# The Super Awesome Pinball Show S1-E12 **Source:** The Super Awesome Pinball Show **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2020-07-20 **Duration:** 156m 3s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://superawesomepinballshow.libsyn.com/the-super-awesome-pinball-show-s1-e12 --- ## Analysis Episode 12 of The Super Awesome Pinball Show features Christopher Franchi, Dr. Pin (Christian Lai), and guest co-host Mrs. Pin (Sarah, Dr. Pin's wife). The hosts discuss their recent pinball activities including playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at a local pinball gallery, Franchi's transition to a new game design role (The Exorcist pinball), reflections on Stern games like Munsters, and nostalgia-driven licensing ideas. An exclusive interview with George Gomez (Stern's COO and VP of Game Development) is mentioned but not included in this excerpt. ### Key Claims - [MEDIUM] Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is going to be as big as Jurassic Park for Stern — _Dr. Pin states after playing TMNT co-op mode: 'I walked away feeling like that game was a huge win for Stern...I think Turtles is going to be just as big as Jurassic Park.'_ - [MEDIUM] The Munsters code is shallow and limits the game's longevity — _Mrs. Pin discusses the Munsters: 'Some people just buy it and they play it for a month and then they sell it...if you expanded that code, you'd get much more mileage out of it'_ - [HIGH] Christopher Franchi has started working on The Exorcist pinball as a new game assignment — _Franchi directly states: 'I officially this week started my new pinball assignment, new game...The Exorcist, colon, Your Mother Sucks, Dead Cocks in Hell, Pinball.'_ - [HIGH] Franchi is doing early-stage art style tests for The Exorcist, expecting two weeks of exploration before committing to a direction — _Franchi explains: 'right now I'm just sort of doing some art tests and trying to find the right look...I'm going to be on this for probably two weeks to find, you know, the direction that I'm going to move forward with.'_ - [MEDIUM] Stern employees are working from home and only going to the office once per week or every other week during COVID — _Franchi mentions: 'they're not working at the office. They're working from their houses, and they'll go in there, you know, maybe once a week or once every other week'_ ### Notable Quotes > "I love it. Did you have fun yesterday? We had a great time. I just want to point out that I am up past my bedtime two nights in a row, ladies and gentlemen. That is love." > — **Mrs. Pin (Sarah)**, ~6:30 > _Establishes Mrs. Pin's personality and willingness to sacrifice sleep for the show, setting a warm, family-oriented tone._ > "I walked away feeling like that game was a huge win for Stern. And they are now on, I guess, Jurassic Park. It was huge. Elvira was a success. But I think Turtles is going to be just as big as Jurassic Park." > — **Dr. Pin**, ~30:00 > _Strong endorsement of TMNT as a commercial and critical success, positioning it alongside Stern's biggest recent hits._ > "The co-op mode, I think, really makes this game. It makes it more than just a regular pinball machine because you can help each other." > — **Dr. Pin**, ~27:00 > _Identifies co-op as a key differentiator for TMNT's appeal, suggesting novel game design mechanics are resonating with players._ > "I officially this week started my new pinball assignment, new game...The Exorcist, colon, Your Mother Sucks, Dead Cocks in Hell, Pinball." > — **Christopher Franchi**, ~51:30 > _Official announcement of Franchi's transition from Stern to a new manufacturer (implied to be Spooky based on KB context), revealing an unannounced game title._ > "When I worked for Stern, they liked my style that I had with the Batman artwork. And then every time I went forward, they were always wanting that. And that's not necessarily what I do best or what I enjoy to do, you know, the most." > — **Christopher Franchi**, ~54:00 > _Reveals creative tension at Stern regarding artistic direction and suggests Franchi's departure was motivated by desire for creative freedom._ > "Captain Fantastic still sucks...the one thing that that game needs to be set on besides five ball is set on the top of my roof and pushed off." > — **Christian Lai / Dr. Pin**, ~39:00 > _Humorous but candid critique of a classic pinball machine, showing division in community taste around classic vs. modern design philosophy._ > "I think if Dwight came out with a deeper rule set that you could toggle on or off, I think that would be great...having options for different modes on machines." > — **Mrs. Pin**, ~36:00 > _Suggests community desire for flexible game difficulty/complexity options, potentially addressing divide between casual and hardcore players._ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Christopher Franchi | person | Pinball artist and designer; co-host of The Super Awesome Pinball Show; recently transitioned from Stern to begin working on The Exorcist pinball game. | | Dr. Pin / Christian Lai | person | Co-host of The Super Awesome Pinball Show; pinball enthusiast and tournament competitor; husband of Mrs. Pin. | | Mrs. Pin / Sarah | person | Guest co-host for episode 12; hosts her own pinball podcast; wife of Dr. Pin; known for outspoken personality and community engagement. | | Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles | game | Recent Stern pinball release; features co-op gameplay mode; praised for full playfield, beautiful art by Jeremy (Bowen Kerins), and family-friendly theme; played and endorsed by hosts and competitive players like Bob Choate (WPPR #230). | | The Exorcist: Your Mother Sucks Cocks in Hell Pinball | game | Unannounced pinball game; newly assigned to Christopher Franchi as artist/designer; in early art direction phase with estimated 2-week exploration window before committing to visual style. | | Stern Pinball | company | Major pinball manufacturer; released Elvira, Jurassic Park, Munsters, and TMNT recently; George Gomez serves as COO and VP of Game Development; employees currently working hybrid/remote during COVID. | | George Gomez | person | Chief Operating Officer and VP of Game Development at Stern Pinball; legendary pinball designer; exclusive interview featured in this episode (details not included in excerpt). | | Bowen Kerins / Borgie | person | Stern pinball designer; designed TMNT; known as reliable, high-quality designer; working remotely with limited office access during COVID. | | Ed Van Der Veen / Ed Vanderveen | person | Texas Pinball Festival founder; former co-host; sent TPF flag as gift to Franchi and Dr. Pin; currently renovating garage into premium game space. | | Bob Choate | person | Competitive pinball player ranked approximately 230th in WPPR; played TMNT co-op with hosts and helped them progress through wizard modes. | | The Super Awesome Pinball Show | product | Pinball podcast hosted by Christopher Franchi, Dr. Pin, and rotating guest co-hosts; episode 12 features Mrs. Pin as guest host. | | Pinball Players Podcast | product | Podcast hosted by Jeff and Joe; recently featured Franchi and Dr. Pin as guests in an episode that aired during this show's recording; praised by hosts for strong hosting and editing. | | The Munsters | game | Stern pinball release; discussed as having shallow code and limited longevity despite fun gameplay; hosts debate whether deeper rule set would improve reception. | | Captain Fantastic | game | Vintage pinball game with tight flipper gap and challenging difficulty; owned by Dr. Pin who actively dislikes it; praised by Mrs. Pin for skill-checking players with tight flipper spacing. | | Pinball Expo / Pinnberg | event | Major pinball tournament/expo; hosts express nostalgia and sadness about event not happening recently; referenced for famous Keith Elwin Captain Fantastic catch moment. | | Keith Elwin | person | Legendary competitive pinball player; demonstrated famous catch on Captain Fantastic at Pinnberg Finals; benchmark for elite pinball skill. | | The Pinball Gallery | company | Local pinball arcade venue with approximately 70 machines; implements strong sanitization protocols; locations include TMNT on floor; hosts good players. | | Spooky Pinball | company | Pinball manufacturer; implied as Franchi's new employer based on The Exorcist assignment (from KB context linking Franchi to Spooky). | | Jurassic Park | game | Recent Stern release; positioned as major commercial success; TMNT compared favorably to this game in terms of expected market impact. | | Elvira | game | Stern pinball release; listed alongside Jurassic Park as successful recent title. | ### Topics - **Primary:** Co-op gameplay as differentiator, TMNT critical reception and market positioning, Christopher Franchi's transition to new game (The Exorcist), Artist's creative autonomy and style direction - **Secondary:** Munsters code depth and longevity concerns, COVID-era remote work at Stern, Classic vs. modern pinball machine design philosophy - **Mentioned:** Guest co-host format and community diversity ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.78) — Hosts express enthusiasm for TMNT, praise Bowen Kerins' design work, and show warm camaraderie. Discussion of Munsters and Captain Fantastic includes criticism but in good humor. Franchi's transition announcement is presented positively despite the departure from Stern. COVID inconveniences (closed arcades at campsites, remote work delays) are treated with acceptance and humor rather than frustration. ### Signals - **[business_signal]** Stern operating with distributed/hybrid workforce during COVID; office access limited to once-per-week or once-per-two-week visits; impacts parts availability and game assembly timelines (confidence: medium) — Franchi explains parts delays: 'they're not working at the office. They're working from their houses, and they'll go in there, you know, maybe once a week or once every other week.' - **[event_signal]** Ed Van Der Veen (TPF founder) is renovating personal garage space with premium pinball collection; project in-progress with future photo documentation planned (confidence: medium) — Franchi: 'he sends me a video of the basement that he is pimping out...it's his garage, which is currently filled with a ton of stuff...he is pimping out this space, and it is going to be so freaking gorgeous.' - **[community_signal]** TMNT's family-friendly theme and co-op mechanics are attracting broader audience segment; hosts praise theme accessibility compared to Iron Maiden's graphic content (confidence: medium) — Mrs. Pin: 'the theme, too, is super, super family-friendly...I just, I go back to, like, how amazing of a game Iron Maiden is...but the one thing that I can't love is the fact that there's, like, bloody squirting everywhere.' - **[product_concern]** Munsters code depth perceived as limiting factor in game longevity and competitive appeal; community suggests optional rule set complexity toggle could improve reception (confidence: medium) — Mrs. Pin: 'Some people just buy it and they play it for a month and then they sell it...if Dwight came out with a deeper rule set that you could toggle on or off, I think that would be great.' - **[design_philosophy]** TMNT co-op mode identified as key differentiator that elevates game beyond standard pinball experience; enables cooperative play mechanics not present in tournament/competitive settings (confidence: high) — Dr. Pin: 'The co-op mode, I think, really makes this game. It makes it more than just a regular pinball machine because you can help each other.' - **[design_philosophy]** Early-stage game design process involves extensive art direction exploration; artist conducts style tests to identify optimal visual approach before full production (confidence: high) — Franchi: 'right now I'm just sort of doing some art tests and trying to find the right look...I'm going to be on this for probably two weeks to find the direction.' - **[personnel_signal]** Christopher Franchi transitioned from Stern to new manufacturer to work on The Exorcist pinball; move appears driven by desire for creative freedom and stylistic autonomy (confidence: high) — Franchi states: 'When I worked for Stern, they liked my style...every time I went forward, they were always wanting that. And that's not necessarily what I do best or what I enjoy to do.' - **[product_concern]** TMNT receives strong endorsement from competitive player and hosts after extended play including wizard mode completion; positioned as major Stern success comparable to Jurassic Park (confidence: high) — Dr. Pin played through multiple wizard modes with Bob Choate (#230 WPPR) and concluded: 'I walked away feeling like that game was a huge win for Stern...I think Turtles is going to be just as big as Jurassic Park.' - **[product_strategy]** The Super Awesome Pinball Show plans 10-15 future episodes with rotating guest co-hosts including well-known industry figures and lesser-known community members (confidence: medium) — Hosts announce: 'we're going to have some really exciting upcoming maybe, what, 10 to 15 shows at least where we have just people who are well-known in the industry.' - **[product_concern]** Bowen Kerins (Borgie) maintains reputation as consistently reliable, high-quality designer; TMNT reflects strong artistic and mechanical execution (confidence: medium) — Dr. Pin: 'Jeremy did an awesome job...Borgie never lets us down.' --- ## Transcript Show starts in one minute. Tuning in to the Loser Kid Pinball Players Podcast. I know I'm drunk. Time for another pinball profile. The following is an Ad Pass Radio production. The new recipe tastes great. That is good for you. Holy shit, what? It's the Super Blastin' Pinball Show. That's right, it's time for your favorite pinball show. With your favorite hosts, pinball artist Christopher Franchi. And Dr. Pin and Cell, Christian Lai. Also, a rotating gallery of bonus co-hosts to spice things up. Blah, blah, blah, blah. We'll see you next time. Gentlemen, time for the show. Zesty, yet delightfully mild to please the entire family. Groovy. Hey there, all you pinball rock stars out there. It's episode number 12 of the Super Awesome Pinball Show. If you didn't know, this week is National Vodka Week. Hey. Ooh, very nice. Vodka. Some of the very special co-hosts of the Pinball Players Podcast will tell you about that. A new chief operating officer at Jersey Jack Pinball We'll pitch some cool new pinovations that may be coming to your pinball games very soon. We'll also have our usual past few weeks in pinball and the latest in pinball news, plus our exclusive interview with Stern's Chief Operating Officer and VP of Game Development, the Wizard of Wonder, George Gomez. All that and our special co-host for this week, who we'll introduce right now. She has her own podcast. She's married to Dr. Pin. She's the queen of cuss words. She's the last with sex. She's Mrs. Pin. What up, Pinheads? Mrs. Pin. I'm here in the super awesome pinball studio. Oh, yeah. Can't wait. The one place that you can also swear quite a bit, and I'm looking forward to it. How are you, sweetheart? I am fucking great. We are so happy to have you. I mean, our first guest host had to be Mrs. Pinn. There really wasn't any other option. But I'll tell you what, Chris. No, no, no. There really wasn't any other option. There were a lot of people who wanted to be on today. We had a huge number of responses to come on as a temporary or a permanent co-host. So we can't thank everyone enough for reaching out and offering to throw their hat in the ring. Absolutely. Well, you know, we had talked about having Mrs. Pinn on before, actually. We were just trying to think of the right way to do it. We originally were talking about some for Valentine's Day, and nothing seemed to work out. But when you're missing a third co-host, suddenly it works out, doesn't it? Yeah, when you live with one, it would be perfect. It just kind of falls into place. Yeah, you know, it's handy. In the interest of diversity as well, it's nice to get a female voice on the show. Absolutely. We had a moto on, but it's good to have an official co-host on for a show. And, man, we're going to have some really exciting upcoming maybe, what, 10 to 15 shows at least. where we have just people who are well-known in the industry all the way to, you know, I've never heard these people before. So it should be really fun to hear some new voices and some new takes on the hobby. Yeah, it'll definitely spice things up, and it'll help us to sort of corral in our new co-host, someone we think, you know, there's no better way than to try somebody out, basically, you know, put them behind the wheel and see how it goes. We got lucky with the three of us when we started the show because we had no idea how it was going to go. We just sat down and started doing it. Yeah, and that's what made it fun. I mean, and I think we'll get some of that excitement back because we'll have to flip the script a little bit each time we record and see how it goes between the three of us as we move forward. But Sarah, Mrs. Penn, this is our second day of recording. You actually helped us out yesterday for about three hours with Mr. George Gomez. What do you think of being on the Super Awesome Pinball Show so far? I love it. Did you have fun yesterday? We had a great time. I just want to point out that I am up past my bedtime two nights in a row, ladies and gentlemen. That is love. And I am serious that at 9 p.m. I am usually in bed, maybe not sleeping, but definitely in my jams. So you're welcome. In bed but not sleeping. Yeah. Dirty, dirty man. Well, anyway, Kristen, you and I were on the Pinball Players podcast with Jeff and Joe, and that episode just came out today. Of course. It's so good. We listened. We loved it. What, did you guys listen already? Yeah, we were sitting there in bed cracking up. The funniest part of the whole thing was when Joe said, that's the best fart, right? Yeah. He meant the best fart. Yeah. The best fart. He meant the best fart, but he said fart, and then, oh, my God, it was so funny. And then I called him out. Yeah, you did, but then Parsons compiled it together, like, Like, yeah, it was awesome. It was so funny. I will say, though, that that was a ton of fun. Those guys are super gracious hosts. We had a lot of, like, really interesting segments that Parsons put together, and I hope we get to come back on or have them on our show because those guys are good people. They're a lot of fun. Oh, my God, yeah. They're so much fun. It kind of reminded me of what it would have been like if we were at Pinburgh, just getting all of the people back together again. No, but don't say that because that makes me sad and there's nothing like Pemberton, you know? I know, I know. I'm still having hard feelings about that. Like my eyes keep watering randomly and, you know, I'm like getting my flipper fingers are twitching at sporadic moments. You sure that's just not your husband's cologne? It could be. It could be. You never know. Yeah, we had a blast. I want to thank Jeff and Joe for having us. Definitely a good time. We've got to figure out how to get with those guys again. So I just wanted to give you guys a heads up. Go to the Pinball Players Podcast on Facebook. I don't know if they have a website or not, but that's where I went, and I saw the podcast was up, and I'm like, oh, hey, cool. So check that out. Okay, and now it's time for our Weeks in Pinball. Our past few weeks in pinball. That's right. We know you guys can't wait to find out what we've done the past couple of weeks in pinball. And to start things off, ladies first, Mrs. Pin, what have you done the past couple of weeks in pinball? Well, Franchi, let me tell you. I'm sitting right here with Dr. Penn. He happens to be my husband. So our last two weeks in pinball overlap quite a bit. That's right. Because we're married. So we're going to tell you a little bit. Heck yeah. Yeah, we're going to like interject. We've got a little plan. So first of all, we have done. How about this then? Let's try this. And now the Penn's week in pinball. Yeah, that's perfect. Perfect. So we have done a lot the last two weeks in pinball. Actually, the last two weeks in pinball have probably been busier than the last, like, four months in pinball. It's all kind of relative, right? Because we have done so little in pinball that anything pinball related is a big deal for us. It's big. That's what she said. But you know what? Listen, we are in a time of, you know, in the world where we are going to embrace the