# Episode 76 – Dwight Sullivan **Source:** Head2Head Pinball **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2019-01-14 **Duration:** 181m 8s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://www.head2headpinball.com/2019/01/14/episode-76-dwight-sullivan/ --- ## Analysis Dwight Sullivan, senior game developer at Stern Pinball, discusses the design philosophy and mechanics of The Munsters pinball machine in depth. Sullivan explains his deliberate shift toward simpler, more approachable rules inspired by classic games like Terminator 2, while maintaining depth through risk-reward mechanics. Key features discussed include the no ball save design, the dual-playfield integration with separate flipper buttons, the Zap button mechanic, and the five-character progression system leading to Monster Madness wizard mode with two difficulty levels. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Munsters received universal positive reception across multiple fronts and platforms — _We couldn't be more happy. It seems to be very well received on many, many fronts. And obviously you've been on some podcasts. You've also done a stream with Jack Danger._ - [HIGH] George Gomez repeatedly pushed Sullivan to create a simpler game like Terminator 2 while working on Game of Thrones and Star Wars — _And all the while, all while making Game of Thrones and Star Wars, George is pounding into me. He's like, Dwight, I love Terminator 2. Make another game like Terminator 2._ - [HIGH] Munsters has no ball save from the start and features features moved closer to the start button for accessibility — _Yeah, that's exactly the thinking. So from the beginning, we're like, well, we're going to move all of the features up closer to the start button... And so when you push start, you know, Herman is two shots away. Grandpa on a premium and pro is three shots away_ - [HIGH] The five character modes (Spot, Grandpa, Herman, Raven) are not stackable except for Lily, which is designed as a catch-all scoring mode — _They're not stackable except for Lily. Lily is meant to be stackable. Lily is just everything scores kind of a mode. It's 30 seconds on the clock._ - [HIGH] Monster Madness has two levels with Level 2 being significantly harder and further back in progression — _Level two is very much like level one, but every single mode has a slightly different rule to it, or it's a little bit harder, or the timers are a little bit tighter, and the scoring is all quite a bit higher._ - [HIGH] Munsters features a dual-playfield design where the lower playfield (Grandpa mode) is integrated into main game progression, unlike Game of Thrones — _I was determined to make the lower playfield on Munsters, you know, more popular than, you know, like to improve and do better and learn from my mistakes on Game of Thrones._ - [HIGH] The lower playfield uses separate flipper buttons to enable simultaneous play on both playfields, differentiating it from Family Guy's approach — _Yeah, because I can't play both playfields with the same buttons. And I think most people can't... I think this is a much different experience._ - [HIGH] Sullivan grew up on High Speed which had no ball save and inspired the volatility approach in Munsters — _I mean, you know, this is an experiment, right? This is a risk. But, you know, so I grew up on, like, High Speed. High Speed had no ball save, and it beat the hell out of me until I could run the red light and play multiball._ ### Notable Quotes > "So I made Game of Thrones, and then later I wanted to do more and a bigger game like that, so then I made Star Wars. And all the while, all while making Game of Thrones and Star Wars, George is pounding into me. He's like, Dwight, I love Terminator 2. Make another game like Terminator 2." > — **Dwight Sullivan**, early in interview > _Reveals George Gomez's direct influence on Sullivan's design direction and the inspiration for Munsters' simpler approach_ > "It's just a more simple rule set. Not necessarily mode-based, not necessarily epic and 20 modes and you've got to do this and you've got to do that and it's not a space opera." > — **Dwight Sullivan**, mid-interview > _Defines the core philosophy distinguishing Munsters from Star Wars and other complex modern Stern games_ > "I love extra buttons. I love as much input as I can get. I like giving the player as many choices as I get. So I'm at odds now. I'm making a simpler game, and I want the player to have lots of choices, like lots of decisions." > — **Dwight Sullivan**, mid-interview > _Articulates the design tension Sullivan is resolving through passive mechanics and the Zap button_ > "I just need them to shoot Herman one time and see the hurry-up start. And the hurry-up, like the lights change, the music changes, something else is going on, Herman is talking to you, and somebody else is saying, like Marilyn is saying, hurry up or whatever. I think even if they don't succeed in this hurry-up, then they're a little bit hooked, and they might play another game and then shoot Herman twice and play a multiball. And then I think I've won." > — **Dwight Sullivan**, mid-interview > _Explains the engagement strategy for casual players encountering the machine for the first time_ > "That way, most people will just get it. They don't know. That's fine. They collected the super jackpot, yay. But if you read the line at the bottom of the text while it's sort of showing you the award, you can go like, oh, I can hold down the button, and eventually you'll learn, I think." > — **Dwight Sullivan**, early-mid interview > _Describes the passive discovery mechanic for the zap/hold-to-cancel super jackpot feature_ > "I'm fine with adding an adjustment to use the upper flippers for the lower playfield... as long as an adjustment doesn't make a game worse, I'm always in favor of adding an adjustment." > — **Dwight Sullivan**, mid-interview > _Indicates Sullivan's openness to operator customization and future code adjustments_ > "I think the bad, the only part that you're talking about that the only time when that will happen is when a Premium is out on location. Yeah, I didn't think of that." > — **Dwight Sullivan**, mid-interview > _Acknowledges that the four-button learning curve is primarily a concern for Premium machines on location (not Pro-tier units)_ > "I want people not to turn it on. I mean, you know, this is an experiment, right? This is a risk." > — **Dwight Sullivan**, early-mid interview > _Sullivan's candid statement about his goal to have operators keep ball save disabled despite it being optional_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Dwight Sullivan | person | Senior game developer at Stern Pinball; coded Game of Thrones, Ghostbusters, Star Wars, and Munsters; described as 'greatest pinball coder of 2019' and having worked on machines that sold more units than any other coder since 1990s | | The Munsters | game | Stern Pinball machine released in 2019; based on classic 1960s TV sitcom; features simplified rules, dual playfields, no ball save, Zap button mechanic, and five-character progression to Monster Madness wizard mode | | George Gomez | person | Senior figure at Stern Pinball who repeatedly influenced Sullivan to create a simpler, Terminator 2-inspired game during Game of Thrones and Star Wars development | | John Borg | person | Works with Sullivan at Stern; collaborated on Munsters mechanical design; appears to have design authority on playfield layout decisions | | Jack Danger | person | Pinball designer/media figure who conducted a stream with Sullivan where Munsters Premium rules were outlined | | Keith Elwin | person | Legendary pinball designer cited by Sullivan as exemplary at implementing risk-reward mechanics | | Game of Thrones | game | Previous Stern game designed by Sullivan; featured upper playfield; Sullivan indicates it was less integrated into main progression than Munsters' lower playfield | | Star Wars | game | Recent Stern game coded by Sullivan; described as having complex rule sets with extensive modes and movie multipliers; referenced as opposite design philosophy from Munsters | | Ghostbusters | game | Stern game coded by Sullivan; host mentions having it on location | | Terminator 2 | game | Classic pinball game that inspired Munsters' design philosophy; known for simple rules, multiball focus, and super jackpot mechanics | | Terminator 3 | game | Coded by Steve and Sullivan; used as comparison point for understanding simple vs. complex rule frameworks | | High Speed | game | Classic pinball game with no ball save that influenced Sullivan's design philosophy; Sullivan cites it as formative experience showing value of volatility | | AC/DC | game | Recent Stern game with lower playfield; received mixed-to-negative reception; Sullivan learned from its mistakes when designing Munsters' dual-playfield integration | | Family Guy | game | Stern game with mini-playfield using same buttons for both playfields; contrasted with Munsters' separate flipper button approach | | Head to Head Pinball Podcast | organization | Source of this interview; hosts Martin and Ryan C. conducted the interview with Sullivan | | Stern Pinball | company | Manufacturer where Sullivan works; currently developing and releasing Munsters and other titles | | Tim | person | Internal Stern player who almost never reaches Level 2 Monster Madness, referenced as benchmark for difficulty tuning | | Keith | person | Internal Stern player who almost never reaches Level 2 Monster Madness, referenced as benchmark for difficulty tuning | | Marilyn | game_element | Character voice in Munsters that provides 'hurry up' callouts during Herman mode; part of engagement strategy for new players | | Martin | person | Co-host of Head to Head Pinball Podcast conducting interview with Sullivan | | Ryan C. | person | Co-host of Head to Head Pinball Podcast conducting interview with Sullivan | ### Topics - **Primary:** Munsters game design philosophy and rules framework, Simplicity vs. depth in modern pinball game design, Risk-reward mechanics and decision-making in pinball, Dual-playfield integration and separate flipper button design, No ball save design decision and volatility, Zap button mechanic and passive game progression - **Secondary:** Comparison with previous Stern games (Star Wars, Game of Thrones, AC/DC), Casual player accessibility and on-location gameplay experience, George Gomez's design influence at Stern, Monster Madness wizard mode progression and difficulty scaling ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.82) — Sullivan is enthusiastic about Munsters' reception and design choices; hosts are engaged and appreciative of his design philosophy; conversation is collaborative and exploratory rather than critical. No significant tensions or disagreements emerge, though thoughtful design debates are discussed respectfully. ### Signals - **[community_signal]** Sullivan has participated in multiple podcast appearances and streams (Jack Danger stream) to explain Munsters' design and rules; indicates intentional media outreach strategy (confidence: high) — you've obviously got months of this coming out... you've also done a stream with Jack Danger. And I watched it recently, you were on the premium. - **[competitive_signal]** Sullivan uses internal Stern testers (Tim, Keith) as difficulty benchmarks; Level 2 Monster Madness deliberately positioned as difficult enough that top internal players rarely achieve it (confidence: medium) — So level two Monster Madness is much further back. It's much harder... Tim and Keith almost never get to level two Monster Madness. - **[design_philosophy]** Sullivan explicitly states design challenge of making simple, approachable game while maintaining deep decision-making and player agency; resolves through passive mechanics and multi-layered risk-reward (confidence: high) — I'm at odds now. I'm making a simpler game, and I want the player to have lots of choices, like lots of decisions. So I had to figure out a rule that was going to be mostly passive. - **[design_innovation]** Munsters introduces novel mechanical and interaction design: no ball save from start, separate flipper buttons for dual playfields, Zap button mechanic that charges passively and lights additional jackpots rather than catching shots (confidence: high) — That's never been done before... the Zap button works... this is different. So I made it so that... you could just... hold down the zap button to cancel. - **[design_philosophy]** Dwight Sullivan explicitly shifts from complex, epic rule sets (Game of Thrones, Star Wars) to simpler, more approachable design inspired by classic games like Terminator 2; this represents a deliberate stylistic evolution influenced by George Gomez's advocacy (confidence: high) — George is pounding into me. He's like, Dwight, I love Terminator 2. Make another game like Terminator 2... I want to make a simpler game that kind of returns to the olden days. - **[design_philosophy]** Sullivan explains intentional decision to remove ball save in favor of feature accessibility and volatility; aware this is experimental/risky but deliberate choice inspired by High Speed (confidence: high) — This is a risk. But, you know, so I grew up on, like, High Speed. High Speed had no ball save, and it beat the hell out of me... there's some magic in that. - **[design_philosophy]** Sullivan indicates openness to post-release adjustments based on operator feedback and audit data; has already planned code adjustments for flipper button usage on lower playfield (confidence: high) — I'm fine with adding an adjustment to use the upper flippers for the lower playfield... adding an adjustment to, and it's in the plan, I just haven't gotten around to it yet. - **[competitive_signal]** Sullivan identifies Game of Thrones' upper playfield as not sufficiently integrated into main progression and explicitly designed Munsters' lower playfield differently based on this mistake (confidence: high) — I was determined to make the lower playfield on Munsters, you know, more popular than, you know, like to improve and do better and learn from my mistakes on Game of Thrones. - **[design_innovation]** Munsters' lower playfield with separate flipper buttons designed to enable true simultaneous two-playfield gameplay; differentiated from Family Guy's single-button approach as superior experience (confidence: high) — I think that when you are playing both playfields at the same time, it just adds a whole new element that you are actually feeling that you're playing two tables at the same time because you've got two sets of buttons. - **[competitive_signal]** Sullivan intentionally designs engagement for casual players: first Herman shot triggers hurry-up with audio/visual/voice feedback to hook player into second play; no ball save creates volatility that encourages repeat play (confidence: high) — I just need them to shoot Herman one time and see the hurry-up start... I think even if they don't succeed in this hurry-up, then they're a little bit hooked, and they might play another game. - **[product_strategy]** Munsters explicitly designed in three tiers (Pro/Premium/LE) with strategic feature distribution: lower playfield only on Premium/LE, dual flipper buttons feature exclusive to Premium/LE units (confidence: high) — Grandpa on a premium and pro is three shots away... Well, it's not on the Pro, and the Pro is the most heavily routed option, obviously. Right. Yeah, we get a lot of Premiums on site here as well. - **[product_concern]** Munsters received universal positive reception on multiple fronts; hosts note it's widely accepted as positive and good pinball release, unlike some recent Stern releases with divided reception (confidence: high) — We couldn't be more happy. It seems to be very well received on many, many fronts... you've got certain people that like it and certain people that don't, but it seems to kind of be universally accepted as a positive and good pinball release. --- ## Transcript you're listening to the head to head people podcast find us on facebook email us at head to head people at gmail.com Welcome everybody to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. This is episode 76 and my name's Martin and with me... It's Ryan C. And Marty, our next guest is responsible for writing the code on the biggest games on the market. I think since the 1990s, no other coder has worked on machines that sold more units than this guy. He currently holds the title as the greatest pinball coder of 2019. In fact, he's unrivaled in this category. Ladies and gentlemen, Dwight Sullivan. Hey, how's it going? That's a great interview. That's a great... That's a great interview. We're done. See you later. Thank you. Well done. Introduction. But that is your intro. And, you know, we have been wanting to get you on this show for a long time. And now more than ever because you've obviously got months of this coming out. But for those people that don't know who the hell you are, who are you, Dwight? Okay. Sure. My name is Dwight Sullivan. I'm a senior game developer at Stern Pinball. Senior, that's just because I'm old. That's just, right? Senior means old, right? So I'm a senior game developer at Stern. I've worked on games recently. Let's see, so Game of Thrones, Ghostbusters, Star Wars, and now Munsters, you know, the coolest game of 2019. Yes. You've got to be pretty happy with the initial reception of Munsters. You know, it's not a coin toss, but, you know, some of the more recent CERN ones, you know, you've got certain people that are like it and certain people that don't, but it seems to kind of be universally accepted as a positive and good pinball release. We couldn't be more happy. It seems to be very well received on many, many fronts. And obviously you've been on some podcasts You've also done a stream with Jack Danger And I watched it recently, you were on the premium And you outlined the rules for that For me, Ryan and I often do talk about The Dwight Sullivan coding framework This one seems a little bit different for you Did you go into this wanting to do something different? I did, I did so that's a little bit of a story I like so I love monsters and I think it's apples and oranges to say Star Wars right so I love both of them in fact lately when I play monsters there's like the Star Wars novel that pops up on my shoulder and goes what the hell man you're having fun with this this isn't Star Wars this isn't epic this isn't movie multipliers and crap this is simple 90s, straightforward, feature-based, not mode-based fun. So I'm having trouble reconciling that, but it is very different. So I made Game of Thrones, and then later I wanted to do more and a bigger game like that, so then I made Star Wars. And all the while, all while making Game of Thrones and Star Wars, George is pounding into me. He's like, Dwight, I love T2. Make another game like T2. And so finally, at the beginning of Munsters, I told John, I said, John, I want to make a simpler game that kind of returns to the olden days. What does that mean, though? What does make a game like T2 mean? Because you were involved in T3, right? Or was that not you? Yes. No, no, yes, that was Steve and I. Yeah. So what does T2 mean in your language when George said make T2? Is it just the fact that it's a game with a more simple rule set, or is it something to do with the way the code evolves in the game? It's just a more simple rule set. Not necessarily mode-based, not necessarily epic and 20 modes and you've got to do this and you've got to do that and it's not a space opera. So T2 is very simple. Like you want to start multiball and then you want to get the super jackpot. And when you weren't doing that, you wanted to get payback time, right? And all of that's kind of simple. monsters isn't quite that simple, but it's almost as simple, and it retains a lot of that approachability, easier to learn. Those are what I wanted to do. Yeah, because you've got your five main characters, and you want to kind of complete them to get into the wizard mode, but then wrapped around that, the depth, I guess, is the strategy in how to maximize the score in those five modes, right? It's not necessarily bringing in, you know, five different things together or, you know, diving half an hour into the code to get to that point. It's just, you know, you've built a framework around five simple things. Correct. It's exactly that. It's five simple things. Each one, and they're not stackable except for Lily. Lily is meant to be stackable. Lily is just a everything scores kind of a mode. It's 30 seconds on the clock. And all while she's running, every switch is going to score. but we don't say Switch because most people don't know what a Switch is, so we just say everything. So it's not stackable. You play Spot or you play Grandpa or you play Herman and Raven and you work your way through the five on your way to Monster Mendes. But I also made it so that the five, so that wasn't going to satisfy people. Like today, you know, if it was T2, that would be fine. We'd be done, right? So I also made it so that there's a level one and then there's a level two. And level two is harder. And so the first time you play Monster Madness, you're really sort of only halfway through the game. But getting to the second Monster Madness is a bigger distance. So the first Monster Madness is even less than half. It's closer for everybody to get to. So to get into Monster Madness, do you have to complete an objective in that character? or is it just start it and finish it? No, you just start the mode. So completing Lily 1 is hitting the bank four times, spelling Lily. That completes Lily, and as a bonus for completing Lily, you're one step closer to Monster Mandas, and you get the Lily mode. The Lily mode is sort of a reward for completing Lily. Okay, so for example, like the Herman Monster, you start that multiple, it's just a couple of shots. if you do nothing in that mode, have you then done enough to get into the monster madness? Yeah, for Herman, you have to make two shots. You hit Herman, that starts a hurry up, and then you hit him again and the magnet will grab the ball. And that's right after pushing start. if you fail to hit Herman the