why I grabbed that big game. Had a non-hacked harness, play field, and all three drop target assemblies. Yeah, that's just tough stuff. I need a cheetah. I know. I have the play field I bought saying, hey, one day I'll find it. And that's what I need to find next. There you go. I love my cheetah, even on my cabinets. Don't you have like seven of them? I had two, but one is now in the possession of our other co-op friend up at the sanctum. He has my second one. Gotcha. I traded that for a parts machine also. So we went in parts and machines both back and forth. Yeah. See? See? It's good stuff. It's good stuff. Well, this isn't just a podcast where if you just say you need something, somehow somebody messages you three days a week. It usually is. Lately, it has not been. Joe Fox needs a cheetah. Yes. All right. Joe Fox needs a cheetah. Joe Fox needs a cheetah. He also needs some Soarin' Roms. He does need some Soarin' Roms. Some new snoring ROMs came out for Theater of Magic and Mousing Around. So I guess Theater of Magic's taking away the left orbit shot? Yes, they are. Yes, it does. It fixes that big time. And Mousing Around would be the center ramp. Yes. So you can get those through Planetary Pinball. It's funny. As bad of a player as I am, any of these things they come up with that are so repetitive and make the game bad, I can't do it anyway. So to me, I already have it. Community box bombs. Let's see. What else do I have here? Man, there's so much crap. Rush Leak. Yes. You see that? There supposedly was a picture that Stern put out somewhere. It was, like, of a really early Godzilla Whitewood. Yes. It had two guides on it and the flippers, and that was it. But next to it was another game, and you could kind of see the top of the side art, and people were doing their Internet stuff, Internet investigators, and saw the top of it was the top of the Rush logo. So everyone was like, it's Rush, it's Rush. It's Rush, it's Rush. How curious they always are with their stuff and how much Zach has tried to limit these leaks. And this happens like once a year where somebody finds something buried in the photo. Can't we just agree to the fact that this isn't accidents? Yeah, well, then Stern took the photo and cropped out that part of it and reposted it, which to me even more senses of trolling. Yeah, because either A, somebody's getting fired the day after, or B, it's just trolling. Yep. Yep. And remember, Zach Sharp, he is a Sharp, and we know they like trolling. They do, which means, wait, so if it's trolling, does that mean that it is not Rush? Exactly. You got your thinking. So it's serving its purpose. So it's Rush. Yeah, it's probably Rush. Everyone thinks it's Rush, so. If it is Rush, what's your opinion, both of you guys, on that? It definitely was an odd selection in my mind. I mean, I'm not a Rush fan. I think Pink Floyd or Grateful Dead or any of these, they have much more of a following than Rush would. Yeah. I don't know, yeah. It's an odd selection if it's true. It could have been more cooperative. At least ELO was on the top ten list that I saw on one of these. Oh, God. There's not going to be an ELO game. It's never going to happen. I know that, but at least ELO was mentioned on the top ten future games you would like to see. So here's a question. Is Rush going to be one of these, like, Primus games? No. No. I mean, I know it's rumored to be Borg, but could it maybe not be Borg and it be one of these studio games? No, he's due for a new game. He is. And what his name George Gomez is going to be making a game this year or next year Like he not busy enough I don figure he just finishing or doing the game that was Steve game Richie's. Yeah. Yeah, which all the rumors are. All the rumors were it's James Bond. Bondage. And I don't know what that means. Is it going to be, like, just generic James Bond with no one's likeness on it? Or, you know, who knows? I have to make a confession. Uh-oh. I've never seen five minutes of one James Bond film. Oh, my fucking God. Wow. Fail. I know. Fail. Even because Ron doesn't like movies and never really watched too many movies. I've seen them all. Yeah. And honestly, I probably like them. I just never, I don't know. Let's see. Okay, Bruce, you have to recommend one to Joe. What do you recommend? Probably the newest ones, I'd probably go right for Casino Royale. It's the easiest one to get into. it starts at a basic beginning point, I think that's a good, easy start. Are these all completely detached movies? So it doesn't matter which one you start with. It's not like a saga or a series. They used to be. With the Daniel Craig ones, it was more connected. Yeah. We're getting into Spectre. We're getting into other groups. That's why he gave you the first one. Okay. That's why I said you don't want to go back to Sean Connery days. I would go back to Sean Connery. I would go with Goldfinger. Oh, I couldn't watch that. You have to go back to the whole thing. Oh, like Goldmember? I love Gold. That's all I can think of as I'm watching the whole thing. But you have to go back to the whole thing. All right, Casino Royale. I'll watch it on the plane going out to Chicago this week. Yes, with what's-his-name. Definitely. That is a good start. Daniel Craig. Yes. Daniel Craig, yes. That would be a good start. That would be Chicago on the outward. What's the second one? I'll watch one coming back, too. Yeah, Goldfinger. Watch Goldfinger. Oh, if you want to keep with that, it's Quantum of Solace, I believe, is the name. No, I'll do one new and one old. Yeah, do Goldfinger. Do Goldfinger. All right, so we're going to do Goldfinger on the way home from Chicago, and I'm going to do Casino Royale on the way out there. Excellent. Perfect. So, Bruce, what one would you tell them never watch? I would say the last Pierce Brosnan one was pretty bad. No, the one with Anthony Dalton. Anthony Dalton. Okay, Timothy Dalton, but he was in two of them. So which one shouldn't he watch? It was really dark, that second one. Oh, yes. It was License to Kill. Yeah, it was really dark. I thought that was one of the more famous ones. No, the Timothy Dalton ones were kind of like, it was the, we wanted Pierce Brosnan, but he was stuck doing Remington Steele, so we did Timothy Dalton instead. He was stuck doing Mrs. Doubtfire, so we could get him. We got stuck with him doing, we got stuck with the guy from Flash Gordon. Yeah, I always forget he's in Flash Gordon. He's good in that. Come on. Sam Jones. No, he's another guy. Timothy Dalton. He's in Flash Gordon. Oh, is he? He's Prince something. Yeah. He's in his younger days. He's the tree guy. Well, he has to reach into the tree, yes. Yes. What else do I have? Well, this is a biggie. Or is it? American Pinball. Reveal the game. That's right, baby. David, fix the app. We've got a new game for you. Without controversy, it's impossible with this company. Well, without controversy, it's impossible. this country, but go ahead. That's right, baby. Bruce is going to get into a bad subject once again, because that's what he does, baby. But it's Legends of Valhalla, baby. It's a game for the common man, baby. Which was done by Riot Pinball originally. Yes, like a year ago. Like, you can go on YouTube right now. Four years ago. Four years ago. You can go on YouTube and Buffalo Pinball did a stream of this, like, in June of last year. And you can watch the game if you want to see what it plays like. The interesting thing is they released it as a, well, number one, they released it on location. Yes. They shipped them to locations. And locations. Swore them to secrecy. And then they all, like, it came out Saturday morning. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Saturday morning they started to say, hey, tune in at 2 o'clock. We're going to be streaming a new secret undercover game. And then it's not been released. There's nothing he knows about. And they already knew it, yeah, because I think one of them had a picture of a quarter of the box, and people were looking at it like, it's an American pinball box. It's definitely Legends of Valhalla. And some redheaded fist fuckers on there. What? What is a redheaded fist fucker? What does that mean? So it's a deluxe edition. Yes. So it's more expensive. Limited to 300. Limited to $308,395. The Classic Edition, which I assume would be their normal game, price will be announced at a later date. But you can't get the Classic until all 300 deluxe editions are sold. Oh, boy. So hopefully they sell. I don't want to mark this. One of the friends of the show is on that pinball machine doing sound. Jeff Teolis. He's doing call-outs. He'll be doing call-outs in a game that actually will be released. About? What do you mean about? Well, about? Well, no. It says on the flyer, 500 professional call-outs. It's misspelled. I don't know if that's intentional or what. I'm thinking that's a misspelling. I love it. They literally misspelled it on the flyer. But there's also controversy with this game. Oh, God. So you're going to get into this, huh? Of course. Hold on. Before you get into the controversy, state in the news. I don't get this. from America. I have no opinion on the game and it was designed by somebody else and it has nothing to do with the gameplay or the game itself, but I don't understand how they continue to keep going down this route of quote-unquote unlicensed I don't know. It doesn't make any sense to me. I thought they admitted to the fact that with Hot Wheels that they knew they needed to get a license and even though Hot Wheels was a minor license, it still was a license and then they go back to what... Yeah, baby, but it's David Fix here, baby. We've got to have games for the common man, the common gains, baby. It can't all be licensed, man. You know, they're expensive, baby. Well, the common man doesn't pay $8,500 for that. Yeah, well, that's the problem. What they needed to do is put both out at the same time, the classic and the new edition. Make them limited, like $200 each. That would have been the smartest thing to do, almost like the Fathom procedure, and just get it out. and you didn't have so much more time with development and that kind of stuff and the play field layout. It's already done for you. So I can see somewhat as a filler in keeping your line. This game was pretty much, I mean, I'm sure the software is probably where most of it was being worked on. But if you look at the play field and compare it to, like, the stream from, like, a year ago, it's the same play field. So is the artwork. Yes, which is interesting. How is that artwork, Bruce? If you want to know where Bruce is going, remember the monkey from Oktoberfest? Yeah. Remember the controversy the monkey caused by groping people? Yep, and was taken home. And there's no monkey in this one. No, there's no monkey in this one. Instead, we have dead women. Dead women and women with humongous cleavage, we'll say. You know, yeah. Assets. Assets. Yeah, a couple of women I know we're very upset with. there's a dead woman on the side. On the side. I saw that. Yeah. In a pool of blood. Bloody blood. Like, I could see if she had a spear in her hand and she was fighting, that would be better, you know, because at least she was defending herself and trying to hold off the, you know, the Valhalla people, you know, whatever. The Valhalla people. The people of Valhalla. The legends. But, you know, women were very upset about this. for both topics. So it seems like there's never past couple games for them besides, you know, Hot Wheels controversy. Why? Maybe to keep their name in the business. Keep their name to the forefront? Yeah, I just don't understand it. It's got two buttons on the flippers there on the one side. I don't know if it's on both sides. I don't know what that's for. Maybe a diverter or something? Like Oktoberfest, maybe? Another magnet? Yeah, I think it's a magnet. Oh, yeah, and they have them in the wrong position, too. Yep. What do you mean, up and down? Yeah, up and down instead of, you know, where the MagnaSafe button should be, where it was for 30 years. That's what they did with Munsters, and it drove me crazy. Oh, it's not that big. Yeah, my hands are too big. I kept hitting both buttons at the same time. Probably the same reason it would take too much of a pain to redesign the cabinet. Or maybe they were trying to go anti-spooky and not really short against the shooter. But what did October fest? wasn't that behind each other? I thought Oktoberfest had the buttons where you would normally play Magnet State Games. What the hell? Unless they stole Munster's cabinet, they would have had to redo the cabinet. Of course. I don't understand it. The good thing about... Knock your socks off, guys. What I'm buying is... No. Not for $8,400. No, this game, no. The good thing about AP is that I owned a Houdini and Oktoberfest Hot Wheels at some point. They're rock solid. Rock solid. Their support is honestly second to none. I've always received responses from Dave Jeff Brenner on a Sunday morning, and I had a new power supply when it went bad on a Tuesday. He shipped it right out and got here. They're fun to shoot. I mean, Houdini is a tough thing. That's a saving grace for that company. If they didn't have Dave Jeff Brenner and other people in that company, it would be gone already by now. Absolutely. Is it going to be P-Rock again? I don't know. I don't know. Last conversations I heard, they were talking about going with their own system, which being that their parent company makes circuit boards, you would think that would be what you would go for. Maybe they're P-Rocking this one just for the last, you know, just because maybe most of the software is done. Probably the original version of it was probably P-Rock. Yeah, I guarantee it was. It was the Riot-do P-Rock. Yeah, they did. So maybe they're just doing this the last time, and then the new boards will be coming out. But we have a lot to see this week at Expo. Ah, Expo. But you know what Legends of Valhalla... I do. Yeah, me and Joe do. The Legends of Valhalla has three flippers, six balls, three metal ramps with wire form returns, interactive Thor's hammer, one hidden Kraken magnet. Well, it's not hidden anymore. He gave it away. one Thor's hammer magnet above top lanes, one spinner, one berserker controller drop target, seven stand-ups, flippers lit with apron lighting, special gold reflective apron, over 100 RGB lights, two spotlights, 12 flashers, sculpted and hand-painted skull piles, sculpted and hand-painted Odin figures, sculpted hand-painted shields on ship, 500 professional callouts. It's literally spelled C-A-L-L-O-U-U-T-S. So there you go. Bones. Bones. It features 22 total modes. Oh, God. 16 legend battle modes. Five are multiball. Six other modes. Three are multiball. So they're going with the Guns N' Roses. More is better. Eight different multiballs, which is probably still way less than Guns N' Roses. Follow Hollow Wizard mode and Bagnarok Super Wizard mode. Ron, you really missed your calling. You should have been one of those guys on commercials or a monster truck show this weekend. Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. At the Springfield Raceway. Car-clutching action. Witness. Truckosaurus. The only way you'll miss it is if you're in jail. And if you are, break out. Break out. I'm waiting for the manufacturers to call me. I mean, every other podcaster gets to be in a game. Yeah, I know. Let's see. You know why they don't? Because you're on the show, Bruce. because they figure the NBA will just get thrown out the window and the game will just be revealed. All your call-outs are involving you cursing or saying red-headed fist fuckers. I don't even know what that meant. That might be the name of the episode. Yeah, that would be obscene. We have morals. Not really. No, not really. But I love that red-headed fist fucker. Oh, Jesus Christ. Okay. Who's that, Teolis? Yes, I love him. He's a great guy. he is my favorite I swear to god he will bang for backwards for anybody oh my but he is the best I love Jeff instead of talking about Expo right now because you're not going Bruce you went to a show I did you went to York yes me and Zach were down there how was York the only thing good about it was Godzilla, Alien and a couple of EM's pricing was ridiculous some people got an Alien Some people got some deals. Like there was a guy walked in with three pins. He walked in with a whirlwind, a twilight zone, and a comet. And he wanted to sell them. So he was going to set them up. And before, of course, he was even setting them up, people were, how much do you want for this? How much do you think he wanted for his comet? $3,500. Ron? Sure, I'll go with that. $1,300. Wow, that's gold. Done, instantaneously. Okay, so now, whirlwind. $2,000. $2,500. $1,500. So, Twilight Zone. I think it was $1,500. The person I know who bought it, Mike, will be able to tell me better if he does listen to the show. He