small victories. And these are some small, awesome victories. So the first thing that we've been doing, first of all, we've got to tell you that, you know, because of COVID, we have kind of gone out into nature. We've bought bikes. We had kayaks before this. And we've decided that we started doing some camping because, you know, we didn't quite feel comfortable during the peak of things going to hotels. And so we decided that we were going to go camping. So what we didn't anticipate was that we were going to get to the campground, set up our stuff, be all, you know, rustic and gross. and then we were going to go into, like, every campground has a little store, right? They sell firewood and marshmallows and all that good stuff, but every campground we went to had an arcade with pinball in it, and all we could do was stare through the windows and, like, reach our hands out longingly towards the pinball machines that were, of course, closed. It's so sad to go into these. Oh, my God, they have a pinball machine, and they were good. They were good ones. They were like the Addams Family. Simpsons pinball party? Yeah, World Cup soccer. And to look through the window and seeing them in there turned off with the door barricaded. And we have a whole album, I think, of campsites we've been to where Sarah's wearing her N95 mask, looking longingly into the arcade space because we can't play these freaking games. I know. Oh, man. So fun. Well, what can you play? I mean, it was just the two of you. No, well, because it was like the campground. Every campground has a little arcade for kids, right? Because you go camping, and then you get your tent set up, and then you realize, what the hell are we going to do all day? Because really, there's nothing to do when you go camping. After mom and dad put the tents up, they want to take a nap, and the kids are like, ah! So you go to the store and play pinball. There's only so many s'mores you can make. Right, and that always happens at night, because that's when you have the fire, because otherwise there's 170 degrees outside all day. Yeah, that was a little bit of a bummer. You're really selling camping. Well, listen, the first time we went was a few weeks ago, and it was actually a lot of fun. It was so much fun. We went swimming. We went hiking. We went biking. The Carl Weathers was decent. We went last weekend, and it was the biggest camping fail I think of all the time. No, it was the biggest camping success story of all time. It's all in how you spin it. It is. So we drive out to this beautiful Racetown Lake in Pennsylvania. We set up our tent, and we realize as we're setting up the tent that it's so hot as balls that we can barely move without breaking out into a sweat. We're ready for it. We're, like, about ready to have a heat stroke. The kids have already collapsed into a puddle in the one tiny shady spot, and they're, like, hugging. They're like, please. Please. Can we get ice cream, anything? Can we jump in the water? Anything cold. I'm worried our kids are going to have a heat stroke. So we throw them in the car, like, about 10 minutes after we get there and set up the tent. We're on max air conditioning, just sitting there like, all right, what do we do now? No, so then we were like, okay, let's go for a little tour of the campground. So we go, we're driving around the campground. We see the little store where the arcade was. We see the beach. And then we start seeing, like, these little camps and, like, little cabins. And then we see, like, these things. Like, they called them yurts. It's like a tent with a roof on a pallet. I mean, it's like a nice tent, like, glamping, right? You could throw some pinball machines in there. You could, definitely. It had electricity. So we go, and we're, like, looking at all these. Leah's like, um, could we get one of those instead? And Christian and I look at each other like, maybe? That's the best idea you've ever had. So not only did we not get a yurt, we got a freaking, like, upgraded suite at the lodge. We went from a camp out in a tent to a giant hotel room in like an hour. It was. You win. So amazing. I've never loved you more. I mean, I really have. It was pretty special. It was. But yeah, it was the farthest thing from camping ever. But anyway, we've digressed from pinball. So to kind of elaborate further, because we were so bummed out that there wasn't any pinball on location, we looked into what might be open in the area that we could also go and socially distance and make sure that it was safe. And this place, the pinball gallery that I talked about last episode, had a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that we had just found out was on the floor. I like turtles. And so we basically high-fived and hit the car and went to check it out. It was awesome. It was totally great. You know, Dr. Penn has been very good about my, like, neuroses with germs. And so we got there, and we were like, okay, listen, if we're uncomfortable, we can just leave. It's no big deal. But we got there, and I swear to God, it was like they were sprinkling hand sanitizer from a fairy wand and, like, had little sprayers going. And the wonderful people who owned the place were like, every single time someone used a machine, they would finish and then they would clean the flipper buttons and the lock bar. And any part that they could have possibly touched was sanitized. And I seriously felt completely fine. Yeah, we felt safe. Everybody had masks. But there weren't many people there. There was maybe five, ten people there, max. And the place is like, you know, it holds how many? They got like 70 pinball machines. Yeah, yep. So it was a huge success story. Huge. It was awesome. And we got to try Turtles. So why don't you give us your assessment? What do you think? I like Turtles. Turtles was awesome. It was. It really was. It was so great. It was so much fun. It was a great machine. I loved it. I loved the, what do you call it? I don't call it the right thing. The co-op. The co-op player. Thanks. Co-op. You could kind of attach your score to somebody else that you were playing with and try to, you know, combine your resources so somebody like Dr. Pin could carry the team and it was a great show. What was really cool about this, Chris, is that when we went there, there were some really good players there, one of which was Bob Choate, who is a, I think he's like 230th in the world. And so we did some co-op with him, our buddy Rodney Kamageese, and Mrs. Finn. We were each able to play a different turtle. Turtle? Yeah, Turtle Power. So we were just trying to figure out how to play this game. And I don't think I walked away with a great understanding of the rules, but I definitely appreciated the game for how full it feels. It doesn't feel like a game that is going to be figured out quickly. It's pretty deep. There's a lot to do. There's a ton in the play field. It feels relatively packed, and it's a freaking beautiful game. It really is. It was beautiful. Jeremy did an awesome job. But the co-op mode, I think, really makes this game. It makes it more than just a regular pinball machine because you can help each other. We're so used to tournaments, and there's no talking. There's no helping. You don't want the guy next to you to do well necessarily, even though people are usually pretty good about rules help and that sort of stuff. This felt like you could sit there, you could mash the action button when the pizza eating party happened for the other player just because you're on the same team. You're just trying to help each other out and get as far as you can. So we were actually able, with Bob Choate's help for the most part, he really carried the team. But we got all the way to the end of the game, and we pretty much saw the entire thing. So we played the mini wizard modes, we played the Final Wizard mode. And the Final Wizard mode has a couple of phases, so we didn't get through all of them. But we got pretty far through it. I walked away feeling like that game was a huge win for Stern. And they are now on, I guess, Jurassic Park. It was huge. Elvira was a success. But I think Turtles is going to be just as big as Jurassic Park. Yep. Well, Borgie never lets us down. Yeah, man. And I think the theme, too, is super, super family-friendly. I mean, like, I just, I go back to, like, how amazing of a game Iron Maiden is, and I think that that game is so much fun, and I love that game for so many reasons, but the one thing that I can't love is the fact that there's, like, bloody squirting everywhere. Oh, it's not enough, like, Kentucky in the world, don't do that. And, like, zombie, you know what I mean? Like, I got to, oh, that's mom guilt right there. Like, I can't bring that one into the house yet. Well, see, we could wheel in another winner into that group if we could just convince Dwight to revisit the code on the Munsters because the game itself is awesome. Dude, I love the Munsters. I think it's a great game too. It's a great game to play, but the code is shallow, so that limits it. Some people just buy it and they play it for a month and then they sell it, and that's it. I think if you expanded that code, you'd get much more mileage out of it, and I think people wouldn't poo-poo it so much. I think you need to have both. I think if Dwight came out with a deeper rule set that you could toggle on or off, I think that would be great, but I like the game for what it is. It's very fun. It's very easy to understand. And games like T2 that have survived the test of time, thank you, I see Monsters in a very similar way in the sense that it's approachable, and it's very fun to flip. It's just not your choose 20-character Jersey Jack Pirates. Yeah, but you know what? I have to say that the Monsters, to me, is a much more fun game for that exact reason. So for the reason why you're saying some of the more intense players don't love it necessarily, I do love it for that exact reason. Wonderful woman. Very free-spirited. That's marvelous. It's relatively easy and straightforward to follow the rules. Yeah, yeah. Don't get me wrong. I like it just the way it is because I'm not a big rules guy. It takes me a long time to kind of absorb that shit. I got to go and watch Jack Danger play the game and go, I don't know what the hell, what is it, you know, watch the video over and over again. Yeah, I don't know how he's getting like $12 billion, you know, on Batman. I'm like, I've already got $400 million. That's actually a good score. I don't even know if I got it. I might have got that high, but yeah, you know, he's the master. Anyway, yeah, I am fine with the way it is. I don't like hearing other people poo-poo it because of that. And so, you know, in interest of making them happy, it's just like you said, and I think we talked about it before, you know, don't just update the code and go, okay, well, here it is. Update it in a way that you can say, okay, well, we're going to have classic monsters mode and then the deep monsters mode, you know. So I don't know. Why not, right? I mean, these days with the co-op mode being so successful, I'm sure that's going to get a ton of fanfare. Why not mix it up and have options for different modes on machines? I mean, I think that's a reasonable step to take to try and please as many people as you can if that's really something that you want to do. But, yeah, so that was the majority of our pinball-related stuff outside of doing this show and doing the Pinball Players podcast. But I did get a gift in the mail yesterday that I have to give a shout-out to. And when we opened this up, Miss Pin looked at me and she goes, you are definitely putting that up in the man cave. So we got a really nice gift from our good friend and former co-host, Ed Van Der Veen, sent us a giant TPF. What would you even call that? It's like one of the things that hang from the ceiling. It's not even a flyer. It's made of like canvas. And it's like a huge flag. It's called a flag. A flag. But it's got your armadillo on it, Christopher Franchi. And it's got the whole TPF thing that you drew. And it's freaking beautiful. It is so nice. So that is definitely going up in our man caves. Thank you, Ed. We love you, buddy. And we have some stuff for TPF that we were going to bring to him that I think we're going to have to send out. I think we might have to. It's some of the best stuff I think you've ever made. It really is. So, Ed, look forward to that when you get that in the mail. Yeah, it's going to be awesome. I got one, too. I know you did. I know. I was waiting for you to chime in. I was waiting for you. You guys talk fast. Sorry. Yeah, I got one, too. So, thanks, Ed. Very cool. I'm trying to figure out where I'm going to put it. It's about, yeah, it's about, like, what, seven, six, seven feet tall? It's like the size of a door. Yeah. Like, almost. Maybe not quite as wide, but we were trying to figure out, okay, do you frame it? I said, no, I don't think you could frame it. But could you somehow stretch it like a frame but not a frame? That doesn't even make sense. No, so there's no border around it. Yeah. So it has a backing. Yeah. What you just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I've ever heard. Because of the way those things are made, they flip over onto themselves and then they heat seal it. If you try to frame it, it's going to wrinkle up and look like crap. That's what I thought. You just got to free flow to put two nails, you know, on the top and then pull it down and, you know, stretch it as tight as you can and put two nails in the bottom. That's all you can really do. I got nails. She's handing you a nail. When I was texting Ed, thanking him for it, he sent me a video of some of the stuff that he's been up to. So, obviously, we had mentioned that he had other interests that he was trying to, you know, focus more time on. But this dude sends me a video of the basement that he is pimping out. Actually, no, it's his garage, which is currently filled with a ton of stuff. And some of the coolest pinball games, you know, you could think of. Name a great game. He's got it. But he is pimping out this space, and it is going to be so freaking gorgeous. And I hope he puts some pictures on Facebook or something when he's done with it because. Pictures? And we're coming to visit as soon as Texas gets COVID under control. Okay, buddy? Just expect us on a plate. Yeah, we'll be there. So, Chris, what have you done, man? What have your two weeks been like? Well, I've still been working on Munsters. I'm trying to get that back together. They're, Borgie promised me some pieces that, because, you know, I wasn't aware of this, but they're not working at the office. They're working from their houses, and they'll go in there, you know, maybe once a week or once every other week, you know, to collect some things or whatever, but he's not there. So, yeah, I was sitting here, like, expecting these, like, little, it's hard to explain how I'm going to, but I need these little screws and pieces to add some mods and also fix the stripped bolt that I'd stripped on my lens for the lower play field. And he keeps on, he's like, hey, I got your pieces. And I'm like, all right. So I'm thinking they're on the way. And then like a week and a half later, he sends me another text and says, I'm going to get those pieces out to you as soon as the end of the week hits or whatever. So this thing's all torn apart. The lower play field's taken out. Everything's all fucked up. And maybe one of these days I'll get those pieces. But it's only because of, you know, the problems, you know, of them trying to get their stuff sorted at CERN. And I don't know when they're going to be going back in full time. They may not ever. Who knows? but yeah he's a busy guy yeah waiting on that news flash spoiler alert Captain Fantastic still sucks did you get the picture that I I took it special just for you that's right actually Christian told me to take it but I'm just taking the credit it was me posing right next to Captain Fantastic thumbs up just for you I wanted the thumbs down that's what I was hoping for because then I know you're on my side it almost looks like you're like it's like you're purposely trying to not be on my side by going, we love this game. We're pretty much just trying to mess with you guys. One hundred percent. That's exactly the message I was trying to send. Did you happen to play it, like, so that you could understand my pain? No, I actually did, Chris. I did. I played it just to see what it was like. I think that yours is set up probably a little more brutal than most, but the game is definitely challenging, which is why it should be set on five ball. I mean, it's an older game, which is meant to try and kill you right away so you put more quarters in. But I felt like with any machine that has two flippers that are right next to each other, and if you flip, you're opening up a gap. Yeah. I feel like you have to flip so much less than you would in a regular game to try and stay alive. And then my entire goal playing it was just to get the ball back up top so that it was far from the flippers. Yeah, that's the only way you can score anything is get it up top, trying to get those two white arrows so that you double up your multiplier going up the center. Yep, that's right. But, yeah, I think the one thing that that game needs to be set on besides five ball is set on the top of my roof and pushed off. Scott Ducky style? Yeah, right? I'm getting rid of it. Screw that thing. I actually feel like I love the games with slippers like that just because they are so horrible that I have a chance of winning sometimes. Do you remember, we were watching Pinburgh Finals, and there was some, I forget what game it was, but it was a game just like this where it had that giant gap in the flippers. Keith Elwin caught the ball on, let's just say on Captain Fantastic Chris, the left side where you have those two flippers. He caught it on the middle, the tip of the middle flipper, and he let the ball kind of roll back towards, so it was almost about to drain out. And then he just casually dropped the flipper and then flipped it and hit this shot perfectly. It was like, it was a thing of beauty. The entire stadium was like gasping. It was that moment that I was like, this is the difference between somebody who is freaking amazing at pinball and me. Is there a border? You know a border. Yeah, I heard about that. I had not seen it, but I heard about it. So that's cool. Yeah, so the big news is that I officially this week started my new pinball assignment, new game. Oh, very cool. What is it? What is the title? Wait, who is it? What is it? I have not heard of this. Give me every detail. Top Woman. It's just between you and me, Franchi. And all 3,000 listeners. All right. 