second time all other Hermans for the rest of the game will require four shots because it has three little lights in front of it so you have to hit Herman and advance the light four times then it'll start to hurry up and then you have another chance to complete him but then just starting the multiball completes Herman the multiball is the reward but completing him is all you need to advance toward Monster Mendes Okay, and so then I noticed on the stream, you didn't go too much into level two. Is that because you're still sort of fleshing it out, or is it done, you're just now implementing it? No, it's mostly done. Level two is very much like level one, but every single mode has a slightly different rule to it, or it's a little bit harder, or the timers are a little bit tighter, and the scoring is all quite a bit higher. Well, you know, measurably higher. So, for example, Lily level two is in the game, and instead of every switch scoring, every switch builds a value, and then the Lily target collects it. Right, okay. Yeah, cool. So it's almost the same thing, but it's slightly different. Okay, would you compare it to, like, level two missions on Star Trek? Is that, like, something that someone could draw a comparison to? No? No, it's not like that at all. It's much, you know, like the level one modes and the level two modes are very, very similar. It's just, you know, they're going to be tweaked a little bit or have slightly tighter timers. So like Herman, Herman level two, Herman level one starts off with all the jackpots lit and Herman lights them. Herman level two starts off with no jackpots lit, so you have to start hitting Herman right off the bat. Right, okay. Yeah, I got that. But what I like about this as well is that this framework, you can gauge how easy or how difficult people define that, and then you can sort of tweak either the difficulty level, but it also allows you to go level three if you want to. But you know what I mean. I'm not going to make any promises. The game only promises levels one and two. It's in the GUI, right? It's in the user interface. You can see level one and level two and how far you've made it. Um, the plan is all level three and higher is the same as level two. Okay. Okay. But, but, but the scoring will continue to get bigger. That's what I thought. It'll keep, it'll keep, you know, it'll remember that you've done it twice. And however, like if you had a shit, um, second, you know, second multiball or second Herman, you know, and you didn't advance very well, you'll pick up sort of where you left off scoring wise on level three. Okay. I kind of use level three and level four. It's just, just with the same rules. Same rules. Right. But just so that you know, Tim and Keith almost never get to level two Monster Madness. Okay. You know, at work. Yeah, fair enough. So level two Monster Madness is much further back. It's much harder. Okay. One thing I noticed about this rule set, and it certainly is what we love about pinball being the whole risk-reward thing. This, in particular, really is all about risk-reward, particularly when you start talking about the super jackpots and whether to cash them in or not. Again, was it your... Did you have that in your mind to say, I really want to now make this whole risk-reward thing even more visible to people? Yeah, yeah. That's one of my favourite things in all of game design is the rule mechanic of pressure luck. I always like to put in pressure luck mechanics whenever I can. And so it all just sort of fell together. So I'm like, well, I want these super jackpots to stack and I want them worth more, but I don't want any prompting. So like Monsters doesn't ever have, you know, at the beginning of the ball, you're choosing a song or you're choosing what character to play or what house to go for or anything like that. So it all needed to sort of be passive. So it was kind of a brilliant moment when all of a sudden I realized that you could just, you know, I could just, you know, you hold down the zap button to cancel. Otherwise, you're going to get the reward. That way, most people will just get it. They don't know. That's fine. They collected the super jackpot, yay. But if you read the line at the bottom of the text while it's sort of showing you the award, you can go like, oh, I can hold down the button, and eventually you'll learn, I think. So do you think that because you have gone for a simpler rule set, and I would argue against that because I did watch it, and I was still confused by all the rules that are there, but do you think that because you are going for a simpler framework, it kind of releases you to be even more focused on the risk reward element because you are trying to put random things together. The more complicated you make the rule set, it then makes it harder to add the risk reward element. Am I right by saying that? I'm not sure. I don't think so. So like Star Wars, you know, has tons of stuff in it and everywhere I could, I tried to add risk reward, right? So, like, you know, Lightsaber Duel has, you know, like, it's kind of a small timer, right? So you're constantly having to hit that three bank to keep the time going, you know, and so on. So there's lots of, you know, even epic games have lots of risk reward. I'm not sure. I guess what I noticed with Munsters is the risk reward is a lot more obvious to me. Like, you know, when you boost characters, you know, for example, or... I see. And, you know, we get onto the zap as well. That in itself, you know, you're taking your hands off the flippers to push a button. That is pure risk-reward right there. Plus, you've also got the super jackpot. So what I guess I'm saying is that it's not like what I believe with Star Wars where you do have certain events that themselves are risk-reward. this has every layer from each of the characters to the zap to everything has got a risk reward element on top of it you're right I try to add that as much as I can and I think all of the good designers and rule guys do, it's nothing new every game tries to add risk reward wherever they can, Keith Elwin is great at it so you're right so boost goes away at the end of the ball Like if you don't go and utilize your boost, it's gone. If you didn't maximize your zaps when you could, they're gone, you know, and so on. Yeah, and I guess that's what I was saying with this one is that every element that you do, and it is more of an accessible rule set in that, you know, you hit the ramp a number of times, it's going to do something. You hit Herman a number of times, it's going to do something. You hit Lily, exactly that. But you've got all these layers of risk-reward that affect all of that as well. For me, I find that more understandable and obvious, and therefore something that I would want to achieve, because I'd be aware of it. Yeah, I think you're right. I think what you're saying is, since the game is simpler and more approachable and more learnable, each of the parts can have more detail to them, and you'll understand them. That's exactly right. And, you know, I love watching the videos and hearing the coders go through the rules. Again, there was a lot in this, and there's a lot of subtle stuff as well, but it's one of those ones that I particularly like where it's very situational. It's there, it's laid out, you can do all these different things, but as soon as you start combining things, that's when the excitement happens. Right. So, Dwight, no ball save. You said that that was something that you planned from the start. So, I mean, in Deadpool and The Beatles, there's kind of shift the gains of the outlane rubbers on there. I'm guessing it's because you guys did internal testing, and you said, okay, well, it's playing a little bit too long. So, for it to get down to this kind of three-minute magical time for the average player, those outlanes need to go out. So if you decided that it was going to have no ball save from the get-go, do you then, you know, you and John Borg, I guess, have to ensure that the game is a little bit easier in the sense of, you know, ball times? Do you compensate by having that Herman multiball a bit easier to get to? Is that what you're thinking? Yeah, that's exactly the thinking. So from the beginning, we're like, well, we're going to move all of the features up closer to the start button. That's at least the way I think of it. And so when you push start, you know, Herman is two shots away. Grandpa on a premium and pro is three shots away and so on. And so, you know, you're much easier to play with those toys and play with those multiballs. And therefore, you know, we don't need a ball save. I wanted to keep it volatile because I was wanting volatility as well as easier. I was trying to kill two birds with one stone there. Yeah. And you also have like a multiball as well that starts with no ball save, and that isn't super common. Well, I don't even remember the last game that does that. I know a lot of older games do, but... That's Raven that gives you the restart as well. So there's some sort of compensation there, right? Right. And Raven also starts with out-of-ball it. And out-of-ball will kick in a ball save. Yeah, I mean, obviously it's good that you can turn it on, because when I heard about that and when I saw you talking about it, So my immediate thought to me was, okay, that's cool. I'll be able to be fine with that. But to a casual player that goes up for the first time, that flips moments and misses, that can still pose a problem, but you've still got the ability to turn it on, I guess. You do have the ability to turn it on. I want people not to turn it on. I mean, you know, this is an experiment, right? This is a risk. But, you know, so I grew up on, like, high speed. High speed, had no ball save, and it beat the hell out of me until I could run the red light and play multiball. And then I would remember that game, and that game, and I would play game after game after game, and then I would beat it up, and I would kill it. And I had lots of volatility, and I think there's some magic in that. Well, that's another thing that me and Martin always talk about, is that the way that a game is set up when someone first plays it is a really big factor in determining whether or not they like it or not. And if it's super-duper hard, they might walk away and say, oh, screw this game. But if it's too easy and they see too much of the game, they also have almost the same reaction. So I guess it's that balancing act where you've now taken away ball saves, but as I said, you put all these things in to still kind of reward the player and let them think that they're having a good game. Right. I just need them to shoot Herman one time and see the hurry-up start. And the hurry-up, like the lights change, the music changes, something else is going on, Herman is talking to you, and somebody else is saying, like Marilyn is saying, hurry up or whatever. I think even if they don't succeed in this hurry-up, then they're a little bit hooked, and they might play another game and then shoot Herman twice and play a multiball. And then I think I've won. Yeah. Well, I mean, your games are known for kind of being very popular on site. I've got two of them myself coded by you that are on site, and I would have more, but the place already has, like, Ghostbusters and Star Wars, so I can't put them there. But let's talk about the LoL Playfields. Sure. LoL Playfields, I mean, the last time that Stern kind of did it, I guess, was ACDC, I believe. and, you know, to mix reactions, mostly negative in the long run. I mean, people kind of want that premium kind of feel to the demo machine being different than the pro. But I don't know many people that say, I play the songs with the word hell in it because I love that lower play field. So going into it, obviously there's a lot of pressure in, you know, not doing the same thing as ACDC. So how did you approach that? Well, I didn't. So I'm lucky. I don't know anything about ACDC. So I hardly, I don't think I've ever played an ACDC with a lower play field. Don't you work in the service actually? Isn't that like right there? Oh, I do, but the ACDC we had, you know, didn't have the lower play field, right? Because I think, yeah. So, sorry. So to me, though, an extra play field, whether it be lower or upper, is the same thing. It needs to be integrated. And I think, so my last one was Game of Thrones, right? And Game of Thrones also sort of, you know, today people, you know, would rather play the pro. And I think, so I was determined to make the lower play field on Munsters, you know, more popular than, you know, like to improve and do better and learn from my mistakes on Game of Thrones. Well, what do you think the mistake was on the Game of Thrones? I mean, it is large in size, but it does have two full-size clippers, and it doesn't stay up there too long. Do you think about, like, maybe game integration of how... If I did it... Yeah, exactly. If I did it from scratch, from, like, today, you know, so the upper playfield on Game of Thrones would be more integrated to all the different house rules. Yeah. Would be, you know, like the inserts themselves on the upper playfield would, you know, would be more dedicated to the house rules. Okay. So that, you know, like you had to go up there and you had to accomplish something for like three of the houses. Okay. And, yeah, right now, is it just one? Is it just Targaryen? Is that the... Yeah. You probably know more than me on that one. Well, no. I know it's also the extra multiball up there as well. Yeah. I mean, the upper playfield does lots of cool stuff, but you're focused on getting to Hand of the King, at least I am, and it's not in your way to getting to Hand of the King. I think that's part of the problem. Yeah, and so in Monsters, obviously, one of the characters is the grandpa, and you have to go down there, is what you're saying. Yeah. And how do you... So we started flipping that little play field long before we flipped the big one, and it was just awesome. So it was clear that we had to have, like, so right off the bat, it got my gears working, and I'm like, well, we want to integrate this, and we want it so that, so that's why, like, Mystery is on the lower play field. Like, you know, it's like the lower play field is just an extension of the upper play field. It's not extra. It's not special. That was what I was going for in the beginning. And we're always going to have a multi-bowl down there? No. So we were thinking about it, and we weren't sure, because the thing we flipped in the beginning didn't have a multiball, and it was great. But we were playing with it, and eventually it occurred to us that we could do a multiball, and I'm like, well, now we can never put that back in the box. It has to have a multiball, because then you can play multiball on both playfields, and that's going to be tons of fun. And is that where the second set of buttons tend to play? About the same time About the same time We were always going to do playing on both playfields at the same time so that's, to me, that's why you need the second set of playfield buttons Yeah Well, I guess because probably the biggest similarity we've got is Family Guy, right, which has got the ministry playfield where you do play both playfields with the same buttons. Why is it that you want to have a different experience with this? Yeah, because I can't play both playfields with the same buttons. And I think most people can't. Because you've got the double stack, and a lot of people don't even realize there is a double stack. They press the buttons the whole way, and you're always going to flip both right flippers at the same time and both left flippers at the same time. So I think this is a much different experience. and I think it's awesome. I think that when you are playing both playfields at the same time, it just adds a whole new element that you are actually feeling that you're playing two tables at the same time because you've got two sets of buttons. It's going to be really interesting for us to play it and experience it, I guess. We know about it because we're pinball podcasters, so we look at these releases and we know that it has four buttons, so we don't know when to use it, but how do you convey to the average player on site that doesn't really know pinball too much, do you have call-outs in place, like use the other buttons, or what's dictating for them to shift their hand off? So there's a line of text on the screen, and it goes 4, 3, 2, 1, before I kick out the ball below. and for now that's pretty much it. So I didn't explain that very well. So long before you get to Monster Madness, you play Grandpa like at least once and maybe twice. And so you're playing single ball and then maybe multiball down there by itself. So what happens is the ball goes into the exact hole and then the game goes dark. Clearly, we're playing the lower play field. And the screen, the LCD screen says, you know, use lower flipper. Use lower flipper buttons. And that's what we have for now. Would you ever, I mean, if you get audits back from, say, the first month, I'm not sure how it works at CERN, but if there are a considerable amount of people that are getting into that mode and never press that button, would you consider it like an option for operators or something to just tie it to both buttons so you can have them both flipping, or do you say that people just have to learn to use both buttons? No, I like giving options whenever I can. So as long as an adjustment doesn't make a game worse, I'm always in favor of adding an adjustment. So I'm fine with adding an adjustment to, and it's in the plan, I just haven't gotten around to it yet, adding an adjustment to use the upper flippers for the lower playfield. Yeah. It's not for me, and it's not for Marty, and it's not for you as well. It's just sometimes I see people get, like, TIE Fighter hurry up on Star Wars, and they're just not doing anything. And obviously the ball's in play, so it doesn't really affect the game too much. Right. So I guess when they keep on flipping and nothing happens, they'll probably look at the screen and realize what they're doing wrong, right? Right. Well, I'm thinking that everyone that bought, you know, an LE or premium knows that there's four flipper buttons and what they're for. and they will help communicate that to whoever. Now, if they're operating it, the game has lots of good curb appeal. That was another part of the reason why we wanted the extra buttons because I think the extra buttons make you walk up and go, oh, what the hell is that? I want to go check that out. Last time I remember that, seeing that, that was kind of fun. So I think the bad, the only part that you're talking about that the only time when that will happen is when a premium is out on location. Yeah, I didn't think of that. Yeah, it's not on the Pro, and the Pro is the most heavily routed option, obviously. Right. Yeah, we get a lot of premiums on site here as well, right? But speaking of buttons, we talked about it briefly before. We'd love for you to explain the Zap button. Okay, sure. So the Zap button is another... So I love extra buttons. I love as much input as I can get. I like giving the player as many choices as I get. So I'm at odds now. I'm making a simpler game, and I want the player to have lots of choices, like lots of decisions. So I had to figure out a rule that was going to be mostly passive. And so this is the way Zap Button works. Anytime you hit one of the little mini targets, the Zap Button is going to blink sort of an electric blue, right, because it's a zap blue or whatever. and if you hit it while it's blinking, you'll charge your Zap Meter. And that's all you have to do. That's all you have to remember is charge your Zap Meter. The game will take care of the rest. Later in the game, if your Zap Meter is charged, when you shoot a jackpot, it will give you that jackpot and you'll collect it like a Herman jackpot or whatever. And then in its wake, that same jackpot shot will now light electric blue and flash really fast and eat one of your charges. So you charge up your meter ahead of time, and then as you're playing multiball, you'll eat your charges, and of course you can keep charging it while you're playing your multiball as well. So it doesn't give you a jackpot, it just lights an additional jackpot if you have enough staff. Like a wizard. Correct. Yeah, yeah. That's never been done before. Usually the button is for kind of catching in shots that you're not skilled enough to make, but this is, I guess, yeah, just more shots, more shots for you. More jackpots. And then, like everything else in the game, four zap jackpots, light super jackpot. Okay. Okay, so that's an additional jackpot. On the super jackpot thing that we were talking about before, is there a way to check how big your super jackpot is? Because it was creating these kind of awesome moments in the stream with Jack Danger the other day. People kind of like not knowing how big it'll be. Then it was 50 million or so. So is there a way to check how big that is before choosing to press your luck? Well, so you, you know, like if you have a calculator nearby, you can multiply, you can add it up. So every time you shoot the, so it starts off at half a million, Super Jackpot does, half a million. And, well, yeah. For one character, are you saying, for one character? Right, right. So if you have one Super Jackpot and you've done nothing else, and you go in there and you collect it, you'll get half a million points. Yeah. And then, of course, but then it's like so, but if you have two, it's like three, you know, it's like three, you're collecting three of them. And if four is like five and so on, you know, or even more. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but it goes like, you know, like one is worth one, two is worth three, three is worth, you know, like six, something like that. Right? It's exponential. Well, but it comes back down. So, like, four and five are the optimal positions. Okay. You know, because it just got too crazy. So, because I really wanted two to be worth a lot more than just two times, right? So, I made it three. And then three, you know, is probably, maybe three is five. That might make sense. And then four is seven or something like that. But you want to get to a point where people are saying, enough's enough, I've got to cash that in. Yep. Yeah. And then it's still worth more if you had eight or nine, which is very difficult to do. It's still going to be gigantic, but I think it's diminishing returns at some point. Because another thing that happens is, like, if you have Lily's super jackpot lit already, and then you're playing Lily again, you're working your way toward a super jackpot that you can't light because it's already lit. So how many super jackpots, sorry, can you get before, like, you can not cash it in, like, forever kind of thing. Like, you can be at the end of Munster, you know, like the second round, right? But how many can you collect before you get to Munster Madness? Well, you, Munster Madness, so there's ten different ways to light it. Oh, okay. You can't ever do more than nine because of the way it's done. And we can go into that if you want to. But most of the time, like when you get to five or six or seven, you're about as high as you're going to get. It would be really difficult to get the others. And in the meantime, you're passing up super jackpots that you could be getting. Yeah. Do you understand? Yeah. Because if you don't collect the super jackpot and then you light it again, well, then it's still just lit. and you're not going to get two of them. But you're also wanting it to get to a certain stage where people say, right, as you said, low diminishing returns, if I press my luck even more, it's not going to be quite the incremental, so I might as well start going for things like playfield multipliers to then increase the value of what you've got stacked there, right? Yeah, and that far left shot is the hardest shot on the game. I mean, it's not that hard, but it's still, like for me, it's a lot of risk for like if I have so if I have 3 and like 2x going, 2x playful multiplier, I always take it, I'm just like, it's gone, done take it how would you compare it to a shot like say Medieval Madness it's like, you know, that catapult shot on the left, is it easier than that, is it harder than that it's about the same I think it's doable but you've got to really play it a while to really be able to nail it consecutively? I guess. I played Medieval Menace quite a bit back in the day, and I haven't played it in a long time, but I used to make that catapult shot whenever I wanted to, at least in my mind's eye. Are you pretty much given my metaphor is keys to the office, and Dwight, you've now got what the game's going to look like. You now just go out there and do what you want to do, or is it really still a team effort between you and John and whoever else is helping on the coding? It's always a team effort. Even, you know, every game is a team effort on every team. But, I mean, even, but, you know, like the, I don't know. I mean, like, normally the buck stops with me on all things not physical, right? So, you know, like display and rules and scoring and lights and choreography and rules and even where the inserts go and what they say, that's usually, I have tons of say over that. And even on Munsters, I had tons of say, but John and I made a pretty great team. And we collaborated quite a bit on both physical things and rule things and choreography and whatever. So it's both, really. So talking about multipliers on the game, I believe you said on the Dead Swift stream that if you hit a multiplier, it lasts a minute. Is that correct? Was that a minute? I think that's correct. I haven't, I don't, that was the plan, and that's what it probably will be, or it'll be something like that. But I'm not exactly sure what the number is today. I haven't looked at it in a while. Okay. Is that so? So I usually don't revisit something until about now, you know, if it's fielding right. Like, I spend all my days every day tweaking all the things that don't feel right, you know, so... Yeah, for sure. And how easy or difficult, in your mind, are you trying to make playful multipliers? Is that something that you want to make difficult? And is it something that you're conscious? Like, you know, when you said... I can't remember what it is, you know, time after the start button, whatever it is. Is that something that you want really it to be for good players to be able to get? Because there are some games where some of the multipliers are really difficult, some of them are easy. Yeah, that's a great question. I think a play-filled multiplier needs to be risk-reward, so that's why it's almost always on a target. In this case, it's on the kitty target, which isn't very easy to hit, and the ball is in play the whole time. It's a target, so it's coming back at you. But it's right up the middle, and kitty is often lit, so I think everyone's going to get a 2x somewhere in their game if they play for two minutes. So I want everybody to get at least 2x or so But the people that understand the game They're going to dive in and go after that 6x So how do you light kitty? Every area, every major area lights kitty When you complete it So like you hit the four lily targets You hit the lily bank four times And spell lily and that completes Lily and completing an area like Lily does a whole bunch of stuff. If it's level one, it lights Raven, lights Kitty, gives you Lily completed, meaning the light down between the flippers, between the slings, it gives you that light. And then, of course, starts a mode, starts Lily. Okay, so you can't just wail on the Kitty target a hundred times and get six X straight away. You have to complete. Yeah, you have to complete again. Yeah, okay. That's cool. it's kind of new as well video modes you've got video modes in Game of Thrones Star Wars and Ghostbusters is Munster a departure from that or is there a hidden insert somewhere for that yeah we don't I think video modes are confusing I think they're more advanced and Steve and I like video modes and we're in the minority but we still just make people play with them anyway and John I don't think if we came up with a really cool monsters video mode John would have gone for it probably but we didn't and and and I think we you know we pretty much said I think that's that's you know that's more you know that's more you know like well I guess T2 had a video mode didn't it yeah it did so it was a good one yeah yeah so I don't know I think did what creature from back of game had one as well I didn't I didn't work on creature really? yeah oh Ryan I know he gets bashed up in the video mode I think that's where I'm getting confused oh you're right, so you're right I'm the peeping Tom in Creature from the Black Lagoon and Jeff so Mortal Kombat is a big thing at work at the time and Jeff who programmed Creature was way into Mortal Kombat so in Creature from the Black Lagoon you can play that video mode and you can if you do the right thing at the right time I don't even know how to do it but you can knock my head off and see blood spurt out my spine we're going to try that now yeah so as soon as they put that at the bottom of the stairs where we used to test games at Williams you know there was like a line of people waiting to play it I don't understand it okay that was supposed to be funny Jeff I was just looking up the Jeff Johnson is the guy who I thought it was you okay I had a question about creature. I'm just going to cross that one out. Move on from that. I had a question, sorry, about light shows in this game. So the Premium and the LE have the color-changing GI, so to speak, like the green and the white. Does the Pro have that one as well? Correct, it does, yeah. Yeah, okay. It's very important to me to try to put everything that's cool about the premium and LE on the pro, except for the one thing that's going to be different. So in this case, the changing GI had to be on the pro. The spot had to be on the pro. The magnet had to be on the pro. Herman moves on the pro as well as the LE and premium. For sure. Now, you know, in some games, you know, obviously you want to excite the player when they're doing something exciting. And, you know, the best way to demonstrate that, I guess, is with some feedback, either audio, you know, visual with the lights or a shaker motor. The light show on Munsters, I'm guessing that was especially fun to work on because you're dealing with Grandpa's lab down the bottom. So, you know, I'm watching the Jack Danger stream, and you've got these kind of electric bolts going out through the play field. So what was your approach on that one? Was that fun to work on? Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I love working on light shows. I love, you know, it's a whole process, and I always look forward to it every single time. Like, I always make a big deal out of extra ball. I always try to make a big deal out of Super Jackpot, and I try to get, you know, like, as many lamp effects in the game as I can. And so I love working on Grandpa because it was, well, it's like Zap Jackpot. Zap Jackpot was challenging because Zap Jackpots can happen any time. They don't happen just in a multiball or they can happen, you know, whenever you shoot them. But they can be just during regular main play. So I didn't want to use the regular lights for that. So Zap Jackpot is just the GI lights, you know, which turned out to be great. Well, it is actually something that I did notice on the stream as well, is the use of the light show isn't sort of detracting you from what you need to do. And probably the example I'll give is Star Wars, mainly because I was playing it last night, where some of the light shows do go on for such a long time that you lose connection to what you're doing because you can't necessarily see what you're doing. Like the play feels black, lots of flashes are going on. Was there something that you consciously went into with monsters to make it, you know, still have the visual pizzazz, but not have those moments where you're effectively blinded so you can't see what you're doing? Yeah, so, right, like on Winter is Coming or Lightsaber Duel or Escape from Boba Fett, like those are very, you know, like those are very demanding light-wise. on your eyes. And that's all by design, but I get lots of criticism for that, and I wanted to sort of step away from that a bit on Munsters. So I tried to back off a little bit on that, on Munsters. Ryan's definitely not mentioned that constantly about that. I was going to talk about it later on. He does. You guys throw me under the bus every episode. Constantly, whenever we get the opportunity to. That's exactly right. We'll go into that a little bit later on in the design phase, but is that something that you enjoy yourself? Like, obviously, you're making games that you like. You don't make a game and say, well, I don't like this, but I'm going to put it in there anyway because someone out there likes it. So you obviously enjoy, like, you know, you're known for, like, the fanfare guy. Like, you know, like, no other machine goes off like getaway when you get a super jackpot, and it feels amazing. Thank you. Yes. So, obviously, like, you know, with the newer machines, it's a lot harder, right? Because a jackpot in Getaway is worth, you know, 25 and then it's worth, you know, the slip is worth 50. So, you know, like, the player knows after getting it for the first time that that's how much it's worth. Whereas in these newer games, you know, with the super jackpots and with regular jackpots, you know, when they're increasing and there's a lot of math going on, you don't know exactly how much they're going to be worth. And we asked, I guess, Lyman Sheets the same question, but he didn't, I guess, answer it the way that I think he understood the question completely. Is it hard to create fanfare and the celebration of the player when you don you know I guess there a variable component there of how much the jackpot going to be worth Yep. Yeah, so a great example is like Super Jackpot on Munsters. Super Jackpot on Munsters is the exact same fanfare and show whether you get, you know, half a million points or, you know, or 50 million. Yeah. But the ball is staged at that moment, right? The ball is away from your flippers, right? Right, right. Yes. But, well, no, you could be a multiball. You often play super jackpot during multiball, and you could have other balls going around. But I have two. So, like, super jackpot has two different lamp effects, one for in multiball and one not. If you're not in multiball, it takes over the whole play field, and it's much more blinding. But, you know, you have no ball in play, so I don't care. We, honestly, we don't care If there's no ball in play That's absolutely fine Right, so I look forward to hearing What you guys think of Munsters later And I know you won't hold back About, you know, like Getting a super jackpot during multiball And if it was too blinding or not No, of course we will say that But also, it's different Back then, Ryan, when you're talking about Things like high speed They weren't LEDs back then They're LEDs now, which are a lot brighter. I think, again, what you're asking is, is the fanfare that you get equal to the reward that you're actually getting? Right. That's what he's asking, and no. So sometimes it has to do with what it took. It has to do with what it was. So you're collecting a super jackpot, and to me, I don't really care about the points. I care about, oh, it's a super jackpot. It's going to be big. It's going to be huge. It's just going to be in your face. And, you know, if you didn't make the points big enough, well, that's your problem. It's our fault, Ryan. It's what I'm hearing. We are the blame. I'm going to hear that exact phrase every time I get the triple super on Ghostbusters for $3 million. I'll be like, well, I fucked up. Is the triple super not good? What's wrong with that? Okay, the triple super on... I mean, first of all, there's no jackpots in Ghostbusters. Everything's super, which is fine, but when I think of a super jackpot, I think of this really big payoff and not necessarily something I need to work on to build. It's just this big thing. So, I mean, the first time I played the game and I hit the captive ball up the middle and the Sclero brothers pop up and you hit them twice and then it's like super jackpot is there. I'm like, holy shit, already? You hit it and then, you know, amazing, amazing call-out with like a gap in between every word. triple, super, jackpot! I'm like, yes! And I look up and it's like three million. I'm like, what? Three million? Yeah, that's a bit silly. I agree. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what to do about it. It's just the equivalent. Everyone knows my worst is when, and I think T2 was one of these, where they go, big points. And it's like, that's not big points. That's shitty points. Right. That was always a joke, Williams. Right. Right. That was always a... Everyone echoed that exact same phrase at Williams. Like, that's not big points. Yeah. And it just sort of became kind of like, well, it's called big points. It's what you got. I love it. Okay. So, yeah, as I mentioned before, I guess we'll move on. Unless you have more stuff to say on Munster, but I think we've covered it pretty well. You know, you're known for the guy who does the big payoffs. So, if I'm rallying pinball machines, I usually want them to be your ones. And one is because you get to work on the biggest licenses there are out there. Like, you get just all the awesome games. But two is that when I see people playing games like Ghostbusters, like, I'll complain about silly stuff like, you know, if that triple super jackpot wasn't worth my attention, this, this, and that. But the person who's casually dropping quarters into the game actually loves that stuff. And Ghostbusters sells figures, apparently, or rumors and reports are pretty big. So when you sit down and decide to start coding a game, and we've covered it with Munsters, but let's look at those other three games, Game of Thrones, Star Wars, and Ghostbusters. Who are you thinking of the most? Are you thinking of that casual player? Are you thinking of the home collector? Are you thinking of yourself? Who do you design? It's all of the above. So I try to, you know, so, and we all do this. Every designer, every developer, you know, we all try to make the game for everyone at each step. Like, we sweat over every decision. We, like, every time we put something in a game, we think, well, like, is the tournament player going to like that? You know, is the novice going to like that? And we have arguments. We'll argue for 20 minutes about stupid little rules. And, you know, we sweat over every single thing in trying to please everybody. And we know we can't please everyone. Yeah, it's impossible, right? It's actually impossible to make a game for everyone because the amount of people that enjoy pinball, it just spans across such a wide variety of opinions. But do you feel like you lean more towards... Well, I mean, as I said, your games celebrate players more than probably any other game. So is that because you like to be celebrated when you're playing pinball or is that because you know that people on site like that? The latter, right. You know, when in doubt, yeah, I try to make, I try to please the, you know, the player that's more like me, the player that's not that great. I think that I'm, I always think that I'm making a good game for, you know, for competition. You know, like I want, you know, like this game is going to be in the A-line at Papa, right? And then it just doesn't turn out that way. And I'm not sad, but, you know, while I'm making it, I'm trying to make a game for everybody, but often the tournament player gets left behind a little bit. And then Josh will yell at me, and then I'll change something. But I think it was with Star Wars, I think it was actually a tournament player that had the greatest advantage for that game because it really is what I think is the most complicated rule set that you've got. And it really does lend itself to somebody that really does want to deep dive into the rules. So I think you kind of got it right with Star Wars. Well, thank you. Thank you. And you're a tournament player, so that's cool. I can't stand the game. That's just me. But in my defense, as Ryan will tell you, I am a tournament player, but I am really lazy when it comes to understanding rules. I just need to know how to get into multiball or how to start a mode. When I say lazy I just don't have the attention span Is actually my problem I am actually going to be streaming Star Wars again this week Because this is what I said To a friend of mine who's got it I said I don't like the game And that's not right I should like this game Because I do like the rule sets I do like Steve Ritchie's games I just don't understand it I just need more time with it But that's... You're not to understand, Marty. You understand the game. Like... No, I don't. Start a mode, hit your shots? No, I actually... Play the wizard modes? No, okay. Yeah, but that's fine. But that'll get me 500 mil or might get me a bill. But I'm playing against people that are continually getting 4 billion and above. So I'm missing out on that because... You've got to move the multiplier to where it needs to be. Right. And you need to get it up and high. Right. And so, look, I'm often known as, and I will often admit, that I miss really obvious things. And I'll give you an example. Now, again, I'm a tournament player. It wasn't until the other night that I was playing it that I fully understood how to keep my multipliers up. Are you serious, mate? I'm absolutely serious. It was in, like, the first stream. No, I know. Like, Dwight Slider was in there. He's like, hit the target bank and you increase it and keep it going. So what I'm saying is, I don't have the attention span to retainments. No, no, no, no. It's probably on the rule card as well, Marty. No, it probably is. But it's not, and I wasn't even really listening out for that, you know, when the timer starts sort of about to expire. Yeah, all that kind of stuff. So it's one of those things where, because it is such a vast rule set, for me it's like, oh, shit, Where do I start to really dissect this rule set to understand it in the way I like to understand rules? Yeah, so just don't think of it as vast. Think of it like this. So, like, all of the modes that aren't multiballs, pretend they're all just one, right? And they have one rule. Like, whatever color they are, shoot that color, right? And then all the multiballs, then it's not 19 modes. It's, you know, it's one. and then the multiballs are all slightly different, so you maybe have to learn those. But learn to move the multiplier, learn how to beat lightsaber duel, learn how to beat escape from Boba Fett, and you'll do well, I think. But I don't want to move multipliers. Oh, well, sorry. No, the reason why I'm sort of saying that is that, I mean, obviously, I will move the multipliers as well, but this is what I wanted to say about Star Trek, and it's why I want to play it more. I am a slow game. I love... And look, we can talk about Star Trek till the next five hours if you want to, because it is my favourite game for a reason, and it's because the rules absolutely meet the layout. It absolutely just integrates perfectly. And because I'm a slow player and I like things fast, I don't want to have to stop to think about what I'm actually doing. I just want to do it. And that's why Star Trek works really well. Hit the flashing shot, do this, fine. For Star Wars, that's where it's a little bit different for me because it is a slow game, but it still makes you have to think. Yeah. Star Trek has one of the most brilliant rules in pinball. And I actually think that Lyman thought it up. Star Trek has the, you know, like you shoot a shot and the next shot is worth two X. Is it Lyman? Because it's in all of Lonnie's games. Lonnie has put that in like Aerosmith and I think in the end. All right. So I don't want to start a fight between those two. So I don't know. Maybe I don't know who thought it up. But I think