# Episode 92 – At The End of the Day **Source:** Final Round Pinball Podcast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2026-05-31 **Duration:** 77m 9s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://www.finalroundpinball.com/episode-92-at-the-end-of-the-day/ --- ## Analysis Jeff Teolis and Ryan discuss Pokémon Pinball's massive release, market frenzy, and limited edition secondary market pricing (LEs selling for $20K-$40K+). They debate the game's design simplicity versus its IP strength, discuss Pokémon lore and fandom, and pivot to broader industry topics including tournament format politics (Amazing Race format removal), venue scaling issues at Indisc, and IFPA governance concerns. ### Key Claims - [MEDIUM] Pokémon is a bigger IP than Star Wars or Disney — _Ryan discussing Pokémon's scale relative to other major IPs_ - [HIGH] Pokémon Limited Edition units sold out completely and are being flipped for $20K-$40K+ on secondary market — _Jeff and Ryan discussing LE scarcity and secondary market pricing_ - [HIGH] Ryan was on a distributor reservation list for a Pokémon Pinball machine two years before announcement — _Ryan recounting emailing his Australian distributor 2 years prior; received Pro allocation instead of LE_ - [HIGH] Stern released a promotional video where George Gomez and Jack Danger's pronunciation of 'Pokémon' was edited in post-production, with footage panning away from their faces — _Jeff describing a Stern video showing layout designers discussing the game with edited audio_ - [MEDIUM] The Pokémon Pinball layout is described as 'junkyard-y' and plays similarly to Junkyard — _Jeff's observation about visual similarity to Junkyard game_ - [MEDIUM] Pokémon Pinball layout looks 'kind of boring' and safe, lacking revolutionary gameplay elements — _Ryan's personal opinion as someone who ordered the game_ - [HIGH] There are 150+ new Pokémon released annually, with over 1,000 total Pokémon in the franchise — _Ryan explaining Pokémon release schedule and franchise scale_ - [HIGH] Jack Danger designed Foo Fighters, X-Men, and now Pokémon Pinball — _Ryan recalling his Jack Danger game purchases_ - [MEDIUM] Tournament directors often add brand-new games to competition brackets too quickly after release, before code stabilizes — _Jeff criticizing TDs for adding new games without full code patches; references Neil McRae and UK Open_ - [HIGH] The Amazing Race tournament format was removed from Stern Pro Circuit eligibility because Josh Sharpe deemed it 'too efficient' — _Jeff discussing Amazing Race format removal and Josh Sharpe's reasoning_ ### Notable Quotes > "I had my name down for, like, two years ago. I checked my email and I emailed my distributor two years ago and said, Hello, please reserve, like, these set of Pinball machines if they release a Pokemon Pinball machine." > — **Ryan**, early segment > _Demonstrates advance knowledge of Pokémon Pinball in industry circles before official announcement_ > "You basically make them your prisoner. You catch them in a ball. You throw the ball at them, and then they're trapped inside your ball, and then you release them, and they're like your bitch." > — **Ryan**, mid-segment > _Humorous but critical take on Pokémon mechanics; highlights outsider perspective on franchise_ > "It looks kind of safe. Jack Danger bought out Foo Fighters and X-Men and I was like, whoa. Those are crazy. Holy shit." > — **Ryan**, mid-segment > _Contrasts Pokémon layout with previous Jack Danger designs, suggesting less innovation_ > "I won't ever put in Jaws until it got to full code or close to it. I'm like, fuck, we're in no hurry to put these in. So take your time, TDs. Put it in the free play area. Don't wreck tournaments with new fucking games." > — **Jeff**, later segment > _Clear stance on tournament integrity and code maturity; references Jeff's own tournament operation practices_ > "If Josh doesn't like it, man, if you haven't learned this after OBX and everything else, Josh, whatever he says, goes." > — **Jeff**, closing segment > _Commentary on IFPA leadership dynamics and Josh Sharpe's authority over format decisions_ > "Supreme is a good IP to or a good instance to compare it to because the numbers that we are seeing people trying to sell them for doesn't mean that they are selling, reaching Supreme levels of insanity." > — **Jeff**, early-mid segment > _Acknowledges secondary market pricing without confirming actual sale volumes_ > "I think this game, layout-wise and gameplay-wise, it looks kind of boring. There's nothing revolutionary about it, and I'm saying this for someone who's ordered it." > — **Ryan**, mid-segment > _Owner critique of game design despite strong IP enthusiasm and purchase commitment_ > "You, Ryan, need to do better. I'm just not... It's a great movie by the way, go see it." > — **Jeff**, mid-segment > _Jeff critiques Ryan's sales pitch on Pokémon IP versus spontaneous movie recommendations_ > "And I always said to him, you don't need to kill it, you need to tinker it. And I'm glad he has tinkered it, but he saw too many, and this is like a small group of fucking IFPA people, that they see people getting too much whoppers too quickly." > — **Jeff**, closing segment > _Details Josh Sharpe's reasoning for Flip Frenzy adjustments and broader IFPA governance concerns_ > "Every time they said the word Pokemon it panned away from their face and showed the game. And it seemed like they maybe re-recorded and said Pokemon, Pokemon, and maybe before they were saying Pokemon." > — **Jeff**, opening segment > _Observes potential pronunciation/licensing editing in official Stern promotional video_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Jeff Teolis | person | Co-host of Final Round Pinball Podcast; pinball operator and tournament organizer with strong opinions on game releases and tournament formats | | Ryan | person | Co-host of Final Round Pinball Podcast; Australian-based location operator and Pokémon Pinball owner; knowledgeable about Pokémon franchise | | Jack Danger | person | Pinball designer credited with Foo Fighters, X-Men, and Pokémon Pinball (layout/toys); well-regarded by Ryan and Jeff | | George Gomez | person | Pinball designer/architect on Pokémon Pinball; appeared in Stern promotional video discussing the game | | Tanya Kleiss | person | Code developer for Pokémon Pinball (per KB context) | | Stern Pinball | company | Manufacturer of Pokémon Pinball; major pinball manufacturer with Spike 3 platform; releases promotional videos and manages code updates | | Josh Sharpe | person | IFPA leader; controversial for removing Amazing Race format from Stern Pro Circuit eligibility; has authority over tournament rules | | Neil McRae | person | Tournament director for UK Open; mentioned as example of TD who puts in new games despite Jeff's criticism | | Pokémon Pinball | game | Stern Pinball machine released Feb 2026; LE units sold out; secondary market pricing $20K-$40K+; three tiers (Pro/Premium/LE); 750 LE units | | Foo Fighters | game | Jack Danger-designed pinball game; praised by both Jeff and Ryan for gameplay depth and rules quality | | Uncanny X-Men | game | Jack Danger-designed pinball game; Ryan recently developed strong appreciation for rules and shot flow; Premium version criticized for hand sewing clunkiness | | Junkyard | game | Classic pinball game referenced as visual/mechanical comparison point for Pokémon Pinball layout | | Indisc | event | Pinball tournament/expo; increased to 400 players; venue scaling concerns; Jeff attended last year but skipped this year; location moved | | Amazing Race | game|format | Tournament format/event from Ohio that gained Stern Pro Circuit status; removed from SPC eligibility due to Josh Sharpe's concerns about efficiency | | Flip Frenzy | format | Tournament format modified by Josh Sharpe after IFPA concerns about players scoring too many bonus whoppers too quickly | | IFPA | organization | International Flipper Pinball Association; governs tournament sanctioning and rankings; Josh Sharpe holds significant authority over rule/format decisions | | Stern Pro Circuit | event|organization | Tournament series requiring IFPA compliance; Amazing Race format ineligible due to format removal decision | | Keith Elwin | person | Legendary competitive pinball player; referenced as collector benchmark for Ryan's Jack Danger game collecting | | Spooky Pinball | company | Competitor manufacturer; designed Beetlejuice which Stern passed on; referenced as example of successful niche IP execution | | Beetlejuice | game | Spooky Pinball game; Stern had license but passed; designed and executed by Spooky; sold out successfully | | Jaws | game | Referenced as example of game Jeff waited for full code maturity before putting in tournament rotation | | Beatles | music_group | Referenced for influence and legacy; Beatles pinball machine exists; discussed in context of live performance limitations vs. studio albums | | Elvis Presley | person | Musical icon; recently watched 'Elvis' concert documentary film; referenced in context of performer charisma and Elvis pinball machine existence | | Send Help | media | Sam Raimi film; Jeff uses as example of superior narrative/pitch compared to Ryan's Pokémon franchise explanation | ### Signals - **[market_signal]** Pokémon Pinball LE units selling for $20K-$40K on secondary market; multiple sellers listing buy/sell ads simultaneously; suggests unprecedented FOMO-driven collector demand (confidence: high) — Jeff: 'the numbers that we are seeing people trying to sell them for' and 'they're going to quick flip it for $1,000, $2,000, $3,000'; Ryan noting people with ads for both buying and selling same product - **[product_launch]** Pokémon Pinball LE units (750 production run) sold out completely; allocation management unclear due to distributor discretion over stated waitlists (confidence: high) — Jeff: 'It looks like it certainly did' sell out LEs; Ryan unable to secure LE despite 2-year advance request, receiving Pro tier instead - **[design_philosophy]** Pokémon Pinball described as visually 'junkyard-y' with perceived simple/safe layout design; owner (Ryan) criticizes lack of revolutionary elements despite ordering game (confidence: medium) — Ryan: 'It looks kind of safe'; 'There's nothing revolutionary about it'; 'layout-wise and gameplay-wise, it looks kind of boring' - **[licensing_signal]** Stern promotional video showing designers George Gomez and Jack Danger appears to have edited in pronunciation of 'Pokémon' in post-production, with camera pans obscuring speaker faces (confidence: medium) — Jeff: 'every time they said the word Pokemon it panned away from their face and showed the game. And it seemed like they maybe re-recorded' - **[competitive_signal]** Amazing Race tournament format removed from Stern Pro Circuit eligibility due to Josh Sharpe's determination that format is 'too efficient'; illustrates