3,000? Hey, you go. I'll tell you. It's a long title. It's The Exorcist, colon, Your Mother Sucks, Dead Cocks in Hell, Pinball. Franchi. Why did you take it there? You could have just lied. Instead of like, I don't know. It's a quote from the movie. I'm not just like trying to be dirty. Is this the topper spit out piece here? Yes, exactly. Nice, nice. Exactly. Yep, and then the play field comes out of the game and just levitates like one foot over the machine. Sounds like a deep root innovation. No, because this one will eventually come out. Oh. Oh, hey-o. Yo, burn. That was a pretty sick burn. That was horrible. Oh, my God. That was horrible. That's crazy. So how is it going? I know you can't give us details, but are things flowing for you? Are you feeling the artistic, like, yes. There's nothing to really talk about. I literally just started. The first thing I do is try and find, at least I have the opportunity this time, to try and find the right style. You know, when I worked for Stern, they liked my style that I had with the Batman artwork. And then every time I went forward, they were always wanting that. And that's not necessarily what I do best or what I enjoy to do, you know, the most and all that. So right now I'm just sort of doing some art tests and trying to find the right look that I want for it. So there's not a whole lot to talk about. Well, I mean, it's interesting to hear about the very early stages of a game. So what is involved in that? Is it just sketches? Is it like storyboarding, for instance, where you're just showing kind of ideas of what you're thinking? No, it's just taking a character and trying different things. Because you can go really, you know, like with the artwork for Guardians or The Beatles or any of that stuff, you can go real straightforward and realistic with it. Or you can go kind of cartoony with it. You can go sort of zombie yeti with it. You can go realistic but sort of a caricature. You know, there's a lot of different ways you can go. Are you trialing this for you personally? Or are you going to create a couple of different options and bring it to them and say, what do you like best? No, it's my job to do the art. So I'm doing this for myself to find what I think works best and then move forward with that. But, you know, that takes a while. So I'm going to be on this for probably two weeks to find, you know, the direction that I'm going to move forward with. But that's it. That's all there really is to tell about that. If you need any help drawing some seriously bad-ass stick figures, you know who to call. I'm just saying you would not have to mess with any licenses no what Sarah really needs is a snorks pinball machine which we know is probably never coming no but really it's really been exaggerated because I do love the snorks but I would much rather see the smurfs on a pinball machine 100% more than the snorks yeah okay the snorks are like the smurfs under the sea and I just think that the word snork is so fun what do you think about Fraggle Rock pinball. Fraggle Rock would be so awesome. That would be good. That's like a, that's a blast from my past, man. Inspector Gadget pinball would be another one. Think about all the different things you could do with Go-Go Gadget. Go-Go Gadget arms. What? There's one that I would love to do that fits sort of the mold of Inspector Gadget and that's Dexter's Laboratory. Oh, that would be really cool too. The toys in that game would be awesome. Dexter is just awesome. Yeah, because this is a whole laboratory thing where you can make all kinds of cool stuff. That's like It's so niche, though, I feel like. I feel like all of this is so, like, it's just like, you know, you've got the people within five years of how old I am, and that's it. Who cares? Right. Nobody else. That wraps up our weeks in pinball. Do we want to move on to the pinball news now? Let's do it. All right. Cue the fancy intro. And now, pinball in the news with your super awesome eyewitness news crew. All right. So the first item in the pinball news that we want to talk about is Jim Patlock. being hired by Jersey Jack Pinball as the COO. Now, when we talked to Jack, he had mentioned that they are really looking to hire. And, man, we've seen some action there. They weren't kidding around. They brought some big names in. And Jim Padlaw is no one to shake his stick at. He's got a long history in the industry. And the first time I've ever truly felt like a media outlet, Chris, is when we got this email, this press release from Ken Cromwell in our super awesome pinball show email account, which was pretty freaking cool. But yeah, it said basically that he's going to join them as their chief operating officer, and he's had 50 years of experience. He's going to be out in Elk Grove with them, helping to get things going. And I had to look him up on Pinside just to get an idea of everything he's done. And man, his pedigree is long. He's got all the way back to, let's see, 1970, he worked on game design for a game called Four Queens, Queens all the way up to Silver Bullet in 2012, the game that he worked with Brian Holderman, it was kind of a one-off. Don't fucking just read news off the internet, you fat piece of shit. That's quite the resume. But yeah, and Elvira and the Party Monsters, I guess, was his most recent commercial game. But yeah, he's got a long history. He's going to do great things with them. I'm really excited. I mean, I know that Jersey Jack has gone through a ton of transition lately, but it sounds like they're making some smart moves with you know the hiring of ken cromwell who's been doing a lot for social media and then this is just another one that seems like it's moving in the right direction yeah there are some rumblings that there's some not so positive things going on right there but i have no idea what they are all i know is there are rumblings so it could be uh could be true could be horseshit who knows yeah no it's hard it's hard to know really because this stuff doesn't always speak and see the light of day but from what is being put out there it It sounds like they're doing okay, but we'll see. I can't wait to hear what the next game is and get some more info on that. And the rumor on the street is that that's Eric Menear's game, Sarah, who you freaking love. Eric who? Eric Menear. Just kidding. You're the best. I got you. I'm going to love you. Did you notice how he said it real fast because he wasn't really sure if he's saying it right? If I spit it out at like 100 miles an hour, no one will notice. Eric Menear. Maneer. Why does everybody at Jersey Jack Pinball have a very difficult to pronounce last name? It's maybe not difficult when you know how to say it, but there's so many potential ways to say it. Maneer and Gennari. I feel like I'm always messing it up when I say it. No, that's why I just call him Jack. You said Patla, right? I did. I did. That's a pretty phonetical one. Yeah. Kind of hard to get that one wrong. So, guys, the next awesome thing in Pinball in the News is that Marcos Specialties is putting something out for everyone, but really for dummies like me. And it is a pinball database of technician help and fixes, if I'm correct. I think they're doing two things. One is they're putting out tutorial videos on how to fix stuff. Yes. So Emoto Harney is hosting these, and they're streaming just kind of live action, how do you fix X, Y, or Z. I've seen a couple. They're awesome. Freaking awesome. They're on YouTube, aren't they? They are. Yeah. And then Crystal Gemnick sent out kind of a press release of sorts from Marco saying that now they're compiling technicians because if you buy a pinball machine and you don't really know what you're doing, things can go bad really quickly. And there's not a ton of people out there, at least that are obvious, that know how to fix pinball machines. So having a kind of a collection of these names and where they're located and how to contact them so they can come over and help you out in a pinch, I think is going to be a hugely helpful resource. It's like the pinball yellow pages. That's right. That's right. And for us, you know, I mean, if something goes wrong in our machines and it's not something relatively straightforward, We're hosed without Jim from JT Amusements. I mean, the guy has helped us so many times. I mean, I almost know as much as Jim, but... The original brainiac. We still call him up just because we like to see his pretty face. That's right. Chris, you have connections. We know a couple of people in the area, but I can't imagine where someone would go outside of maybe a Google search if they didn't know how to fix a machine. And I don't think there's a ton of people out there that do this stuff, so it's going to be a cool thing. It's awesome. It's needed, too. I mean, I feel like this is a service that people need. So I'm really excited about all of the aspects of this. Yeah. Yeah. I got lucky because I got Joshua Clay Harrell who comes over and he's like a master at whether it's a modern day or an EM. He is a whiz. So he can, no matter what comes in this house, he can fix it. So, and he's like 15 minutes away. So, you know, really, really, really lucky with that. So yeah, that's going to be, that's definitely something handy for people. And if that gets out, if people are familiar with that, you know, people that aren't super, you know, into pinball, if they know that they have the comfort of that, you know, to lean on, they might be more willing to try out getting, you know, a pinball machine in their house and stuff. So, you know, who knows, that might work to help grow, you know, the hobby. Absolutely. Totally. You know, that's something that people have really wanted or maybe didn't even really know they wanted until it was out there. So it kind of leads us into our next segment, which is what do you guys think pinball needs? So what are some innovations in the pinball landscape that you would say, man, that would be freaking awesome if we had that? Cock magic. It can be anything from an idea like a technician database to an invention for a pinball machine. Do you guys have any thoughts? Chris, do you want to start? Well, I'm working on one right now. I mean, the problem with this is that you sit down and you discuss ideas like, wouldn't this be great? And then some dick's going to go, that would be great, and they're going to make it. And then you're screwed, and they're making cash. Hey, kids, it's time to use the F word. I love you! Well, you influenced me because in the last episode, you had talked about how you had some great idea that you were putting together. We've subsequently talked about it, and it is an awesome idea that no one has ever thought of. I just don't know if there's anything that you might not necessarily think would ever truly happen, but you would love, or if there's something you don't want to make yourself that someone else could possibly do. Something that wouldn't happen that I would love to somehow be able to... Between the slippers and Captain Fantastic, perhaps. No, that thing's just going on through. No, I'm thinking maybe like, can I play pinball while sitting in a jacuzzi? No, that's called electrocution. If you've got put-tooth and dialed in, maybe. I'd enjoy that. maybe some sort of a stool that you don't necessarily sit on but you kind of lean on so that you can enjoy your pinball stance but still take a little bit of a load off. Maybe a ledge to just rest your butt cheeks on something. I don't know. If it's something that's really good that hasn't been done before, that's going to be really difficult to think of because everything's been done. So what would be a good innovation for pinball. Well, shit. Maybe it's not feasible. Maybe it is. Maybe it's something that could really happen. And then the pinball technician database also was like, wow, this is new and fresh. There are some new ideas out there that people could actually come up with. So I just want to put you guys on the spot. Sarah, can you think of anything that would be amazing in pinball that hasn't been done before? Christopher Franchi, I just have to tell you that Christian told me about this a few days ago and literally the second after he told me this idea, I pulled the most ridiculous shit out of my ass. That was hilarious. and Christian was like wetting the bed. He was so excited. Did you wash it off? I didn't. Sorry. Don't bring a black light over. Ew. So anyway, so what I came up with is, you know, I've just been thinking lately about pinball in terms of what's happening in the world, right? So a lot of us cannot play pinball because of this crazy COVID-19 that's happening. So I thought of a couple pinnovations that I think the world could really seriously benefit from. Oh, I cannot wait. I know of one of these, but I don't know the rest. Okay, so I'm going to start with the one that I think is equally awesome but less hysterical, and that is I want when we go to the Kutztown Fair. So in the midst of July in the middle of Pennsylvania, you can go to this German folk festival, and it's amazing, but it is hot as balls, okay? So because it is so hot, you have to walk through every now and then they have this little bridge, right? And it's like a mister of mist. Oh, that's so deep. Thank you so much, honey. But you walk through, and it, like, cools you off, right? So I'm just thinking, we need a mister of Purell. I knew that was coming, and I love it. It is. It's great. So that after every game you play, you just walk through the mister of Purell. You, like, kind of rub it down. Like a hazmat. Yes. Yeah. And then you continue on, and nobody is germed, and it's all beautiful. I think before each round in Pinberg, you have to walk through the Purell, mister. Right? Can you imagine how this would change Pinberg? It would burn the hell out of your eyes, but it would make you clean. No, you just watch your eyes close for like two seconds. Make it like one of those cash booths with the fan. So you get in, put some goggles on, and then you get sprayed and you walk out. I mean, that seems a little more intense, but I could get behind it. Yeah, I like that. Anything with hand sanitizer, right? And speaking of remaining sanitized and clean, this leads me to my second pin of vision. Are we going to say turns or do you want to go through your whole list? No, you don't get a turn. All right. I get it. Okay. You get it. So here's my second pin of vision. This was the one that I totally came up with straight off the cuff. What we need is a pinball bubble, okay? I thinking some kind of like you know you see those bubbles that people get into and then they like body slam each other and go rolling Okay Something like that except maybe a little less movement involved but some kind of like inflatable suit And here is where this pennovation just the beauty of it just is so boundless. Okay. So not only is this going to keep people safe during COVID-19, right? So I'm thinking like long-term though, I'm hoping that at some point we're done with this shit and we can move back. But, you know, you think about crowded pinball tournaments, and it's not always super pleasant. I mean, I'm just saying, I don't know what it is. Sometimes people get a little smelly. Sometimes people do not use hand sanitizer. I mean, you see people like picking their butts and their noses. Oh, God damn it. Did you fart? You got to like touch the same flippers. I get a little skeeved out by that. Okay. So just imagine yourself in the pin bubble with a nice little fan cooling you off. It could even have some kind of cooling feature so that you're nice and dry and nice and fresh. AC in there. Okay. But then you could add in deodorizer. Okay. I'm talking like get a little sandalwood essential oils. Tropical breeze. Maybe a snack bar. Maybe a snack bar. Maybe a little mahogany teakwood. Well, you have to have some kind of window for snacks to enter the bubble. Okay. Yeah. So beyond that, though, the options here just keep going and going. I mean, pet pending. But then you also, you got to think about like in a casino, right? What do you do when you walk in a casino? They like super over oxygenate the air, right? Because you walk into a casino and all of a sudden you're like, yeah, man. Oh, man, I got so much energy. I'm feeling so good. So you pump extra oxygen in that shit. You're going to be playing the best fucking pinball game you've ever played. and you're going to do it from the pin bubble. You're going to smell fucking great. You've got a snack window. You're going to be super oxygenated. You're going to be able to stay sanitary, okay? You could even have some kind of like inflatable hands. I mean, you might have to practice a little bit. It might affect your pinball game marginally. And you would not be able to sit. So that, you might have to have some kind of built-in chair or something. But these are minor details that I am ready to work out. I'd like to propose a mod for that, and that would be the shit chute, so you can clap out of your bubble and not have to get out. Well, I've used that. It just kind of tumbles down this tube and drops off onto the floor. I do see the practicality behind this innovation change, and I can appreciate it. I do have one idea. The tilt shock collar. So just like a pet would have. I like this. Yeah, this is good. You put the collar on, and every time you nudge it, depending on how strong the nudge is, you get a little zap. So you kind of get punished if you really haul off and, you know, try and pull a deck flip. I'm sorry. My husband needs this. No, dude. I do not. You slide our pinball machines like eight inches. It's the only way my score is at all relatively decent. I have to have some nudging abilities. You cannot squeegee this thing across our fucking floor. It makes me very... We need a shot caller, Christopher Franchi. Make it happen. Pinball shot caller. Trademark. Yes. Yes. friends. Yes. So I actually tried to come up with real things that would be practical, but I can't follow that. Like my, my, my ideas are still not as funny as that, that I don't even want to say. I don't think it's funny that you think this is funny. I am with you dead ass seriously. All right. So what about a device you slip over the pin that makes the flipper buttons stay pushed in? So let's say you're playing an epic game on Lord of the Rings and you have to use the bathroom or you want to go make another drink, but no one's around to help you out. Or in a tournament setting, if you get a Stucky, instead of just sitting there holding the flipper button in, get like a little bracket that sits over the side of the pinball machine and keeps the flipper button to press so you can cradle the ball and go about your business. All you really need is like an L bracket with a really strong magnet on it, and you just stick it on the lockdown bar and then push it, and that little bracket that's hanging down will compress the button, and then you just let go. Unless you have to take the glass off, then you would have to have a kind of bracket underneath the machine on the bottom half. But however you do it, I just think some mechanism to keep that flipper flipped up would be cool. Here's what I really think about this pinnovation, okay? First of all, why you got to go bragging about your long-ass Lord of the Rings games? I'm tired of you. Nothing you can say can change that. Oh, no. Okay. Second of all, first world pinball problems because if you play like me, you don't need anything to hold in the flipper button because your games last about two and a half minutes. Third, why didn't you pee before the game started? Listen, why are you going to harsher my innovation? I fully support your bubble. I hate people. All right, give me some love. Because my bubble's awesome. I do think it could have some practical implications. Thank you. I do like the idea of the stuck ball, but I also feel as though you could probably just hold the button and filibuster. These are first world problems. I will give you that. Maybe we just need a pinball bedpan sort of a thing where you could kind of let go right at the game. Dude, why do you have to take it to the bathroom every time? Franchi loves bathroom humor. I mean, we're both my third graders. He's the one that said to go take a pee. I didn't take it there. He did. I'm saying rather than go to the bathroom, do it right at the game. Dude, nobody wants to see or smell that. You are a smelly pirate hooker. All right, my last one is there is a lot of this, but I think manufacturers, it would be awesome if they had pages for each of their game. And on those pages, which they currently do, but on those pages, they had a database of videos where it showed you how to do common fixes. So there's a lot of websites out these days or YouTube channels that talk you through some simple fixes, and those are awesome resources. But there's no one better than the manufacturer of the game to kind of know the ins and outs and to be able to talk you through stuff. So if you have Batman 66, you click on that video, and then the videos below that are troubleshooting for X, Y, and Z common problems for that game specifically. I think that would be really cool. I think it would be true. I think they'd have to admit that some of their things have problems, which I'm wondering if they would be willing to do. Well, they kind of have to. I mean, it gets out there eventually. But, yeah, that is publicizing it more than they may want to. But, I mean, like, you know, maybe, I don't know. It's tough because I think a lot of the common things are things that can happen to any pinball machine, right? Like, you need to change the flippers or the flipper buttons, or you need to put on a new set of flippers, or you need to solder something. So I do think that Marco is in the right direction with compiling a database of that kind of stuff. But I do think that you're right, you know. But, you know, they also, like, mod companies have videos detailing how to install their mods. Yeah, I mean, it would be something similar. Yeah. Like, hey, if this switch goes bad, here's how you fix that. Or here's how you change the light bulb. And this may be a tricky spot to get to for this specific game. I don't know. Information for the win. Hey, there's