might be off, but it was pretty cheap. I was like, I would have bought this in a second. So how much for Twilight Zone? $3,500. Yeah, I'll take a $3,500. But going with your story, $3,000. Five grand. Still. Still. Yes, still. And then another guy had a home use only Addams Family there. And he brought it in, did the same thing, and one of the vendors bought it like that. It was home use only, beautiful. $6,500. Six grand. And he had it up for sale for $9,000, $9,500 at the end of the show. The vendor did? Yes. That bought it. And did he sell it? I don't know. So, yeah. So, yeah, there's a lot of – there were steals to be out there, but there was not a lot of games there this year, unfortunately. I think COVID did have a major impact. I got to play Godzilla. I got to play Alien, another Alien. Who cares about Alien? Godzilla. Godzilla rocked. It rocked. Okay. Have you played it, Joe? I have not. I'm hoping to play it this week, obviously. I played – Yeah, same here. I played two different pros so far, and I'll play a third one maybe this week. And I like it. It's got some good shots, got some good sound, got some good flow. I haven't heard a bad thing about this game other than the magnet. Other than the magnet overheating and stopping working, which I noticed on one of the recent code upgrades, they had all kinds of magnet-related stuff they had in there. They actually changed it. It used to catch the ball every time on the magnet for every lock. It doesn't even do that anymore with the newer code. Also, I noticed things like when it's holding it for the destruction jackpot, it looks like you can hit both flippers and it will just release it for you. But we're up to .80 on the code, so it's going to keep on coming out, as we all said, every couple days. When's the LE coming to the co-op? That's all I want to know. Two LEs. Oh, Jesus Christ. Okay. Two Mandalorians. Yes, so we're going to have two Godzilla LEs for our launch party on December 11th. Oh, you have a date. Yep, December 11th. Okay. Yeah, already approved by IFPA and everything. All right. Is it announced anywhere? Not yet. This is the first world premiere. So that's going to be the, I pray it doesn't snow, because that's your way of telling it. It's not that much. Oh, it's that much? It's December. Jesus. Only six feet. That's not that much. No, no, no. That's actually in late December. I'll be in Florida anyway, so I won't even be there for the show, for that tournament. You won't be there? Nope. I'll be in sunny Florida doing 75 degrees. I was there last. When you talked about being on vacation, I was there 10 days ago. It was 93 every day. I'm going to see Mickey. I'm giving Mickey some money. That's where I was. I gave him enough. Yeah. Oh, I'm in fucking blood. Screw Disney. I hate Disney. I hate Disney. They've ruined everything. They've ruined Star Wars. Really? You really think they've ruined Star Wars? Oh, yeah. It was already ruined by Lucas. I thought the prequels were bad until I saw the Abomination that came out afterwards. I agree with that. But when you have the Christmas special from Star Wars from 1978, that was pretty bad, too. That's the Star Wars holiday special. Yes, that was terrible. And Lucas didn't have much to do with that, to be honest. He let them do it, but he was working on getting stuff ready for Empire, so he was not involved, which was a mistake, obviously. He never has been good with his licensing and handing off stuff like, what? He's made so much money. Star Tours was a cheesy thing until you got inside that place. I don't know what that means. Star Wars, Star Tours from Disney. Disney, the ride. Yeah. Before they did any of this new Star Wars stuff. Oh, okay. It was pretty cheap. You know what they're good at? Cash in your money. Yes. Cash in your money. The money. So, Expo Expo, you guys get to go, you bastards I get to man the co-op for two weeks straight because after that we have Pintastic Oh yeah, that's right Well, I mean, that's not a consecutive week No, it's three weeks I have to man a couple times because Zach's going away and that kind of stuff so yeah, it's going to be a long week at the co-op But it's going to be a long week at Expo. Yes. That's right. This is going to be my first Expo. Oh, really? Yeah. 12 or 13 times. Since I just made the cutoff for David Fick's five-year mark, but it's the first time I've been to Expo. That's good to hear, baby. That's good to hear. You're going to be there. You're going to experience the awesomeness of American pinball and see if we have any modified art on our game by the time of Expo, baby. I think you need to put an email out to Dave Fick this week and ask for a behind-the-scenes tour of American... I don't know. I don't want to do that. I don't know. Because it's like, we need you to sign this NDA, and we'll show you, like, the next five games. Like, no, I'm good. I'm good. I want to see their production facilities with the new place. I'm sure it's great. I'm sure it's great. So I will be attending. I'll be attending a lot of the seminars. Yes. You guys have a great time. I'll be excited to see the Stern tour, but that got nixed. Yes, it's going to be a virtual tour. Yeah. So you get those... Jack Danger. Yeah, Jack Danger. Here. And Jack Danger here. And Jack Danger here. You love Jack Danger, don't you? Ugh. Like fucking herpes. Wow. I can only think so much of Jack Danger. I'd rather have, like, other personalities from this company. Let me guess. You'd rather have Timmy give the tour. Anybody. Make some... He is the ambassador, though. That's, like, his title. Well, no, you do it like, do you guys ever watch any of the Apple, when they do their big shows? God, no. God, no. I hate Apple, too. They kind of branch off when they're in this area. They hand it off to, you know, Bob over here, and they hand it off to this guy. So do it that way. We're in the coding department. Well, here's Tim, and we're in the designer's department. The only issue with that is a lot of people, not everyone can talk well. Yes, I agree with that. And when you do stuff like that, you'll be going good, and then you'll get someone who can just barely be coherent. Mm-hmm. Like a lot of the tours I went in on the Stern Factory tour, some of the better ones were like Steve Ritchie was doing it, because he would just say shit, like how much he hated Lucasfilm, calling him mucus film and all. They were paying the ass with Star Wars. Oh, yeah, don't tell anyone this. It's like, dude, it's like you're in a tour with like 20 people behind you. Yes, no one's going to say anything. Yeah. Or Dwight one was fun because he was just so hyper. No comments? I thought you were going to say a Dwight comment. No comment. No comment. No comment. Very good. Very good. You're learning. See, I'm learning. You're learning. Very good. I swear we could make a whole episode on just like the soap opera pinball and who doesn't like who. Oh, it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. But you'd be like, here's this guy who hates this guy, but this guy also hates this guy who had an incident with this guy. Well, I had an incident with one of these people, so that's why. It's like, whatever, you know. But now they're working together again, even though they hate each other. Yes, exactly. Oh, well, yeah, there's lots of those. Yeah, there's this guy that helped this company get started, but then they wouldn't make his game, so he shit all over them, but their owner wouldn't say anything bad about him, and then two years later they're working together again. No comment again. No, I'm being good. Ron complains that I'm never good. I'm trying to be good here. You are very good. Yes, you're being very good. You're trying to pull me out on it almost. Okay, we're back. Edited out all kinds of stuff there. Bashing has all been done. All the bashing has been done off camera. Yes. If you want to join our Patreon that doesn't exist, you can get the full unedited versions of these podcasts where you can find out what the next five games are going to be from every manufacturer. Uncensored Bruce. Uncensored Bruce, too, yes. What do we got here? Want to go to the ball bag? Oh, I love a ball bag. Oh, you love the ball back. Okay, let's go to the ball back. Did you read? I sent some of these to you because some of them wanted kind of responses not on the show. Yep. But you can read them here, and I can explain what I did. Oh, well, okay. I did, and he came back to me