IFPA centralized authority concerns (confidence: high) — Jeff: 'You know what format they're not playing at Indus this week, Jeff? The Amazing Race. They will never play that... Josh, whatever he says, goes' - **[operational_signal]** TDs criticized for adding brand-new games to tournament rotation before code matures; potential for exploits; operator best practice is to wait for full code patches (confidence: high) — Jeff: 'I wouldn't even put in Jaws until it got to full code or close to it... Don't wreck tournaments with new fucking games' - **[venue_signal]** Indisc tournament experiencing capacity/queue issues at 400 players; venue moved; scaling concerns expressed by attendees about maintaining experience quality (confidence: medium) — Jeff: 'I was there last year and I thought it was too big... 400 people playing and the queues were ridiculous... I wish they would scale it back' - **[industry_signal]** Josh Sharpe holds de facto veto power over tournament format eligibility on Stern Pro Circuit; small IFPA group influences decisions; individual authority concerns raised (confidence: high) — Jeff: 'And I always said to him, you don't need to kill it, you need to tinker it... Josh, whatever he says, goes' - **[collector_signal]** Pokémon Pinball distributor allocation managed via informal preference system rather than strict waitlist; discretionary allocation based on distributor relationships and 'hotness' assessment (confidence: high) — Ryan: 'they get the first rights of refusal and they just say no or yes, depending on what the hotness is of the products... It's not a real, a great system to run' - **[content_signal]** Final Round Podcast breaks traditional podcast structure by discussing pinball (game/market) extensively before typical content pivots; reflects community priorities (confidence: medium) — Jeff: 'I can't believe we're fucking talking about Pinball this early in final round. We have broken all the rules here on this podcast' - **[sentiment_shift]** Strong positive sentiment on Pokémon IP power and LE demand; mixed/skeptical sentiment on actual gameplay design; owner acknowledges gap between hype and mechanical innovation (confidence: high) — Ryan: orders game but admits layout looks 'boring' and 'safe'; Jeff acknowledges IP size but criticizes gameplay; both note disconnect between IP excitement and design substance - **[personnel_signal]** Jack Danger accumulating strong collector/operator following; Ryan recognizes himself as Jack Danger 'fanboy' equivalent to Keith Elwin collector behavior; designer reputation influences purchasing (confidence: medium) — Ryan: 'It's like Jack Danger is now equivalent to Keith Elwin for me. I'll just collect all these games'; purchased Foo Fighters, X-Men, and Pokémon --- ## Transcript Where's the third flipper? Give me that soul. Don't you want to say the doctor? Make me roll. Just playing bad. Yeah, what a shame. Someone pooped their pants mid-game. Where's the third flipper? It's player versus player and player versus machine. Welcome to the final round. Look at that. Two weeks on the dot. I think my calendar's broken. Hi, I'm Jeff Teolis. And I'm Ryan, but I... I wanna be the best, Jeff, like no one ever was. To fight on them is my real test. Crop dusting is my cause. What? This episode's all about Pokemon. It's the Pokemon theme song, but I customize it towards you. We're talking about Pokemon today and Jeff doesn't know anything about Pokemon so I'm here to educate him and whoever wants to listen. I had no idea that was a Pokemon song, I just thought it was another one of your many off-key piece of shit songs. I mean wonderful, catchy, oh he's so Ryan songs. I'm so creative, it's all from my brain, not AI, it's all from my brain. Did you see the stack of Tim Tams that my local Costco had? Your services are no longer needed, they have invaded. Do they have Vegemite? I've had Vegemite and they don't need to bring that salt goop here. Oh yeah, I know nothing about Pokemon, so I've seen video games. First of all, how apropos was our song, where is the third flipper? Two flippers, soul sucker. You do know something about Pokemon, Jeff. You know how to pronounce Pokemon. We might get into that a little bit later, but there was... Actually, let's get into it now. There was a video that Stern released a bit more about each models and it was George Gomez and Jack Danger talking about Pokemon. And every time they said the word Pokemon it panned away from their face and showed the game. And it seemed like they maybe re-recorded and said Pokemon, Pokemon, and maybe before they were saying Pokemon. I think a lot of people from the USA. I find that quite funny that the people making the game said it differently and all licenses have different restrictions but saying the name properly I guess is a pretty big one. Yeah, we're going to talk a lot about Pokemon and I know other podcasts have done it but we're going to give you a different final round take. You won't hear any of these thoughts on any other podcasts. They'll talk about coils, they'll talk about artwork, they'll talk about gameplay, we'll talk about none of that. But I do want to play the game, I haven't played it yet. It's interesting, you know, my first thought that comes to mind in the game was years ago, Stern admitted that none of the designers had any interest in doing Beetlejuice. Do you remember that? Yes, I do. They had the license there and they passed around the teams and it just came down to like a passion thing and no one had the passion for it. Yeah, and then look what Spooky did. Sells it out instantly. It looks fantastic. And they probably could have sold a lot more. So does that mean Jack Danger jumped all over Pokemon? Which, by the way, I have since learned, like, the best IP. I used to always think it was Star Wars. The IP is, what, bigger than Disney? Bigger than Star Wars? So what do I know? But I did know this. And I think you did too. It was going to do really well, especially with things like Stern Insider Connected. I had no idea the L.E.s would be that batshit crazy. You know, this is like Supreme Level nuts. I had my name down for, like, two years ago. I checked my email and I emailed my distributor two years ago and said, Hello, please reserve, like, these set of Pinball machines if they release a Pokemon Pinball machine and if it's from Stern. And, you know, so the rumor's been there for a while. I guess I knew how big it was going to be two years ago, But I was still blown away by everyone's reaction because it's hard to know who's into Pokemon because some people are loud and proud about things they love. And I feel like Pokemon maybe is a little bit more nerdy and hidden. And, you know, there's a lot of people that are like, if it's not Metallica, if it's not like this really macho theme, then I don't want to know about it. And Pokemon isn't that, but the sales, not that I have access to sales figures, but considering it's sold out and yes, Supreme is a good IP to or a good instance to compare it to because the numbers that we are seeing people trying to sell them for doesn't mean that they are selling, reaching Supreme levels of insanity. I know people firsthand that are putting out ads, I will buy an LE, send me your price. And they're also at the very same time putting out ads saying, who wants my LE, highest bidder? They don't have it in hand. They're just going to quick flip it for $1,000, $2,000, $3,000. And it looks like they could have sold a lot more LEs. I know some of the other titles haven't sold out their allotment of LEs. This one looks like it certainly did. But when you talk about you had your name on the list, when you call a vendor, and obviously you're speaking to your Australian vendor, and I think you only have one, don't you? Kind of really one. The other guy buys from the main vendor. Yeah, I mean, if you consider it that way, maybe there's about three, but really it is just one. So how do you get on the list? What does that mean, you're on the list? Do they confirm? Yes, you are number 35 on the list. Do they pick and choose, don't they? Or maybe take the highest bidder? Apparently, I mean, I think previously the list was a list, but I mean, how do you manage a list when people then say, hmm, you know, it's like they get the first rights of refusal and they just say no or yes, depending on what the hotness is of the products. Like, it's not a real, a great system to run. And I don't buy that many Pinball machines anymore, so. You've moved down the list. Like Mini-Me on the bench. Down the bench, Mini-Me, down the bench. I waited, well, one business day, but it got announced, I think, on a Friday night or Saturday morning here, and then I messaged on Monday, and I responded to that email saying, like, yep, confirming your email from two years ago. And I said, hey, how are we going with this? I know you're probably so busy right now. How are you going? And the answer was like, oh, I don't have a Pinball machine for you, Ryan. And maybe I should have confirmed closer to the date, but they managed to get a slightly bigger allotment. And I do have a Pokemon Pro coming for location. But not an LE? No, I originally put my name down for an LE, but my email was like, hey, I'm not in that game anymore. Like, I can't spend $20,000. The only reason why I'd get an LE, Jeff, is... Actually, no, there is no reason. Well, yeah, but I'm not in that game. I'm not in the game to make... I don't mind buying a pinball machine, enjoying it and selling it for more, but to buy it for the sole reason of inflating pinball prices, like, I would love to make money a different way. If I was desperate, then sure, and I don't hate people who do that, I'm not saying it's wrong, but I struggle to understand pinball. It seems like it's just the collective hive mind of thinking that like, okay, Pokemon's the one, like this, it's back, Pinball is back, inflate the prices. And then the next game, for some reason, isn't that. And it's like the community decides as a whole, and I don't know what it's based off. Sure, it's a great theme. I love Pokemon, maybe not as much as the people that have been into it for 30 years, but I can name a couple of hundred Pokemon. I'm into it. I played Pokemon Go with my kids for the last eight years. I remember when Pokemon Go happened, and I know nothing about Pokemon Go. People went nuts. I don't know if it'll ever be repeated where people were out in public playing some kind of video game and interacting with someone, and you could tell when someone was doing the thing. They were looking down on their phone and you'd roll down the window and you'd be like, there's a Snorlax like 20 metres down the road and they'd get really excited and people were happy. It was like this small two-month window where people were like working together. It's something that brought people together and eventually it faded away. The