no badness in more information out there. That was a really good one. That was a legit one. All right. So that's what I've got. I love it. That was so good. I feel like you really balanced out my really unrealistic but extremely practical ideas. I just want to say. Because you are our co-host, I have to throw this in here because Chris and I had an awesome time on the Pinball Players podcast. And there was a segment called the Top Five Shots in Pinball. It was very satisfying. It was very satisfying. And we covered our shots. Chris didn't know that was going to happen because it was totally strung on him because it was five satisfying shots, which is a term he hates. So satisfying. Yeah, I hate it too. But I wanted to throw it out to you because I'm just curious. What are your top five most satisfying pinball shots? All right, I wrote down a couple of ideas here. Nice. Some of them are legit. Some of them are a little bit vague. So I hope that you will accept my top five. Okay. So first of all, as many of you might know or might not know, we own Medieval Madness and we own Attack from Mars. That's awesome. Yeah. Correct. So on these machines, for whatever reason, when I start playing them, I am like a freaking boss at hitting the lock shot. It is this little channel between the left ramp and the, there's a castle or there's a saucer on Attack from Mars, right? I don't know what happened to me. It's very sad. I cannot hit this shot to save my life anymore. No? And it's not a hard shot. I know right where to hit it off the flipper. But it's like I have so much pressure on myself to hit this shot that I choke every fucking time. Every time. Pinball is a mental game. I am fucked up mentally. So I have to say that any time I hit that lock shot, really any lock shot in general, But, you know, those two in particular, because I've just had such a love-hate relationship with that shot, I really do feel a great amount of relief. And I don't want to use the S word, but I really do feel the S word. Nice. Which is satisfaction. Sat-sat-sat-sat-satisfaction. I love it. That was a good one. All right. So that was the first one. The second one, I have to give a shout out to Ron Ron Hallett, because my second shot is any time I can play Harlem Globetrotters and hit the spinner so well that I can judge it based on the level of spinniness at Ron's house. Ron's spinners are legendary for starting to spin and literally never stopping. They don't stop. So, I mean, any time I can hit a spinner like that and think, man, that spinner's just not as good as Ron's, that right there is a good shot for me. Nice. I just do. I love a spinner, but especially on Globetrotters, for whatever reason, I really love those spinners. I like it. They're real juicy, right? Okay. So those were the first two. They're packed with satisfaction. They are. I just, isn't there a synonym for that word that we could, like, you know, it's like justification or something else. I just don't, that word is like meh. All right. So anyways, shots that make me feel great. Okay. Here's another one. Nice. Probably my all time top. I'm not going in order here. Top favorite, most satisfying feeling is anytime I hit a motherfucking saucer. Nice. I love yelling at the top of my lungs. Stop it. It is just so good. It's this feeling of victory that I just can't, I can't get enough of. I love it. And I don't care what game it's on. I don't care if we are playing an older game. I don't care if we're playing a newer game, like a little saucer. I don't care. I just love hitting a saucer and feeling like, booyah, fucking hit that shit. Right? So that right there is the next one that I love. It's like victory. V for victory every time I hit that shot. Then the last two are a little bit more vague. I just want to say that I feel immense joy any time I hit a ramp and any time I don't drain the ball. That's my last two. I like it. Yeah. I mean, Chris had, what was your American Girl pinball shot that you loved? Oh, that was classic. And the whirligoo. The whirligoo shot. Listen, so any shot counts. I mean, I bought Dr. Pin this little teeny tiny Ninja Turtles pinball machine, like a little electronic video game one. And I swear to God, even on that thing, I don't drain and I'm like, man, you are the fucking bomb. Dude, you lost a real opportunity to text me and say, honey, I just want to let you know, I bought you a new in-box Turtles, and it's waiting for you at home. I would just, that's so mean. I know you would never do that. It's so mean. That would have been hilarious. I mean, it would have been. The reason he wanted you to do that is because it would have been so mean that he would have eventually guilted you into buying him one to make up for the meanness. Yeah, that's a great point. Nah, he wouldn't have to guilt me into it, but I did think that it was pretty awesome. It was awesome. So where would you say the next pinball machine, if we had to buy a Stern right now, It would be between Jurassic Park and Turtles, right? No. No? No. What would you say? Jurassic Park, 100%. It wouldn't even be a thought. No contest. Okay. All right. No contest. How about you, Chris? What would you, in a battle of those two? Jurassic Park and Turtles? Well, I can't say because I've not played Turtles yet. I have played Jurassic Park. Theme-wise, I'm leaning towards Turtles. Not a big Jurassic Park fan. But dinosaurs. Still, still. But the game, you know, I mean, that's where it's at. It's the game. It's not the theme. So, you know, that's why I'm not just going to say, no, I'll just get the turtles off. I've got to give it its due because it's an awesome game. It's the timing, yeah. So, yeah, I'm really going to have to play them. But I'll say this much. It would be very difficult for me to diss my boy Borg. Yeah, for sure. And obviously Yeti, you know, and Sullivan and everyone else, man. That was a great team. It's a championship team. They were both great teams, yeah. Yeah. I got a little visitor over here. Mr. Barlow is trying to get in. Say hi, puppy. Say hi. He's just licking his chops. Hey, hi, pups. Say hi. He's just drinking water, and I could hear it coming through the microphone. It's on his drinking bowls on the other side of the room. Guys, we're going to go to some kind of commercial break. It's going to be amazing, but not as amazing as what you will hear when you get back, which is us and George Go-Go Gomez of Stern Pinball. We'll be right back. Guess what? I got a fever. And the only prescription is... The Super Awesome Pinball Show. Oh, yeah! Super Awesome! This show is sponsored by Cointaker, distributor of brand new, full-size, authentic Stern pinball. Chicago gaming, raw thrills, arcade games, and much more. Also, a full line of dramatic pinball mods, LED flipper kits, speaker lights, custom laser LED toppers, playfield protectors, Valley Williams parts, pinball apparel, and much more. Get the latest releases and glam out your game room with Cointaker. Everything at your fingertips at Cointaker.com. Get your game on. R2-D2, hurry up. Hello, welcome to Burger Chef. We'd like a Star Wars poster, please. I knew it. Well, all you do is buy a large serving of Coca-Cola for 49 cents, and the poster's yours. R2, look. It's us. R2, I think we'd better leave. Collect all four Star Wars posters only at Burger Shep. Hi, this is Joe Camco from Capel Simba. And you're listening to the weirdest weirdos I've ever met on the Super Awesome Pinball Show. Now, back to our program. Well, it's about frickin' time. I am the God of Hellfire, and I bring you... The Super Awesome Pinball Show. It's a cool show. Live from New York, it's the George Gomez interview. It's George Corman Live! With your host, Branchie! Dr. Pim! And Mrs. Pim! And now, George Corman! George Corman! Well, I always wanted to be live from New York. Well, you actually are, George. We called up and said, hey, can we get George Eumanns for an interview? And he said, yes, I'd be happy to call you. I'm in New York. That makes it even fancier. Right. How are you doing? I'm good. How are you guys? It's actually great to hear you guys live, I should say, from New York. My girlfriend lives in New York. She lives in New York City. And like when life is normal, we see each other maybe once, twice a month. It's that. And so now that, you know, the entire studio is working remote, you know, I can participate in a bunch of Zoom meetings as easily from here as I can from the house back home. So I decided I was going to come out for longer stretches of time. So I've been out here, you know, for a couple of weeks and probably will be out here another couple of weeks. and so it's kind of interesting. It's, I guess, one of the few benefits of life in the pandemic. Yeah, I was going to say that's a silver lining of the COVID era right now that you're able to do that. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, let's formally introduce you. This obviously is George Gomez. He's a pinball legend. He's been involved in the world of gaming since 1978 and specifically on pinball machines for a number of decades now, working for Bally, Williams, and finally Stern Pinball. Currently the Executive VP of Game Development and the Chief Creative Officer for the company, while also continuing to be an active lead game designer. So you're kind of a man of many hats. Yeah, I don't really get to design that much anymore. You know, I touch all the games in one way or another. I mean, I interact with all the teams and render advice and help them with this and that. But I do, you know, as I think you guys know, I love to design. But, you know, in the arc of my career, this is not a bad thing. It's, you know, I've designed a lot of things, And I'm blessed and fortunate that I've gotten to do that. And so, you know, it's where I'm at right now, running the studio for Stern Pinball. And it's a lot of fun. I have a lot, you know, as you know, I have a huge cadre of really talented guys in every discipline that it takes to make these things. And so, again, I'm blessed in that way also. Can you give us a brief overview of what it means to be the chief creative officer at Stern Pinball? Sure. So all of the company's products are essentially my responsibility in terms of, you know, everybody. So everybody on the executive team has an area of responsibility, and mine happens to be the product. We've got chief operating officer, Kevin Sheckow. He runs the plant, and he runs procurement and quality stuff. And we've got chief revenue officer, runs sales and marketing. That's John Biscaglia. And then we've got, of course, the CFO, which does the obvious, you know, the financial stuff. And so different areas of the company report up to each one of those guys. The only thing that reports up to me is product development. So I've got about 50 men and women in the studio. And then, of course, at the top of the group, the one and only Mr. Gary Stern as the CEO, and his partner, Dave Peterson, who handles a lot of the company strategy stuff. So, yeah, so my piece of it is the games themselves and everything it takes to make them, you know, the accessories. Anything that's basically a new product or a new product initiative is basically my responsibility. So it means interacting with all the teams, interacting with the licensing guys on the licenses. It means sort of giving direction to all the different things and weighing in on what we should and shouldn't do. You know, at the executive level, in terms of stuff we should develop, how we should go about it, you know, what would be a cool new thing. all that kind of stuff. So it's really kind of fun. The teams all have their own personalities, and they all want to make the things they want to make, and it's a question of letting them do that and sort of getting it aligned with the vision of the company in terms of growing the company and the hobby and all the things that it takes to be that, right? You said that you don't really design much anymore, but actually between 2016 and 2019, you had your hand in on six different games as lead designer. Lead designer, yeah. So some of those things are not things that were planned. And some of those are projects that sort of took on a life of their own and became more than we anticipated they would be. And so they ended up consuming more of my time. I don't want to bore everybody with sort of the strategic vision, but we want to be all things pinball. But in terms of the day-to-day business of the company, the very core product that drives and funds the company are what we call the cornerstone games. cornerstone games we do three big titles a year they're intended to be as mass market a title as we can probably do there are times when we you know we don't go as mass market with the title for example iron maiden which was very successful for us but when we talked about that title we talked about you know how does this title resonate in the united states and that voice was sort of subdued to the notion that it really resonated in europe and up until covid 40 percent of our product, maybe more, was exported product. And so you can't discount the voice from Europe in terms of what they want as a product. And you can't discount the international voice. The Australians buy a tremendous amount of games and, you know, they have a vision about what they want. And so as our customers, we have to listen to that voice. And so you get a game like Iron Maiden, we said, okay, in the States, I don't know, you know, is mom going to let it in the house? There's a lot things that we think about, you know, and so we make those choices. And so this isn't, you know, I've gone off on a tangent. I'm not sure. I forgot what the original question was. Just tell me that you're not going to end up making a David Hasselhoff game. Right, but trust me, somebody's talked about that. Big Mac multiball. But, no, I think that the three cornerstones, right, They try to be as broad appeal as they can possibly be. I know where I was going with this. So the three cornerstones each have three different price points because we figured out that these different flavors address different elements in the market. And so the pro game mostly ends up on the street being operated because it's got good return on investment and it's a simpler game that can appeal to a player in those locations. Of course, the collector market is a big part. So, you know, the LEs and premiums are there to satisfy that market. And clearly, sometimes we do a better pro than we do a premium or an LE. And so sometimes pros end up in places where we thought, oh, you know, we're not going to sell many pros in the home. Well, but certain games we do, right? Deadpool being one, right? So where people, for whatever reason, like this version versus that version, or they don't feel like the distinction is enough to spend the extra money. But those three cornerstone games basically drive the core business of the company. And then there's other things that we do. And Chris is very aware of this because he worked with us on the Beatles title. And the Beatles title is a niche product, right, which we knew going in, hey, this is a niche product. We're not going to sell as many of these as we would a cornerstone. But it's still a viable thing because it gets us into sometimes we do products that are intended to go into places where we don't normally live. Right. And that was one of them. Right. We appeal to a lot of Beatles fans that wouldn't necessarily maybe consider a pinball machine, but a Beatles pinball machine they will consider. So you have those kinds of titles, and we like to call them studio titles because the notion was that originally we were open to the notion of an outside studio bringing us this concept. But the reality is that a lot of times that's a very hard thing to realize. Most of the people on the outside can't bring us a product that's ready to hit our assembly lines. And so it requires a lot of influence from inside to get it to that point. And that's how it is that I've had to jump in on some things, right? Batman was intended to be a studio title, and it was going to be a game that was intended to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the company. And Chris will tell you, you know, that, I mean, the reason Chris joined us and did an amazing job on that product is because I was really unhappy with the stuff I was getting from the studio and quotations on the outside, right? And so it was like, you know, in a panic, I went into Greg Ferrer's office one day and said, my God, this stuff is horrible. We've got to do something. And, you know, Greg hunting online and, you know, we stumbled into Chris and invited him in and he did an amazing job. And it picked up the ball, super short, crunch time frame and, you know, just detailed that thing out amazingly. And so, I mean, I think that that was intended to be a studio. It wasn't a cornerstone. Beatles was intended to be a studio. It wasn't a cornerstone. But when a designer on the outside isn't delivering or some element of the outside isn't there, I have to backfill it in order to make it real. And so it's like I end up, okay, you know, I'll take it. I'll do it. And so that's a little bit how those things came about. Batman was a little bit different because we had intended right all along to essentially just evolve my Dark Knight game from 08. And so it wasn't that there wasn't a designer there. In that particular case, it was that the art was going to be done on the outside and was going to come in and work with us. Someone was going to come in. But there were so many guys working on it. No two things looked like the same guy had done it. And it was horrible. So, you know, Mr. Franchi saved the day. So, you know, I mean, that's how I've gotten involved. Deadpool, same thing. You know, you guys know we got into some difficulties with the designer that had the game before me. And I had to step in. I was like, okay, all right. And then it was such a disturbing thing that I was like, okay, I'm not touching anything. We're going to start over because I don't want anyone to say anything about anything. So those aren't planned things. Those are things that you just have to do to kind of make the business run and sort of get things to work out. And so. I can't imagine a single person in that place went, well, we knew this day was going to come. No, I mean, it was just, you know, we were stunned, right? Yeah. I have seen that, though. You kind of have stepped up. So for the pin line, it sounds like you kind of took the reins on that. And when Deadpool needed a new leader, you stepped up for that. So it does seem like you fill the gaps. But to me, that seems like it would be a lot all at once, given that your plate is already pretty full based on just what you do in general. You're like a superhero at Stern. You're like a superhero. Really. I mean, you swoop in, you've got your normal job, like 9 to 5, and then they're like, oh, shit, something happened, and you fly in and you save the day. Into the phone booth. Exactly, like, you know, teleporting or Harry Potter on a broom or something. I mean, it's awesome. I feel like it's got to keep your job interesting, right? Yeah, there's no question my job is to do this thing. There's no question. I'm going to get this recording. I'm just going to play it back when I'm feeling down. There you go. No, I think, you know what, I think everybody does what they need to do when they need to do it. You know, I mean, that's the deal, right? And so it has been an interesting time. It has been really busy. But, you know, one of my really crazy busy days one day, somebody said to me, you know, there's going to come a time in which you're going to miss this level of interaction and activity with this. And trust me, that day, that was hard to imagine. Right. Yeah. It's like, no, my world's on fire. What are you talking about? Was there ever a time that you just had to bite your tongue? Like, did a license ever come around where you really wanted to do it, but because there was no circumstances forcing you in, you just had to kind of bite your tongue and go, You know what? There's some stuff being worked on that I really wanted to do, but it's just not practical for me to be a designer leading a team. When you see me in that role, it's not. It's not a necessity. Yeah. And so I think that there's some titles that some of the guys are working on that I really would have liked to have had, that I would have liked to have done. And, you know, you just, like I say, you