it's a brilliant rule. it's one of the best rules in pinball ever. And so that's, to me, that's, I see what you're saying. I see it's like straightforward. But in Star Wars, I really, really love, and I thought it was just as brilliant to put the control, you know, instead of having to shoot a shot and then the next one is 2X, put the control in the player's hands. And I still love that today, even though, you know, the reaction to it wasn't as good as I thought it would be. Well, it's funny because, as you said, on paper, that's a tournament, a high-level tournament player's dream because you've got control over it. But I guess the high-level people are so into flipper feel and not taking their, you know, that they do stage flipping, which you said you don't like to do. Dwight, you want that second flipper underneath for Munsters. They don't like to lose that flipper feel. So, like, someone like Josh Sharpe, who kind of famously said, like, if you don't like him, then just set him on the three and leave it there. And that's what a lot of, I mean, I don't know. I guess we haven't really. So you need to set it on the three and then leave it there, but then you need to move it to video mode when you're playing video mode, and then you need to move it back. Because you probably don't have three. Ideally, you have it up, you know, you've got the multiplier up pretty high, and it becomes two or one. and now you have to move it either to one of those three shots, depending on what makes sense, the left ramp, the Death Star shot, or the right-hand side of the scoop. Yeah, we've got a really good tournament player here locally, Jordan Trotterway, and he moves it. And my argument to Josh when he was saying that was that, well, play someone like Jordan Trotterway who does move it, and you're going to lose by like 4 billion points because you're leaving points on the table when you're not moving the multiplier. So I guess people will argue about that forever. But when you were designing that game, why did you choose 20x and then, of course, that's doubled? Does that figure mean anything? Do you think that's the upper limit of multipliers? No. So Josh is in my office often early on, and I'm discussing things at a high level with him. And he often tells me, just let it go as high as you want. and so the multiplier was at 60 in the beginning and then I'm like well that's too high that's too high so then I moved it down to 40 and then much much later in the process Keith Elwin is playing and Keith suggests that for tournament players it should be 20 and then so I you know Keith is usually pretty brilliant at things like that and so I changed it to 20 for tournament players okay I've never played So it wasn't the other way around. It was 40, right? It was always 40, and then near the end of the design is when you start thinking about tournament, because you can't do that until you sort of have a mostly complete game, because otherwise you would be modifying things that you're throwing out. Like in the middle of the design, you might have multiballs that don't exist at the end of the design. So why tweak them for tournaments when they're not even going to exist tomorrow? So, okay, so you're saying if it's in tournament settings, it goes up to like 10x, and then if you double that, it's 20? Is that right? No, no, tournament settings is 20. It goes to the maximum of 20. Is that what you're talking about, the maximum? Yeah, because, I mean, normally it goes to 20, but if you hit the force target, it doubles it to 40, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right, you're right. I was talking about doubled. I was talking about double target, correct. Yeah, okay, okay, okay. So then just on Star Wars and the rules, and you sort of said it as well, people were a little bit cool about the rule set when it came out. My question to you as a designer, because you're not a robot, right? You're actually a human. Does that kind of feedback sort of really impact you or do you look at it and say, oh, well, I'll just get on to my next one? How do you react to that kind of feedback? I try to learn from it. So like Monsters doesn't have stuff like that, right? I think, you know, like if it really, really sucked, and I'm sure I've done stuff that sucked in the past. I can't think of any, but I try to, you know, I try not to ever do that again. And if it was great, like I try to put it in another game sometime down the road. So I just learn from it. I'm fine with taking criticism. I mean, sure, I'm impacted. Like, if somebody, you know, hates something I did and I thought it was great, it's going to affect me. But, you know, you've got to move on. You've got to just learn from it. A theme like Munsters, you kind of – people love it. Obviously, it was from their childhood. But, you know, it's being said that Star Wars is almost like a religion, you know. Like, do you feel like it was almost going to be impossible to please a majority of the people with – I mean, obviously, there's a lot of facets to the Pokemon machine. There's the art and layout and, you know. but the rules is a part of it. Do you feel like no matter what you did, there'd still be a majority of people complaining because it is Star Wars and the biggest IP of all time? Absolutely. I think Star Wars is the biggest ticket, and it's going to be a huge disappointment for so many people. So, of course, it leaked. Everyone knew we were doing Star Wars ahead of time. We can't keep any secrets. So for months before the game was coming out, You've got 75 people going, well, it has to have this and it has to have that. And I'm like, Jesus Christ, you're going to be disappointed. So I'm a founding member of the Church of Star Wars. Like there are bigger fans than me. There are people that are very zealots about Star Wars. I'm not a zealot. But I was there in 1977, and I saw Star Wars nine times in the theater before it left the first-run theaters. Um, um, so I'm, I've been a Star Wars fan my whole life and I've, you know, and I made, I tried to make a game that I wanted to make. I tried to make a game that was complex, complex because I love complex. I tried to make a game that was epic. I tried to make a game that was fun and had a little bit for everybody. Um, and you know, that's the way it turned out. Yeah. Well, I think the Game of Thrones was actually in the similar boat because I think when the, when Game of Thrones rules came out, everyone at that time said it was too complicated. But that rule set has aged incredibly well because I think our ability to understand complex rules has now surpassed the complexity of Game of Thrones. So it matured nicely, I think, is what I would say there. And I still think it's one of the best rules in pinball now. And it was, again, one of those ones where it's giving the player a choice to play a game certain different ways. Was that your goal, I guess, with Game of Thrones as well? Yeah, it was. Yeah, so back then, and even today, I like choices. I still love games where you walk up, you push start, and you're given choices to do. I like that Star Wars is like that, Game of Thrones is like that. So it became really, really clear that you walk up and you go, well, I'm going to push start here and choose a house. Which house am I going to be? And then what does that mean? And then that's where it began. So, yeah, and thinking back on it now, like, say, Walking Dead, for example, the Walking Dead pinball machine is a snapshot of where the show had progressed up until when the pinball machine came out. But I guess what you did differently with Game of Thrones is you kind of structured the rules in a way that it didn't matter what kind of happened with the storyline of the show because you choose your house and then you try and get the, you know, you try and rule. Yeah, so kudos for that. That was really smart for you to do that and not kind of have scenes exactly from... No, again, but also at the time, it would have been really hard for you because I remember a lot of feedback at the time was, oh, well, it's not like the TV show. I don't feel like I'm in the TV show. Well, you can't. It's actually really hard to actually do that, particularly a show that is still in production, right? So you've just got to place the player into the universe of Game of Thrones and go, right, play. You've got your houses. They're all fighting against each other. And some of those fights will be clips from the movie. Yes. Part of my background is board games. I love board games. And I design board games as a hobby, and I've even had one produced. So board games are really good at taking a theme and abstracting it. And I sort of lean on that whenever I'm designing pinball machines or rule sets because I think pinball is pretty abstract. It has more replayability, doesn't it, though, if you abstract it, whereas if you say this is the story, then when you get to the end, you might not necessarily want to go around the bend again. Right. This is a question about Game of Thrones and Star Wars kind of together. So I've noticed this, but someone else messaged me today and asked me to ask you this question. Uh-oh. No, it's not a bad one. It's just this weird thing that you might not even have known that it's in there. But when you have multiple running on those two games and you shoot the right orbit during multiple and it's that problem where you've got the shooter lane shooting at a ball and it hits a switch, so you have to disable that switch for a second because you don't want to give someone a free right orbit jackpot. Those two games seem to delay that switch a little bit longer than other games. Is that like... Than like Diamond games? I don't know, just any game. I know Demolition Man does a horrible job of doing it. I never shoot the right orbit on Demolition Man because I know out of the pops it'll give me one for free. But obviously it's going somewhere, right? Marty, how about Star Trek? Does it sort of suspend your right orbit jackpot while you're shooting? Yeah, it does, but it's a lot quicker. So that time, it actually... Yeah, so that's probably something that could improve on those two games. I bet Munsters is just as bad. Okay. I bet Munsters is. No, I've put in too much time. My question was, is that something... Well, no. I mean, there's code that says ignore this switch because I just shot a ball, and the switch closure is probably from the ball that just came from the shooter's switch, shooter groove, and that could probably be tightened up. I agree. Okay. Yeah. And it's one of those hard things as well because that's something that people will look to exploit if they can. That's just one of those things. So in a way, you've got to play it safe. And so everyone says, well, forget the right orbit because I know I'm not going to be guaranteed a jackpot. If you try to tighten that up somewhat, people are going to start, you know, short plunging the ball and trying to double plunge so they can time it quite right. It's really hard for you to get that stuff right. Yeah. And, like, so Munsters has a doubly so. So you can, like, so the Dragula shot is also at a ball. So you shoot the Dragula shot for at a ball. so you're going to get so the ball's going to come from the shooter groove and the Dragula shot pretty much at the same time and if you had a jackpot shot on the right orbit and you had a ball on the left flipper and a ball on the Dragula shot and a new ball's coming out of the shooter groove, are you guys following? Yep. So now those two balls are going to collide at the top of the game. Meanwhile, if you shoot the right orbit, you're going to have like three balls up there at the same time and you deserve a right orbit jackpot but you're going to be screwed. Yeah. So, I mean, is that kind of like, you know, that situational pinball moment, are they the hardest things to code? Is it easier to design, well, not design, maybe like code the framework of what's going on, but is that kind of stuff the hardest to deal with because you're choreographing randomness? Well, they're not that hard because, you know, there's just so many of them. There's dozens of little edge cases where you need to just run them all down one by one and figure out what's best in that situation and fix it and what's best in that situation and fix it. So it's not that they're hard, there's just lots of them. Okay. But then you've also got to, you've got to be constantly observing those pinball machines once you've released them and they're out in the wild and people have got to go. You've got to observe how people are playing them to then do co-divisions, right? Correct. So now we have an in-house tester. We have Mike Benicor. Benicor, yeah. Right. Yeah, he's pretty awesome. He tests games all day long, and he makes notes about things he sees. And then when the game is further along, like it is now, so every single day, somebody is also in there testing games, just because they're tired of working at their desk, and they'll walk over and play a game as a break, and that helps whoever's game they're playing. Like we were playing Deadpool not too long ago, and now they're playing Monsters. So like Keith Elwin and Tim Sexton and so on and others are often in there playing, and they'll come to my office and they'll say, hey, I just saw this or I saw that, and it helps quite a bit. So there's, I mean, because it's pinball, there's like, you know, and there's so many rules, you know, bugs can become a found, like, a year or two years later. And I remember I was watching, I think, Indisc last year, so, like, literally exactly a year ago, and it was Eshka Lefkoff, you know, he's still a teenager, and he was talking about that kind of... It's kind of an exploit. I don't think it's worth, like, crazy amounts, but there's some kind of thing that you can do where you can light the super jackpot... What game are we talking about? Sorry, on Game of Thrones. You can light the super jackpot. If you collect enough gold, you light it that way, if it gives you an option to. From Mystery. Yeah, from Mystery. But there's a series of things you can do, and it just stays lit, so you can just lay on it forever, not in multiple. Right. Stuff like that, do you just say, okay, well, it's not that bad. No, I say that needs to get fixed, and I'm going to fix that as soon as possible. Okay. Yeah, so stuff like that, I have a whole list, and every once in a while, I've worked on Game of Thrones, and it hasn't been released yet because I've got tons to do on it, but I think that might even already be fixed in Game of Thrones. Well, what constitutes a release? If you say you've just been using the latest Game of Thrones software, it's been released, and then that bug comes up, just pretend it takes one hour to fix, right? So you sit there, you fix it. What then needs to happen for it to get released by Stern? Does it need to be a significant amount of code? No, it just needs to, we just don't want to do, you know, like three in one day. So, you know, we, you know, it depends on what else is going on. Like, is there more things coming down the pipe? Is there, you know, is there other things on my list I want to fix? You know, can I combine it into a bigger thing? That's, if I can, then I'll, you know, then it'll wait and it'll get combined. it just depends on is it tested? Has it gone through the beta testers? Do we think it's really fixed? There's stuff like that. Okay, well, you said that you might already have that fixed, so what else on Game of Thrones needs to be done? Game of Thrones? Sure. So, this is a topic that's going to be tough to kind of talk about. I mean, so I'm never going to make a promise, right? So I can't promise you guys or your listeners that there will ever be a Game of Thrones release again. Of course, if there's bugs like that one, you know, I want to fix them as soon as I can. But so there are other things in Game of Thrones that would get fixed. I have beta testers who've helped me quite a bit, and we've, you know, there's a list, and I would, you know, I would knock out the list and fix it as soon as I could. Okay. Well, then, code, right? So one of the big questions that everyone's asking, you know what I'm going to talk about, is Ghostbusters, right? Here it comes. Sure, sure. And obviously we just saw on Student of the Union that it's been delayed. And like, similar question to that, I'm not going to ask you to give us details because that's part of the surprise of releasing new code. but it was sort of said that there's really not that much that is needing to be fixed with Ghostbusters. What's your thoughts on it and where the code is? That's a great question. So you're asking me what I think should be fixed on Ghostbusters? Yeah, without having to tell us what's been fixed because I know you can't. I know it's a difficult question to ask But I guess what I'm sort of really asking is, do you think it's a monumental task ahead of you? No, it's not monumental. It's not. It just needs to – but every – code takes much longer than you think, right? So it's not – even the simplest thing is usually, you know, a few days of work. so Ghostbusters what I would like to see is what I would like to see is I think it's so one of the things I would like to see like one of the highest things on my list isn't, I never see this on other people's list so maybe I'm stupid but I think the game is too messy right, I think that when you're playing it and you're working your way up that center ladder of ghosts that you've collected, too many things are stacking on top of each other, and it's just a big, hot mess. I would like to see super Lupin Supers be never stacked with anything else. Like, so that when you're... Kind of like Tobin the Superguy kind of thing, right? Like, you can't catch it while it's going on. Yeah, I have ideas of how I would fix this, and I have to actually get there and fix it. But, yeah, so I want that to be kind of a moment. Like, Looping Supers originally designed was like it was just you versus the game, and how many times can you, you know, shoot that left ramp over and over and over and over again and just, you know, and just kill it. And that kind of gets messed up when it stacks on top of other things today. Do you think the – sorry, keep on going. Go ahead. Well, I love looping supers as a mode, but the only thing that I don't necessarily like is, as we were talking about before, you have those crazy modes and payoffs in Getaway, but the ball, when you hit the super jackpot, well, actually, no, the ball moves you to the stage because you have another ball going on. My point, I guess, is that the ball travels down to the flipper before you get to see the full animation of super jackpot and how much it's worth. So it's only when you stuff up the shot do you see how much all of those shots are worth and not when you hit it? For me personally, maybe I'm in the minority here, the payoff of how much it's worth adds excitement and nervousness to the shot, which might make me stuff up more, but I like that. Just like in ACDC, for example, I can see the super jackpot value at, you know, most of the time. Every time I hit a shot, it's there down the bottom. And when the cannon, you know, you get that shot, I'm nervous because it's worth 60 million but if you loop it perfectly 10 times you don't know until you finish so is that something that No I completely agree with you I think you're right I think I don't know how to fix it though because I mean every time the ball makes the switch of the left ramp that we should hit you in the face right then with what that meant you know like what did you just do now can you do it again and how many is it how much was it worth how many is it how much was it worth how many is it you know it shouldn't be like that i know but then then then that comes back to what we're talking about a while ago when you're talking about the fanfare because looping supers for me on ghostbusters is the most exciting part of that game and if you can and i and i think i'm in the the high 30s is the highest i've ever been able to do it and I just know that at the end I'm going to get a big payoff. But again, as Ryan said, I don't know until it is. But this is what's really challenging for you is because you want people to have that moment and when you get that ramp and it comes up, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, super jackpot, that feels great. But you kind of also want that score in there as well. But by the time it comes back to the flipper, you've really only got about two seconds of time. So that's the balancing that you've got to do as a coder to have that experience where it's conveying two things. I think you're right. I think we have to wait to fix this until the Ghostbusters vault, and then it'll be on the LCD screen, and we'll have more space on the LCD screen to do both. We could do the dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun, you know, dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun. You know, or, you know, with... Are you doing better art on Ghostbusters instead of that Photoshop art? No. Go start the time. It's awesome. Heidi, we should have to talk about the Munster's LCD screen. I mean, the LCD screen on Munster's has got to be possibly the best implementation of the LCD screen that Stern's done yet because everything is there. You don't really need to hold down the flipper to kind of see your progress or anything because, you know, you've got different segments of the screen, right? So did you have a big role in that for Munster's or was that the LCD team? That's got to be me. yeah that's that's i i i'm that's my design um well so i mean that's all right so that already sounded like it was i took more credit than i really deserve um so so um everything there is what i wanted and and how it all came out kind of laid out it was a team effort with me and the artist okay does that make sense yeah for sure yeah i mean so we we it was it's like the 17th pass, you know, of the GUI. We call it a GUI, but it's more of a user interface than it is, like, you know, graphic. I guess it's a GUI. But, you know, so we started someplace and then we