saying, oh, okay. Okay. Well, Soren. Yes. Hi, Slammers, he says. This is about the big game. So I'll just read the first part. I enjoyed the tech and repair talk on the show, but Bruce, I think you guys went the opposite direction on that big game issue. First, I wish you had stated that the fuse blew at power on or coil test or in game or even when the game was sitting quietly in a track. I think it was only when you put it in coil test. Yes, it was only in coil test, which he now knows. Second, you did not tell us if the number of solenoids connected to blow the fuse was on the power side or the driver side. It was on the driver side eventually. Okay. All power was always there. Mm-hmm. So. And you spoke to him? Yes. He told me to replace, try the CPU board, try the driver board, try to direct wire up correctly. And we already did this beforehand. I had a new CPU board in there, put in there. We had a new driver board. Yeah. Did the same thing. Direct wiring right from the thing. I just wanted the bigger fuse, and it's been funny. Great. It's just I think there's a coil that's destroying a little too much more power. The only thing I have not done, which he did recommend, was I want to put my amp in between and read how many amps it's drawing. But it does not draw. Put your amp in between. What does that mean? My meter. Oh, okay. So I can actually test the milliamps. Every once in a while I feel like I shouldn't say anything just so we get more mail. What did he mean by put amp in between? I don't understand that. All right. Thank you, Soren. Thank you, Soren. Yep. So he was like, oh, okay, you answered every single of my questions except for one, and I did answer it. He goes, I will not ask another question. I'm like, oh, you can always ask a question, Soren. I always want people to find out. We love questions. Wayne. We have Wayne here. He was the one who said it would be better to not read or whatever. Basically, he had questions about bally and stern drop targets. Yes, which we have kind of a fix. Well, for the ballys anyway. Yes. But he did have interesting questions. Like, why are the original Stern tombstones so much better than Ballywans? I think it was the plastic that they're using. That toxic plastic is better. Why did Stern go from tombstone to the wings on top? For ball catches. Not being caught. The balls doesn't hang up in the window. Oh, when it's down. Yes. Ah, I never thought of that. Yes. Wow. Hmm. I've never been able to figure out how, in 2021, we cannot accurately reproduce, forget the strength of the plastic, accurately reproduce drop targets in these older games. They're always off a little bit somehow, some way. Yeah, like the stern ones are a little short for some reason. Yeah, you can't, we can't reproduce something in 2021 that was built in the 70s. What's the proper name for that, the thing on the top, the wings? I don't know. Like a ledge. Flat top? Yeah, flat top or ledge, because it actually makes it so the balls don't get stuck. I think the game they started doing that was probably Meteor. Yes. Because original Meteor, like earlier Meteors, the Meteor run was so long, like 7,000 units. The first ones had tombstones everywhere, including the Meteor targets on top. Then as they went through the run, they replaced the Meteor targets to the ones with the flat top. top. Which, because the balls were hanging up. Ah, really? Yep. Because that's the first one I can remember that. They changed it during the run. I think it's just, you know, old, good old plastic that was flexible and bendable now it's just like rigid crap. And it does, you know, resist a couple of things. That's good shots from balls. Oh. Or is it the fact that nobody would manufacture these and actually make any real money because of such a small sector of manufacturing. Well, the people who do manufacturing them just sell. They're not going for quality. I don't even want quality. I'd rather have them break 100 times. At least they're accurate that they would actually function. That's exactly why I'm agreeing with you. As far as the last sentence Wayne put in his email. If you need a tester, we've got plenty of machines at Bally and Stern to test with. I think that means he's taking you up on your offer. Yes. That's all I'm going to say about that. Thank you, Wayne. Now we have one from Scott, our Scott. Our Scott. He has solved Bally drop target bricking. He solved it. He's the man. He's the man. We're going to tell you to go to Pinside. I know this is amazing. If you go to Pinside and look for Bally drop target bricking fix. that's ballet drop target bricking fixed he has come up with a fix it involves bending brackets I'm not going to try to explain it go to see that watch the video there are pictures there are there is a video do this now or forever hold your peace he said he used it right on his mystic on the the three targets in front that you pound and brick like crazy now they don't brick at all There you go. Thank you, Scott. Ta-da! And there's not nearly enough responses to his post either, in my opinion. If you had someone tell me, like, yeah, I have a foolproof way that these won't break anymore, and, like, you can't get it. Come on. Sing the praises. Sing the praises. Thumbs up. Is there any thumbs up on this post? Only three thumbs ups on this post. Jesus. Fail. Fail. I figure I had to do thumbs up when I'm on my phone looking at Pinside. It doesn't have the buttons, are they? That's true. It doesn't. It does us. So that's why I don't want thumbs up stuff because I'm 99% of the time I'm on my phone. I'm like, I can't thumbs up. Okay, it's pin side. It's your fault. Come on, Robin. Fix it. Fix it. Yeah, he listens to us all the time. He does? No. Wow. I have a post from Greg. Hi, Greg. Hi, Greg. Hi, fellas. Found this on Facebook today. Basically, he – thanks for this, Greg. He put a post in from someone on Facebook was having issues with their Mando, and I didn't even think about this. Oh, this is good. Yeah. So we've said many times you want to replace the cloth stops in your new steering games because they're shit, and they'll start falling apart, shaving metal, shavings all over usually your coin box. And you need a cash box. Yeah. However, with Mando, that play field. Is above the play field. Yep, the premium in LE, that thing's above the play field. So guess what was happening? Metal shavings on your play field. On your play field, and then when the ball drops, it goes through them. Yeah. Grinding them into the play field. Grinding them into the play field. So, especially if you have a Mando, Premium, or LE. Check that out. Check that out. Just replace them. Just have a big collection of coil stops on hand when you get a new game. It should be just part of your normal procedure. You replace the balls because their balls suck, and you just replace the coil stops. As weird as it may seem, taking out coil stops in a brand-new game, you'll be thanking your strengths. And it doesn't take any level of real ability. No, real ability. Screwdriver. If Ron can do it, anybody can do it. If I can do it, anyone can do it. It just takes a screwdriver. I would have thought that those metal shavings also could potentially start shoring out switches if it was a piece of metal. Possibly, yeah. Sure? Why not? Yeah, what the hell? Why can't they fix it? That's the easiest thing to fix. She may have an ongoing problem. It's cheap. Have enough people complain? I don't know. It seems to be the absolute number one thing everyone says. Like you said, Ron, replace the balls and replace the coil stops. Yep. Yep. All right. So that's the ball bag. I have a note here. District 82 Super Series. Super Series. God, there was a lot of tournaments. God, there's too much pinball. Too much pinball. I would have been burnt out from this. This is more than pinburg. Yeah. It was six tournaments. I think, what was it? Thursday, there was one, and then there was two on Friday, two on Saturday, then one on Sunday. As typical with these kind of tournaments, they always run longer than you think they're going to. Really? Yeah. I think they finished it, the one Saturday night, they finished at 2 a.m. So I guess Sunday morning. Yeah, Sunday morning. Yes. Yeah. But congratulations to the overall winner, Raymond Davidson. I'm just going to go Raymond Davidson. Who was already number one after the first tournament because they recalculated the Whopper or whatever. And he was number one, and then he won the overall series