just have to accept that it's the arc of my career right now. And that's where I am. And that, you know, it's cool. You know what? I get a lot of satisfaction out of running the studio and seeing the success the studio's having. And it's a different kind of satisfaction than going out and seeing your game on test for the first night kind of thing. But, you know, I've done that. And growing this company is, you know, what's important to me right now. Getting through this, which I think we're all focused on, right? Right. And, you know, we're lucky. Everybody's safe and we haven't had very many issues. And we're doing what we can. The back end of this, we want to be the continuation of the company we were going into it. I'm really fortunate I haven't had Laney bone off. We've compressed areas of the business to deal with this. and we're beginning to expand again. I've actually hired a couple of guys in the midst of this. So, you know, we're very fortunate. And I think the executive team is a good team. I think that, you know, we don't always see eye to eye, and there's a lot of behind-the-scenes emotion and energy when someone has an idea and there's a counter-idea to that and stuff. And it's not pretty behind closed doors, but at the end of the day, the reality is that we're a team, and the thing that's important is the growth and survival of the company. And so, you know, I think all those guys are very focused on their area, making their area work. And my responsibility is the development studio, and that's what I'm trying to do. How has COVID changed daily life? I mean, obviously, you are on location, I guess we'll say, which is kind of nice for you for some reasons. But how have things changed? You can't remotely produce or have an assembly line to make pinball machines. So what has changed? Right. So in March, you know, we scrambled, right, like the rest of the world to try to adapt and create a plan and keep our people safe and all that. So we shut down like everybody else did when the government said you got to shut down. And as soon as the government allowed us to come back up and running, we came back up. And so the development studio went home and continued to work. I don't know if it's visible from the outside, but we run with a lot of discipline, meaning that the teams are very proactively managed. And so team meetings continued on Zoom and Skype, et cetera. And guys would go into the shop when they needed to go into the shop. Guys would get together to play games to test them and develop them, et cetera, when they needed to. But it's still happening that way today for the most part. The factory started back up in the first week of June as soon as the government allowed us. And, you know, it looks different over there. You know, the last time I was there, a couple weeks ago I was there, and there's dividers to keep people safe while they eat lunch. and there's touch point ID on everything you touch, and there's hand sanitizer everywhere. Masks and gloves and everything. And so every protocol that the CDC talked about, we enacted. You know, we looked at what other manufacturers are doing, right? We looked at Ford. We looked at a lot of different manufacturers that are in a similar situation where you have to have people in an assembly line putting something together. What do you do? And so, you know, we spaced people out where we could. We realized that when we came back up, you know, the day rates weren't going to be what they were. You know, we were humming going into this thing. You know, we were doing great. And then all of a sudden you shut down for two and a half months and you come back up. But we've been so fortunate. The community has been so good to us. There's huge demand for the product. And sales guys just kept reporting back orders, back orders, back orders. But, like, right now we're trying to sell back orders and get the new game to everybody. There's a team that's getting their game ready to launch in the fall. And so, I mean, it's a vital place, even if everyone's not there. But, you know, the factory's up and running. So if you're going in. Those sneeze guards and stuff aren't cheap. So next time somebody wants to bitch about a $600 topper, just say, hey, man, you know. You've got new expenses. I'll tell you, most of this stuff, it's interesting because the guys in our fabrication shop made most of that stuff. And so it was like the craziness of March. You know, we're like, okay, all right, so we can't have people doing this. What are we going to do? We've got to build these guards. We're like, I think the plastic company is going, wait, you guys don't typically use this much plastic in a monster. Speaking of manufacturing, are you guys backlogged at all? Yeah, we're way backlogged. Right now we're trying very hard to fill the backlog and also keep up with the new game. So we have three lines. We have two big lines, And then we have like a small line that we use for things like accessories or reworks or sometimes fixing somebody's game or something. You know, so one of the lines is dedicated to turtles right now. And the other line is dedicated to backlog. You know, so we're shipping lots of stuff, not just turtles. And then even I think the little line was repurposed to kind of, you know, help with the backlog. So, but, you know, it's a good place to be, right? Somebody wants your product. Exactly. It's a good time to own pinball machines. I mean, let's be real. If you have one in your home and you're fortunate to be able to afford one, it's a good time to have one because you've got a lot of time on your hands and you're kind of stuck at your house, right? It is. So I can see how it would be in demand even more so than usual because people are, you know, they're not going out. They're not spending money on things that we normally spend money on, like travel. And so they're like, hey, we've got enough money to splurge on that new Turtles machine. Yeah, we found, George, that bikes are really hard to come by. swimming pools, kayaks, and I would think pinball machines would fall right into that category. Do you feel that way? They do, yeah. We completely agree. It's exactly what you were saying that, hey, we were going to go on this big European vacation. I guess we're not. We've got like 20 grand later. Right. Yeah. That's actually a bargain compared to Europe. One of the things we saw right away is we saw a huge uptick in the accessory business. Right. because people who already had the games were, like, thinking about modding them and thinking about, okay, how do I, you know, oh, yeah, I probably should get this. Well, and had time to make the repairs and adjustments. Right. You know, that's why Lowe's is, every time I drive by Lowe's, it looks like the store exploded. I'm like, you are not following 6G protocol, people. It is so crowded at Lowe's. Everybody's like, oh, man, I finally got time to fix that closet or got time to mod out my pinball machine. Right, right, for sure. Yep. With what's going on with COVID and the things that have happened and the changes to the building and the changes in the way you guys work things, you know, and how things are getting done, is that going to impact your schedule at all? Are you guys still right on track for everything you're planning on doing? Well, we're short some number of games for the year, but in terms of the titles that we plan to launch, all that stuff's still on track. Well, that's good. So every year we plan some number of titles are going to be launched and this is when they're going to be launched. And all of that stuff seems to be pretty much on track. Wasn't Turtles late? It was late a little bit. It wasn't late that much. It was late probably, might have been three weeks late, I think. Yeah, which is pretty impressive in everything that's been going on. I mean, I feel like that's pretty amazing. Yeah, I mean, again, it doesn't look like it's from the outside, but we work it all the time. You know, we just work everything constantly. And those dates are important because, you know, it's important to have product in line. The company doesn't make any money if product isn't going out the door. And so it's really vital to our survival. And it's the reason that we run the studio with the discipline we do because, you know, it's kind of like you have to. And, you know, I mean, stuff's going to happen, right? I mean, shit happens all the time. It's like stuff, this is not working right, this is broken, this whatever. And so we have to react and we have to repurpose resources. A licensor may say something that you were really banking on is not available or you can't do it or they reject something. Or sometimes we go through a series of rejections, you know, to get to a place. And I mean, Chris knows this very well. You know, it's like how difficult this is to like, you know, have the guy saying no, no, no. But, you know, sometimes they won't tell you what it is that they're looking for. Well, that's why you're a superhero, because you're just supposed to know these things. Like, you need to be able to read their minds. R2D2. It was a challenge for sure. It was a challenge for sure. Yeah. The one thing, though, that we have talked about on this podcast before, though, is the topper strategy. And that's something that we haven't written down that we want to ask you about, but I'm just really curious, because you brought up R2D2. How does the topper factor into the pinball strategy from creation to getting around to the topper piece? Because so many people are passionate about toppers. They really want the whole package when they get it straight out of the box. And you guys have been doing really cool stuff with toppers, with Black Knight and even Star Wars topper when it came out. I mean, it was really neat. How are you looking at toppers now? Is it kind of a when we're done with the machine, we do it? Or is it something that goes with it? No, so I'll tell you a little bit about the strategy of that business. A long time ago, before we had much of an accessories business, we had a parts business, but that's basically replacement parts. But the accessories business, we looked at it because a lot of people were hot-rodding the games on the outside. So a lot of the garage shops and stuff were guys making toppers or guys making whatever, widgets. The problem was that a lot of times the widgets or the toppers or whatever, they really don't plug and play with our stuff really well because they really don't understand the stuff they need to understand about, you know, how the system works and just different things, right? So when we sat back to look at it, we said, you know, why aren't we like BMW or Porsche or somebody that, you know, they're going to sell you accessories for your car. The accessories are warranted and they plug and play and they work and no one's drilling any holes and you're not cutting any wires and everything is going to be seamless. and they're intended to extend the experience of the games. So whenever possible, we've said, okay, it shouldn't be just decorative. We should be doing things that the guys on the outside can't do, like integrating them into the game software, you know, and integrating them into the rules and stuff like that. So that was the approach from the beginning. And the teams actually, they create as part of kicking off a project. So teams go through, the schedule is managed. There's a series of gates that they have to go through. And the gates are basically, in some ways, they're go-no-go gates, meaning that you could get set back at a gate. Meaning that you know you do a presentation to the executive management you present what you doing and then people comment on this and the manufacturing guys are involved the executive team involved These gates happen all the way along the development cycle of a product And so one of the very early gates is a concept gate where they present a series of documents that lay out where they think they're going with the game and what they're doing with the topper and what they're doing with the accessories and what they're doing with all the stuff, what they think the art style is going to be, what the music is going to be, all this kind of stuff. So that everybody's on the same page. Everybody signs off on this. Everybody says, yeah, that's great. Let's do that. So the toppers are conceptualized early on. They haven't always been because as the accessory business grew, the original concept of the accessory business, it was tough to realize it given that there was a bunch of products. The day we had that idea, there was also a bunch of products already in development. And so now people had to scramble to like, I need a what? I need a topper. okay, I've got to come up with a topper. So, yeah, we have a lot of challenges. One of the challenges right now is we want the accessories to be ready when the game is ready. And it's a hard thing to do because we don't want people that aren't on the team working on the accessories because we want the accessories to be as integrated with the game as possible. So that means that the guys that are best going to integrate it are the guys that are working on the game. And as you know, making three versions of a game, a pro, a premium, and an Ali, is a ton of work. And so a lot of times, right around the time that they're getting ready to final their game, they are having to also final the accessories. And so we've gotten better at understanding where the different lulls in the development cycle are relative to each discipline so that we can manage, okay, all right, now we need you working on your copper this week. We need you working on this next week, whatever. And so we're getting better. But we're not there yet. You know, I hear about it from the sales guys all the time. Accessories need to be done when the game is done. And I get it. You know, everybody wants to buy them at the same time. And so, you know, that's a challenge that we have to master correctly. And you've seen them evolve, right? We've decided that, hey, it's kind of cool. You know, if you buy this thing and it comes with a rule or comes with a feature that you didn't have until you bought this thing, it adds value to that thing. Right? It's like that your topper is much more than a light show. And so we think that's kind of cool. Lots of other products do this, where they extend the use of the product by selling you a new widget that comes with new power. So, yeah. I mean, that's the deal. Currently, every game development has conceptualized their accessories at the inception of the game, but they get worked on as they can throughout the cycle. And, you know, two key guys, right? There are three key guys. The game designer, the lead developer, and the lead mechanical guy, they are the guys that are going to execute on this topper. And, of course, the art guys, right? I mean, and so Chris will tell you that, you know, we did the Batman topper, and that wasn't conceptualized at the beginning. That came late in the cycle. You know, we were, like, scrambling around going, what are we going to do? Okay, you know, this, like, this cockpit thing. Okay, yeah, right. Yeah, wasn't that, like, a double, like, you were working on the idea for that center thing? working on something and then I'm like you wanted to make it 3d in the middle and I was like making this light box that was flat and you said hey we could marry these two and it'd be great yeah right right right exactly I was trying to figure out how to afford the thing that was in my head when we talked about it right and and so I was like you know what your art looks so good I don't need to mold those cockpit canopies you know so yeah but you know that was the case of a topper that wasn't conceptualized when the game was. And so we're getting better at that. Does it vary by game, George? Like, do you feel like depending on who the team is for that game, they're either more aggressive or less aggressive with the topper strategy for that? Yeah, I think so now part of learning any piece of a business is seeing how your customer base responds to the thing you've made, right? So now we've had great success with some of the toppers you mentioned, right? The Star Wars topper, the Batman topper, the Jurassic Park topper. You know, and so now teams that maybe weren't paying so much attention and were sort of, I wouldn't say phoning it in, but they were less interested in their topper than they were in some other elements of their game. Now, all of a sudden, they see, oh, hey, you know what? Those Jurassic Park things sold out in like two hours. I guess we should make some of those. There's a topper Twippy award too now. Right, right, right, right. You know, the UV kit on Stranger Things, right? For all the shit we got about that, those things flew off the shelves, right? They were like, they sold those things out like in no time. So we're looking at a lot of things like that. And, you know, I'm sure you guys saw all the flack we got for that UV kit, right? Oh, my God, yeah. And you say to yourself, look, here's the reality. I can't just throw it into the game because it costs X amount of dollars. So unless you want me to raise the price of the game by this much, I just can't give it away. It's all about perception, right? I mean, you have to feel like you are not getting screwed. So if you tell somebody straight out of the gate, hey, here's what comes in the LE, and in the future we're also going to release X, Y, and Z, I think people would take that easily. We thought this would be really fun. It's like a cool reveal. Like, oh, I've already got part of this? Oh, my God. Now I've got to get the whole thing. Right. And so it really was the thinking inside. The design of that thing was in the game from the beginning, and the problem was that it cost too much money. And we started spending a lot of money just on the R&D of it, like working with the ink guy and getting the ink to work with hard codes and getting the ink to work with the play field and all this other stuff. So we're like, oh, man, the dollar signs are just out of control on this device. And so we were like, okay, all right, so what do we do? We had two options. You kill it. No one ever sees it, right? And that was conversation on the table. It was like, we'll kill it. We'll do it in another game that maybe has more budget for it down the road because it doesn't have some other device or something, right? And so we thought about that. And then we said, no, why don't we do this in the accessory? And then we said, yeah, but you've got the problem with the playfields. You know, you've got to screen all the playfields because you can't just sell an accessory just to the premium and LE guys. You've got to sell the accessory to everybody. And you know what? We incurred the cost of screening that thing on 100% of the playfields. And we didn't pass that on. because your strength of things didn't cost more because of that. So we just said, okay, all right, we'll eat this. You got the cost of screening the playfields and all this. It's in the games. Let it go, and we'll sell the accessory. And they did buy off the shelves, there's no question. But it never fails. The flack in the forums doesn't exactly mirror reality. I don't know how you can handle that, George. Honestly, the vitriol behind something as small as a topper is through the roof on websites like Pinsight. So, I mean, how do you balance that? Obviously, you want to make everybody happy, but at the same time, you have to. You can't. You can't. You can't. So, do you shoot for the 80%? You just want to get the majority of people out there? You know, we do. We do what we feel is right, you know, and so you read the stuff. You think there's like some committee of guys wringing their hands to figure out how to screw people. There is no such committee. it's like you know like they think you know we're machiavellian monsters and we're just out to you know like and that's it couldn't be further from the truth look we buy our own products right every one of us has firm time all machines in the house every one of us in the development studios paid their own money for these games and we want the games to be the best they can be within the scope of the realities of the world we're handed you know i mean so it's like i work to a budget It's the budget that allows the company to make a profit, and that's what we can do. And we're a business. But within that, we're all in there trying to make the coolest thing we could possibly