said, okay, now let's add this, now let's add that, now give me another meter here and I'll make it be the combos. Give me another meter here and, oh, we need another meter for the zap button. And, you know, we just kept going and adding and, you know. But it's just laid out really well as well because, I don't know, I mean, a lot of that information is on Star Wars, but because it kind of, pops up for some reason. I don't pay enough attention. It's like something is always there and then the text changes. So Ernie Perez is one of our newer artists. He played a large role in how well it's laid out, but we also learned from Star Wars. So I think Star Wars does the same thing. It has all the information you want, but it is kind of it does sort of pop out and pop in, and there's too much information and I think Monsters is a nice fine balance. Yeah, I think also coupled with what we've said before about being more accessible for rules, it means that when you look at the screen, you know exactly what that zap indicator is because you understand what the zap button does, if that makes sense. Like you understand what a level one Herman thing is and it's got the number one up there on the display because you already know what a level one Herman is. So those two things come together so well. Back to Ghostbusters. Back to Ghostbusters. Yeah, sure. The multiple music in Ghostbusters is amazing, right? But if you're playing a mode, unless I'm playing like old code or something, if you're playing... I'm sorry, what's amazing? The beginning of multiple? The multiple music. Yes, the beginning of multiple was also amazing. but the multiple music, but if you're playing a mode, the mode music takes preference to multiple music. Is that something you kind of consciously made a decision to do, or is that just something that is on your list to fix? No. Why? Is that bad? It's not bad. It's just different. The multiball is kind of pedestrian. It's not really special about the rules of that multiball, and it's, I think, like, you've got one, you know, that's cooler music than the multiball music, right? Isn't it? I hardly ever hear the multiball music because, like, 90% of the time I'm in a mode because, you know, modes kind of, like, piggyback and chain onto each other, right? See, maybe, you know, maybe Ghostbusters shouldn't have stacking. Okay, what else? about the librarian insert at the scoop. Is that something that is on the to-do list, or is that like... Well, now it is. So the library insert was never, ever designed to be like a feature or a mode or its own little rule. It was always supposed to be just an indicator of, hey, shoot here, because you're playing a librarian mode or something. And, you know, it's underused. I agree, but it was never ever meant to be a feature, never meant to be anything much more than it is right now. Okay. But now it's become a thing, you know, so it'll probably get its own little rule. It's a thing. I guess pinball people, if they ever see an insert that doesn't do anything, it's like, you know, that's a massive no-no. Yeah, yeah, like the cities in Kiss, you know, it just drove people crazy. If that was never in there, then people wouldn't have said, I want the city to do something because it wasn't there. But ACDC is awesome like it is, and doesn't it have like Canon inserts that don't do anything? Yeah, yeah. But that's Lyman. Lyman fucking rocks, so... I didn't mean that. I meant that in a good way, right? I mean, I'm a huge fan of Lyman, and yeah, so I think if it's great, it doesn't, you know, people overlook it. Yeah. Are you God, Dwight? Yeah, of course I am. So that was on the instruction card for... So that was never meant to be part of 1.0 either. And so I've always considered Ghostbusters... Ghostbusters is, you know, it's messy, and I wish I could clean that up, and there's some bugs, and I think that... And of course I would love to fix bugs, and I will as soon as I can. and I think that we came, we saw, we kicked his ass that could be a little more polished that's not one of the crazy amounts versus other moments it should be worth more and it should be more interesting are you a god was never but I think Ghostbusters is complete if it wasn't buggy and if it wasn't messy we could call it done but but Are You a God, though, is a wizard mode that I sort of thought about, and I put it on the instruction card, and that was a huge mistake. Mistake, yeah. Because, I mean, we saw Achilles' Ass kind of is the ultimate, I mean, it could be easily the ultimate wizard mode, because you're completing every single mode, right? Right. So what was Are You a God meant to be? completing every mode and maybe getting to 100 ghosts? Or what's the, what was, well, you don't have to explain if you don't plan on putting it in. It didn't have a design. It was just sort of a thought, you know, like, are you a god? And it wasn't, it was just sort of, it wasn't really trolling, but it was just kind of like, you know, it was just kind of like flavor text on the instruction card. You know, like, are you a god? You know, be well at everything, right? And I'm like, well, that, you know, we could do that someday, but, you know, it never happened, and I don't know if it will. Okay. The Scolari Brothers. Yeah, that's my idea. Yeah, no, no, no, I'm just, okay, in general, like, you know, it's almost like a punishment, right? Like, when the Scolari Brothers pop up, you want to get them down, you don't want to be in that mode. Have you ever thought, yeah? Go ahead. Have you ever thought of maybe... Like, the multipliers is obviously a big part of Ghostbusters, and you can get them off... Well, you can get them off of Mystery Awards, you can get them off bashing the left... No? You can't get them off of Mystery? You're right. You're right. That's a great idea. So maybe if you get the two Sawyer brothers down, that maybe qualifies a 2X or something. Well, maybe a countdown to the 2X, so it lights it, but it doesn't last forever. No, it lights it on the target, yeah. Yeah. instead of Super Jackpot. Or something, I don't know. I think that's a good idea. That's probably where I would go if I made the game today. Because targets that are interfaced are great for multiple arms. Yeah, the Scolari brothers were my idea, and I wanted the game to be like, the player is a Ghostbuster, he's like a new kid Ghostbuster, and he's joined the team, and he's battling against ghosts, and I wanted the game to be a fight, and kind of mean and in your face. Right. And John had the same idea, and then I think we made it too mean and too in your face. Well, again, we're talking about the whole risk-reward thing. The risk is there, and we were talking about before with the Super Jack-o'-Pail, the reward is not there, and that's kind of what Ryan's saying there, is if that became a multiplier, which they're not easy to get, then that's a big reward. I agree. It's the hardest thing, I guess, in pinball, and especially for gearing it towards a tournament player because, as you said, you want your games to be in the A-bank at PAPA or whatever. I guess the biggest thing is balancing, right? Like someone, a tournament director, like a high-level one, would want most of the games that get put in there, except for old games. Old games, they seem to throw that out the window. Like old games, they're just fun and you get random points and it doesn't matter. It's entertaining. But for new games, they want it to be balanced and they want the best players to win. And you're right in that Ghostbusters is this chaotic pinball machine where there's so much kind of stuff going on and then you can kind of like blink your eye and you've got this running and that running and the Square Brothers are up and you've got to cross your arms. And to a point that's fun and then just past that point it's too much. Yeah. It depends. I think Ghostbusters is the number one game that I've seen, and I know it's a very small set of data, but the number one game that I've seen talk to people on site, and they're like, oh, yeah, I love this game so much, and I'm buying it as my first demo machine. But I think those people don't get to that point that we just talked about. I think they hear the dun-da-dun-da-da-da, dun-da-dun-da-da-da-da-da. They hear that. They see the art. They see the logo, Ghostbusters. They see ghosts popping up and comments and stuff and they're in love. They don't get to the hot mess that you and I know about. So, okay, so you do want to work on ghostbusters but it's not, I'm guessing, from your background. I've wanted to for a long time. Yeah, it's not up to you. It's up to the page role. Well so let talk on that for a minute So like you know forever you know Stern has been struggling with software And even though you know it extremely important to us to you know release code that complete at launch and to update when needed and fix bugs and whatever. And it took us a long time because we were spread thin and we didn't have enough software guys. And then we were doing spike one and spike two. It took us a long time to get to the point where we are today. George has been working really, really hard at staffing us up. We now have, I think, nine programmers in-house and three out-of-house. So that's why Lonnie finished Guardians of the Galaxy and then knocked out a bunch of stuff that he's been waiting to do forever. I will finish Munsters, and then hopefully I will work on stuff that I've been waiting to do forever. Okay. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, 100%. Everyone thinks, I guess, that as soon as you guys hire more people, like Tim Sexton's here, where's this code and where's that code? But can other people work on your code, or are you the type of person that you don't? It could, but we have so many things going on. And it took us, you know, till the last, you know, like in the last year to kind of get caught up. And like everyone as they're coming off, all the leads as they're coming off a project, you know, they now have time to work on stuff. And I will have time. And I'm hoping to work on stuff. I just, I'm sort of, you know, because of, just because of the way things worked out, I'm kind of at the, at the end of the cycle. You know, because like Lonnie finished Game of the Guardians before I finished Munsters. Okay, yeah, for sure. But that means, like, I mean, obviously there's, like, have you been earmarked for the next game? Like, is, you know, I'm not sure if you can talk about it, but, you know, is there... Well, we're always thinking about what we're doing next, but that's, but we now, the schedules are now built such that there's time, I have time now after Munsters to work on stuff. Awesome. All right. Well, yeah, we look forward to it. any possible update to an older game that comes out. And, of course, Marty, are you getting a Munsters? I am getting a Munsters. I have got confirmed... But you haven't played it yet. See, I've been hearing you say you're getting a Munsters. How do you know, even before you saw it, that you want one? Because I love the thing. Marty's really old. He's really old. I am actually very old. So I was a big fan of the show. Oh. If I'm really honest... The leaked pictures. It's the leaked pictures. It's not the leaked pictures, but it's... I don't want to say too much, but I have had conversations over certain periods of time with some people that have been involved somewhat through a friend or a colleague or whatever, and there was two things that were said to me. It is going to... Well, actually, three things. It's going to be one of the best Borg layouts he's done. it's going to have fantastic art and it's going to have a different rule set. So those three elements, I was like, okay, those three things have now got my interest. Then when I saw some leaked pictures and I saw some of the layout, I went, okay, that is in my mind what I thought I was going to get. So I'm in. Easy. And now what I've seen, absolutely glad I did. And now it's up to Dwight to see how long you hit the game for, Marty. It's all up to Dwight. So, Marty, what flavor are you going to get? I'm getting the limited edition, the LA. Oh, wow, nice. Yeah. So you'll get it soon. Do you want to be a beta tester? Yes, but we won't get our machine for a while, though. Yeah, we don't get it until, like, March, is it March, really? Yeah, probably end of March. Oh, because you live, like, hell and gone from here. Yeah. Oh, my God. We're practicing another planet. But, yeah, if you want to fast-track a machine to me, absolutely go and talk to some people and make it happen. Well, we send... We air-freak games to Australia, but that's just for that show. Sure. So what do you can do? No, I can't. I have no power. Just ask some people and see if you can make it happen. But, yeah, look... Yeah, yeah. I'd love to. Anyway, I just want to mention, this is the hardest part, right? So when you do get it, Marty, and you play it, let me know, and we'll, you know, I might, if I'm still working on code, or I still probably will be, you know, I'll put you on the list to be a beta tester. Yeah, for sure. Excellent. All right, Ryan, so are we ready for my segment? You ready for it? Ah, shit, I thought we were done. No, we've got it. It's not going to take long, but it really, it is a new segment we call, by we, I mean me, that I've only just made it up. This is head-to-head hot seat, and I'm going to ask you 10 questions, Dwight. 10 questions and it's an immediate answer. All right? So you're stealing this from Zach? Not really. Okay. What's my role in this, by the way? Do I just sit here and do my thing? No, you're just a observer. Okay, cool. It's just because these questions you could answer for ages and we'd be going for another couple of hours. but I just want to put you on the hot seat and pressure you to give me an immediate answer. I'll try my best. Okay. What is your favourite pinball machine that you've not been involved in? Monster Bash. Okay, cool. Did you say Monster Bash? Monster Bash. Monster Bash. Monster Bash. Yeah, I'm a huge fan of George and Lyman both. Cool. What is your favourite rule set that you've done? Oh, that's a hard question. See? so as I fly idiot idiot immediate answer go go go go oh Star Wars okay oh so but like so when I play Munster Munsters I love Munsters and I have tons of fun with it and I'm and so then there's a conflict in my head like you can't like Munsters because it's not complicated and hard like Star Wars and you know like a fight a storm goes on in my head while I play Munsters because you know my favorite is Creature from Blackwood going awesome we'll set babies right Fucker What rule set of yours Do you think has got the best Theme integration? Star Trek Next Generation Okay What's the Most your favourite Toy or gimmick That you've coded For? Oh wow Toy or So the lower play field On monsters maybe Yeah but Let's Monsters aside Because that's still coming Monsters aside Yeah All right. So, I'm a new kid out of, you know, like, wet behind the ears and green as can be, and the Canon on T2 is pretty fucking amazing. Yeah, cool. So, yeah. We agree. I think so, too. Yeah. Of the machines that you've done, what rule set would you want to do again? What does that mean again? Like, over or? Yeah, do over. If you look back and you say, if I had my time again, that's the machines. Okay, cool. Yeah. Okay, that's fine. What's your favourite coding moment? Meaning, something that you've coded that just creates the best moment. The moving multipliers on Star Trek, Star Wars. That's not really a moment. I think money means more like a jackpot payout. Oh! Is that what you think? Yeah, it is. I thought you meant the thing that I thought up that I really loved. That's also good. But, yeah. So, I think the getaway super jackpot's pretty great. Okay. Yeah. I think we're now into our seventh question what is your least understood rule set? least understood? yep oh wow, there's so many if you're watching a stream or something and people commonly miss something they should be shooting for so I was I don't know about understood but like so I'm not until I started listening to like you guys and other podcasts I didn't know people hated Champion Pub and I know like do you guys champion pub? I just think it gets boring very quickly and I I think the voice actors were not as good as all the other promo machines that yeah that were around at that time yeah I like it but yeah I don't love it okay so I think so I I don't understand the hate on Champion Pub, and so that's... Does that answer your question? I'm not sure I answered it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's good. What game of yours has the brightest light show? Oh, wow. Isn't... Game of Thrones, right? Yeah, it is. Game of Thrones, premium limited edition. Well done. Winter is Coming. No, I actually don't think it is Winter is Coming. For me, I think it's Blackwater Multiple Start. Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not the start. When you get jackpots, you mean Blackwater Multiple Start. No, when you start it. When you start it. Mine installed pin stadiums on them, and then it was both of our machines, and then I put that on site, and, yeah, I just like to buy things. But that's only on the Pro, though. Yeah, and I think the LA and the Premium have that option. Actually, no, I think the Pro has it as well, where you can actually tone down the intensity of the light show. Is that right, Dwight? You can, yes. Yes. Okay. What deserves a better rating, 24 or Bugs Bunny? I don't deserve any credit for either one of those games. Bugs Bunny, I didn't really do anything on. I mean, I did help, but it was just a tiny little bit, and I don't deserve any of that credit. Are you distancing yourself from Bugs Bunny? No. I mean, I do think it's, you know, it's a game that could have been much better done, but I don't know what your question is. Are you asking me, do you think I, those are my games? Because those aren't, neither one of those are my games. Well, they've got your name associated with them. Yeah, but I didn't work on Lord of the Rings, you know, I didn't, but my name's part of that. Yeah, no, fair enough. No, but I kind of, it's back to my whole, you know, if you could go back in time, like 24 is actually a bit of an underrated game but there's others 24 is a Lyman game so I started 24 and then they laid me off and I had this I had this you know like extremely complicated rule set about a third done and Lyman came in and just threw that all out the window and wrote something vanilla because he had to get it done in two days and that's why 24 is the way it is. So 24 could have been the game. Well, I don't know. I don't know. I had... You were going to work your way through 24 different modes and the clock was going to be ticking and I had all kinds of great ideas. At least, you know, I thought I did at the time. And then we said... 24 Vault Edition, right? Yes. Bring it back. Right, right, right. Yeah, that'll happen. Alright, last question for Head to Head Hot Seat. What's your favourite video mode? Oh, That's a good question. Out of all video modes? Out of all video modes. Okay. All the ones that he's done, Marty? No, all video modes of any kind. Oh, Star Wars, I guess. But that's not fair because it's LCD. So before Star Wars, because, again, I'm a founding member of the Church of Star Wars, so I'm always going to lean that way. But I love the video mode on Star Wars. So the Indiana Jones mine cart thing is pretty great. Yeah, cool. That's good. Awesome. Cool. There you go. All right. Are we done, Marnie? We're done. I like the T2 video mode. It's pretty good, too. I really like the T2 video mode. Yeah. So. And anything that's simple that, you know, again, that's a video mode that's got risk-reward just right in front of you. And you've just got to make those instant decisions on what's going to be the reward. Yeah. I tried to go back there and be something similar with the Ghostbusters one and I didn't pull it off the Ghostbusters which one is silver yeah, Cross the Streams is a great video mode right, right, but that was inspired by T2 right, okay, yeah, I like that yeah, you're going left, then you're going right then you're going left, then you're going right they're coming at you from both sides quick question, I think people like that in Ghostbusters I haven't heard any complaints about it because it's like that dependable part of Ghostbusters where you know if you don't really screw up, you're going to get at least, was it like 60 million or 55 million or something? That other video mode that's in there, I know there's a rule that, like if you're in tournament mode, you get like one correct guess per 10 ghosts or something. Yeah, so if it's just on site, kind of like, you know, you're playing it in a tournament, but it's in tournament mode, is it random? How do I know when to cash out? Are you saying if you're not playing tournament? Yeah. Well, I am playing a tournament, but I don't have the keys, so I can't put it in tournament mode. I guess I should be playing Cross the Streams. Right. I mean, there's only two ways to play the ESP game. Like you know the outcome or you don't. If you know the outcome, you guess the correct number of times and then stop and take the points and go home. and if you don't know the outcome because you're not playing in that deterministic version, then you press your luck as far as you want to and get out when you are tired of pressing your luck. I'm asking you this question, but this would be something that I probably already know. If I hold down the left flip before I start the game and enter competition mode, because I think it's called competition and not tournament mode, will that enable those settings for me, or is that something else? Yeah, that should. That should put you in ESP mode. The ESP mode should do the deterministic thing. Okay. I'm going to force everyone to do that next tournament I run because Ghostbusters is at the place that I run tournaments. So I'm not as up on it as maybe you are. What's more lucrative, the ESP or Cross the Streams? Well, Cross the Streams, if you finish it, is worth the same amount, I think, almost