community is still huge. The amount of people that actively play the game is huge and the reason why Pokemon is such a big IP is there is an unlimited amount of Pokemons that will come out. There's over a thousand Pokemons. Every year or so they release like 150-ish new ones. I know of obviously Pikachu and maybe Meowth. That's it. I thought there were less than 200. I thought there were 200 of them. So there's the original Pokemon that came out many, many years ago. There was 151 and there's a Pokemon rap song that will rap through all the names of it. And it's this amazing song. And then they're like, okay, what do we do? Let's release the next season. And then there was 100 more. And then there was 134, 135 more. And then 107 more, 156 more, 72 more, 86 more. And then every year they would just release a new Pokemon game. Can I ask something? Yeah. I'm dumb. Are these toys or are they just digital characters? They're digital characters, but they're IP that can then be converted into toys, keychains. This is why Pokemon is so big, Jeff, because there's an unlimited amount of shit to sell. There's so many things, and because they've been doing it slowly and consistently over 30 years, I think it's been... It's overwhelming for someone who doesn't know anything about Pokemon, but once you get into it, you're like, cool, I'm collecting these things and I'm training them and fighting with them. They're part of my family. They're part of my friends. It's, yeah. Hold on a second. You said once you get into it, it's like, cool. Don't know about that. I'm interested in playing the game. Don't have any interest in playing Pokemon or catching them all, which, you know, I laughed at Bruce and Ron, who also probably know nothing about it, when Slam Tilt when they said, wait a second, you're catching them and training them to kill each other? And I thought the same thing. They never die. Is that not how it works? They just kind of get, like, there's no death in Pokemon. It's all, like, they faint. Beat them up enough that they faint. So you've taken the blood out of their bodies. There's no oxygen going to the head. They faint. You do something to them while they're passed out and capture them. Next thing you know, they're in a cage. It's pretty weird. You go out into the wilds into these lands, and then you see a Pokemon just enjoying themselves, living their best life. Do you gang up on them, or is it always 1v1? I mean, it's always 1v1, but there's other... I mean, maybe in some of the movies and stuff. But the funny thing is, Jeff, is you basically make them your prisoner. You catch them in a ball. Oh, that's cute. You throw a ball at them, and then they're trapped inside your ball, and then you release them, and they're like your bitch. So I don't know what it treats you. It's kind of like... How is this interesting to people? Slavery. It's only interesting to me, Jeff. I'm not sure about... I can't talk about other people. Oh, no, no, no. There's others interested in it. Like, this just has nothing... I don't get it. You can say it all you want. By the way... I had the opportunity, yeah. We're talking about Pokemon. I can't believe we're fucking talking about Pinball this early in final round. We have broken all the rules here on this podcast. But one thing that we aren't talking about when we are talking about pinball, we haven't even talked about the game, we're talking about the IP. And how many minutes has this been now? Like, whatever you say, anybody, I'm sorry, I'm not discrediting your enjoyment of the IP and Pokemon. I get it. I like things that other people don't like. So I totally get it, to each their own. I can tell you this in all certainty, I will never be interested in it. But also I'm an older fart, right? So why would I? But I'm interested in the game and if we could possibly divert from all your capturing and making Pokemons faint and making them your bitch and getting them in a bowl and meeting them in a deserted wood, which sounds like fucking creepy. John Trudeau should have made this game. Anyway, what about the game? It looks junkyard-y, right? I'm referring to the game junkyard where it's got that thing in the center and it's very similar to that. Two flippers. I'm curious how it'll play. I hope the rules are really, really good. It looks pretty simple without playing it. I'm not criticizing it. I'm just saying I haven't seen any of it. I'll be the bad guy. I've ordered it. I love Pokemon. I think it'll earn well. I think it'll eventually have good code and be fun. But there is, and I would love to be proven wrong, and it's not up to anyone except myself to make the decision, but I think this game, layout-wise and gameplay-wise, it looks kind of boring. There's nothing revolutionary about it, and I'm saying this for someone who's ordered it, so this is not like, don't go and order it, and boycotts don't. I kind of get upset. What's that red and white ball do? What is that thing? That's the poke, that's, jeez, you really don't know anything about that. I'm not trying to be funny. I know fuck all about it, and I never will, which sucks because I'm going to have to learn this game because for some reason, and I was going to get into this later, TDs get fucking boners in putting in brand new games. Neil McRae, if you're listening, I love you, man. I'll never miss a UK Open, but if that game came out the week before the UK Open, he would put it in the tournament. And I don't like when TDs put in brand new games because exploits can happen. Stern likes to do code updates. You'll never see this guy, whether it's the Beast, the Canadian Nationals, anything I do at Maple, anywhere, ever put in a game that doesn't have full. I wouldn't even put in Jaws until it got to full code or close to it. I'm like, fuck, we're in no hurry to put these in. So take your time, TDs. Put it in the free play area. Don't wreck tournaments with new fucking games. There, I said it. This is what a majority of people, like the people that aren't in the top 1,000 players, feel like at any tournament when they play and they rock up and there's, you know, 15 new games that they've never played. That's how I feel sometimes. I'm like, I've never played this game before. Like, I'm going to have to... And of course, I can look it up and research, but the only way for me to learn with my brain is to actually play the game. So that's what it feels like. So you think the game looks boring? It looks very samey? It looks kind of safe. Jack Daniels bought out Foo Fighters and X-Men and I was like, whoa. Those are crazy. Holy shit. Jack, if you're listening, brother, fucking love Foo Fighters. I can play that forever and ever and ever and ever and ever get bored. And I now, today, a week after the Canadian Nationals, have a crazy new love for Uncanny X-Men. Except for the premium. Sorry, I'll never like the hand sewing the shit. I wish it wasn't as clunky, I will give you that, but as far as the rules and the shots and the flow, when it works, fuck is that a cool game. I just realized I've bought every Jack Danger game. I bought Foo Fighters, I bought X-Men, and now I've bought Pokemon, which is... Fanboy. Yeah, it's like Jack Danger is now equivalent to Keith Elwin for me. I'll just collect all these games. When's the tattoo coming? How would I represent Jack Danger as a tattoo? He's just got so much going on. I don't know how to represent him. Simple dead flip somewhere. That's all you gotta do, bro. That ball, Jeff, that's a Pokeball. That's how you capture Pokemon. You throw the ball at it? So you're fucking throwing stones at it? That sounds a little Dark Ages. It's a magic ball. You throw the ball, the Pokemon magically zaps. It doesn't matter how big it is. It's kind of like the genie in the lamp in Aladdin, except it's a ball. When you want to fight, you open up the ball, or you press the button, it opens up, and they come out, and they're ready to fight. Hold on a second. Can I ask another stupid question? When you're fighting another Pokemon, is it like All's Fair in Love and War, or do you have to take turns? Well, like, in the video games, it's turn-based. It's not like you sit there and mash keys like Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter, like bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. You have one shot each, and you use different attack types depending on what type of Pokemon they are. Who gets the first shot? I haven't watched a movie in a long time, but it doesn't really matter. It does to me. If I get four shots to your three, I've got a better chance of beating you. Yeah. Yeah? I probably should... Someone's probably screaming. Steve Bowne's probably screaming at me because there's probably an answer. I don't know. My level of Pokemon knowledge is only from Pokemon Go, not from the video games which come out first and the movies. Please write your complaints to FinalRoundPinball at gmail.com. Address them to Ryan. I never claim to be a Pokemon fan. I am fucking immune to any kind of criticisms because I'm ignorant. You, an owner of the Pokemon game, someone who's played Pokemon Go, went up to strangers in graveyards in Australia when kangaroos are hopping around and said, hey, you got a Charmander there, buddy? Is that another one? Charmander, yeah. Anyway, see, I got three. Anyway, sorry, dude, you need to be on top of the game. Do you know what Charmander evolves into, Jeff? See, this is the little I know. Don't they have three evolutions? Like they start off as one, they go to two, and then they're like a, I don't know what it is. Most of the time. Some of them don't evolve at all. Sometimes they have two. Like Pikachu doesn't evolve? No, Pikachu evolves into Raichu, but nobody loves Raichu. Why? Because Pikachu was... Do people fight with Pikachu? Yeah, yeah. And sorry, who's Ash? He's the anime? Yeah, he's the main character in the movies and the protagonist, and he's like an 11-year-old kid or something like that, And then he goes into this Pokemon world and then he has Pikachu as his first Pokemon. That's his buddy who hangs out with him all the time and fights. And then he goes through and finds other Pokemons to deal with and fight with. Can I just say something? Yes. I will acknowledge that Pokemon is a massive IP. No question about it. I already said, bigger than Star Wars, bigger than Disney. You have done the worst fucking job of selling me on Pokemon and getting me interested in it. I'm going to give you a shitty IP and I'll get you interested in this. And now this is what Final Round is all about. I've seen a bunch of movies. We'll talk about movies in a bit, but one I want to bring up. It's called Send Help. It's by Sam Raimi. Sam Raimi is the same guy who made The Evil Dead. So back to pinball. He also made Spider-Man. You played the Spider-Man game? That's a Sam Raimi movie. He's done other things too. He did the last Doctor