make. And at the end of the day, that's what we have to worry about. We have always said, you know, let's keep our eye on our ball. Let's not worry about what somebody else is doing. We want to go in there every day and make the coolest games we know how to make. And that's what we want to do. And we don't begrudge anyone else their stuff. We don't hate anyone else. You know, we don't have any kind of animosity to the other people that are trying to make them on a scene. But we are focused on our stuff. And we're going to do the things that we want to do. That's how you deal with it. I tell my guys, I say, don't go on the farms. It's going to make you feel bad. And it's, you know, it's a guy that he doesn't have the right to make you feel that bad because he doesn't know you. He doesn't know the passion and energy and commitment that you bring to this job. And he will never know that. So it's like, don't go up there. Just don't give him that right. You essentially give him control of your emotions. Right. And he has no idea who you are. That's reality from my perspective, you know. Absolutely. I think that's life in general. Yeah. Yeah. When you say he, are you that guy on Facebook? That guy. That guy on Facebook. I don't know who they are. I really don't because that's the other thing, right? It's very interesting. Pinback 22 or whatever. Yeah, we tried many things, you know, like early on. We tried to engage. We took it to heart to the point that we would try to say, hey, you know, I'm sorry you feel this way. You know, let's talk about it. Let's understand where this comes from. But I have to tell you that in most situations, those conversations go nowhere. It's too much drama for your mama. That's what I said. Pinside. I mean, I love Pinside. Don't get me wrong. It's great for so many reasons. But when it comes to those forums, I just ignore. I can't help myself. They don't want to hear your reasoning, George. They're just in a contest to make the biggest insult. Who can help insult the other person? So reasoning has no place in that forum. No. The same thing with Facebook, social media, any of that stuff. You know, it's like I just kind of like when somebody's talking shit, I just kind of like, OK, all right, I'm not I'm not going there. I'm just and it's hard. Right. Because, Chris, I know, you know, I know you and I have talked about this. I know you've lived it and I know you get wrapped up in it. It affects you personally that when somebody says bad things about something and honestly, they don't understand. Right. They have no idea. No, it's a labor of love. Right. So it's like you can't you can't help but feel personally offended if somebody is not happy with what you've done. But at the same time, you know, every single game that any pinball manufacturer puts out, you're going to have things that people love and you're going to have things that people wish they could change. And you're ultimately not going to be able to make everybody happy. You can say that about anything in the world. When you create something, you're essentially putting yourself out there for criticism. Exactly. You know, right? Whether it's like, care what you design. You design cars. You design software. You design iPads. I don't, whatever it is, you're putting yourself out there. You know, if you go to any of the forums for any of those hobbies, you'll find a lot of similarities. It's a place where people feel free to do this, and it becomes a contest about, you know, I'm going to say the most outrageous thing I can say because I know it's going to stir something up, but people are paying attention to me and they're interacting with me, you know? Yeah. Right. Well, we've derailed a little bit. That's all right. That was very interesting. I loved that. I loved that rant. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's golden. But, yeah, we were talking about accessories and things like that. Now, one giant expensive accessory that you guys put forth recently was Star Wars, quote, unquote, The Pin. Yes. Which is, you know, basically a new game to fill a different sort of marketplace that you guys felt, you know, needed a little attention. And how has that worked out for you? Like, as far as the numbers, is it where you guys expect it? Is it something you're going to continue forward with? Yeah. So we are going to continue forward with it. And at this point, we've done three different initiatives to address what we think is a market. And part of these initiatives, when we do some of these things, we're not expecting them to be, I mean, we would hope that they're going to be runaway successes. But we do them with the perspective that we're going to learn something about not only the product, but the environment that we have to sell it in and how we're going to manufacture it in order for it to be cost effective, etc. It's a market. It's a lower price point, basically. In its simplest terms, the intent is to go to a market for someone that maybe doesn't already know pinball machines. It's about growing the audience of people that are into pinball machines. One concept is it can sort of be a gateway drug. It can be, you know, hopefully you like this thing, you buy this thing, you have it, and then you go, yeah, and then you go look and, you know, and then you go to the Stern website and see what else is there. and then at some point now you love this thing enough, but you've played through it, and you're tired of it, and you're ready for one of the big games. And so the price of the big games has continued to creep up because the materials we buy, the processes that we have to spend money on, all that stuff, when that stuff goes up, basically gets translated to the product. And so as the price has gone up, we've said, you know what, I love our existing community. I love our existing customer base. But think about this from the perspective of a pinball machine in every home, And there's a lot more people that don't know and interact with pinball than there are people that do. And that's the audience and market that I want. I want some piece of that. And that's why the pin is significant, because it's going to go into places where the other games might be a tougher sell initially. Not everybody, and we've been, you know, we're growing that program from the perspective of understanding how it is that you sell the product, right? If you put that product on the floor, on a showroom floor with the big games and that particular vendor also sells used games, it may be a non-starter because the dealer might make more money selling a used game. It's very similar to the used car business, right? So it's very similar to the used car business or the car business in general. If what you can buy is the brand new entry-level product and he can move you into a higher grade used product for the same price, he might make that sale instead, right? So part of this is about not only learning how to, you know, not just about making a less expensive pinball machine that's still engaging, still feels like a pinball, because that was the thing that we learned from the very first iteration that we did, which I don't know if you guys have ever seen it. We did it like probably eight years ago or 10 years ago. And those two games were perceived as toys. And so it was like, hey, we went too far down market. So we need to come back up so that they feel like the Mommashines. And I believe, I mean, I'm very interested in new experiments about creating new markets of a product. And so that's very seductive to me, which is why you see me be the guy that picked up the torch and ran with it relative to that stuff. because it's not about making an inferior pinball machine. It's about making a pinball machine that could address a market that doesn't currently exist for pinball machines. And that's pretty exciting. Yeah, absolutely. That leads into my question of your marketing strategy because for the people who are diehard pinheads, they really want to see these games revealed with a black curtain on the stage at a major show just for them. But recently you guys have been doing the mass market reveals, reveals, the IGNs, the Kotakos, the websites that basically show this machine to people who might not have any idea that pinball is still around. Is that your main goal at this point, to try and branch out into all of these markets that are untapped? Well, I don't know if it's a main goal, but it's certainly a goal that we're interested in, is getting new customers and new eyeballs on pinball. For us, it's about, we don't ever want to hear anyone say they still make those things. We want to change the world. And so our vision of changing the world is, we've become a lifestyle brand. So it's like this wasn't a goal. You know, 15 years ago, we were a pinball machine company. We're a lifestyle brand now. We have brands like Supreme that are mega lifestyle brands approaching us. We didn't go to them. They came to us and say, we think you guys are hip. We want you guys to make a pinball machine for us. But, okay. You know, so when you see us in the IGNs and Kotaku and you see us on the floor at CES and stuff like that, it's essentially about extending the brand, right? It's like we don't sell pinball machines at CES. We don't sell a single pinball machine to see us in concept, meaning that no one on the show floor, you know, I mean, we may direct someone. Someone may come and play a monster game and say, hey, wow, this is so cool. Where do I get one? And then we tell them. But in terms of our sales guys actually moving equipment, those events are about marketing and presenting our brand, exposing our brand to as broad an audience as we possibly can, right? So we want to be all things pinball. We want a digital flip train. We want an accessories business. We want a parts business. You know, I want people to be able to go on the website, order a ramp for their broken down whatever, and get that ramp. And so it's just about taking the company and firmly putting it in the 21st century. I mean, really, that's all it is. But a follow-up to that, you know, a lot of people, you know, if you read the forums, you read a lot of crap and all that. But sometimes some people actually make a good point. And a lot of people think that Stern and the other companies have sort of forgotten about the fan base that they have when it comes to releases. Because they said, like, well, you know, the fan base for IGN and all that, whatever, you're going after trying to get a new fan base. But at the same time, by not having your black curtain reveal at Texas Pinball Festival or whatever, you're kind of leaving those people's cheese in the wind. Is there a way, let's say you do, you know, our reveal at Texas Pinball Festival, then, you know, three or four days later, weekly or whatever, you do a reveal with IGN. Does IGN suddenly not want it because you've already shown it at a festival? Or would it not matter to them and you could almost do a second reveal? I'm not sure. I can tell you this for a fact. We never think, oh, we don't care about the guys that are our fans. I mean, that's the last thing on our heads. I mean, it's really about getting the broadest possible exposure. If you look at it from the standpoint of our existing customer wanting to get their hands on a game, I mean, it's not like they didn't see it on IGN or Kotaku. They saw it, right? So, and as soon as possible, we always try to tie into all the major shows. And, you know, this year there was going to be a huge TMNT thing at Midwest Gaming because it, you know, it sort of lined up with a release of the game, right? And so it's like we don't have any intention of ignoring or avoiding the shows. We want a presence at all the big shows. We want a strong presence. I mean, you know, we took like, I was like, Marco had like, when we did Iron Man, he had like 50 pinball machines on the floor at the Midwest Gaming Festival, right? Every one of those pinball machines sold off the floor. We love that. We don't have any issues with that. It's really about getting worldwide exposure to the brand more than anything. It's part of the about. Could you do both, though? I mean, what? Possibly. Sometimes these things, you know, it also has a lot to do with lining everything up to when, you know, when stuff's ready and when we need it and all that kind of stuff. You know, our distributors and dealers typically get, you know, you've seen the webinars. They get a very early look, usually before anyone else. So, you know what? We are hardly perfect, and we critique and analyze everything we do. And every time we do something and we feel we did it right, we take notes. And every time we do something wrong, we take notes. And the last thing we want to do is insult or get anybody in a fizzy about something we're doing. So, yeah, it's worth thinking about for sure. It's going to be tough because you're, as the market leader in the pinball space, you're also the most prone to criticism. So the good with the bad is equally as great, I guess. Yeah, I mean, it goes with the territory, right? We're in so many places on the street, in people's homes. We literally have a global market. You know, I see Pima machines with labels going to Dubai, Russia, Finland, Norway. I mean, you walk the end of the line, and there are Pima machines going everywhere. That's so awesome. I just want to interject that that's got to be like a really amazing feeling. For me, when my games are online, I have a collection of photos of Deadpools going to every corner of the globe. Belgium, I mean, you name it. And I have photos, and I walk the end of the line every day, and I took pictures of those labels. Because we are very proud of being an American manufacturer in this day and age that is exporting product all over the world. product in America, you know, that employs Americans and to manufacture that product. And not a lot of companies in this country can say that. And so we love it. And you know what, I'm a designer that produces things that get manufactured and sold and shipped all over the world. And that as a guy who grew up wanting to be a designer and essentially I've realized my dream. And that's one of the most satisfying things to me is seeing those products going everywhere. So yeah, you know, I love it. And the fact that they're still around, I think that's one of the best things about pinball is that these games that you made and every other designer made decades ago are still around. And some of them are in my basement. I just think it's like what other hobby can say that? And being remade and people are actually clamoring for these games to be remade. And that kind of transitions to the Vault program, which we wanted to ask you about. Right. Yeah. I mean, so how do you guys decide? I'm taking it. I'm going to run with the show. So my question is, how do you decide when you're going to do a vault game, which one you're going to do? I mean, is it based on a number of things, like based on the production line and manufacturing it, the parts that are needed, the manpower, or is it solely based on the love of the game and how many requests you're having for this game to be remade? It's first driven by the man to the game. Makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes there are challenges. Like right now, one of the most in-demand games is My Lord of the Rings. Yeah, we were going to get there eventually. I don't know if we could put in a good word with somebody. I'm sure that might be like a head honcho. But I mean, I really love that game. Hit us with the truth here. Is that ever going to happen? Yeah, so here's the challenge, right? So the challenge with some of those older products is the fact that, like, for example, Well, that game lives on, I think it's two generations of hardware ago. And some of those parts have gone end of life, meaning that you can't buy them. You can buy, you know, you might be able to buy 50 here and 30 there, but you can't buy big quantities of some of those electronics, the chips, that make up that old White Star system. And so that's one of the challenges. Now, that doesn't mean that we couldn't port the game to one of our current modern systems. And there's been a lot of conversation about that. But it's just that much more work to get it done. Well, that's right. So we love Vaults. You know, we've done great with them. So Vaults are actually really nice games, and I'll tell you why. They're really nice games because the very first thing that we do when we build a Vault, when we decide we're going to make a Vault, is we go sit with Pat Powers and his group, and we say, okay, Pat, open up the service logs. I want to hear everything that went wrong with this game. And then we try to fix it. It's like a redo. Yeah. And it's a redo. If you ever look closely at one of our vaults next to the original, you'll find little things like, for example, the web slingers in Spider-Man are made out of stainless steel, but the original ones were plastic. You'll find that the latest Iron Man has the improved magnet with the ring so it doesn't wear out your play field. You'll find lots of things like that in the vaults that are tiny little engineering things, but they're significant because your vaults is going to... In some cases, you'll find higher-res art on your vaults, because remember that some of the vaults were made back in the days when we were Marc Silk-screening stuff. And so just by virtue of the fact that we're digitally printing it, we had to up-res the art. And so we had to, like, go find higher-quality versions of the art, recreate the art using higher quality. So, like, Iron Man is the best example. If you find an original Iron Man and park it next to the vault Iron Man, you'll find all kinds of things. It's got the vault arm that has the cool steel backbox. It has the nicer speaker display panel. It's got all kinds of improvements. So the vaults are great that way. So it's not just making the game. It's actually kind of making a brand new game in terms of, you know, you have to figure out how you're going to manage to capture this. You know, it's an opportunity to make it better, right? Right, exactly. Why wouldn't you take that, right? It's like there are two big challenges. One is obsolete hardware, which requires a bigger engineering effort to port the old software to the new system. And there's a bunch of hurdles there. The next big thing is licensing. Sometimes the licensor doesn't have an interest and he won't grant you that license, right? And so... Oh, so it's not like it carries over. No, they expire. They all expire. Every license expires. Those greedy bastards. Yeah. Like, for example, in the case of Fat Man, right? So the license expired and we had to go get it renewed because there was continuing demand for the game. We didn't want to leave it. You know, it's like, wow, you can't. You know, it's like, you can still continue to sell these things. We're selling them this year. We'll make more Batman. So it's like, in order to do that, though, when the license expired, you got to get a new license. Right. And so sometimes you face the challenges of the second time around. The licensor might not want to do the same deal he did before. And so that deal gets a little bit more expensive and you have to figure out a way. how much can I actually raise the price from the last time I made the game and not piss people off or not make a statement, they're not going to buy it because it costs us much more. So I would say to you that the two biggest things is how much engineering time is it going to require? Because I don't have a vault team. It's kind of like whoever is free to work on it, preferably the guys that worked on the game originally, the mechanical engineers and the artists typically are the guys that get hit on the vaults because, again, there's the service improvements, and typically there's some art improvement. And so those are the things we can afford to put X amount. I can't turn it into a six-month project. I've got to turn it fairly quickly, and that's really the issue with Vaults. But it starts with what do people want. It starts with the sales guys coming in and saying a lot of demand for this game or used versions of this game are trading for a lot of money, which in and of itself tells you there's demand for the product, right? Well, I mean, you have to know just by your marketing on Facebook is that the showdown, the Stern Showdown, has Lord of the Rings right up there for the greatest game of all time in