and got a shit ton of Whoppers. Shit ton. I thought the impressive one, K. Lee George, was second. I don't think he'd ever played there before. No. So that's the cream. What's one thing when you looked at the leaderboard, the cream definitely rises to the top. You see all the people you would think you would see. But then there's always one random guy that you don't know. There was a couple of random guys. There was one that was like 3,000. He was in like the top 40. I was like, oh, wow, see? He must be a regular there because. Well, no. If he's a regular there, he's not 3,000. Well, I mean, maybe, you know. Or just a guy who plays well and never played in tournaments. Exactly. That could be a threat. Exactly. I'm 3,000 because I suck Congrats Another note I have on here I posted this I think last week or two weeks ago I mentioned it on the podcast It was actually on a part of the podcast I edited out I had a clip from the old Stern factory From like 1980 So I posted it to my Personal YouTube It actually got quite a lot of hits on it People asking me like where that came from and all that. So check it out. Look up Gizmonic. That's my YouTube handle. My personal YouTube handle. You can get to see the smoke cloud from all the soldering. There's probably toxic fumes going up in the factory. Gary Stern still having gray hair. Gary Stern still having gray hair. Full head of hair, but still gray. Although his face looked like he was 30, which he probably was. Yes. They had on the line, looks like they were running two lines. They had Ali and then they had Big Game. And there's some galaxy also in there a little bit. Well, they had, you saw Cheetah, which had to be like a prototype, because that was after Big Game. Yep. And you get to see Mark Cuban working on Sea Witch. That was cool. That was really cool. You got to see their break room, where they had a very slow-playing meteor that they needed to jack that sucker up. Did they have a wall in Microwave Zen, too? No. No, that would have actually added more. life expectancy would have even went down even more with those old microwaves. I hear that they're gone now anyway from the factory since COVID. They don't have that wall of microwaves anymore. No. Boo-hoo. Boo-hoo-hoo. Let's see. What else do I have here? I feel like I'm missing something. Oh, repairs! Repairs. We finally got blackout out of the co-op repair. It was that bottom door coil. The coin, okay, the coin lockout coil. Yep. He's been at it for a week, knock on wood. It's still good. Now we have another game. We have a Gorgar in the cleanup area, and we have a Xenon. Xenon, we're doing Lopsicles, which have issues. Why do the Lopsicles have issues? It's literally just a socket. Yeah okay They still flicker They still flicker Well wait a minute Yeah but you have to put the resistor on there We did Oh I sorry Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And they are a pain. They need to be redesigned a little bit round. They're square. They're almost like a rectangular shape. Almost? No, no. You're either square or you're rectangle. There's not an almost. Okay, they're rectangular, but you want them to be more of a square. They need to make them rounded edges. Okay. Because when you're trying to fit them in some of the ground wire areas underneath the ground wire, the staples are really close, and you can't turn them to get them into the light socket where the light insert is easily. So they're cutting boards. Trimming boards. They're little mini boards. So you're just trimming them to get them. Trimming them. Yeah. So I can actually fit them. Oh, we're talking about these new little LED boards. Yes. Okay. I was going to ask first. Yeah. Lobstacles. Yeah. Lots of sickles. And his website sucks. He needs a website. Oh. He does. He's using friggin', like, Facebook, a Facebook page. Yeah, that thing. I want 100 of them. Okay, here you go. Send me $20 via PayPal and I'll send you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah? He's not doing it as a business. He's just helping out. Okay. Okay. Overall, do you like the product, though, Bruce? I, until I see it work right, no. Was that the first time you were using them? Yeah. customer wanted them to put in. We put them in because he had like literally 40 sockets that were bad. Right. So we're like, well, you can do it this way. He goes, well, I have them already. Okay. Yeah, he had the earlier lobsticles. The newer ones have the resistor on the thing. Yeah, so we bought resistors. We've soldered them all in on them and they're still flickering. Could you use one of those anti-flicker where they put it on the board or a new board? We have to run that again, but we have to then have a newer style board. So it's really... More money for the customer. Yeah, more money. Well, the anti-flicker, not the board, because that's like $120, but the other one's like $50 where you could just plug the plug into that and then it jumpers it. Yeah, I don't know. We'll see. Are you actually cutting those? Where are you grinding them? Cutting. Cutting with paradise. Okay. Where do you get the anti-flicker board? Where is that thing? I forget where that is. I've seen it. The board is either you can get it from Alltech. So it's just a little, okay. It's a whole new, well, if you get the whole new light board, which are good for baleys and sterns, it just replaces the light board. It's got all the resistors on the board. Then there is a little adapter set you can buy for like $50, and you could Google it, but I don't know where that comes from and came from. And it literally is like you plug this into the original board, and then the harness goes onto that. Valley LED Flicker Eliminator. There you go. It's on pin side right now. It's a Comet. Oh, really? Comet pinball, $45. Early solid state and stern LED adapters. I have an 8-ball deluxe that no matter what I put on those boards, I cannot get the upper set of GI to stop flickering. Burn, baby, burn. Get rid of those LEDs. I know. Burn, baby, burn. I know. Stop. Yeah, but I can't get them to stop flickering. Just the upper GI. And I used even the auxiliary, because it has that auxiliary light board, and I bought that one for it. Can't get them to stop flickering. So we've been working on this Enon with that new tube they got. We're putting in a couple posts that are broken. So we're just trying to get that all up and running. And then the Gorgar. Gorgar's had a fun thing. And we finally got, we don't know how this happened, but bad battery holder was not letting it boot up all the time. It just go right to test and everything like that. So we put an external battery holder on there. It's working fine. And I'm looking at the displays. It's got an original power supply in it. And the power supply is like the displays are all like dancing around a little bit. Like you can see they're going brighter, dimmer, brighter, dimmer. so it looks like it has a little bit of AC ripple in the DC voltage they're going primer brighter so I have a system 336 power supply still so I threw a brand new one in and it fixed the brightness issue except for one is now completely dim or dead it's like almost out gassed because I guess maybe the higher voltage just killed this one they're original displays they're 40 years old So I got to tell the customer either, A, you got to get a new power supply and get a display, or B, deal with it, and eventually all your displays are going to go bad. So I got to give him two options, and I guarantee either one he will not be happy with because he's got to spend money. You didn't even suggest all LEDs? Or all the displays, which means probably more. Well, you would get rid of the 100 volts, that kind of stuff, But I think those displays are like, what, 225 or 250 because it has the master display in the middle. Yeah. You've got to get five into the. Yeah, Williams system six. All right. I have repairs. Quicksilver. So I did a shop job on Quicksilver. And ever since I had this Quicksilver, it's been having the issue where you turn it on sometimes and it doesn't boot. Yep. You've got to turn it off, turn it on, turn it off. I think it's had that since. Yeah. Since I've had it. They've got it. Yeah. So I decided to kind of attack that issue because I was getting tired of it. I mean, you turn it on, and the LED would just come on solid, and it wouldn't do anything. And you turn it off, turn it on, turn it on, and eventually it would boot. So I just looked at the 5 