Strange movie. Sam Raimi is back to his bread and butter with this movie called Send Help. It's about this kind of a loser, loner woman who's just got a shitty job. She's been promised a promotion. I'm not spoiling the movie. She's been promised a promotion. The guy who promised her died. The son takes over. He's a hot shot. He only hiring his buddies and she gets kind of demoted and basically used and abused She does all the work gets no credit Well they playing crashes they land on a deserted island and she a survivalist and he helpless And she just fucking turns the tables on him. In that 30 seconds I just talked to you, I have made you and anybody else who doesn't know anything about Pokemon more interested in send help than fucking Pokemon which has been around for 30 years. You, Ryan, need to do better. I'm just not... It's a great movie by the way, go see it. Hold on a second. What was your last day job? Admit it. What was it? I got fired, Jem. You still have a job. I was in sales. I'm still in sales. But anyway, just a little hyphen to work on it there, kid. How dare you out me like that, Jem? If I'm not outing you, you want me to out you some more? Here's another one. I called Ryan earlier this week. I'm like, hey, do you want to do a podcast this Sunday? He's like, I'm on a video phone. He goes, got to be careful. I'm completely nude. He's fucking sitting in his living room, buck naked. Pulling it, I assume. The only time I'm nude in the summer is when I'm fucking going in the shower. I have a sauna. I don't even go nude in my sauna. Do you have some trauma related to being, you were born naked, Jep. I'm not fucking Tobias from Arrested Development. Never nude. Dozens of us, dozens! Greatest show. Oh my god, Tobias. Are you seriously only ever nudes when you have a shower? How about... Well, I think Anne might mention once or twice a year we happen to be in our birthday suits. By the way, let me give you another movie. We went and saw Wuthering Heights, which is like Margot Robbie, which is okay for this dude, And that Jacob Elordi guy, super tall, handsome guy. Ryan, I'm going to give you a little tip because you're only in your 40s. As you get into your 50s, you're further away from when you're in your 20s. And when you're in your 20s, the wind could blow and you could get excited. When you're in your 50s, it's okay. No, no, no blue pills. No, but it's okay to have a little bit of eye candy to get the engine revving, if you know what I mean. And going to see Wuthering Heights with Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, let me just say it's a great date movie and I'll leave it at that. And if we're keeping track of when the last time I was nude, not in the shower, we might also throw that in there too. At the cinema. Not at the cinema. Special erotic showing of Wuthering Heights. I'll give you another movie too. We've seen three movies in the last couple days. I'm going to see Scream 7 next week with my son Brady. I didn't know they got the original cast back in Scream 7. How old is that movie? 30 years, I think it came out. It came out in 95, I believe. So anyway, yeah, Nev Campbell. It's an IP as old as Pokemon. Amazing. I'm actually shocked Spooky hasn't jumped all over Scream. Scream would be a good one. But anyway, we saw the trailer during Send Help, and I'm like, I'm going to see that when it comes out. And then we saw it again at Wuthering Heights and sure enough it came out the next day. So Ann and I saw a movie on whatever, a Thursday night and then we went back to the theater at 4 o'clock in the afternoon the next day to go see a movie called Epic. Do you know what Epic is? Amongst a couple. Yeah, you're fucking right. Elvis Presley in concert. And let me tell you, we were giddy watching. He was such a fucking performer. Freddie Mercury sure probably has the best voice and can captivate a crowd. But Elvis just embraced, he just fucking loved music, was great to the band, all the stuff. And the concerts, like, I mean, women would fall all over this guy. Anne told me afterwards, she goes, I used to have a scrapbook of Elvis and all this stuff. And I'm like, at one point he's singing, I don't know what it was, and I fucking whispered into Anne's ear, I think I'm gay. Because he was fucking awesome. I go, he's fucking awesome. What is the movie? Is it original footage? Because I saw the poster for it. Yeah, oh my God. Yeah, he did the Elvis movie, he did Moulin Rouge, he's a real musical lover. So if it's a real concert footage, then what's Baz Luhrmann doing? He put it all together like Peter Jackson did with Let It Be, you know, the Beatles three episode thing. So he took this footage, made it beautiful, used, like every narration was actually Elvis himself talking. And oh, the movie's done, I'm like, I would watch it again right now because it was just like seeing the greatest concert. He just all has different styles and, you know, he even makes fun of his own shitty movies and stuff. He's like, I'd get a script the first five pages. It's like the same movie I just made, but, you know, it was fucking great. Great, great, great. Love it. My God. I remember listening to Eddie Murphy Delirious. He's like, Elvis is so fucking good. They let him act. He couldn't act. Elvis, we've got to win this race. We've got to win this race. Elvis, have a lemonade. Elvis, would you like a lemonade? Lemonade. That cool, refreshing drink. Like, I believe, excuse me. Yeah, but even Eddie nods like, hey man, Elvis was the king for a reason too. Yeah, I grew up with Elvis playing in the house all the time. My mom and my dad were obsessed with him. And I guess I took it for granted. Like sometimes what your parents love, you're just like, ah, I don't like this. But yeah, there really is no one like Elvis. And for a while it was Elvis versus the Beatles. My mom would always just say, like, nah, like the Beatles, they just, you know, they don't have the it factor that, they do have the it factor, just not in the same way. I'll give this to the Beatles. Incredible songwriters and four very talented guys. Like Lennon McCartney wrote all the songs and when they finally, George Harrison, have a couple of songs on, I don't know, I think Revolver was the first one, maybe Taxman. But when they let them go nuts on Abbey Road with Here Comes the Sun and something and While My Guitar Gently Weeps, and they're on different albums, but I'm just saying, you're like, holy fuck, George Harrison might actually be my favorite Beatle. He is actually my favorite Beatle. And he was in the background the whole time. Anyway, that's what I love about the Beatles. It's not like kids where it's just, you know. It's all shit. You're going to see a show. You know it's a circus. But Beatles, if there is one knock against the Beatles, and this is where Elvis fucking dominated, is they just never played live. And they played that show at Shea Stadium. All it was was girls screaming. That's all you could hear. So it was a little chaotic. I mean, that's the one knock on the Beatles. Why did they not play live? They just stopped touring. I mean, they made crazy great albums. I love the Beatles. I mean, that'd be a good... I gotta look at some classic rock websites and see the greatest rock bands of all time because you're gonna have the Beatles, you're gonna have the Stones, you're gonna have Zeppelin, you're gonna have Queen. But the Beatles, how many people have been inspired by the Beatles? And the list goes on and on and on. There's a Beatles pinball machine, Jeff. And an Elvis pinball machine. Just to bring it up. We're all tying it in. And Elvis is at Indisk right now. I didn't go to Indisk. First time in six, seven years. Are you missing it? Do you have FOMO, Jeff? Fear of missing out? I don't have fear of missing out because I'm not there. It's not a fear. Do I wish I was there? Yeah, but after the week I... No, no. I was there last year and I thought it was too big. When there's 400 people playing and the queues were ridiculous. I heard a lot of people say, geez, I wish they would scale it back a little bit. And I don't know how you do it, make it more machines. And they've done some changes, but they've also moved the location. That's not why I didn't go. I didn't go because I was so busy the week before. And I think this didn't even announce until January. And I was like, I'm already basically booked. So, you know, but looking out this year, yeah, I wish it was there and stuff. But it looks like the location looks great. Jim and Jay, and Carl's not there, but Jim and Jay have done a great job, as always. I mean, the games are great. You never hear anything about that. The queues look awesome. So yeah, I just wish Indus would cap at whatever the number is. Sometimes, you know, it's too big and it can wreck the experience. So I've said that because I'm not saying anything I haven't said to them personally. You know what format they're not playing at Indus this week, Jeff? What? The Amazing Race. They will never play that. Isn't that something? In the edition that took forever to come out, my top 10 most intriguing people of 2025, I mentioned Josh Sharpe. Which obviously people are going to get pissed off about, but hey man, if he doesn't like something, he doesn't do it. And for years it was the flip frenzy, and that killed the flip frenzies. And I always said to him, you don't need to kill it, you need to tinker it. And I'm glad he has tinkered it, but he saw too many, and this is like a small group of fucking IFPA people, that they see people getting too much whoppers too quickly and they don't like it. And if you ask Josh point blank, he'll say they are too efficient, which is not a good answer. What you're really saying is your other tournaments aren't efficient. That's what you're really saying. And the Amazing Race were really efficient. I mean, you look at what he's done as far as the Stern Pro Circuit has done. They had the Sanctum, which was one of the most sought-after tournaments ever. But because they don't have a playoff system, the Sanctum will never be, sadly, on the Stern Pro Circuit. The Amazing Race, there's a big event out of Ohio, and that made it to the Stern Pro Circuit after years and years of really building it up. Now it's dead. Not the tournament, but the format and therefore can't be part of the Stern Pro Circuit. If Josh doesn't like it, man, if you haven't learned this after OBX and everything else, Josh, whatever he says, goes. And you have the choice of being an IFPA or not being an IFPA. But it's whatever Josh says. That's it. And it's interesting because things happen and people react to it and sometimes there's a calling to like, we're going to boycott IFPA and we're going to create a new thing. And I feel like it's never enough. Like little, little-ish things happen. Sometimes they feel like really big and things blow up, but it's never enough