the Stern wheelhouse. So does that play a role? Yes. Yeah, absolutely. All that stuff, a lot of times that stuff is done with the notion of, you know, hey, what can we learn from this? And so, yeah. Well, I got to tell you that somebody recently asked me, if they vaulted Batman, would you redo the art? And I said, I would love to redo the art because I had, like, four weeks to do it the first time. And, like, I didn't even have a chance to think about it. I just slapped shit on the cabinet. It was beautiful shit. Beautiful shit. By the way, it looks amazing, so I don't know what you're talking about. But the Vault, usually it has to be a game that's been out of production for a while. And, hopefully, Batman has been in continuous production almost since. I say continuous meaning that we've made it every year since we've made it. It hasn't been, you know, like every week there aren't Batman out there, but every year since we introduced the game, we've made Batman. And that's the real testament to the quality of the games that we make in terms of the games themselves is the fact that a lot of times people, maybe they didn't buy it originally or they played one on the street years after we released it and they really liked it and then they go up to the company or they go up to their dealer and they say, hey, can you give me a, I missed that Deadpool the first time around. Can you give me a Deadpool? Cool. And then that's the guy that will call up sales and sales will tally it. And they'll say, well, we're not sure when we have them scheduled now, but we'll take it down. And when it reaches a certain number, those guys go, hey, we got to build these things. And so most of the games, that's what happens, right? In the last few years, we've been very fortunate that there's been continuous production on so many games. And that second line or the small line is always like firing up. We also have games that were improved by software and there's a resurgence of interest. Guardians of the Galaxy, perfect example, right? It's like all the greats we got when we first released that game. And that game has been continuously made in the last couple of years. It's come back strong. People love the hexagons. They do. That game is amazing. Just throwing in my two cents there. I love that game. It's a great game. That's the amazing thing about technology, too, though, is that you've got all of these games that you're continuing to improve. And because of technology, now a lot of the, you know, you can download the upgrades and you can USB into your. Christian does all this, so I do not do any of the technical stuff when it comes to the USB drive. I just, he makes it look very easy. But, yeah, the updates to the code that can come as regularly as you guys can create it. Right. That brings up a whole new world for us. So, you know, we talked about challenges, things that we consider, you know, like stuff that we're not, that we think we're not doing as well as we could. talked about accessories and stuff. The thing that we still struggle to release games at 1.0 and trying very hard, meaning that we're getting very close. You know, you've seen a bunch of releases where, boy, it didn't take many more releases after we started manufacturing it to get to 1.0. So development teams undergo a tremendous amount of whiplashing in terms of some of the licensing challenges and some of the technology challenges when a designer invents something that's difficult to, that's not working the way that it was intended to. And so there's tremendous amounts of work that goes into getting it to work right. So those are the things, those are the unseen things that behind the scenes, like, you know, it's not like we all took three weeks off and went and lay on the beach, you know. Like, you know, there's, like, shit happens, you know. And so I think we're getting better at it. A lot of times designers or developers, I mean, Lyman's a classic case, right? he's a developer that even after he's done with something, he continues to think into you know, he plays this stuff all the time and he continues to think into what it could be. And so, he'll like, okay, I'm going to do, you know, I think can I do another code release on this because I had this other idea, you know, and so that's how the code gets extended. You know, Guardians of the Galaxy, I mean, Lonnie and Mark Zinnikor put a bunch of work into that thing that made it as in demand as it is today, right? And initially when we released it, we got so much grief about that game. So... But it's turned out to be one of the most desired games out there right now. I mean, it's a fun game now with the code as fleshed out as it is. Yep. But you had talked about going after what people have been clamoring for, and there's one aspect of Stern's history that has never really been explored, and that's vaulting the stuff that is way, way back. Like, if you try to find a Quicksilver right now, you are going to be SOL. There's no way you're going to find it, and if you are going to find it, it's going to be like 15k. Yeah, we've talked about it. Yeah, we've absolutely talked about it. It's just the question of, I mean, it's a full-on development cycle. I mean, that's remaking the entire game, essentially. I mean, you can use it as like an example, but the technology is so different. But do you feel like it's a simpler technology, or do you think it would be difficult to go back to that? So what you have to ask yourself is how many would we sell, right, in comparison to one of the modern games. And so that's the issue. The issue is, okay, so you say this is the work. When we look at a project, like, you know, there's been some of the conversations about, for example, moving a vault game into modern hardware. And when you start thinking about that and you say, I'm going to move it into modern hardware, hey, wouldn't it be cool to alter the display effects and use the modern display and create all new display effects? And everybody gets excited and everybody goes, oh yeah let's do that that's awesome yeah i can see it you know and then you go okay but that's that's like building a whole game right you know so you have to say to yourself do the economics support it right the end of the day we make some number of quips over yes it's in great demand it was an awesome game the magic that i have to figure out is how do i do that and make it a valid business case for the company right that's really that's who that is it's not you know it's You know, could we do it? Sure, we could do it. You could do anything, George Gomez. I'm just saying. Would you guys ever consider vaulting toppers or even going back and creating toppers for games that never had one since toppers are such a thing? Yes, that is absolutely something that we've talked about. So, yeah, there's a bunch of games that lend themselves to improvements on the stuff we made back then or to the... Yes, absolutely. Yep, something we've talked about. I just have to say, we have eight pinball machines in our basement. Everything from Stars to, I don't know, I guess Medieval Madness was the latest one that we purchased. And every single one has a topper. Every single one. Because I refuse. I'm like, Christian, I don't care if you throw a freaking antique Liberty Bell up on top of that game, but it will have something on the top of it. Oh, my God. Sarah should apply to Stern's topper division because she makes some pretty amazing toppers. You have to. It's like going to church in Robert Englunds, yes, without one of those bouffant things on your head. You just can't do it. It's just, do not come into my house without a topper. Those things are, what do they call those things? Fascinators. Yes. Fascinators. It just makes the whole outfit Jordan. Do you know what I mean? You have a closet full of fascinators? I don't, but I do have a closet full of topper pieces. I really do. I feel like it's such an essential part of just, you know, people walk into your arcade or your basement or wherever you have a pinball machine, and it's the first thing they see. First, before even the play field, they can see the lights and the topper, and it draws them in. I'll tell you, we put Batman at Logan Arcade with the, you know, with the Super Elite topper with the bat signal, right? and Logan's got fairly high ceilings, and it's a dark environment, right? So you walk into the place, and the bat signal is like... It's like a beacon of light. Right, right, right. And so it's funny because it was like the number one earning game for a long time, and then they moved it to the other room, and I'm in there one day, and I'm talking to the guys, and I'm like, what's going on? He's like, oh, you know what? The earnings dropped up. I said, yeah, it's because you moved it into this room, and the bat signal... from across the room I don't see the bat signal it really is like the way to advertise the machine before you can even see the bat glass before you can even read that it says Batman 66 do a little experiment, put it back out there again put it back out there oh my god, it needs to go back to the room yeah I know, you can walk into the room there's some bat signal the black knight topper oh my gosh, I mean that has blown every other topper out of the water Yeah, Black Knight Topper is awesome. It's so amazing. It is the one, I think, that I have said, and I don't say this super often, but I do say... I know, you're going to put a Black Knight Topper on top of your garden, right? I mean, I might mix it up a little. It's the feathers. You're going to take the Black Knight's head off and put Groot up there. Exactly. He's just going to say Groot things. That's all. There you go. It's a topper that makes you want to machine. Not that Blackman is an amazing machine, but the topper sells the machine because you're like, man, I want that topper. Yes, like we've got a really cool algorithm in that thing that decides his emotions and stuff. And which really nobody notices how that is until you really stare at it and work with it for a long time. And then you realize how seemingly intelligent he is. And so it's, yeah, we're very proud of him. And the insults are just so amazing. The Steve Ritchie insult. Oh, man. Tim Sexton, the coder on that game, the lead developer on that game, did an amazing job with that particular piece of software. And the mechanical engineers did a great job in terms of articulating it. And, you know, it's a very, very cool. Like I said, just pull the knife's head off, put that on your guardians. There you go. So it's rare that we get someone who's so in tune with the business strategy of CERN Pinball. So we want to ask you just a couple more things about the business. And so online gaming has been something that's been around forever in video games, but it's something that we kind of only started to see in pinball. Is that something that you see CERN jumping into? And without revealing any trade secrets, what do you see as kind of the future of online and pinball? I think it's no secret that we're working on a bunch of things related to extending the environment of the games into that space. And so I can tell you that I think when we get there, the things we're doing are going to be very different from the things everybody else is talking about doing. A lot of the stuff that we're doing is going to have a lot of player interaction and a lot of location interaction. And so there's something for everybody. And so, yeah, we're very excited about it. It's just it can't go fast enough. It's the thing. It's probably one of the things I work on the most. And we would have been a lot closer if not for COVID. But COVID has a distraction to my focus in terms of, okay, I was working on that. Now I feel like just kind of worry about the structure of the day-to-day business in terms of, you know, how they're running the teams remotely and getting the factory back up and all that stuff has really slowed us down. But it is going to be a very cool initiative. I'm driving it really hard. It's just, you know, it's just going to take some time. That's exciting, though. It is. It's exciting to hear that you're working hard on that and that's something that's coming. So, you know, I think we've known that, but just the possibilities are pretty extensive. Yeah. I mean, I've seen and heard from lots of people what they want to do and stuff. And it's like right now I'm like, wow, that's cool. Go ahead and do that. That's not what I'm doing. Right. We had Joe Kamenko on January, February. And he said because we asked about the future of Kapow and he had said that some things were being buttoned up as he spoke with Stern about some continued Kapow product Has that come down the line any further I think that you know we love Joe and clearly you know he is woven into the fabric of this company because he had such an impactful role in sort of the first iteration of this company And so we'll continue to do stuff with Joe. It's a question of what fits and when. But, yeah, I mean, we'd love to see, you know, more interaction. It's just a question. It really is. We're in the difficult situation. And it's a privileged situation, really, but of having more cool projects than we can possibly introduce simultaneously or in the course of a year. And so it's a question of strategizing, okay, when does this come out and why is it important that it comes out here? And what are we going to do in terms of the focus of this product? And we spend a lot of time trying to mix up the product line, trying to mix up the licenses, trying to determine what piece of the market the licenses are going to resonate with. and so, you know, that's just part of it. Outside of Capel, though, you also have other companies and other, you know, you said you have three lines and one of them kind of handles stuff like the private label games like Supreme and most recently Heavy Metal. Do you think that you're going to continue that? Is that something that has done well for you guys? Yeah, private, you know, private label is great, right? It's like because private label product is basically owned by the label. It's not sold by us. It's not owned by us, meaning that, you know, they pay us to do it. So it's a great piece of business, right? So it's like we will continue to have a private label line. And it's just a question of being selective and picking the right partners. You know, private label product is really not intended to, like, we don't want to compete with ourselves. And it's not necessarily for our audience. It may resonate with our audience, but it's really about what the brand wants. You know, what does the brand want to do with their product? What does Pabst Blue Ribbon, what do they want to do with their thing? You know, they wanted it to be a giveaway premium. They wanted it to end up at some of their premier locations. What did Supreme want? Supreme wanted a pinball machine that had the cachet of some of their products, right, and some of their other products. That sort of exclusivity, you know, there's only a very small amount, and people fight over them. And, you know, I think I saw one go for $100,000. I mean, it's like, you know, that's like so, and that wasn't the only one. It was like, you know, there was like one at $80,000, one at $60,000. You know, it's like it's crazy. so yeah but you know that's they're doing that's not us that's like you know it's like they came to us that that's their world and and how they want to do their thing and same thing with heavy metal you'll see more of more different brands sometimes you might see a much bigger brand with a bigger footprint and you know we love that is that like a hint i mean do these companies come to you george or do you pursue them so it's a little bit They're both great. A lot of times they approach us, and there's a guy in our company who looks at opportunities so that, you know, he sees a brand where maybe there's some intersection sort of in the Venn diagram of who they are and who we are, and that might be a call you make. You know, you're not always going to get the sale, but that's a call you need to make, right? It's not a matter of convenience that there's a rainbow connection between Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and heavy metal, right, with Mr. Kevin Eastman? Oh, there you go, yeah. I might have been the only person to pick that one up. I did some work for Heavy Metal, so I already knew that. So I'm like, hmm, did he just come to you and say, like, hey, while you're doing that, it'd be great if we had a Heavy Metal. Is that how that worked out? You know, it's interesting about Turtles, right? Originally, there wasn't a lot of love in the house for the brand, and so there was this perspective that the 80s game, you know, wasn't probably the best game from that era, and that there was a perception it was a weak game. There was a perception that it didn't play well in street locations because it was too young a title. And that may have been the case in the 80s, but clearly those people grew up. So sometimes when there's that sort of indecision, get the brand to do a presentation. And, you know, so those guys came in and they did a presentation and we got done with the presentation and then there was a line of guys outside my office going, I want to work on that game. Okay, all right. So it was like, wait, two days ago I polled you guys. Nobody wanted to do this. Everybody laughed me out of the room. like you not want to be on teenage man i am questioning these people no but for me for me as a pinball guy i i didn't i didn't necessarily love that theme either it wasn't something i said would make a great marriage with a pinball machine even and it's already been done but we uh we saw more about it we just played it this weekend and it literally is everything you would want in a pinball machine it's interesting is that the team that that ends up working on it a lot of those guys related to it meaning they they were like oh yeah i was a little kid i was watching this but honestly it wasn't a day before but it was probably a month and a half two months before brand came in did their pitch that i had dropped the title and not everybody's like yeah no yeah maybe it could work it was like it was a real big ho-hum to the point where i said this isn't gonna go unless we convince them somehow and and then and honestly myself i need to be convinced So I said, get those guys on a plane and get them to come in and pitch. And they did. They pitched. And honestly, before we got out of the room, guys were grabbing me. Like, hey, I think I want to work on that. It was like right under their breath, you know? It was like, wait, you guys, everybody was embarrassed two weeks ago, but now everybody wants to do it. That's the thing. Can you fly me in to pitch Beetlejuice to those guys? Because, like, what happened there? Everyone said no, and the door was shut. Exactly the same kind of thing, Chris, right? It's like, you know what? it's so important for the team to be vested in the thing they're making. As a guy who was on the other side, right, who was in the teams making games at Valley Williams and stuff, and the worst thing that can happen to you is that you get sucked into a project that you don't want to work on, that you don't, I can't relate to this or whatever it is, right? So I would avoid those things like the plagues. So I learned teams have to be vested in the thing they're making. You know, from licensors we get these, like, crazy lists of stuff that, you know, I mean, like, you know, Big Trouble in Little China or something, you know what I mean? They go like, okay. I'm like, wait, but this was like from 1982. You want me to do this? You're saying they're coming to you, pitching you to get their licenses? Yeah, they do. Like, you know, usually they send stuff all the time, and they have these lists, and the lists are sometimes there's some really funny stuff. Like, you're not serious, right? You know, one item, 12 pinball? Yeah, right, exactly. You know, it's stuff like that. It's like, absolutely. You know, chips? You guys want to do chips? Man, I used to love that show. I know. So you said that most of the time they come to you. How often do you actually go to a licensee? Sometimes it's clearly a mutual thing, right? They're like something that's like hot right now that we would be interested in. You know, I mean, it's no secret, right? We go to the licensing show. we have relationships with the licensors. At the licensing show, that is what they do is