every time, which is like $56 million or so. Okay. whereas you started, like, what, half a million or something on ESP? So to work your way up to, like, 64 million is a decent amount of correct guesses. Right. But, I mean, as I said, if I put it in tournament mode, then I'll know exactly how many I can press my luck for. Yep, yep. Cool. Also, in tournaments, ESP takes too long because people sort of sit there and go, ooh, which one am I going to pick? It's like, oh, fuck, just pick one and move on. Oh, great, great. a random number generated at the end of the press. It's not. It gives you... It's not random. Oh. Okay. Isn't it something to do with the movie? No, it's weighted so that the guesses in the beginning are more likely to be successful than the guesses... And then as you go, it'll work its way toward 50-50. Yeah, but that's still... That's... Yeah. Yeah, I don't mean random every single shot, but there's no, like, the bacon one isn't more than anyone else. It's just a different amount of random each guess. Yep, yep, yep, you're right. Cool. All right, so that, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for joining us so late in your afternoon. Mine looks awesome, and I'm not just saying that because Marty has one. I've got one, I've got one. Yeah, so well done. I want Marty to like it Well, I do And as I said, when I first watched the stream Because I actually don't necessarily like to watch the streams Because when I turn a machine on I want to discover the rules as I go But I figured in three months time There'll be a lot of code revisions till then So I kind of just wanted to get a sense of the framework and I watched probably, I don't know, 45 minutes of you, you know, whenever it was, a couple of days ago. And there was two things that came out of it. One was it's a really good framework. I really like how each of the different characters have their own part of the machine. And that's how you progress it. But the other thing, this is going to sound really cheesy. I was really impressed with how proud you are of your code. Oh, thanks. That's not cheesy. That's great. But that's what came across to me, was you were just like so fucking excited. You're like, I know I've created something really good, and I'm desperate to tell you why this is good. And that's what came across. It's really good. Oh, thanks. Thanks. I am pretty passionate about everything I do. It's almost still a fault, but thanks. I appreciate that. That's all right. Thank you. All right, mate. Thanks, guys. We appreciate it. Later, man. Okay. Bye, mate. so there we go Ryan that was Dwight Sullivan what was your favorite bit? my favorite bit was the part where Josh Sharpe on episode like 40 something came on the show and he said it before that hey if you don't like the multipliers just blah blah blah blah leave them there and don't move them around here's the motherfucker who said make them like right like he's the one that should be copying the shame no not shame but Josh Sharpe Come on Josh man You got such a dance floor there Yeah absolutely So but what did we learn? Dwight's a passionate guy for sure You can't say he's not passionate I just I hope that he gets the opportunity to Work on a game as long as he needs to work on a game Like Other people At other companies And maybe even at Stern Have been allowed The opportunity to do Yeah We also learnt that He's a I guess you could say he's a good sport We sort of brought up some criticisms, and he was either already aware of them, and sort of as he said, he's like, I like to learn from those things, don't make the same mistake, and do something different the second time around. So I'm really pleased he didn't shy away from that stuff, even when I said I wasn't a fan of Star Wars. Yeah, and just remember, if you get a really small super jackpot, it's your fault. Make it bigger. Make it bigger before you cast it in. you don't have to those trucks that's right I also like the fact that they the in joke is big points not being big points like they're doing it well in joke is in like in Williams in the 90s 20 years ago now it's big points right it is yeah 15 million on airspace anyway Munsters Ryan Munsters yeah first of all so you got to mention it during the while I was doing the interview but especially when Litt had an awesome panel discussion with Dwight, Jerry Thompson, John Borg, and Christopher Franchi, and they kind of did a brief on the game, all four of them, the main proponents of the team. So go to the website and have a listen to that. But I would like, since you did a segment, Marty, a new segment, the Head to Head Hot Seat, which is definitely not a rip-off of anything, I would like to do a new segment called Six Fast Thoughts. Now, just to explain, I don't... It's completely not a rip-off of anything. No. And I'll have to explain it, because no one has done this before, but basically it's just my... Instead of talking about monsters for an hour, which is what we usually do when a new game comes out, I just pick, like, six things that I want to concentrate on, and I'll just quickly just go, bam, bam, bam, this is what I'm thinking about, and then you can comment on it, and we can go from there. Cool. So, and then maybe you can, like, insert this thing that says six fast thoughts I've got a robot-y kind of voice. I'm just... Okay. This is Stern's best release in terms of release in ages. When the game came out, we had high-res pictures of all three models. They were streaming the game instantly. There was a promo video that we always wanted to say, hey, how come you don't release that straight away? That was out instantly. Gary, Zach, and Jack Danger were all in costume. It was at CES. of course no one at CES really cared, I'm not sure if you're watching the stream Marty but like, you know, when they took the curtains off the pinball machines the camera was facing towards everyone looking, as if you were the pinball machine, and a bunch of people kind of took photos and they just walked off but once again, the release was so good Marty that people that don't like the Munsters and this game wasn't on their radar, now want the Munsters Sure Is that fair? Am I allowed to add to your thoughts or or is this just you're going to leave it? No. Look, absolutely agreed, and I think that's what the general consensus is. Of course, when we get to the game, it's still going to have the people like it or they don't like the game, but nobody's been really critical of the release. Now, what's really interesting is we all knew it was monsters. They'd sent the manual inside the Primus pinball. There was leaked images. you know, all that kind of stuff. What I kind of like about this is that, you know, Zach Sharp just stuck to the plan. The plan is, don't mention it, because there's this moment where we're going to do a proper launch. And I think had they said anything beforehand, that's what it would have been when everyone was going, you know, they just can't do a launch properly. No, no, no. He said, our plan on this particular day at this time, we're going to do a full launch. And I'm glad they did. There you go. Cool. Fast thought number two, the art package machine on this machine, is an absolute knockout. And the reason why it's more of a knockout than normal is, you can go on Google Deadpool fan art, and there's some really cool fan art. And that doesn't take away anything from what Zombie Yeti's done, but there's assets out there that are good. go and Google Munsters or Munsters fan art or Munsters anything and everything looks shit. It just does. It just does. And I only realized this yesterday when I was like photoshopping that picture and I had to get the picture of the translator. I couldn't get a random picture of the Munsters because there's nothing. Everything just looks crap. So Franchi has done this from scratch. He's colorized it. You've got to remember that the Munsters was not colorized. So it looks good. Look up colorized monsters art or video or anything, and it just looks weird. I will add, though, that Greg Ferrer is an absolute madman because there is the black and white version, which looks amazing, the premium, and the instruction cards on the black and white version. Greg Ferrer was like, okay, this is the black and white version. Let's make it black and white instruction cards. But for the LE, it's still yellow, and it's not a yellow pinball machine. so I'm still the only person in the world that... Yeah, I couldn't give a shit. Like, yellow card for fun. Yes, I know. No one cares. It's just me. It's just... I'm the only person who, like, you know, a $13,650 pinball machine, like, stylized with, like, hey, let's keep the welds on the fucking, you know, the ball returns, because let's make that look, like, really old and monster-like. Like, that's a thought for Stern. That's fucking amazing. But, you know, like, yellow instruction cards, like, yeah, put them on. Yeah, well, it's tradition. It's tradition. So you are the only one that can. And you can put your own cards on, and that's great. Now that we've got great Franchi art, we can do that. Hey, Franchi, send me some custom cards. Thank you. So my thoughts on this are absolutely agree with you. I think that you see the evolution of Franchi as a pinball artist from Batman to Guardians, then Beatles, then this. this is probably the most intense his art is as well. It's still got his flat sort of, you know, cell shading, whatever you want to call it, but it's intricate. And I've had screenshots of both the black and white premium and the Ellie on my phone, and I just stare at these pictures all day. I zoom in. I look at it as a whole. I think he's absolutely nailed it and I'd said previously that the best playfield art that Stern had ever done was Guardians of the Galaxy this is better and are you going to do another fast thought on the black and white versus colour or can I talk about that now? No, you can talk about that now So what's really interesting is that it's really divided people we put a poll up on our Facebook page as well and I think like 35% of people preferred the colour 65% preferred the black and white. I was really worried about the black and white, to be honest, because obviously, you know, there's the whole black and white Twilight Zone that was done, and I thought, oh, maybe they're trying to do that. What I like is that it is black and white, so it's reminiscent of, you know, the movie assets, but I think the colour inserts work so well on a black and white canvas, and the last time that was done so well was Centaur. Yeah, it does make a big difference between making something completely black and white and then leaving certain little, like, you know, the inserts and Herman and, like, you know, the flasher domes and whatever's on there. It draws your eye to it. It makes it more special than kind of like being lost in the art, so to speak. there's one there's only one little bit that I don't like about the art and it's very small and it wouldn't stop me from buying a Timor machine or anything I'm not sure if you're looking at a picture now Marty but that the lily area like on the right the green like fuzz hue whatever it's called like around her that's like I see that first all the time and in black and white it's black and white so it blends in with everything but on the Pro and the LE, it really sticks out to me more than anything else. Maybe that's just the picture on my phone or it could be, yeah, it could be just bigger than normal. Yeah, it could be you. It could be me. It could be one of your crazy things where you just hone in on the most inconspicuous thing and go, oh my God, I cannot believe it. It's like I don't even know what you're talking about and I'm trying to find a picture so I can compare, but I can't remember it. Keep on looking while I talk about fast thought number three. The game looks fast, and it looks like, for some reason, the least clunkiest game I've ever seen. And I'm not sure what angle they had it at. We probably should have asked Dwight if he just had it on the show. But it just looks fast, and Shuff didn't reject. And then when they did reject, it didn't, like, the ball wasn't, you know, it wasn't doing that weird thing where it goes sideways and clunks onto something and then clunks back. It just looks good. And I know a lot of people don't like fan layouts because they've been playing pinball for 40 years and they're really bored. I don't know. I like any layout that is fast and satisfying and the software complements that. And, yeah, I'm looking forward to playing it. Yep. Okay. Nothing on that? No. Okay. Fast forward number four. Fast forward. Fast forward number four. I can't wait to play the software. We just talked about it with Dwight. Simple rule setup. You know, a simple base with a lot of tricks and quirks to it. The light show does look amazing. I think epic light show moments for, like, multiple and stuff have been missing from games like Beatles, Iron Man, and Deadpool. Especially Deadpool, as I said, with the start of Ninja Multiple, will just kind of like start. You know, when I saw the electricity kind of like go through when he was playing Grandpa's Playfield, my eyes kind of lit up and was like, wow, I haven't seen something like that in a while, in a couple of years. Yep, absolutely agree with you. I think that it comes back to what I was sort of trying to say to Dwight as well. I think that this is a really focused machine. he knows what he wants to do because the rules aren't overly complex, that allows you to stay razor focused on what it needs to be and when I watch the stream or when I look at the pictures, I know exactly what I'm going to get and I think he's done the machine justice with the code, it is obviously simpler, what he was saying is obviously getting to level 2 is going to be, well completing level 2 is going to be hard but for me, as I sort of mentioned, particularly in Star Wars, if the rules are too complicated, I just tune out. I'm just not interested. It's just too much. I'm like, no, move it on. With this, I followed along. There was bits where I thought, okay, you're losing me now but I like that because that still gives me some stuff to learn when I play it. Fast thought number five. The Pro, which hasn't been talked about a lot, actually looks amazing. The art package on the side is incredible. The color-changing GI is there. The magnets are there. The spinners are there. Everything is still there except the lower playfield. Only time will tell if the mini playfield is going to be fun or not, and obviously your experience might differ to mine and Marty's and anyone else who's playing. Everything's fun the first time, Marty. The first time you play a series play feels amazing. After 10 games, not so much. Dwight knows this. You know, Dwight, you know. I feel like the only thing that stops any play field from being fun is it needs to feel like you're still playing the same type of pinball as the two flippers at the bottom. I'm not sure what dictates that, but I don't know. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's obviously the thing to talk about is the under play field is a mini play field. And the comparison we've obviously got is Stewie Pinball. And it looks like it plays like Stewie Pinball. And I don't mind Stewie Pinball. I think this has got probably, again, more focused. It's got more focused objectives. Get all the things, hit the bash toy, and then you're in multiball and you've got your countdown. I like that. That's very cool. I guess it's not really fair to say it's like streaking ball, and that's my problem for bringing that up, but it's, I guess, the closest one to it. But you've got a different button for it. You've got multiball. You've got objectives. You do a skill shot, and the ball is down there. It's not like it'll just happen once, and then it's over, like shooting and coming to multiball. So it's already better on paper than any other knee player field stand-up. Yeah. And you know what, we've obviously talked about underplay fields and the fact that a lot of recent ones really haven't been that good. And I guess when you've only got that small space that they use, I guess for Sterns and other machines like Congo that's got that particular same amount of real estate, there's only so much you can do in that small space when you've got proper sized flippers. the only alternative is to go a larger playfield down there like a black hole and a haunted house. They're not going to do that. There's probably not enough room down there with everything else that's going on in the playfields these days. So why not just reduce the size of everything to scale? And that's probably what's going to make it work. Yeah. Fast thought number six. Scott Dinesi. Do you know Scott Dinesi, Marty? Yes. Yeah, Scott Dinesi. So in Team A, he did the hands-free skill shot. He added the soundtrack to the game, the ball lock behind the drop target, and also the ball save countdown mini display for multiball and for main play. With Deadpool and Monsters, Stern has all of those things in their game. It's just a thought. I'm not drawing any conclusions from it. It's just a fast thought, Marty. Okay. It wasn't a great thought. It's a fast thought. I like to have non-great thoughts if they're fast. That's great. Fast thought number 6.1. This was added a little bit later on. There were 500 alleys, Marty. There's not any more. No. There's a bit more now. There's 100 more. 500 plus 100 equals 600. Correct. Yes. So, yeah. And we sort of talked about this because, obviously, we heard this news and we talk about these things during the week. because everybody kept saying, why didn't they make more Iron Maidens because surely there was enough demand. And really there was because we know somebody in the US that put their name down, I think maybe two weeks before it was announced and they missed out. So there's obviously enough for them to sell more. Why more of the Munsters and not more of Iron Maiden? Well, I guess they left money on the table once and maybe they're not willing to leave money on the table twice. It's a hard one because Stern always want to get that alley number per feet in that no one is flipping the game. Like, if they have an alley number that's so small that people are flipping the game, that means they didn't sell it for high enough. Now, I believe the premium is so good that, you know, as evident by kind of the results on our Facebook page, where over 200 people voted. I think that's like the highest it ever had. The premium's good, but it still isn't in black and white. So if someone wants the colour and the little paper, they want everything, they can only get it in the LE. Yep. That's the difference here, right? Yeah, and someone had said, well, why didn't they make maybe, you know, 300 colour LEs and 300 black and white limited editions. Instead of having effectively an indefinite production run of the premiums only in black and white, it sort of does lock people out, I guess, of having a colour version with a lower playfield. But, you know, it's what they do. It's what they do. And, you know, if you're the company yourself, you know, it is very easy to sit back in your chair and say, you know, I want to do this, but it is close to a million dollars of sales that would be there. Like distributors would be calling them and streaming them and saying, hey, you know, like I've got the money. I've got $100,000 for those alleys and there'd be 10 people doing that. Like, you know, confirm it and I'll send the money through. So it's very hard to sit on the other end and say you wouldn't do it. on the other hand, it's a bit of a kick in the guts for people to be sold. You know, it's kind of like the Batman Super Ali thing, I think, was a little bit worse in that it was $30,000 than it was $80,000. So it was almost three times as much. This is like, I'm not going to be fractious, but it is 20% more. It is 20% more. But it's not, I don't know, it's not really that. As you know, I've got an LE. Am I bothered that there's an extra 100 of them? No, God no. That's still limited. 