for someone to be like, okay, here's this new thing being created. And because of that, it just will keep on going in whatever direction it's going to go. And I'm not saying it's horrible, but that's the place that we're in. The IFPA is the governing body of professional pinball. And until someone does something different about it, we can complain and have our voices heard or ignored. But you called it, you know, when they announced the changes. I can't remember what month it was in, you know, a couple of months before the end of 2025. And, like, I acknowledge that. Like, yeah, it probably will, but the Match Play events Facebook page released a graph of tournaments created per month for the Amazing Race format. And you can see a dip from about, you know, maxed out at about 140 tournaments for the month of December last year. And then it dropped down to about 70. So it's halved immediately. And I feel like it will just keep on going down because, sure, people like the format, but then they realize they don't get as many whoppers from it. They avert their attention elsewhere to other more efficient and efficient in terms of whoppers per hour formats, which is, I guess, sad. It's sad if people are enjoying the event. It's not that sad if people are only going because they're maximizing whoppers, but it's that forever race and seesawing of what is fun and also gets you whoppers. And wouldn't it be great if those two things perfectly matched together without waiting, without time, not playing pinball being a factor? The only problem with what you're saying is Josh Sharpe doesn't give a shit. He doesn't give a shit about you having fun. And he'll tell you that to your face. I mean, look at years ago, it used to be the top 20 events that you had over three years. And you probably wouldn't have many, you know, from two years ago because they decay, right? Whatever you did a year ago is only worth 75%. Whatever you did two years ago is only worth 50%. But there used to be 20. And people would travel and play a lot like, oh, fuck, I got a few duds on my list of 20. And Josh, I would say the IFP, but it was Josh. Josh dropped it to 15. Why did he drop it to 15, Ryan? When did that happen? I just looked at my IFPA profile. Yeah, dude. Years ago. I didn't even realize. It used to be the top 20 for your IFPA rankings, but it's still the top 20 for your state or your province. And the problem I have with that is it doesn't encourage you to play more pinball. It encourages you to play more high-value tournaments only. There's no encouragement to play more pinball. If you have 20, if you have 25, if you have 30, then you need to play more pinball. You'd think Josh who has investments in, I don't know, Pulp Fiction and even Cactus Canyon and Halo when that comes out or whatever it is. You'd think he'd want people to play more pinball. Well, maybe not. Maybe he wants them to play raw thrill games. Anyway, don't kid yourself. And I'm not saying this out of sour grapes or any disdain or dislike of Josh. I really like Josh a lot. Listen, I like a lot of people. And do I agree 100% with a lot of people? Absolutely not. It doesn't mean I don't like them or not. And cancel culture is not part of my DNA. So, you know, if you don't like this, we can't be friends. Yeah, you won't hear me say that. I disagree with him on that, but I also look at everything that's out there and go, you know, the IFPA is still the best thing I've got for competitive pinball, so I've got to use it. I've mentioned it before, but in Victoria, during COVID, when we went into a crazy lockdown, the strictest in the world, and we eliminated COVID. We thought forever, but it was a temporary one, but there was no COVID in the country, let alone the state, and we were allowed to go out and do whatever the fuck we wanted, and IFPA was still shut down. We created our own league temporarily just to have some kind of rankings so that people could feel like what they were doing was meaningful. And then IFPA came back and we kept the format running in the shadows. And in doing that, we created a format where every single result counts and you can kind of grind your way into the top 32 if you really want. And I think that helps. Like that has helped people continue to go to tournaments. And regardless of the format, if it's a monthly tournament, it'll get the same amount of, we call them vipers, like our equivalent to whoppers. Can it be exploited? Not really, because it's a small group. I understand if we rolled this out worldwide, people would just start running very meaningless tournaments. And that's when you have to be like Josh Sharpe and be like, okay, this is Nerf, this is Nerf, this is Nerf. But it's such a little controllable environment that it works quite well. If someone wants to create something similar and I could help them in any way, I helped create the format with somebody else. I can't remember exactly how the formula works, but there is a formula. Maybe that's something that people can do to encourage local participation versus this bigger picture. But yeah, that's the situation with Amazing Race, Jeff. It's what you said was true and now it's come to life and it's sad. It's like as soon as it happens you know what's going to happen but to see it actually happen is to me is sad. To see the halving of the amount of tournaments that people were obviously enjoying means that there's 70 different events every month around the world that have been changed. And I assume it's like not to everyone's liking. There's a reason I'm the IFPA people's president. I know these things. I know what the people want, but I can't give them what they wanted. Do you know years ago I asked Josh how much would it be to buy the IFPA? I considered it. And he said it's not for sale. Not for sale. But it's still the best thing we've got. I'm not saying that, I mean, listen, every sport or hobby has its flaws. Nothing is perfect. And I just ran a tournament in Edmonton for the first time ever, the Canadian National Championships. You've had them for years in Australia. And, you know, we looked at how many people are playing pinball and Canada has the second most next to the United States in the world. Never had our own national championship, so we did it. And, you know, a schedule came out and was it perfect? No. But, you know, a bunch of us got together, provincial directors, women's provincial directors. This is what we think is the best schedule. We're guessing because we don't have any data. We don't know because we've never run it before. And if we were to poll people, oh, what would you like differently for the schedule? You'd have all kinds of different answers. You're never going to please everyone. So you do the best you can. And that's what Josh does. But he cares more about what he wants to do. Well, the dollar, for example. So many people did not want the dollar to happen, and Josh was like, no, I think we're going to do it. No, you don't get as much resistance. He was right. When's it going to get increased to $2? I don't know. Who knows? So, I think after we recorded last episode, but by the time the episode came out, it already happened, but I... Two weeks ago? Two weeks ago, I played in the Victorian State Champs. I'm pretty sure we haven't talked about this, but I ranked pretty... I didn't play too much Pimball last year. Luckily I had one very good 46 Whopper result that pushed me up to I think 11th or so. But I played in the State Champs which is a knockout. The top 6 get invited to Nationals. I definitely wouldn't. There's other spots that get filled just from having a raw amount of Whoppers. I was so far down the list that I would have to come 6th. And I assumed I'd be, said I'd be very happy if I survived the first round and got knocked out in the top 16. I somehow survived the first round, Jeff, survived the second round, the third round. Very high intensity games, Jeff, where, I'm not sure if you saw my Instagram post, but my, I have a fitness watch called the Whoop. It tracks, if you have at least half an hour of elevated heart rate, it pops up on my phone and says like, hey, I've detected some exercise. What did you do? And it knows if I've been playing basketball or at the gym, it recognizes certain hand movements, but if I ever get it for pinball, which is very, very rare, it just has a question mark. It's like, please, please identify what this is, because you weren't doing anything that we can recognize. Please immediately put on some clothes and go to the hospital. I was watching Wuthering Heights naked in the cinema. Yeah, I made it to the top two, Jeff. Fucking A. On games that I never played before. Which ones? I can't even remember, Jeff. It's embarrassing. I can't remember what games they were. Flash was one of them. No, I can't remember. It's embarrassing. I feel embarrassed because the people that I was playing against have been playing a lot of those games all year. And I think it was actually my advantage to go in blind and not have a crazy strategy for each game. I was just like concentrating on my flipper skills and doing what I knew. But I managed to get to the top two, got absolutely obliterated in the finals by Matt Owen. But I came second, which means I am going to the Australian National Pinball Champs in two weeks. And I'm kind of excited by it because I'm going to treat it the same way. I might come absolutely last, but I'm just excited to, you know, I've qualified the last two years, But I haven gone because of clashes with other events and travel and other important things But this year I can go So the next episode in two weeks I will be talking about all the games that I can remember We'll do it live. Where is it? What city? It's an hour south of Sydney, so it's in New South Wales. Yeah, there's a good Victorian contingency that's going up. Some people are just going up even if they haven't qualified because there's a bunch of side tournaments and things like that. So yeah, it'll be fun. I got a real kick out of competing. I'm a very competitive person, Jeff, but there's a crossover point where I feel like if I'm not having fun competing, then I don't want to compete. Does that make sense? Maybe it doesn't to you because you're a very, very good pinball player, but I feel like when I started pinball, the only way was up, and then I reached a certain point where I was like, well, now other people are getting better, and I don't know how to... Without traveling and playing a stupid amount of pinball, I don't know how to... My goals aren't to reach anything. I think I've reached 300 or so on my IFPA rankings. Well, let's put things into perspective. You said you got a 46 whopper point to put you up to get into the Victorian Champs or whatever it was. Now you're going to the Australian Champs. 