volts, and it was like 4.8, like on the lower side. So I just ended up rebuilding connectors because it comes in. I tested the rectifier board, and it was fine there because it's a new rectifier board. All that stuff's new. It also has a new Alltech solenoid board. Yep, but that's where the 5 volts come from. I tested it there, and it was fine, but it was getting quite a drop from there to the MPU, even if I unplugged everything, like just had the one connector in the MPU. So I just rebuilt the connectors. I got it up to like 4.99, and it still would occasionally just not boot. Same issue. And it's like, you know, I went to my Dragon Fist. You test that at the board, and it's like 5.1. And it's got an original solenoid board in there. So you swapped them? So I swapped the MPUs because I wanted to see, okay, if it still does it on the other one, is something more going on with the MPU? If this working MPU from the Dragon Fist now starts having issues booting, I know the issue is, like, something else. And what do you think happened? Both now work perfect. Both now work perfectly. How did I know? One was designed to be able to need exactly five, and one could be with just a little less. The MPU boards are slightly different. You can tell they have different design dip switches, so they must be different runs. Some of the dip switches, some of the left-to-right flopping switches. Yes, the left-to-right flopping. I love floppy. That's a technical term. I love floppy. The left-to-right floppy one, that's the one. And remember Dragon Fist Forever? I would say I couldn't turn off extra balls on it because it didn't work. Yeah, it was the dip switch that wasn't working. It's a flaky dip switch on that. And now it's in the Quicksilver. But all the switches are working. All the dips are where they need to be and are working correctly. So now I have the other issue I had that I've always thought was an issue with that game is I always thought it had too much work for travel. Just comparing it to other games I have, comparing it to videos, I've seen them, Quicksilver, like the Papa videos, kind of using them as my guide. Mine was going up. The Flipper's going way further. I rebuilt the Flippers, but there was no snow wear whatsoever, and they were exactly the same. They were still too far up. However, there's one thing about when those were rebuilt, just what they have on them that's brand new. The Flipper base plates. And we talked about this before, that the new base plates are not correct. No, they're not. So I'm looking at these things. Basically, I went back and forth trying to get an idea exactly how much it should be, and I did the fix, which is you bend where it rests on the base plate. And I bent it on both sides, and now it's right. But it is annoying. That's one of those things where, like, why is that wrong? It should be right. It should be right. Because here's the problem. They didn't have a real brand-new NOS one, so they'd probably get one that was a little bent. They took that as gospel. I don't know. I don't know. Bent how? I mean, you can look at it visibly and see when it's bent. I know. I mean, and the reason I figured this out when I had my Cheetah, the one base plate was original, and it was fine. The other base plate, all the holes are completely blown out, non-usable. So I replaced it with a new base plate. then I align the flippers and then the one went up further than the other like what the hell it's like the same kit how is this possible and that's what I could visually see the difference I can see the real thing doctor doctor oh gosh we need Dennis the band singing on this show yes I was going to say that is the Tommy but it's not that's quadrophenia exactly and then yet yesterday I did the usual thing. There was a couple sockets I needed replacing, so I replaced those, but then I started having other troubles, and then I ended up screwing with the spinners for like two hours, and then wire came off the coil for the eject saucer, and yeah. Just the usual. The usual just have a couple games on it, and then the stuff breaks, and then I'm down there for hours. Mm-hmm. Yes, it is. And then you find other stuff that you didn't even know was wrong with it, and you find other stuff to repair. Yep. So right now it should be 100% until whatever is going to break out. Until tomorrow. Until tomorrow. Yep. I have a repair. Ooh. This is going to knock your socks off. So I have a buddy of mine locally who sold a game to a non-pinball person but wanted to have some nostalgic old stuff when he saw it on Facebook Marketplace. Sold the game to the guy, and a couple days later the guy says, hey, the game's not working. Can't get the ball to come out. Hitting the button. You know, game starts. so he said, can you do me a favor? Go look at it. I feel bad even though I sold it and it was working when it left here. So I went over yesterday morning. I turned the game on and it's a Gottlieb Buck Rogers. I'm sorry. Yes. I beat it, beat it, beat it, beat it. Sucks. So I look up I look at the displays and I go, oh, well you just need credits. And I hit the credit button. I hit the little wire and then I walked out. Wow. Wow. Wow. Amazing repair skills. Hey, listen. Also. If you need my services, I'll give you my phone number before we leave, and there you go. All right, Bruce. You had something for us? I do. Would you or would you not buy that? Okay. This is where we go on eBay. We give you the number. We show you the item, and you decide along with us if you want this game or not would buy this game. Yeah, whatever you just said, yes. Are we ready? We have to stay up? Ready. You can type it in your search, anything on top. It is 165-137-526-455. It's a flipper clown. It's a Gottlieb flipper clown. Has a buy it now price. of $2,300. Is this from Banning? No, this is from Rome, Georgia. That's right, baby. Rome, Georgia, baby. See, we got... Yeah, starting bid is $1,750. I'll tell you what, the play field is really nice. Looks really nice, yeah. It's got some nice color to it, everything, you know. Wow, it does. Chrome gold and redone. On the other hand, it does not look so nice. No, the cabinet is pretty rough. Especially the front. Somebody took a sander to the front of that. They were playing the game so hard and jostling it, it just peeled right off. Even the head's got some wear all around the top. $1,750. We'll buy it now for $2,300. Well, the good news is there's no interest of paid in full in six months. It is. Very good. Oh, Gottlieb Clipper Club. Beautiful. New old stock playfield installed. Okay, that's fine. All right. All metal re-chromed. New playfield plastics. New back glass. Plays like it should. Love this machine. Everyone should love this machine. Would you buy that for $1,750? I wouldn't buy that for $750. Wow. Zach probably would. I think Zach would. Get the play field. He'd take the play field and put it in his own. Yeah. I don't think $1,750. Maybe $1,000. But there is a lot of work into it. Would you go that much? Yeah, I guess with the play field. Yeah, in the back class. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Are we ready for the next one? Go for it. 334-192-515-154. Hmm. Oh, it's all EM day. Gottlieb Straight Shooter. You're picking all the games that you have at the co-op? $750. Okay. The cabinet's nice. Cabot is nice. Back glass is shot. You think? There's still some. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah, like the top left is all just. And it's funny. It's where the lights aren't even really there. Yeah. You would think that flaking would happen where the lights are. But the play field is not bad. Play field is a lot better than Zach's. Yeah. For $750? In the current market, yeah. Probably. Yeah. I think I would think of this. Wood rail, a good wood rail. It's fun. You got 100% positive feedback on the buyer. What's the description? Gottlieb pinball machine. Here is a Gottlieb straight shooter pinball machine from 1959. It was completely gone through the play field. They're doing the thing, I think, where they talk and it transcribes because there's no punctuation. Literally, if I read it, like it's written. It was completely gone through the play field. is very nice and the back glass is a little flaky. Sea Picks, the cabinet has been repainted to original colors and graphics. It works very well and is known one of the Gottlieb's best wood rails. It is being an electromechanical machine over 60 years old, being sold as his butt works very well. And it's pretty fun. I do have the back for it. Youngstown, Ohio. There you go. Not bad. I didn't think that was a bad deal. Fun game. Okay, anything that's not in the co-op? Nope. Ticket number 324-724-535-467. The Josh Sharpe Special. The Josh Sharpe Special. The High Hand. Gottlieb High Hand. 1250. Place those cuts somewhere in the... The normal checkout will hold that. Yeah. Yeah. Pictures taken with a flip phone. Yep. Glass not taken off, because why would we do that? He's got a nice ceiling fan, you can tell from the reflection. Yes, the ceiling fan looks really nice. Yeah. I don't know. Seems to be a lot of wear. Yeah. It doesn't show inside the machine. It doesn't. No. Oh, no, but he's got, oh, he's got ratings. He gives the rules. It's a perfect game for kids. Yeah. They're going to want to kill the game if they can't get the ball in the hole. Seller information, it has 30, but it has no, like, feedback. I'm confused with that. Operation and functional. Cabinet, 7 out of 10. Backbox, 7 out of 10. Backglass, 7 out of 10. Playfield, 7 out of 10. For you pinball novices out there, this is an electromechanical pinball machine which consists of switch assemblies using blade switches, timing, switching motors, lamps, bells, chimes, knockers, coils, sleeves, plungers, drop target assemblies, etc. You won't find solid-state electronics or circuit boards here because maybe some diodes and a bridge rectifier. This means that this type of pinball needs much more maintenance than the newer solid-state pinball machines. And you must have realistic expectations about problems with the game. So don't call me. Yeah, just because you're shipping the machine could cause some of the blades to go out of alignment and cause a problem. Luckily, though, an experienced pinball technician can get it. Wait a minute. Yeah, then the next line looks like Mike from Home Pin must have wrote it. If you have never bought an EM pinball machine before, then I would highly recommend you buy a newer South State pinball machine. Because I don't want to be disappointed with all the names. Don't buy my game. If you're a newbie, don't buy the game. Well, first of all, the line I read where it says, by shipping it could cause some of the switch blades to go out of alignment, already means, hey, it's not working, but I'll blame it on the shipping. Yes. but he says local pickup is preferred and recommended. Well, there you go. Well, there'll be a shipping in the guy's car. That'll be what causes it. Yeah, exactly. It's got to be something in the shipping. Do you guys find yourself now looking at any ad for any game and go on WTF, but then on the flip side going, well, I guess that's what the market is now? Yes, I think so. I mean, I haven't bought a new used game in almost a year because I wouldn't pay for some of this stuff. and I don't even have the luxuries that you guys had of buying them, you know, stupid, ridiculous numbers that you talk about now and didn't even have that luxury and still wouldn't pay some of these prices. So you wouldn't pay $1,250 for this? I would not. No. You would not? Okay. Two more. Ticket number 115-055-855-141. I'm assuming I pulled up the right thing oh it's the pro yeah I know Stranger Things UV kit for pro model pinball machine stern dealer new I thought you can get these right now no you cannot but I thought they were remaking they are talking about remaking them that's why I think this guy is throwing it on there to try to make the home run fast well here's my first problem all these pictures are literally him taking, well, not all of them, but all taking a picture of a computer screen with a computer screen. Oh, yeah. They're actually not. They're like slideshow. It looks like it's a production. Well, he took a picture of it because the actual UV kit's still in the box. Yeah, in the box. And he doesn't want to take it out. It looks like somebody was doing a slideshow, and he was taking pictures from the slideshow. Like it looks like a white movie screen. I know, but that's the pictures actually from Stern. So I'll tell you, as Bruce, not Bruce, Ron, do you have a Stranger Things? I do not. No, he wants one. Okay. I said I'd like it. I didn't say I wanted one. You would want one if you can get one. If it was a blam and it had the UV kit. It'd have to have the UV kit. This was originally $279 from Stern. Yes, it was. At $399, when you cannot get them, I would absolutely, if I had a Stranger Things and I needed, because it does change the game from a, not really from a play perspective, But from a show perspective, I would buy this. Yes, me too. Well, wait a minute. You said they were thinking of making these again? Well, we don't know, though. Yeah, well, he does. He does. Because he says, in all caps, this is sold out. Impossible to find UV kit for the Pro Stranger Things pinball machine. These are impossible to find. Did I mention they're impossible to find? And this one is brand new from a CERN dealer. Everything is here. Let's see. These will not be produced again. No, you don't know that, though. You can't say that. But everything up until that statement was correct, right? Yeah. I would get this. If I like the game, I'd get this. Yep. Because you're only paying $120 more than what it costs. Yep. It's better than a flopper. Oh, yeah. So if you're thinking about buying this, grab. Do it now. Don't even dig around. Buy it right now, Ron. Go ahead. Buy it now. That's for the pro, though. Click it. It's for the pro. But still. Yeah, but why would I? No, it's for the pro. Yeah, you have to get to it. This is, there's not many games of Stern that I have agreed at this point that need to be premiums, but this is one of them. Yes. Okay, you ready for the oddball? I thought that was the oddball. Last one. 274-785-443-733. What the hell? Thank you. Odin Deluxe Pinball. First of all, maybe get further away when you take the picture next time. I don't even know what this is. Sonic. Paper P-E-Y-P-E-R 1985. Is that the name of the game? No. No, it's Odin. No, that's the manufacturer. So is Paper one of these ones that did Sonic, but it was branded in a different country with a different name? Even though it says Sonic right on the apron. Sort of like Bell. It's Odin Deluxe. Wow. It's the first deluxe, if you look. Odin Deluxe. This is like a game that Neo Skywalker would be selling. It would be. It would be, definitely. And I love the wood grain. Yeah. On the sidearm. Yeah. Is this the original Legends of Valhalla? It's the original. With a dog on the front. He kind of looks out of place. What the hell is with the dog? I know. The dog. He's just hanging out. Hey. What the hell's going on here? Wow, that's a crazy. I'm looking inside. I've never seen a Sonic inside. Yeah, they have all the boards. They put all the boards inside. Yeah. They put them in the cabinet in the bottom, you know, where stuff can fall on them and short them out. Yeah. Well, just get a big plastic cover to put over top of it. And look at that transformer taps. Look at how many transformer taps are on that transformer. I know. That's what I was reading them all, seven, nine, three, or zero. First of all, how can it be a transformer tap with zero volts? Ground. Is it the ground? Okay. Ground. Yeah. So, based on the fact of this being, obviously, we'll use the most used term in pinball today is rare. Rare. And knowing what Sonic slash paper playfields would have been like, for $2,700, based on today's pricing and what things are going for, I'd actually buy this, I think. It looks kind of cool. Yeah. The only thing I fear is fixing it. Yeah, but you know the playfield's going to be great forever. The play field could be great forever, but if you can't fix it, it's still... Hey, worst case scenario, you put regular mechs in there or something. I'm talking about the board set. Oh, yeah, the boards are screwed. Yeah. Although a lot of the Sonic... I mean, you guys would know better. I've got some friends with Sonic games, and they don't seem to really have any issues with them. Oh, they're all CMs or EMs. EMs are fine. Yeah, that's true. They ripped off Williams. They're all Williams parts. This is all their own homogenous stuff. Yeah, I forgot. Yep. Okay Bruce if I want this I'm going to have to go to Hungary though Yes because you're hungry It's from Pex Pex Hungary Is that where they're all buffed there I mean literally it's P-E-C-S Pex That's right we are here in Hungary Do not even try to