500 to 600 is 20%. It's not much. You're drawing the line there. So what if they said, okay, there's 2,000 LEs? Which they wouldn't do. I still wouldn't care. I still wouldn't care because, I don't know, who does it affect? It affects those people that are putting a dollar value against it. Yes. But, okay, let's talk about this. This might get a bit personal, but you sold your Iron Maiden Alley this week. Sure. And you were able to retain its full value because, let's be honest, it's a limited edition version. If you bought the premium, Marty, you would have lost that on like a grand or two grand or whatever the market is at at the moment. But that is true. Yes. Because you bought the limited edition, it held its value in full, even though you used it and abused it and wiped your hands on it and all the other stuff you do with it and everything. So isn't that what the Ali is? The Ali is something that is bought on the premise that it is a collectible and that it will hold its value. Sure, but if it hadn't held its value and I would have had to copped up a couple of extra thousand dollars to buy a Munsters, I still would have accepted that. I don't think that there's an injustice here because of the value of people machines going up and down based on whether they're limited and the rarity of them. Okay. That stuff doesn't bother me. I don't care about the value of the machine, but if they then produced another limited edition that was slightly different, that's when I would feel a little bit ripped off because I want to have... Like Jesse Jack, is that what you're saying? I'm not saying anything like that, Ryan. Yes. but what I'm saying is I like to have the best version that's available. Okay. Is the best version the most limited, or is the best version the best version? For me, in this particular case, I think it's the best and the best, because I didn't want to buy the black and white. Okay, how about if there was a Star Trek Vault Edition, and it was an actual Vault Edition with, like, enhancements, and Christopher Franchi came in there and he's a massive Klingon nerd. Because look at him, he looks like a massive Trekkie, right? Trekkie for sure. Yes. And he was just like, I'm going to just redo this and it's not going to be like, you know, it's going to be like monsters, but like Star Trek. Would that piss you off? Yes. Yes. Well, thanks. But, as I said, it's about having something that makes me feel special, not about the dollar value associated with it. Do you think that they would ever do that? Because they do have these three extremely talented artists now, Zombie Yeti, Christopher Franchi and Dirty Donnie. And I don't think Dirty Donnie and Zombie Yeti would suit every type of artwork, but I think Christopher Franchi would suit almost every type of artwork. You know, these big titles have done in the past. Here we go. You ready? Ready? Yes. Okay, all of a sudden, there's an announcement from Elk Grove, Stern, blah, blah, blah, you know, makers of pinball machines, finally announced, in conjunction with Kapow Pinball, renowned artist Christopher Franchi does a new limited edition Tron. It's not limited, it can't be limited edition, they wouldn't do that, just a premium edition. But think about, no, I'm just saying, no, the parallel we're drawing is whether somebody would do a machine that's considered of more specialness. And the reason why I say fancy, because fancy right now, he would kill art on Tron. That's his style right there. He's a Tron geek. Just look at his face. He just says Tron geek, right? I've changed my mind. It's not Trekkie. But would that piss you off because you've got an LA Tron? it wouldn't piss me off because I paid a decent price for mine, but if I was one of those people that paid insane amounts for Tron, then yes, because I guess it isn't Stern's fault because you should be buying the machines for the purpose of playing them, but they know that a lot of people that are buying these machines are collectors, right? Like, how many people have you been over their house money to play their games and they don't actually play them? No, okay, you hang around someone, people. I hang around collectors more. Well, I used to. A lot of people don't play their games, Marty. Really? They don't. They unbox them and they sit there and they're like, hey, look, I've got the LE because I've got a lot of money, right? So if there's now a better version, those are the people that are going to be the most pissed off and the brand might lose some loyalty. But at the same time, they're gaining new customers that want drones. No, I know. I don't know, Game of Thrones is a better art, Star Wars is a better art, how many games have a better art? No, but the only reason why I'm saying Tron is because you've got one, so I'm making it personal towards you, and the only thing that's lacking from Tron, as far as most people is concerned, besides rules, but, you know, look at that, is the art. The art is... I think it's okay. I don't actually have a problem with the art at all, but it's been most criticised is the art of Tron because it's pretty bland and it's a bit of a Photoshop job, if that was all line drawn and then intricate sort of in-betweens and all that kind of stuff, you would literally jizz your pants. No. Yeah, I wouldn't. Because art is a talking thing and it's cool when it's sitting there and doing nothing, but I don't... Walking to my pinball room and... How many games do I have that have good art? Like, I think Metallica and that's it. And I don't like Metallica because of the art. I don't like Metallica because of Dirty Donnie. I like Metallica because of the layout and the rules and that's it. The art is just like a little bonus for the other people when I sell the machine. But most people, I'm going to take you out of it then, most people would be up in arms over that because I think that that would make it the ultimate Tron because literally it's this great game that everybody loves. They do love the rules. They love the layout. It's just the art. So if they fixed up the art, you've got this near perfect version of it. And if that was me, I would feel that I've got a subpar version of it. Okay. Well, I'm sure people are listening and they're saying, fuck you guys are talking a lot about this last point. Well, do you know why? Because I've heard, I'm not sure if you've heard this rumor, I not going to say what game it is but apparently it is happening this year So there you go Which one Tron No I not saying what game it is But you're saying that there is a game that's being remade with new art. Ah, I really shouldn't have said that. I've got a can of worms. Well, of course you have. I've heard a rumour, yes. Okay. Whether or not the rumour is true, I mean, I'm the guy who said Monsters will be, you know, the Ali 9500. It wasn't. But yeah. You also said, you know, Beatles was going to be 50,000. It wasn't. Yeah. And also, how many times do we hear about the fact that they're going to redo old machines? Like, that's nothing new. Whether it's true or not, you know. Okay. Podcast number, I've already asked two, Marty? 76. And I don't know what the timestamp is. Just everyone remember this, write it down on a piece of paper. 14th of January. Say Ryan Thief and the Head to Head Podcast. which gives me some kind of like ragging rose on the cool part Ryan C on the 14th of January 2009 said a really vague rumour that nobody understands well done congratulations hey I've heard this rumour as well that they're going to make another machine that's it I'll take one of these after I ask you to finish talking buddy no I don't it's just one of these things we just hear so much it's just hard to don't Anyway, let's move on. Speaking of monsters, let's move on to Iron Maiden. Great game, Arnie. Did you see the link there? Possibly the game of the year. New code. There is new code. 1.06. I literally took out two lines of the readme. First one is added Legacy of the Beast 2019 tour dates. What? Where's that? Written. I think it's on the notes. I think it's on your track screen. Yeah. Flight of Icarus now starts. The first reward you get is now 2 million. It was 1 million. Okay. But the increments after that are now a lot less. I think they were 250k. They're now 150k. So, you know... What? The increments of comboing ramps. Yes. Isn't it like, I have no idea, but isn't it like 2 million, 4 million, 8 million? Doesn't it just almost double each time? No? It doesn't go up by 100. So it says Flight of Icarus changed starting award to 2 million and increment by 150k. Was starting at 1 million and increment by 250k. But, I mean, I watched maybe a minute of the stream today during the Indies finals and he hit a ramp and then he hit a ramp again and it was like 2 and 4 and 8 or something. So I don't know what the scoring is there But anyway Iron Maiden Which found Anyway So that's really the main changes to the code On a score of 1 to 10, Marty What is the chance of you keeping your Iron Maiden, Marty? Well, none Because I sold it Sold it, okay It actually got sold You were there when I was selling it I know I'm just Fading you for Why you would sell The game of the century, Marty Do you really want to know? I know, I just want you to tell everyone. Um, I'm just not connected to it. The theme? The layout? The rules? Just the machine. Okay. Do you know what I reckon I did wrong? Yeah. You bought it without playing it? No. I didn't get the new in-box experience. you got a sullied version I got the dirty version of it where someone had played the crap out of it how many games did I put in that money 200 200 games okay I remember I took a screenshot of it and sent it to you I don't know what the fuck Ryan they were short games don't worry I'm sure they were no I think honestly I do think that that was part of it is that I didn't get that open it up and it's mine, it felt like somebody else's machine. That's good, though, because that is a bullshit, like, notion that, like, a pinball machine is some physical object that you need to form some kind of, like, bond with, like, people that give their cars names and stuff like that. So you're selling it because you don't like playing it. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not going to sell it because I opened it in your inbox, so I've got a fucking weird connection to it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's not that. It's basically the reason is why I can sell it. What? Meaning? Meaning I'm not going to regret selling it. But if you opened it up in your inbox, you would regret selling it? I don't know. I think I would have had a different experience with it. It's a good machine. The other things as well that makes me want to... It's not. No, no, no, it's not. It is. No, no, no, it's because you don't... It had been like... No, because you don't actually have emotion. Because we don't know. You lack emotion, so therefore don't understand and how you can connect with something that, you know, is part of your life. Because it's an inanimate object. It doesn't actually have a personality, Marty. I know I like empathy with human beings as well, but I don't... Yeah, I know. So, you're going to be fucked with an inanimate object then. Exactly. Why would I try and form some kind of connection with something that doesn't have any central nervous system? But you do. But why do you like machines more than others? because I opened up a new inbox explain to me why do you like certain machines more than others yeah ok you got me there because it's the way it makes you feel yeah it's the way you make you feel right now that criteria on how things make people feel is different to different people and one of your criteria is no it's not the reason it's not the reason why it's going, right? It's not. It's going because it pays for Munsters, right? And for me, Munsters is just a great theme. And it's a bit more fun, a bit more frivolous. I think Iron Maiden's just too serious. It is pretty hardcore. It's hardcore. It is. And I am... It's hardcore all the time. That's the thing with Iron Maiden is that you don't get a break because everything is epic. Yep. It's not like it builds up and there's an epic moment because just from the plunge, it's just like loop, loop, loop. You're like, oh, shit, already. It's on for the whole time. Yes. That was a problem that I had with the machine and it's a weird problem to have, but it's kind of like we're talking about with Dwight. How do you know when to feel good if everything is good? Everything is good in Iron Maiden. It's just almost too good in that way. I know this is going to sound so wanky, but I was talking to somebody the other night, because I asked exactly the same question, and I said, this is what's going to sound wanky. So, yes, I have a BMW. We all know that because I drove it into a ditch, right? So that's old news. What's its name, Marty? What do you mean, what's its name? Did you name your car? No, I don't. It's just an inanimate object. Why would I have any feelings towards a car? Because you're not allowed to have feelings towards cars, apparently. You're not allowed to name them. Ryan's rules Six shit rules Sorry is that the new segment Right anyway so the point I was making Is that the car that I've currently got You've been in it It is a phenomenal car It does it is just Oh it's BMW goodness And it's the best Car I've ever owned But it's not my favourite car It's not my favourite car because it does Everything too well yeah I think we've had this conversation before and so therefore it doesn't surprise me because it's too good okay in every way no it's no parallel with the Iron Maiden sorry Keith you're too good you've created a pinball machine that's too good that's why everyone's going to the Iron Maiden does everything too well sometimes it's the flaws the quirks that make it interesting how many people have messaged you Marty asking what you sold it for because three people have messaged me asking what you sold it for because they're thinking of selling their Iron Maiden alleys. Well, get in touch with me, people. Yes. Is the answer. Okay. I won't tell you, though. No. It's one of those weird ones because everyone went in on it and I think it's almost the, like, a bunch of people are selling them now and I think because it's fetching higher than or as much as what it was originally for, people don't feel that thing where, oh, I'm going to take a $2,000 loss on Star Wars, at least. So I might as well keep it. No one's might as well keeping Iron Maiden at the moment because it can go to a better home. Hmm. There you go. All right. What else we got? Total Nuka Annihilation. It's done, Marty. It's done. It's finished. Yep. All 550. It's finished. Asterisk. For now. Until they possibly make it again. And if they do make it again, it will be more expensive. Is that really what's been said? Yeah, that was an official quote from either Charlie or KT. So I'm not sure how much. It might be $1 more. It might be $500 more. I guess it might have something to do with not buying as many parts in quantity since the run might be huge. Yeah, okay. Yeah, fair enough. But mind you, they didn't know that they were going to make $500, so they would never have ordered enough for 500 in the first place. Yeah, but they did receive like 300, 400 orders pretty quickly, so I guess they could say, hey, you know. Anyway. What else, Marnie? What else have you got? Well, there was a big event on over the weekend, and that was Indisc, which I went to last year. So many people have messaged me asking whether I was coming again this year. No, I wasn't. Were you there, mate? No, you weren't there? I wasn't there. I've sort of... Here's what I think. Obviously, you know how much of a flip-flopper I am, so I can completely flip-flop on this, but what I'm thinking is... So it's definitely TPF this year. So TPF and Pinberg. I'm thinking next year is InDisc and Ekpo. Okay. So an alternate between them. What do you reckon? Oh, yeah. Well, I can't do four events, right? And, yeah, and Indisc and TPF are kind of, like, too close together time-wise. But, man, Indisc this year looks, like, freaking cool. Like, the amount of... I mean, everyone says Pimberg is the best, and I haven't been, so this is just me judging from my seat. Does everybody say Pimberg is the best? Almost everyone. Who says that Indisc is the best? My team. Yeah, I don't like long events, and Pimberg has to be long because there's like 800 and something people there. And you need that long to figure out who the best player is. Indies has like, what's it like, four, five, six tournaments in three days. One of them's women's, one of them's kids' seven. Oh, yeah, six. Maine has got A and B, but yeah. A and B, yeah. Yeah, so two classics, like one in each day, and then you've got main that runs over the whole thing, and then you've got a high stake. So it's like if you want to go there and you might go really well in four tournaments, you might go really well in one tournament, you might bomb out of everything. But if I went to Pimberg, Marty, and I finished at the bottom of D or E or whatever it is, I'm just like, man, that was three days of shit. And I'm pretty sure no one says that because everyone's like, I had fun no matter what. No, that is actually true because it is still very social. but yeah, it is definitely different because you have got smaller events so you can hedge your bets on any of them and that's what I liked about Indisc was that even though Pinberg had the Intergalactic on the side really you were playing in the main comp for most of those days so you couldn't really just go off with Indisc and in particular now that they've got the card system the old Puppet format where you have a card and you've got to put up five scores. Brutal. It is brutal, but everyone says it's really the best to be able to deliver the best. Did Steve Babin say that? No, I don't know who said that. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think he said it too well, and he's the kind of guy that you always see him in the finals. So, I mean, with the rule, the card-based system, plus, I mean, Indy's just put the weirdest fucking games in. They always do. Not only do they put, like, I think last year's weird one was Barbed Wire. Yeah. Cubeball Wizard was in this. I didn't actually watch that much of the stream, but I feel like I know more about what a well, you know, common tournament games than I did last year. And I'm still learning. But I kind of looked at the list there and I'm like, holy shit, that's a lot of weird games. Yeah. There was. and that's very much Carl and Jim Belsito. That's what they do and I like that. And, you know, as we sort of said, I tried to completely rip off the in-disc format for... Well, now it's changed, you say? No, I know, because they've gone to the card format. I don't know whether I could do that, but some of the elements were trying to put some machines in the bank that were a little bit quirky that sort of don't really get much of a show. I don't know. I've never played a card-based anything. I don't know. Give it a go, Marty. Maybe you should try it on a smaller scale. It seems like it'd be more fun than just playing machines over and over and over again because those good players will always get in, whereas you'd have to string a whole bunch of good games together. You'd get some wild cards, and the people that play consistently will get in as well. Yeah, I absolutely agree. I think that the advantage that Indisc has is that it's got, I don't know, three or four years ahead of me. So it's been able to build a good reputation and player base. So I think there was, what, like over 200, maybe 250 people putting up scores. 260, I think, was the number I saw somewhere. So they can do that, where it can really attract the hardcore. In Australia, we've never had that system. and I don't know whether we've got that many hardcore players that would want to work in that sort of format. Never know until you try it. On saying that, you know, we've still got Flipout at the end of the year. You know I've been wanting to do another tournament during the year as well. So maybe that's the one for that. Anyway, who won? Well, I'm going to go through a number of them and then I'm going to tell you a couple of funny moments. So Classics 1 was Bob Matthews So well done Bob Classics 2 was Derek Thompson And that was in a tiebreaker That came down to the wire with Louise Wagensonner So that was I so wanted her to win Because that would have easily been the biggest tournament A woman had ever won, surely That's just a guess Sure Jaden Lavinia, I want to say, won the kids So well done Jaden But Louise did actually win the women's tournament So she smashed it this weekend Yeah, she had a really good showing B division was won by Connor Stowe A division Doesn't he come to Australia all the time? Yeah, I think he does Is he one of those people that just goes back and forth? I think so I think I've met Connor And he's just a really nice guy So A division In fourth place was Dominic Caffitch Third was Adam McKinney. Second, Jim Belsito. But young, Colin Urban won A Division. I did check the last results, and Jim Belsito seemed like he was in a position, a very good position. He just had to not come last on Iron Maiden, and Colin Urban had to come first, and all these other things, and that's exactly what happened. So he Belsito'd himself. He did. And then we had the high stakes tournament. And Dave Stewart came fourth. Kaylee George was third. In fact, going into the last game, I think the first two players were like six points each. And then, you know, Kaylee and Dave Stewart were one point each. So then it really came down to who was going to win out of Jason Roderick and Keith Elwin. And Jason won that game. And congratulations to everybody. The reason why I sort of want to segue into this was what was one of the funny moments that happened? I don't know whether you saw this when they were playing Argosy, but somebody, I think they had just finished maybe their third or fourth ball, and somebody just walked up and turned the machine off. I actually saw that clip. I didn't get the reference. I was watching it. Who was that guy? I was watching this live. this live, you know, chat's all happening, and, you know, the commentary is getting all sort of heated up, and oh my God, you know, it's this and this. So it was like this really intense moment. Someone finished their ball, walked away. You just see this person just casually walk up, switch off the machine, and walk away. And I thought to myself, and everyone in chat just went, what the fuck just happened? And the commentators just went, oh my god and do you know what I immediately thought this is how stupid my mind works this is a prank or something yeah I thought it was like a protest thing I thought it was like you know one of those douchebags that jumps up on stage at you know singing competitions and all that kind of stuff I kind of looked at this person and thought it was a stunt a prank or just someone being a dickhead but it actually turns out that you know this was late at night and you know they were turning all the machines off because, you know, they had to shut the venue down. So this person was just going along turning machines off and just saw that this one was still on and went and turned it off. But who was he? Was he part of the crew? Yeah, he was part of the, because this tournament is at the Museum of Pinball in Banning. So it was somebody from the museum that just went over and turned it off. But it was an EM, right? Yeah, it was an EM. So does that mean, like, that things carry over ball to ball? No, they don't. And that's why they said this was the perfect game for that to happen, because... They can see the scores. They can see the scores. Carl went up, took a photo of the scores, and then they just continued with their balls. And you're right, nothing carries over. Every ball starts from scratch. Now, here's an interesting question. If that was someone in that four-player group, would he have been disqualified? Yes. Yes. Oh, if somebody was actually in that, they would have been disqualified. If it was somebody that was in the tournament, they would have been ejected from the whole thing. But