46 doesn't even come on my card. I think you need 76 to get on there, but that's a sidebar. Listen, dude, you need to, when you practice these games, I assume there's an hour of practice or maybe a pre-tournament, are you taking notes of, I notice there's a flipper hop there on the left, so you might not want to hit that spinner on the fly, or shit, this shot's earlier than I thought, or oh my god, make sure it doesn't hit the slings because they're, all these kind of things, you know, like, here's a really big one. If a game has a scoop, like think of Funhaus, think of Addams Family. What happens when you don't flip? What happens when you try to live catch? What happens when you dead bounce? These are things that top players do. They make notes of this, or if they don't physically make notes, they certainly keep it to memory. And then when it happens during a game, you're not surprised you're prepared for it. These are really important things, and this has nothing to do with rules knowledge. Yeah, and I think that's what I am better at doing now and I was so bad at doing when I first started playing competitive pinball is I wasn't playing the game, I was playing the machine, sorry, I don't know how to say it properly but I remember I had Kiss at home and I went to play Kiss on location my first game and I just, nothing, the ball didn't go where I wanted it to go, it didn't kick out where I wanted it to kick out and it just threw me off so badly that I scored 8 million or something. I'm like, I never scored less than 50 million. What's going on? And I've gotten so much better at playing the game. And people complain to me all the time about sometimes my games are not level. And yes, my games should be level. My garage is horrible. And I shift my Pinball machines around left to right. And I don't usually adjust. And in my head, it's like, I kind of want a machine to play a little bit differently all the time because I want to play the machine in whatever state it is. Everyone is playing the machine in that state. Does that mean that it shouldn't be level? No, it should be level. I apologize for that. That should be just mandatory. But every Doctor Who ramp is at a different spot of the flipper. It might be a millimeter, but it's different. Every orbit will feed the ball to the top of the sling or right in the middle of the flipper. It depends on the game. And yeah, you have to adjust mid-game or you have to notice those things during practice. And that's a very important skill. I think Steven Bowden was the first one that said it out loud to me. He said that when he... You don't know Pokemon, you idiot. That's the first thing he said out loud to you. Steven Bowden, when we interviewed him on Head to Head ages ago, he was like episode number six or something. Like when he first was like, let's interview people. He said that during Pinball he would go and he would write notes about where when you plunge and you want to plunge lane A is so important in certain pinball machines. That will light the spinner or light the pop bumpers. It's on the same spot of the plunge, roughly the same spot. So look at when you plunge and note down. Look at the top of the rubber, look at the metal ring, look at the triangles that you see. What does a full plunge do? Games like Volley, games like your boner game, Strikes and Spares, you want to hit that B lane so that you can light the spinner. Do you want a 10-point spinner or a 1,000-point spinner? That's a hell of a difference in a game. Now, that being said, I am not a big fan of games that, congratulations, you had a successful plunge, you win, or it's lit. There's a Stern game called Magic, and there's three in-lanes at the top. You're going to get one of them as long as you full plunge. One of them makes the spinner worth $400, the other one makes it worth $1,000, like the middle lane. So that's obviously the better one to do, but you can always go back up. It's kind of like Frontier going back up and you want to get your A, B, C. It's impossible, I find, in that Strikes and Spares Valley game. You can go up the left side and you can go up the right side. It's hard to nudge that ball into the B lane. So that's a game where, my God, the plunges of Oli. How hard is it to get it back up? You know, especially if it's a steep game or the flippers aren't as strong. Tough to do it. The pops usually don't do it for you, but it takes a lot of shots and then you're grinding it out. Yeah, some of the old games you just kind of can't get it up top easily or sometimes it's just not possible. I remember Buccaneer was a game that once it leaves the top pop bumper area, you're kind of screwed. Well, on the machine that I played. Hey Jeff, I just remember one of the games that I played in the Victorian State Champs. You didn't, you were typing, I could hear you typing, you were looking it up. No, I was typing some notes, but Spanish Eyes. Ooh, great game. What a fun game. I mean, that was like the wild cards that people were avoiding and I played it every single round. I was like, alright, let's go. Like, regardless of whether I was down or up, I was like, let's... It's so confusing, Jeff, because you kind of... Well, it's confusing in that usually when a ball goes in between the flippers, you're like, okay, the ball is gone. You nudged it to the pop. Sometimes you don't need to. You just kind of let the machine do its thing and you just pray to the pinball guards and it comes back so many times. And it's like when the machine decides that you no longer can get the ball back, that's it. Which goes against my philosophy on controllable pinball and what I traditionally like, but I don't know. I just had so much fun. The dopamine rush of what's going to happen was fantastic. I like that game a lot too. You don't see a lot of it. And it's got that kind of horseshoe that's worth big, big points. And hopefully the feed comes back to a flipper. Yeah, that's a good game. It still kills me to this day. And I've been doing this for years and years, but I guess it's mainly new players that are doing it. When they're playing what they perceive to be a good player or a top player and that they get to pick a game, they're like, oh, let's choose an EM. Let's pick a luck box. And, you know, just right now, INDISC is going on. Look at all the players that are in the classics. Are they lucky to be at the top? No, they're not, and they're all top-name players, right? Eric Stone was the number one seed going into it. Was he lucky because it was classics, because it was Niem? Nope. Different skill set. Nudging, accuracy, sharpshooting. I totally ignore those comments when I hear people say, old machines are luck boxes. Come on. I mean, maybe Luckbox is a complete exaggeration, but as you said, there's a certain skill set that a lot of good players have with newer games being a lot more controllable and shots and ramps being safe versus, yes, there's a skill in nudging the ball out of Spanish eyes, but the difference between the ball going in and out is millimetres, and I don't think people, or maybe they do, maybe it's a skill that I don't know. Listen, if you're saying I'm going to play an older game because it's a luck game, no, you're wrong. And you might suck. That's right, I said it, you suck. And you know what else sucks, Ryan? The two main characters of Heater Rivalry. Hey, I watched them all. I watched all six episodes. Right after you watched Elvis, Jeff? No, no, that would have been, I would have definitely been switching teams 100%. Did you watch it naked, Jeff? I did not, but so let me just tell you something. Heat of Rivalry. I recommend it. It was good. It's popular. Nova Scotia woman, I think her name's, I forgot her name, Pamela Reed, author. She wrote this book. She wrote a second book. She was trying to write a third book, and sadly she's got, I think it's not going to happen. She's got Parkinson's, so sad to hear that. But anyway, very popular series. There's six episodes. For those that didn't hear our last episode, it's about two rival hockey players. Pick any sport, but they're on opposite teams. They're both like top draft picks. They're always being pitted against each other. And little did everyone know that they were secretly partners, lovers. And they had to hide that, which was very, that's very tragic when, you know, you can't express your love and you can't be who you are and you have to hide it. That was the, you know, that's a story you've heard many, many times and it's tragic every single time. But this show really talked about how difficult it is to come out in sports because a lot of athletes do it after the fact. Certainly I'm speaking more so male-oriented sports. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but in the big four sports in football and basketball and hockey and baseball, it always comes out after the fact. And to me it's tragic that they can't live their lives to their fullest and have to basically live this lie. But anyway, that's what these two characters are doing. They're living a lie. And anyway, the first two episodes, it's a fuckfest 5000. These guys are banging all the time. And I said to Ann, I'm like, okay, I get it. All right. Okay. Enough, enough, enough, enough. And you're not seeing extra hockey sticks on there, if you know what I mean. But there's a lot of ass. And these guys are in great shape. So it's funny enough, every woman I've talked to is like, I fucking love Hated Rivalry. Yeah, I wonder why. I mean, anyway. But what Anne said to me, she goes, you know, why I love the show, and this I took to heart, she said, so often men don't express their love. Heterosexual, homosexual, either way, they don't express it, and it's nice to see two people express their love. Okay, I get it. Anyway, the show's great, and after you're watching the soft porn for the first two, it's a really good story, and they're making a second season. I'm looking forward to it. I enjoyed it. So there. He did Robbery. Check it out. But that's not what I was getting at. I was trying to say sayings that suck and you were trying to be dirty. Come on, Ryan. Get your head out of the gutter. But sayings that suck. And I've been hearing that, you know, I was watching the Beast Games. You ever seen that show, Mr. Beast and all that stuff? Yeah, I've got kids. I watch the Beast Games. Sure, sure. So I'm watching that. And this one guy, this wrestler guy, he said it, honest to God, every third or fourth sentence. Oh, can I? And my son is... Go ahead. No, it's worse than that. And my son and I both looked at each other like, who the fuck says that? At the end of the day. He just kept saying it over and over. Well, at the end of the day, you've got to look in the mirror and see who you are. At the end of the day, it's your family you're looking after. At the end of the day, it's a million dollars on the line. Dude, it's always at the end of the day. Fuck off. It was annoying. But it's a saying I don't think I've ever said. And somehow