pick up this pinball machine Unless you are completely ripped Yeah I pick things up and I put them down That is right So wasn't Sonic a Spain company to begin with? Yes, it was. Yes. So they were also selling their stuff to other companies. So Spain coming out but going to Europe had to be paper? Something like that, yes. Interesting. Sega. They were actually Sega. Yeah. Sega Sonic. Yeah. But I think it's pretty cool. Honestly, if it was local, I'd think about this. I didn't realize it was in Hungary when we were there. Yeah, it's Hungry Hungry Hippos. Yeah. Hungry, hungry hippos Hey, wait, don't give away American Pinball's next title Oh We just leaked out one of our Patreon things Shit That's wrong, baby Our next game is Connect Four Then follow by Battleship That's right, baby You suck my battleship You suck me off Oh, my gosh. God. I think on that note. Yes. Now you know why nobody calls you to do call-outs. Exactly. See? I can do that. Call me. I can be nice and I can make very wholesome call-outs. Suck me off. Yeah. All right, plugs. Let's see. I have Silver Ball Chronicles, the other show I do, on the Pinball Network. We'll be coming out with a new episode soon. I do heavily enjoy that. Yeah, that David Dennis guy is really good. Oh, come on. Double D is nothing without Ron. Double D. D-double. Yeah, that was crazy. It was supposed to be you versus not me. So Silver Ball Chronicles, one of the exciting programs you can listen to on the Pinball Network. Go there now. Enjoy. Enjoy. I did my plug. There we go. Hopefully you're still plugging for us. I haven't listened to the newest episode yet. Chris, who do you want to plug? Who do you want to plug? The Rochester Pinball Collective. 349 West Commercial Street in East Rochester, New York, with almost 50 pinball machines on location. Am I going to be able to get in after 8 o'clock? Yes, you can now. We fixed that. That was actually fixed by us. We fixed it. We've got to keep somebody at the door to push open the panic board. We've got to do even better. We are open Thursday from 5 to 10 and Saturdays from 3 to 11. Pay one price, $20. You can come in and out anytime you want during those two days, the day you're paying of. Enjoy, have fun. Newest games to oldest from the 50s all the way up to current games, including now Rick and Morty. Oh, my notes say that you're going to have two Godzilla LEs coming in? Yes. Are you going to be having some kind of launch party? CERN launch party, baby. Were you demoted to private? No. No? What are you? I am private first class or something like that. Oh, so you are private. You're never going to get promoted. I'm going to get promoted. I'm pushing it. Oh, okay. So when is the tournament again? December 11th. And we also have a tournament, a two-day tournament on the second weekend in November. I'm going to pull up the date right now. Hold on. Give me two seconds. Meaning you could come in either day. Yes, either day, but the finals will be on the Saturday. So you can qualify on the 11th or the 13th. Is there going to be like a pump and dump? Yeah, pump and dump. Not a pump and dump because we don't have tickets. You're going to be tickets. You know, you have so many tickets, you're going to do your thing. You can qualify on Thursday and walk in Saturday if you made it. Or you can come in Saturday. It's too early to be on. And where's the 24-hour flip frenzy? When's that happening? Oh, flip frenzy. Go fuck yourself. Come on. We're flip frenzy? Yes. We did a 24-hour tournament here before the pandemic, but we didn't do a flip frenzy. No, fuck no. I want constant. No breaks. You have the piece. Sorry. Sorry, you're out. Time. Took a lot. Well, no, you have five minutes to get back to your ball. Yikes. But I like to plug that. I like to plug the Delaware Pinball Collective. Congratulations, guys, down there. Hopefully, with the least fines, you'll be on your way. Yes, hopefully. We do an in-state tour championship series at all of our tournaments. You get points to go towards, and we are hoping to host that at the Delaware Pink Ball Collective, which would be sometime in mid-December. So we're hoping for that to be there and not out of my house again. And where is it located? Location will be 1100 First State Boulevard in Wilmington, Delaware And you can find us on the web at www.delawarepinballcollective.com Where you can find our posted hours You can become a member Donations Anything you guys can do to help would be greatly appreciated Hopefully we've donated enough now, Ron So we can actually come down there once on a blue moon And just walk in Both chart members We don't get tackled at the door like I actually looked up the address. It's like four hours from me, so it would take a while to get there. Yeah, that's the downside. Yeah, I was going to say it's probably six hours from Bruce. But I have family in New Jersey, so at least it's not that bad. Where's your family in New Jersey? Vernon and Oakland. It's still probably two and a half hours. Two and a half, three hours, yeah. But at least it's better to stay there and then not have to drive the whole six hours back. That's true. And we're not far from Dr. and Mrs. Penn either. We can get them all to have a nice whole weekend. I bet you they're in a game. Probably in a game. They're NDA'd right now. I don't say anything. Mrs. Pin may not be. She's another one that can't control her mouth sometimes. Nah, they'll put her in. She'll be in some new American pinball game, both of them. You mark my words right now, I'm going to say. Uh-oh. So it's just you guys that are blackballed. Yep, we're blackballed. Well, I'm blackballed due to Bruce. Yeah, by association. Yeah, by association. Yeah. Even his goodwill towards his other show doesn't help him out. Well, even my goodwill not telling programmers to retire. Or telling them they suck. Am I right or wrong? It doesn't matter if you're right or wrong. It's just not very nice, especially when you're a member of the Stern Army and you're telling people their game sucks. Word on the street is that's why Steve's not at Stern anymore. Exactly. Maybe my pressures worked. Oh, Jesus. How do you not know these things, Ron? This is why a lot of our listeners like us, because they like you. Because Bruce tells it like it is. I do. I try to. I say Bruce tells it like he thinks it is. There you go. Bruce tells it like he thinks he wants it to be. My opinion is right. My opinion is right. Can we meet up this week and I can give you a hug? No, you have to do the demo man hand. Or just give me the Vulcan peace sign, you know, live long and prosper. It's not peace, it's the logic sign. Live long, it's the logic sign? No, it's live long and prosper. Everyone knows that. Come on. Well, because I've walked by you at multiple shows over the years, and I always felt bad just coming up to you and bothering you. Hip check him. Just check him. Right? No pimosing. Oh, I guess that was Joe. Sweep the leg. While he's playing, you sweep the leg. Sweep the leg. All right. Anyway, I'll find you this week and introduce myself face-to-face. Cool. See? So plug away, Ron. Well, this has been Episode 175 of the Slam Tilt Podcast. We can be found online at www.slamtiltpodcast.com. Look in the upper right-hand corner. It has all our links, including to our Facebook page, our Twitch channel, which hopefully I'll be streaming sometime in the future. Eventually. Eventually. YouTube and it also has our email address which is flamtillpodcast at gmail.com thanks to everybody out there thanks to everyone in our group hi Steve, hi Zach hi everyone in our private podcaster fun thing group thingy thanks to Joe for joining us this week thank you for having me good luck and welcome to the stress of pinball business now. That's all right. Good luck. We're all counting on you. Yes, good luck. We're all counting on you. Thanks, everybody. Until next time, say goodbye, Bruce. Goodbye, Mike McGowell. Oh, my, my. Oh, my, my. Can you fool me? Can you fly? Oh, my, my. Oh, my, my. You can fool me if you fly. Oh my, oh my, oh my, oh my, I don't need to keep you alive. Oh my, oh my, oh my, oh my. One all seriousness, Ron, I'll find you. And this week, introduce myself. Sounds good. Guys, be safe. Get COVID. Enjoy. No, that's not being safe. Can't say be safe and get COVID in the same sense. Yeah, what an idiot. If I see it now, you're not going to get as sick.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 9bc7e09d-2d85-43c5-b3ed-cb51a45753b0*