this was somebody, it was an innocent mistake. Somebody didn't know, just thought, you know, I've got to turn this machine off because these people keep playing this machine and we've shut down, we've shut the place. Pinball tournaments are such a fragile kind of thing because everyone's pretty orderly, but I was chatting to Luke Marburg about it and he was telling me about this weird situation where, you know, basically, like, if you're not playing in the game, you can do, like, you know, you wouldn't do it because you wouldn't be an asshole, but you can get away with, like, crazy things as long as you're not the four players in that group. Like, you can, like, jump over the machine and you can just get, like, a warning or something, but if you, like, if you're in the game and you distract the player and say, hey, hit multiball or do this or do that, like, you're out, right? But, like, if your friend is in the game, like, you could, You could walk up in the middle of Iron Maiden where he's about to get, like, the super jackpot and turn off the machine. And, like, who's going to stop you? No, no one's going to stop you, but you will be ejected from the event. That's what will happen. People will say, no, sorry, I don't care that you've got a drink in your hand. You're leaving the event. Yeah, I don't know. I guess we have to get Josh Sharpe back on the show and ask him what the craziest stuff has ever happened during a comp. but lucky that wasn't one of them in terms of disrupting what actually was going on. No, I know. Well, another game that was... And one of the interesting games was Excalibur. Did you see anybody playing Excalibur? No, no. It's a Gottlieb game. It's a crazy one. But somebody did a tilt-through, and everyone was like, oh, shit, tilt-through. And then the game reset. Oh, so zero points for him. Yeah, well, he was a... And I think that might have actually been Jason Werdrick in maybe Classics or something. I can't remember what it was. Or maybe that was in A Division, when the main comp were not in high stakes. But yeah, then the whole machine just sort of reset. So that's the crazy stuff happens in these tournaments. And it's up to a tournament director to really know the rules and know, OK, well, here's the ruling I need to make, and here we go. But lucky with Argosy, because take a photo, move it on. Yeah, and Jeff Chills from Pimble Profile did an awesome little interview with Carl D'Python Anghelo and he was kind of saying, well, this should be a major. I think they have enough points now that, you know, in a couple of years it will be a major because 250 plus people, it should have over 70 points, I believe. Yeah, it is, as I said, I love the format. I love the venue that it's at and I love that it is a very social game, a social tournament. so there's also something else I wanted to talk about and this was at Indisc as well we talked about it last year we're going to talk about it now and this is Scorbit Scorbit? What is Scorbit? it's like an automatic module thingamajiggy that uploads the scores so you just have to write them down a thingamajiggy what some would call a doohickey so it's a box It's a box. You don't need to know how it works. It just does its job. Right. It's this magical box called the Scorbatron. Those two. I don't know whether it's a box or whether it's a little, you know, PCB board or something. But anyway, it's the Scorbatron. It's called a Ziggy Biggie. Yeah, it's the magic box that makes it work. And effectively, what this does is you can put this in your machine and it automatically, not only does it automatically, you know, log the scores, the player scores that people are playing, but it can also log things like, I don't know, your audits and your machines or faults. And so this was running last year. This year at InDisc, it was more pronounced. Those games that were using Scorebit on the stream, you could actually see the Scorebit display and there was probably maybe a one-second delay from the score and then it being updated in Scorebit. That's really quick. But, you know, we're often wondered, what would you do with this once it becomes internet enabled? And that's effectively what has happened this week. And there was a media release that went out today, this week, about Scorbit. It's been like two, three years. I think there's three people that are ultimately putting this together, Jay, Brian and Ron. And I'll just read out some of it. It says, Corbett is not just a mod, it's a platform. It says, we've created custom hardware, mobile applications, and a robust internet service to create the next step for pinball. While that sounds daunting, this is nothing new to the team at Corbett, a company founded by technology veterans and successful entrepreneurs with a history of bringing new products and services to market. The team already includes over 10 people and dozens of industry advisors, bringing with them decades of expertise. We're also pinball players, operators, and most importantly, enthusiasts, just like all of you and do this with a passionate commitment to community. So what is Scorbert? At the highest level, Scorbert is connected pinball. It allows scores and other data to be real-time broadcasted... You're going to write the whole thing down. No, I'm not. No, I'm not. No, I'm not. To be real-time broadcasted to an internet service from a pinball machine ranging from solid state to DMD and modern eras. Talks about the Scorbertron. Yeah, black box. When can you get one? Soon. How much will it cost? We don't know yet. Can you get in on the early beta I've said Ryan Get on in it Because Me? Yeah Because I don't stream though It's not for streaming What you can do Is you can connect this up to match play So it automatically calculates the scores And enters them Imagine if you had Every machine Where's this? Imagine if you had every machine In a flip frenzy With scoreboard on Automatically logging scores So you wouldn't need to tell anyone No Yeah, okay How great would that be? There's a lot of machines though The price No, we don't know that That's it, make or break So anyway, I said to one of the founders I said, Ryan would be screaming this Because remember, I think we talked about a similar device Probably about a year ago And we looked at the price and went, maybe not But at the time, you were saying how much you would love something like this So, you know, you're an operator You're also a tournament director so why wouldn't you be interested in something like this? Okay. Get in on the beta. I'll click on my link in the show notes and I will beta test it. Yeah, do. Do. I put in a good word for you. Okay. Thank you, sir. I'm really keen and what's really interesting is that last year when we saw it I thought to myself I wonder what you can do with this once it all gets connected and they're doing that. It will be open source effectively so people will be able to just make it something. They're just providing the platform that says you can now record this stuff and it's internet connected. Does it work on LCD games? Probably not, right? No, it couldn't. It says DMD? Yeah. It says solid state DMD and modern era machines. Modern era machines. Okay. So there you go. So that's Scorbert. So there you go. All right. Are we moving on from tournaments? I have a social media watch, Marty. No? You got something before that? Yeah, let's do that. We can talk about the trippies during social media watch. Okay. Marty, you love Harry Potter. Oh, really? Who said that? You fucking love Harry Potter, Marty. Yeah, I really do. You really do. Now, J.K. Rowling keeps on adding a bunch of things to Harry Potter that weren't, you know, like, in the books, but she's like, oh, by the way, you know, like... Oh, yeah, double doors guy, yeah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, yeah, all that kind of stuff. Did you see the one that happened last week, Marty? No. This is a direct tweet from JK Rowling, and I want to bring this back to the pinball machine when it eventually comes out. Okay. Hogwarts didn't always have bathrooms. Before adopting muggle plumbing methods in the 18th century, witches and wizards would simply relieve themselves wherever they stood and vanish the evidence. So... What the fuck? What that means is vanishing shit multiple might. Yep. That's right. Yep. So, like, you know, I think Ghostbusters... Apparate their wee away is what actually would happen. Okay. Is that, like, a spell? Yeah? Yep. Is that what they say? Yep. Correct. Okay. I imagine that's just sort of like Ghostbusters where you, like, you hit Slimer and he slimes everywhere and you have to clean it up. It's just like a giant turd. You hit it, shit goes everywhere. There you go. You vanish it away. Yep. Winterdia Leviosa. That's almost a proper spell, just letting you know. Wingardium Leviosa. Nope. Do you have a connection to your Harry Potter one, Marty? No, because I don't have one. Ah, I thought you said you bought one. Bought one what? Like you went to Universal Studios and you bought, or whatever it is, and bought a Harry Potter one. How dare you tell people that I did that. Yeah, I did. So with Bellatrix Lestrange's wand as well, so there you go. Okay. Because she's freaking epic. When you die, pass it on to me and you will? Yeah, okay. I will. I will do that. That's how I remember you. That shit-vanishing one. So, trippies. Yes. So the trippies are in full effect. And I wanted to say something about the trippies. You ready? Yes. We don't care. I just wanted to just put that out to everybody. So we had, I don't know about you, but I've just had so many people that are almost like super competitive about, you know, you guys have got to win. We don't. We aren't going to win. We know who's going to win because he will win. We're not bothered. We talked about last week about, you know, all the episodes that we did the year before and half of the year before. We love doing what we do. That's, you know what, you send us emails with questions or comments or suggestions. That's kind of what we gauge as being good content. Ryan, what are your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, it came up in our Pinside thread of our podcast and someone said, hey, I'm not going to vote for you until you do this and you do that. And I'm like, all right. I felt like somehow grabbing Pinside PD and just inserting him into the thread, tell this guy to fuck off. And it's because, yeah, as I said, the twopies, what they're meant to do is they're meant to celebrate pinball. But with everything in life, that's not always what happens, and it can turn into this thing. And I'll be honest, and the video, I want to say in November or something, I messaged Marty and I said, I'm going to make a video as a joke, kind of like what Jack Danger was doing. Jack Danger was getting all these celebrities and stuff to endorse, you know, a death lip. And I thought, this is hilarious, Marty. Let's get just the most ridiculous person to kind of endorse us and we'll upload it during the one week of Twippy Votes, whatever it is, and then in December it'll all be done. So I made a video, showed Marty. Marty said, you're a fucking madman because that's going to trigger a lot of people. I showed a bunch of people, everyone said it was fine and I uploaded it right before Christmas and then within like half an hour I took it down because someone contacted me and said, you know, hey it's Christmas, it might not be appropriate it might offend someone, this, this and that I said, okay, I don't want to ruin anyone's Christmas and the people that I showed, you know, before I uploaded it were like, hey, you know, it's voting season, when are you going to upload it? I'm like, eh, like I don't care. I don't want people to think I made this now. I made it to make people laugh. I didn't make it for us. To try and solicit votes. No, I made it because I wanted to make people laugh. And I've already made enough people laugh that I care about their laughter so to speak. That I've got my money's worth out of it. Technically our money's worth. Yeah, Patreon money. Thank you, Patreon money. That's what I was going to say. I don't know. Should we I know we're talking about this video now and that's super annoying to do if you're saying, hey, I've got this thing that you can't see. If you email us, I will show you the video, but please don't upload it online. Please just keep it for yourself. Have a little laugh, and that's it. Yeah. Are you okay with that, Marnie? I – Maybe not. You can edit it out. I didn't want to do the whole thing from the start, so I stopped caring a long time ago. Yeah. Me and Marnie, we're not on the same page about like 90% of the stuff that we do on this podcast. If you're angry about something that I did, don't be angry at Head to Head and Marty. Just be angry at me. And if you're angry about something that Marty has done, same thing. Yeah, you can send a note to Ryan as well. I don't care. Yeah. So, but, okay, I will say, though, if you feel like you want to vote for us, like, I don't want to, like, Slamtail were very nice to say, vote for us and the Twippies and not them. and if I did vote for Twopies, which I'm not, I would vote for Slantilt. Or maybe I'll just put in a vote just for Slantilt and that's it and leave everything else blank. But I don't want people to think that we don't appreciate them listening and voting for us and supporting us in any way that you want. But the point that me and Marty are trying to get across is that if we don't win, if we come last, we are the same as what we are now. The vote, the award doesn't define us. If we win, hooray. If we don't, hooray. And really the point is, we're not going to beg for votes. I think that's really what it is. It doesn't mean that much that we would sell our souls to try and get votes. There we go, mate. What very little left of our souls we've got, right? Yeah, we seem to really dignify as I... Like if people hear about the video, like, come on. Ah, yeah, the video doesn't make sense. And, I mean, we led on from Harry Potter, like, shit jokes. I know, I know. And also, where they're going, you know, it needs to be about celebrating pinball after we did the twerpies. Oh, my gosh. Come on. We are fucking going to hell. We make up our own rules, basically. We don't give a shit is really the whole point of this podcast, and we are going to care even less in 2019 because we said right from the start, We are only going to do this if it's fun. And sometimes it stops being fun, and it is most fun when we are doing it for shits and giggles. Yeah. Well said, Marty. Thank you. I just wanted to get that out, just because so many people get messages to me. I'm like, I'm just... It doesn't matter that much. Okay. This week in pinball, Ryan. I haven't written anything down. Playing more of Shadow. Playing Doctor Who. I played a bit of Pirates of the Caribbean. Well, see, that's what I was going to get to, was we finally, well, I finally got to play Pirates of the Caribbean. I would say probably just maybe 14 months, maybe, after the last time I got to play it. Oh, so you didn't play it at all at... No, I didn't. I mean, not that you'd want to anyway, because you don't get the same experience. No, I know. But, I mean, I did get to play things like, you know, Monster Bash remake very briefly, and Mafia, obviously, very briefly, because... But I never got to with Pirates, so obviously the main changes are three discs are now one, the chest doesn't open up, and it is now... Second Fast Thor, what's your third Fast Thor, money? Third Fast Thor is... Oh, my God. The rules? Oh, fuck, they are amazing. They are so amazing. I could see that you didn't want to learn them all, Mike. You were learning too quick. You know, so this was one point I was saying to Dwight as well. I have a certain way that I need to learn rules. And it's not give me 10, give me 20, give me 30, give me 40. It's give me 10, add 1, add 2, add 3. Just give me increments rather than introducing whole new concepts. So it was doing my head in a bit. But I've got to tell you, what I was really concerned about was, last time I played Pirates of the Caribbean, and it was on very basic code, and obviously it had the three rings. I kind of went, huh, it looks great, but I don't know whether it's really all that fun. And we've talked about this before, how code can really change a game. It really has. This rule set, even though it is completely mad and it is complex and it's wide and it's deep, somehow everything that you do just makes you happy. There's just something about what they've done with this rule set that just... It's hair-free pirate life, Marty. It probably is. But it is the jaunty, sea-shanty music as well, and it's the call-outs. It is the beautiful art. It's the great video assets at the back as well. It's how it feeds information to you that feels really good as well. But even if I hadn't been told the rules, I think you can learn stuff as you go, even though it's really complex. the fact that yeah the proof that you can learn as you go is Wes is a self kind you know really average pinball player and he was explaining the rules to you mate so if he's figured it out and he's the same guy who was explaining Star Wars to you and all these rules that you didn't know as well so yeah so it's just I'm just saying guys if you've played it before play it now this game is phenomenal There you go. I see it. Yeah, I was going to come down on Saturday as well and play, but I just absolutely crashed. Did you go back on Saturday? Yeah, I did. I only got to play that once. I spent most of my time playing Black Rose. Ah, how good is Black Rose? Black Rose is a great game. What? I can't believe I've never liked it because I just didn't know the rules, and then someone explained them to me, and I'm like, this is really fun. It's a really fun game, isn't it? It's such an underrated game. Yeah, it's the best shitty cheap value in from the 90s there is. Yep. Yeah. Anyway. That price is going to go up now. Is that the head-to-head Win Schilling? It is. It is. It's like the slam-tilt stone electronics. Okay. Is that it? Yeah, I don't think I did anything else. That's it. Shall we check the mailbag? Ah, yes. I'm so out of schedule with how we run our podcast. And here it is, everybody. I'm the one that is completely organised. How funny is this? So here's a question that we got, right? This is from an amazing friend of the show. We can count on your vote. That's funny. this is the question this is actually a really really good question, I actually really liked reading this and I thought about it today and I still don't have an answer, but let's read it out, it says of all the pinball machines that were planned but never mass produced which one would you most want to own in completed form, so don't include factors like estimated resale value just which one you'd want to have as part of your collection so, and there's Probably more machines here, but let's... We're going to... I'm going to list them out and you tell me what you think, Ryan. You've got Wizard Blocks. So that was the next game on the Pinball 2000. The one after that was Playboy on the Pinball 2000. 3D Boobs. Playboy by Highway. 2D Boobs. Predator by Skit-B. Alien Boobs, I guess. Homeless Boobs. Well, Zingy Bingy. What is that? That was like massive boobs. that was Python Anghelo's adult game. Is Zingy Bingy, like, something? Is it like a singer or something? No, I think it's... I don't know. Maybe it might have been a sexual move or something. I don't know. Anyway, it was... That's what you gave me when we first had sex money. You gave me the Zingy Bingy. I gave you Zingy Bingy and gave you some topical cream after. I hope it's clean after. Oh, it's true. Oh, my God. God, what the fuck is this? Are you looking at it? Just Google Zingy Biggie Pimple. Yep. Google images. There's a pair of silicon teeth on the playfield. Yep. And triangular inserts pointing towards her vagina. Yep. Python Anghelo, what are you doing? There were actually, like, boobs that came up as, like, pop bumpers. Right? What are they holding in their hands? Ah, an apple. Is this meant to be, like, religious? Like, the forbidden fruit? Maybe. And the serpent? What the fuck? So, anyway, that's... We digress. Wow, I... We've never thought about this. Holy shit. Yeah, I knew all about that one. The next one was Total Recall. I don't know if you ever saw the Total Recall. I think it was the Data East one, you know, the V-shaped cabinet. Yep. The Crocodile Hunter Outback Adventure. Mm-hmm. The Pinball Circus. by Python Anghelo. Play that shit. And then he said, hopefully the J-pop games and Kingpin will be available in the near future. You can count them as candidates or not. He says, Queen and Crocodile Hunter, kind of tricky choice, because I don't think we ever found out what the play field was going to look like. We did see something of the Crocodile Hunter's play field, but it was very, very... I mean, I don't know. Wizard Blocks had a pretty basic play field as well. So, I don't know. So out of all those machines, Ryan, what would you want to be completed? You go first. I'm just Googling something really quickly. Okay. I, out of all of those, I would want Total Recall. I've seen pictures of it. I just think that that would be such a ridiculously unique machine. Have you seen the movie, Marty? Yes, I have. Ah, okay. I thought that was going to be one of those things. No, it's one of the best movies ever made. That's when they had the remake, which wasn't great. I mean, the obvious one, I guess, is Kingpin, because we've seen and played that now. And Wizard Blocks, we played a rough, kind of like hacked-together version, and I'm sure Pat Lawler's version would have played a lot better, and it had inner loops, and it seemed to shoot pretty well. But I will say Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland. simply because of the name. Like, Magic Girl is like, she's a magic girl. Like, it's just magic and whatever. But it's not like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It's just like, you know, _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: a3df148a-6c5b-4027-9453-a65e6300a9ea*