I know. Somehow, now I'm going to hear it in a fucking AI song at the end of this episode, I'm pretty sure. But the other saying that drives me nuts, and I do hear this a lot, is when people say, if I can be honest with you, shouldn't you always be honest with people? I'm going to be completely honest here. I'm going to be completely honest. Every time someone says that to me, I can't help but telling them, hey, thank you for being honest. And I'm saying it in a totally smart-ass way. It's like, well, why would you not be fucking honest with me? Like, what are we just lying to each other? But I have a habit of doing that. But not at the end of the day. What are you replacing it with, Jeff? What's another way to say? Nothing. It's words. You know what? Nothing. You don't need to say it. Words that just, I'm a big believer in the fewer words, the better. Because we're all going to run out of breath one day. I want to be able to say what I mean near the end. And tell what I really think. There's a person who has many podcasts and does pinball commentary. I'm a man of few words. Listen, you listen to every podcast I do, especially on Pinball Profile. I speak less than every guest, and it's done by design. Every radio show I ever did, the guest always talks more. I'm a better listener than talker. I just get paid to talk. How about when you're interviewing yourself, Jeff? As Gene Simmons. That's the way you skirt around it is just having multiple personalities. Listen, all right, a little behind the curtain here. And Ryan's got clothes on, so don't be scared. For some reason, Ryan said, hey, I want to interview Gene Simmons. I'm like, all right, fine, let's fucking do this. And I had no idea what you were going to say, and there you go. Lest you thought it was really, you know, I'm going to be completely honest with you. At the end of the day, it wasn't Gene Simmons. Thanks for being on. You have a new hobby and we gotta spill the beans on this because we've talked about pinball is never gonna be bigger than ear tugging, slapping. Pick a stupid sport on Ocho. They're dominating viewers compared to what pinball does. And I love pinball. But I think you have a new hobby that also will kick the shit out of pinball. What the fuck are you doing now? What the fuck are they? Yeah, I've got a friend who joined a dodgeball team and at the end of the day she just couldn't be in that team anymore and she decided to side her own team so last week we kind of had tryouts and had this haphazard team of random people just like the movie, the 2004 smash hit dodgeball. Were there wrenches being thrown? There was no wrenches being thrown. I love how much people quote that movie. I haven't been able to tell anyone, hey, I played a round of dodgeball the other day without people saying something funny from the movie, which makes me really happy because there aren't many movies these days that a majority of people can quote from and it just makes them happy saying the word and it's not lame or anything. Maybe it'll become lame. Maybe the wrench thing is the equivalent of like, oh, are you a pinball wizard? Like, shut the fuck up. Maybe if I really get into dodgeball, it'll become annoying, but I don't even know if it's going to continue, but it was wild, Jeff. It was a great time. It's not like what it was in high school. In high school, it was so easy and there was no real strategy. It was just like people like the jocks bullying the nerds. As long as you're on the jock team, it was all good. It was easy to catch the ball. Adults can throw the ball a lot harder than 13-year-old kids, Jeff. Okay, let me be completely honest with you. You just said high school dodgeball. First of all, I love the idea of dodgeball. I have a horror story in dodgeball. Horror story in dodgeball. So my high school teacher in our senior year for phys ed or gym class or whatever you want to call it, she was adamant that physically men and women were the same. I'm going to disagree with that. Scientifically proven with different creatures. There were three of us on that high school team or that high school gym class that played semi-pro baseball and we could throw very hard, 90 miles an hour. And it wasn't like the boys versus the girls, but it was just mixed teams on both sides. And I saw my buddy, Scott Johnson, on the other side. I grabbed the ball and I was going to take his fucking head off. And he's like trying to dodge me left to right and I'm lining up and I'm like, I'm putting everything I've got into this. I throw the fastest pitch I've ever thrown in my life. Ever. He fucking dodged it. And Catherine behind him didn't. This pains me. She's a model, right? Not anymore. I fucking split her nose. Oh no. I know, I'm not trying to be funny here, and I fucking lost my shit on, Mrs. Coates, I'll even call her out, that bitch. I said, we're not the fucking same, this is garbage, this is bullshit, and I fucking, I swore my ass off at her, and I walked out of class. You swore your ass off after smashing the girl in the face, this is your fault. Catherine's a friend of mine, right, and I'm like, I'm crying as I did this. She's obviously crying, and I lost my shit on the teacher, I'm like, This is fucking bullshit. We can share certain things. We can run together. Not fucking physical. Who's got the strongest arm and can kill? Oh, fuck. I just... So, anyway, please tell me it's not co-ed, Dodgeball. You're going to be really upset, Jeff. Fuck you! It is mandatory that there are at least, it's a team of six, there are at least two members that are female on the court at all times. It doesn't matter what the mix is, but there has to be at least two men and two female. The rest of it you can make up. But the balls they're using, Jeff, Dodgeball Association, there is an IFBA equivalent, Jeff, for Dodgeball. I can't remember what it's called, the WD, you know, whatever, association, but the balls are so soft that I got whacked in the face twice and it didn't hurt at all by the other team's best player. Are they like nerf balls in a way? They're kind of half air, half softness. Like if it was a sponge you're throwing in the shape of a ball, different story. It is. Okay, okay. And you're not allowed, there are so many rules, you're not allowed to like squish the ball, like suck the air out and then throw it. No, we were using fucking volleyballs. Yeah, that's when people get hurt. Leather volleyballs that you can get a good grip on and you could just, not only that, guys played water polo. They're used to fucking hauling these things. I haven't, Jeff, I haven't thrown. By the way, I've only told you half the story and I'm not going to tell you the other half. I haven't played dodgeball since. I'll just leave. Tell us. I'm leaving. I'll tell you off the air. Tell us on Patreon, Jeff. If you interested you be on our Patreon It only a month Oh Catherine Beautiful girl Wonderful woman She still alive right She eating out of a tube now Because of Mrs. Coates fucking over the top. What a bitch, Mrs. Coates. That's going in the sun. I lost it. I'm like, please don't. And by the way, Scott, my buddy Scott, 6'4", she easily, like he easily, and she was hiding behind him as she should be. That fucker did a dark, oh. He dodged the wrench, she didn't. Okay, I'm going to tell you the rest of the story, but I'm cutting it out. Okay. I'm going to leave in your reaction. Okay. I didn't hit her in the face, I hit her in the... What the fuck, Jeff? That's worse, isn't it? I think it's funny, but in a very sadistic way. Oh, God, Jeff. Which Ryan heard, which I'm not airing, is there's a happy ending to this story. And she's still modeled. That's all I'll say. I didn't see that coming. Neither did I. Neither did the whole class. Fucking murder scene. Okay, next time I go to a pinball tournament, there's going to be at least ten people who are going to be like, what did Jeff do? Am I allowed to tell them, Jeff? I don't want to see it on social media. You better trust these people. Keep it away from Stacey Bogg. Alright, moving on. Yeah, dodgeball, something to do with pinball machines. I want fucking dodgeball for Pokemons. Just fucking peg those guys. Use that red ball. Red and white ball. Okay, sayings that suck. Done. Dodgeball. Done. What else is on the thing? DPX, shut down. I have no opinions on this. Well, good on American for what they're doing. Right after we aired that episode, because we were like, which way is it going to go? Good luck to them. They announced that deal they have with licensing. Things seem to be going in the right direction. The proof is in the pudding. Is that okay saying, Jeff? I'm going to be honest with you. At the end of the day, it's not what I say. Thanks for being honest. I don't even notice when people say it. It happens so often now. It means they're a regular liar. You're a regular liar. If you say it, you're a regular liar. You're a regular liar. Alright Jeff, is it almost time to call it quits for this two week period? Well, okay, American Pinball, that's a pretty good thing. I gotta say, the DPX thing, selfishly, I really, really, really, really, really wanted to see Raza come out. I know people will bitch and go, oh, just stop, the Papa Dues stuff. I found that game fun. I lost money on that game. I voiced the game. Steven Bowden had great rules on the game. I really wanted to see that. I wish things happened for many reasons differently with Deep Root. I wish they never were so obsessed with the pinball, which was only going to be a nightmare. How were you ever going to replace that? What was going to happen when it was damaged? It's a good idea. It was just too far ahead and didn't work. Don't you remember when Jersey Jack had, you could flip with your phone, you could do the flippers with your phone? Yeah. Why'd they stop doing that? Because it didn't matter. I mean, maybe, actually, it probably did matter too. Like if you only had one arm, that would be a great feature to have, right? Sure, yeah. It's accessible then for other people. So I do like that, but it's done. Pinball was just high tech and things you didn't need. I mean, I like the ideas of it, but if it's going to slow down the progress and it sounds like it was going to, just give me a pinball machine. I'm bummed that's not going to happen. Just give me Pokemon. It must be so strange to people that try and disrupt the industry to see that you can release Pokemon and have a fairly, a pretty safe layout. I don't think anyone's going to say that Pokemon is not a safe layout. And I'm not saying that safe layouts aren't good. I love Deadpool so much. I love playing it so much. And it is a pretty, like there's nothing besides the Katana shot. There's nothing really revolutionary about it. And that, yeah, but it must hurt to try and invent the pin bar and, and then Pokemon comes out and everyone's crazy about it. But that's, that's the hobby. There's people that understand the hobby and they're the ones releasing these machines and making the money. And that's the game that you have to play. I don't claim to understand it. I'm just as confused by the Pokemon craze as someone who's ordered it and loves Pokemon. I don't think the craze should be as much, but let's see where it lands, Jeff. Let's see a year from now. What do people think of Pokemon? Is it just a cycle where a game gets hyped and then there's enough people that have been like, well, it isn't that good. And the only game I feel like that's lived up to the hype is Godzilla. When it came out, everyone's like, this is the best game ever. And according to Pinside and sales figures, it is the best game ever. So I guess you can't say the hype didn't live up there. But I feel like every other game either starts low and then people say, hey, guys, we were wrong. This game is actually good. Or it starts high and then the balance shifts in the other way. I feel like maybe, I would love to be wrong, that Pokemon will be one of the overhyped games and everyone will go crazy over the next one. Ryan, the only question I have for you is when Stern Pinball calls and says, Ryan, we need you to hype Pokemon and we need you to really describe it to people, how are you going to answer that call? Are you going to be there to help sales of Pokemon with your excellent descriptions of why it's exciting? Mate, I was watching the press release things of stuff and no one said anything about the game. That's it. It's always about the IP you're talking about. Well, people said, like, oh, you can do this and you can catch the ball, but there were so many little press videos that were released that were just not nerdy enough for me as a pinball enthusiast. It's very light. It was almost like it was advertised to people that were not pinball people. Guys like Retro Ralph, who I don't know that much about, but he's kind of come into the hobby and he's got a big following and he gets invited. One of my top 10 most intriguing people of 2025. Yeah, I'm so happy that someone like that is in the hobby, but I can't listen to that guy and get excited by anything because I feel like a Pinball elitist compared to him. He's in the hobby for a different reason than I am, and that's fine. I realize that the way of Pinball to grow is to have these people that do it, but I haven't heard anyone talk about Pokemon in a way that excites me. And I am dying to be proven wrong, and I think I will be, but no one so far has excited me with anything that Pokemon does compared to a game like, I hate to say it because it's a game that I didn't order, Harry Potter. Like, compare those games side by side and all Pokemon has going for it is the fact that it has come out from Stern. It is cheaper. The price went down by $500 in Australia. I didn't even get to that, Jeff. The price reverted back to a previous price because of differences in currency. And for the first time I feel like ever, that usually happens and the price holds and then there's a slight price rise from Stern and it gets absorbed. And then it's just so random it feels when the price goes up. The prices went down to a price that Pimball machines were over a year ago. So anyway, I'm talking more than my other hosts. I'm sorry, Jeff. That's the way I do it, man. At the end of the day, it's about saving those words, really. It is. Let's call it a day because we've got to do this again in two weeks and we want to have some topics, right? Look at that. End of the podcast, end of the day. That's it. We're done. Final Round Pinball at gmail.com. If you want to complain to Ryan about his horrible skills of selling Pokemon, the number one IP in the world. If you want to find out more about how you can play co-ed competitive dodgeball. Or if you want to talk about how I can become the IFPA's people's president and make this happen for real. Again, Final Round Pinball at gmail.com. We're on Spotify. When Ryan remembers, we're occasionally on Instagram. We're on Facebook. I like that card, the Pokemon card you put up there. I thought that was fun. Yeah, we're on all the things. Jump on our website, final round. No, no. I talked about the Pokemon card. The Pokemon card you put up with the farting guy. Yeah, I guess it meant nothing to you, Jeff. I think you liked it and you responded to it, but do you understand what's going on? Do you know what a Pokemon card is, Jeff? I know one was sold for 15 million or something stupid like that. Do you know which one it was? Anyway, no. Well, Charizades, which is the final evolution of Charmeleon. Okay. Fine. Great. Awesome. Perfect. Super. Wow. You sold me. I'm in. Hey, you know what? What I'm happy about is it's a win for Stern because I don't know how great last year was and dealers are loving having this. It'll keep the line moving, so good on Stern for this. Good luck with the next ones. It's tough, man, right? Like, what hasn't been done? You've got to redo shit. Did I tell you I played Predator? Fuck, we're almost done. I played Predator. Finally played it. Did you? The glass wasn't off. I didn't stab myself. I saw the weapon you were talking about. Yeah, it's pretty nasty, doesn't it? It's so funny how they hid. That's fine. I only played a game of it. I thought it was easy, but maybe it was set up that way. The version I played was set up so brutal. Well again, 46 points gets on your card. Do you know how many points got on my card the other day, Jeff? There was a massive tournament in Melbourne over four days. I qualified for finals. I couldn't play finals because I had my kids that day, so I forfeit my position. I came 27th and I got 3.78 whoppers and it embarrassingly is on my top 15 card, Jeff. 3.78. You know, people think I'm bragging, but there's a reason why I'm Australia's greatest pinball player, most efficient player of all time. That is a fact that cannot be taken away from me. Anyway, that's it. We'll be back in two weeks, I'm sure of it. I mean, just set your watch. We'll be there. We'll hear all about Ryan at the Australian Championship, not learning rules. Just winging it. Just vying it. Just winging it. Just, yeah, watching his heart rate go up. Anyway, have a good one. See you, buddy. See ya. Jett's never watching Pokemon in his life, Ryan's got a pitch but it's fairly alive, salesman grinned but the pitch is kinda weak, he's closing his eyes and just praying all week, Jett says, isn't it kinda like a junkyard? Jad, Ryan says, I think it might just be John. You sold out, confusion raised, nobody knows how this thing plays. If I'm being honest with you, I don't know what I just agreed to at the end of the day. This table's busted, scratched and confused. If I am being honest with you, I am selling Jep's confused. At the end of the day, nobody wins, but we still lose. Jep watching movies, naked in public, Elvis shaking, he clip moans. Jaffa never knew, nobody knows, just socks on, confidence exposed. Ryan says, focus, let me tell you about Pikachu. Jaffa says, I'm not listening to you. checked out halfway through that rant. At the end of the day, I still don't care and I still don't understand. If I am being honest with you, Pokemon 1, Pikachu, who? At the end of the day, I'm pressing buttons, what a clue. Jumbo, Amazing Race Pinball getting gone, thanks Josh Sharpe, the four nights done, another dream in the silver ball gray, or a war out for the format we could save. Jaffa Upp. The day, we do it again, no defense, if I am being honest with you, this podcast barely survives at the end of the day, yeah, at the end of the day, at the end of the day. Junk! No one's on! Roll the ball! End the show! I have one more question to ask you, Jaff. You can cut this if you want, if it's not a good bit, But I wrote it last time about my trip to Vanuatu. When I was in Vanuatu, Jaff, I went to a remote island and I was getting a little tour from the guy that was doing the speedboat. And we had a bit of time before we checked into our accommodation and he's like, let me show you around and let me try and let's try and find a dugong. Do you know what a dugong is, Jaff? A dugong. D-U-G-O-N-G. It's a weird looking, it kind of looks halfway between a seal and a dolphin with like a bit of a messed up face. It's a mammal. It's very elusive. Has it evolved from another one in a Pokemon kind of a, has it been hit by a red and white ball? It's a slave to Ash. It is, yeah, it's an animal that is not commonly seen. People go hunting for them in the way that they go. Not hunting, like to kill them. They're a protected species and this guy was like a dugong whisperer and he lived there his entire life and they recognized the boat and a dugong came up, swam next to the boat and it was this magical moment. It didn't jump out of the water like the free willy and we didn't take a picture. It wasn't like that. It just swam past and it was a shadow. And I asked the guy about, like, is it endangered? Is it a protected species? And he said, yes. And then I saw a bunch of fishermen with nets. And I said, do they sometimes get caught in the nets? It's like, yeah, rarely, but they do. And I said, what happens when they do? Like, what happens when you accidentally kill something? Like, do you eat it? And he's like, yeah, we don't waste the meat. Like, if it accidentally happens, we have been living with these animals. We're not going to waste it. And I was so curious. I was like gone from seeing this beautiful creature to thinking, what does it taste like? And this guy was not like a tour operator from a first world country that didn't want to talk about it. He was just so honest. He was like, it's the tastiest meat you'll ever taste in your life. So it's not accidental catching it. No, no, no, no, no. Whoopsie. No, they don't. They just say when they do need to do it. Are there any fines if they catch these things? I don't know. You didn't ask. You cared more about how do they taste. You're a prick. I love animals. He says it tastes like the cow of the ocean. It's just really tender meat. So my question to you, Jeff, is would you eat a dugong if it was presented in front of you? It accidentally died. It's a creature that you've never heard about. It's a protected species. You're sitting around a fire. Would you eat a dugong? No. No? Why not? Well, you said I was sitting around a fire because you make it sound like when you first mentioned to me you thought, oh, I'm in a restaurant. If I order it and they run out, they've got to get more. No. I mean, if I'm starving to death, yes, I'd fucking eat you if I had to. And I've seen you naked, so I know where I'd start. Hey-oh, hello. But then I'm hungry and I'm still not full, so oh well. I hadn't, I hadn't, oh god, I just... _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v5)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-06-06 | Item ID: a2cdbe63-3fe5-4772-a983-37592cf1d4f2*