they pitch, right? So they pitch us. These things are a giant trophy. And so, you know, like some of these brands, it's the only way they can get it. So they have to have it. Like we've become de rigueur amongst the rock bands, right? Now the rock bands just beat down our door, you know, like, you guys got to do this, you guys got to do this. Because they've seen ACDC and they've seen Metallica, they've seen Aerosmith, and so now they're like, hey, we need one. We need one of those. I want one of those. That's a great problem to have. Yeah, it's not a bad problem to have because it gives you some amount of control on the product as opposed to other products where you have almost no control because the brand is so much in demand that they can be anything they want to whomever they want. And so it's just part of the business, right? They pitch us with, like, really old moldy stuff. Peaches and herb. Hmm. I'll tell you a funny pitch story. When I was a very young man, I was in my 20s, and I was working on Midway Games. So we're talking like, what, six years ago, right? Yeah. We're talking. No, I was like, not quite. But we're talking the early 80s, late 70s, early 80s. And so it was a time when I was working on video games and Midway Games, and video games were exploding for the first time in the history of video games. You know, they had become just a worldwide fad to the point where their games were making more money than movies. And so it didn't take long for the money guys in Hollywood to notice, holy crap. And so they wanted a piece of the action. So they would pitch very aggressively. And so the company at the time, you know, gets some stuff through the conventional channels, meaning the licensing department. But what they wanted was they wanted young people, you know, guys that were maybe more into what was culturally relevant at the time. So they would put me on a plane, and I would go to Hollywood, and guys in Hollywood would pitch me. And so there was this one day where I had gone on a tour of a bunch of the different studios. And, you know, I'd been to Universal, and I'd been over there, and I'd been over here, and I'd been all these places. And the last meeting of the day was literally this guy was going to meet me in the lobby of my hotel. And so this guy shows up, and he starts this pitch. And it was right around the time when we were beginning to get the ability to digitize things to put them in the games. And right around the same time as the Laserdisc thing was happening, was beginning to happen. And so this guy realizes that, you know, we're no longer limited to just drawing pixel art. We can now maybe digitize something and put it in the game. So he says to me, okay, I've got the suit from the creature from the Black Lagoon. he literally he was pitching i got the suit he wasn't pitching anything else he was like i got the rubber suit same guy next thing says you know all right the new director uh up and coming name's james cameron it's a robot comes back to the future you know the you do you know the bodybuilder, Arnold Schwarzenegger, he plays the robot. I'm not making this up. Now we all know history, we know Terminator 2, we know how successful that string of movies went on to be, we know how successful James Cameron became, right? But you gotta roll the tape back to me and a guy in the lobby of the hotel, and this guy is telling me this, and I'm going, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the bodybuilder? And before you know Arnold as the Terminator, you got to go back and look at some of those images, right? And you go, yeah, I don't know. Can't understand what he's saying. Right. So it was like this bizarre confluence of stuff. It was like I got Buckaroo Banzai. I got the suit from the Creature from the Black Lagoon. And I got this unheard of director with a bodybuilder. Time travel, robots. you know, it's going to be great. It sounds to me like you kind of have to roll the dice a little bit back then. You were doing so many things. You know what? You've got to roll the dice all the time. You've just got to go with your gut. But I'll never forget. So the guy that will confirm my story, because he was with me, is Kevin O'Connor, pinball artist, right? Because both of us were working there at the time, and we were the young guys. We were like, you know, I don't know. We were 25 years old. They would say, you know, these guys don't know what's hip. Put them on a place in Hollywood. So we would go there. So we would come back and we would write like a synopsis and we'd do a presentation with whatever it is that they allowed us to bring back. You know, and then the company would make some decision. Yeah, that's a good one. No, that's a bad one. No. So, I mean, Kevin will tell you, we said there was like, yeah, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the bodybuilder. Two years later, we're sitting there watching the movie going, holy shit, this is the thing they did. Damn it. And we ended up making a black lagoon suit game. George, do you feel like there are themes in the past that you've missed out on like that, that you could have had, that you look back on and say, man, I wish we had gotten that? Oh, yeah, there's probably a couple like that. I mean, T2 is definitely one, right? I'm sorry, Terminator, because at the time it wasn't even T2, it was Terminator. It was the original Terminator. And honestly, if you look back, you read about that film, it was successful because he had no budget. He was unknown. And he was careful with his budget. And he made a movie that made way more money than the money they gave him to spend. That always gets your notice. And then, of course, the real blockbuster didn't happen until the second one, right? Where the second one, they said, oh, this is what you did with, I don't know what he had. He didn't have much. You know, he had whatever it was, $20 million or something, which is nothing in Hollywood money today, right? And he made the film. And then after he had that success and the cash was tumbling in, then they said, okay, now we're going to give you real money. and then he went and made T2 and that was the explosive one because everything after that was sort of, you know, was God's food. How many games do you have in production at any time and then how many games beyond that do you already know about that are just waiting in the wings? Okay, so in terms of licenses that we've acquired, we're typically working like two and a half years out. Right now, I already know, I know the lineup for 21 and 22. Wow. What would that be? Yeah, those are, yes. Now, there's things, you know, sometimes the lineup gets shifted, right? Because, like, let's say that we perceive that some element of the market has changed, and it's like, you know what, we were kind of thinking about this, but this thing over here is hotter, so we should move that up. So it's a big juggling match. It just is, but it's what we have to do. I'm sure other companies go through this. Are there ever things where you say, wow, this is really lost theme, no one really cares about this anymore let's just drop it yeah we've killed a couple yeah okay at what point in the process does that happen like what at what point is it too far like if you spend too many man hours i mean things get killed early they have to be you know right because you just you know you don't want to make the investment you can't you can't afford once you're locked and loaded sometimes we can shift things around like we've had situations where a team is struggling we've shortchanged a team taking time out of their schedule because maybe they're you know were in better shape or more, you know, further along, even though they were scheduled to come after. So we have juggled the schedule that way. So we've moved the team back and moved the team up. But, you know, remember those gate reviews I talked about? You know, you can see in a gate review, this is going to be awesome. These guys are right on. Or, you know, you can see, these guys are like, they're fighting with this one. We've got to do some stuff to help them. Cool. Yeah. You have been so ridiculously generous with your time. We have just a few other fun questions to close things out for you. Okay. So I just am curious, does everyone in your entire family, all your friends, your girlfriend, are they all forced to love pinball? I didn't have to do a lot of convincing to talk my girlfriend Julie into being into it because, you know, it's kind of, you meet somebody and you go, what do you do? I design pinball machines. They look at you like, you know. They still make those? Yeah. Right. They're grown-ups, right? They look at you. Right. Yeah, yeah. You're like, are you serious? Is that a real job? Right. Let me leave now. Right. Right. Yeah. You know, so we went to a couple of locations. And like early on, like I said, she was here in Manhattan. So we went to Sunshine Laundry in Brooklyn. Place was amazing. Yep. Yeah. And it was like, I couldn't have planned this. Right. Like there's a guy hanging off in the background. Finally, he gets up his nerve and he comes over and he says, are you George Gomez? Oh, that's awesome. I was like, I'm on a date. I'm like, oh, shit, I am so amazing right now. I'm saying, see, I'm famous. She's probably like, you are full of shit. All right, how much did you pay this guy? Did you pay that guy? So amazing. No, it's cool. I mean, that really does underscore, like, people in this hobby are deified. I mean, the people who really love pinball, if you see George Gomez walking down the street that's very cool I don't know if sunshine helps your case though bring in a woman on a date to sunshine no sunshine it's awesome it's awesome but what I mean is you're trying to say I'm a man I'm not a boy that's a real job and all that and you've got to climb through a washing machine to go what's in her face I wanted to see the work let's go see this So you can understand, right? So you can understand what it's about. That's the neat, cute story I've ever heard. It's so awesome. Yeah, and on that note, do we want to segue into get this quiz thing done? George Gomez, I actually did a bunch of research on you. I don't know if, like, your ears were ringing, but I was watching a bunch of interviews, and I was, do you have a freaking Wikipedia page? Like, this is big shit. Trust me, I had to get editing rights for my Wikipedia page because I was like, I'm like, what the hell is wrong? Yeah. So anyways, during my research, though, I realized that you have a signature style in many of the pinball machines that you have designed exclusively and that you've had a hand in. In some of your more recent years where you've kind of been shoved into the situation as you talked about. So putting you on the spot here, there are five things that George Gomez pinball machines tend to have. And I'm wondering if you can name them. Like, do you know yourself as a designer that well? Well, that's a good question. I'm not sure. What are the defining features of the Gomez design? Great. So it's an interesting question because I don't want to answer it and sound like an egomaniac. Just put it out there. Yeah. All right. So I spend a lot of time working on the flow of my games. I like combination shots, and so I try to work combination shots in. I also try to do shots. All my games, I try to do a shot. I haven't done before. Haven't always accomplished that. I spent some time in my career designing toys, so I focus a lot on the toys. My toys have multiple stages of reveals, usually. And let's see. Some of these would be hard to get. I try really hard to integrate the themes into my game a lot. I focus a lot on making it feel all together, all one. And what else can I tell you? Well, one of the things that it said, it was, George Gomez pinball machines tend to have two flippers. No more. No more. So do you avoid the three or four flipper games? No, my very first game was a three flipper game. Okay. It was Corvette and an upper flipper with two shots from the flipper. A really cool ramp shot, which I've been meaning to revive at some point. And then an orbit, an inside orbit. Very fast, very fast game. Yep. You got three out of the five. I'd say that was pretty good. Because a lot of these were generic. It was a fan layout. We gave you that one. A saucer on the middle left side of the play field. Do you agree with that? No. Usually the saucer thing is about doing something with space that nothing else fits in. Gotcha. You know. But I do like fast. I mean, if you look at Johnny Mnemonics, one of the fastest games ever in the world. Play a Johnny and you'll see. Play a well-running Johnny and you'll see. So, yeah, I like the speed. The two-flipper thing is about, really, it's about almost universally I feel pressed for time when I'm designing a game. Yeah. And I have an Italian bottom that sort of, like, is consistent, and I know it very well, and I tend to use it because it allows me to focus. It works. It works, and it allows me to focus on the top side of the playfield where all the action is, right? So it's like every week that I'm focused on that is a week I didn't waste messing around with a funny bottom, you know? Right. Right. I knew Christopher Franchi was going to turn that into a cartoon. Yes. The last two were very precise shots and design aesthetic, focusing on straight lines and rails. Surprisingly, they didn't say anything about the sharp ramp turns, which I know has been something that people have focused on in the past. Right. You know, I didn't say a variety of ramps. Yeah, I didn't invent those. Like, super tight hairpin turn is a Steve Ritchie thing, and clearly he was an influence of mine. So they're economic in terms of space, and they function really well. So, you know, I think that I'm not a big fan of plastic ramps, and so most of my games have had metal ramps, and the metal ramps, it's much easier. Like, I like to spend the money in places where it's really obvious to the player, and spending money on a big, giant steel ramp, like the ramp entrance, if you will, is just not a good place to do it. And when you make a big, giant steel ramp, that's what happens is somebody adds $45 to your bill of materials. So from my perspective, like if you look at the two ramps on Deadpool, they're the identical ramp because you get the economy of scale of twice as many. And, you know, like the small ramp entrance on the back and the ramp entrance on the left, those are the same identical part used twice. So one thing that no one knows is that I'm very hands-on. I build a lot of my stuff, and I'm also a huge fan of my CAD tools and stuff. And so I love 3D CAD because it allows me a tremendous level of precision in terms of how things fit together. And I don't like bending stuff on the line or any of that stuff. I like all my stuff wrapped together. Everything fits. There's no, like, wanky plastics, like, twisted or anything like that. And so I spend a tremendous amount of energy in just the really niggly details. So my engineers get really tight stuff from me. There's not a lot of arm waving because I really enjoy the time noodling on the details. So I don't always get it right. Sometimes I screw them up. But hey, you pay for effort. And usually you get them quite right. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's awesome. I would say you passed the quiz. Absolutely. As a third grade teacher, I would say you could go to fourth grade. All right, I got two quick questions before we let you go. Okay. Number one, as far as Stern being a lifestyle brand and accessorizing and trying different things, Stern tried a book, which I believe is going to be now the 35th anniversary book, like if it comes out next year. No, believe it or not, it's coming out. It's still the 30th, so it's stopped at that point in time. And I just literally, like two weeks ago, saw proof. So it's about to come out. Believe it or not, it's not our book, meaning that it was a crowdfunded effort, and we did collaborate with the writers in terms of providing and supplying material. Chris, there's a very nice segment on your work on Batman, and so you'll be very pleased when you see it. Cool. Now, have you ever thought of, because everybody likes your sketches and all that, have you ever thought of putting together a little sketchbook, like George Gomez pinball sketches? Yeah, that's a good idea. It's a good idea. I mean, what's funny is I gave some of the sketches to those guys, and I was surprised that not as many as I gave them got used. But, you know, I understand why. You can't dedicate, like, pages and pages to this stuff. But all I was trying to do was when they talked about a particular one of my games, I was trying to backfill it with stuff that people would be interested in. You know, you can show people the brochures and stuff like that, but everybody's seen those, right? Right, right, yeah. So, like, I thought it would be more interesting to see the behind-the-scenes kind of process. But it's a good idea. Have you ever heard of the Strong Museum in New York? They have the Strong Museum of Play. It was endowed by a woman called Margaret Strong, who was one of the, I think, her family had something to do with Kodak. It's in Rochester, New York. It's a big, it's a real deal. If you're ever up there, it's a beautiful museum. It's like really the real deal stuff. And they have all these amazing collections. They have like all the original toy stuff from every toy you can think of. And they have great sex on pinball machines and video games. anything that has to do with playing games or toys that they're into and that sort of thing. And they've invited me into the permanent collection of the museum with my stuff, mostly because they were really impressed with all that handwork, all the sketches and stuff. And so at some point in time, I have to take the entire archive of crap that goes back to 1984 and send it up there, and it's going to go into the museum, and they're going to keep it. That's cool. And all that. Amazing. But yeah, I mean, a book would be kind of a fun thing to do. I never have time to do stuff like that. And the last question is, have you ever played Captain Fantastic? What is your thoughts on the game? I'm sure that I have because when I cut my teeth in the business at Midway, which was a ballet company at the time, and so there was a lot of product from both companies sort of laying around. So, yeah, I'm sure I have, but I don't remember much about the game to tell you the truth. It's been a running joke around our show for the past couple episodes So it's because I bought one because of the nostalgia. I used to play it when I was a kid in the ice rinks. I want to set this thing on fire so bad it's the biggest piece of shit. Like every shot is a dream. It's the best. Now you go put it on pin side and hope somebody buys it. Yeah, that's right. Because it's your game, it's got provenance. How about that? How about those apples? Yeah, I love looking at it. I love the artwork. You know, I've actually got it. And honestly, when you say to me, you know, have you ever played a Captain America? That's the very first thing that comes to mind is the artwork. It's not the game. Yeah, and so it's pretty, yeah. If I never play it and I just look at it, it can stay in the house. But, like, as soon as I walk over, because my Munsters is torn apart right now. Me and Borg are working on some things, and so it's all ripped apart. And there's art prints laying on the other games. So the only one that's really open and available is Captain Fantastic, and it has been handing me my ass for the past couple of weeks. I just want to throw it off the balcony. Thank you so much. Yeah, you're clearly a stabilizing force in the industry at Stern Pinball. We're really happy that you're able to come on, and we're grateful for what you've done for pinball, and we're really looking forward to what's coming from Stern in the future. Cool. You rock. Lots of fun. Send me a link so I can listen to it. Awesome. Okay? Yes, we will. Thank you so much. Thanks a lot. Bye. See you. All right, and that does it for George Gomez. The man, the myth, the legend. That guy is awesome. I can't thank him enough for coming on the show. We had such a great time. You guys have fun? oh my god that was amazing we had to kind of reflect on it so it took us a day this is a day after we recorded him we're sitting upstairs in the bedroom just saying holy crap that was an awesome interview george is such a freaking solid guy he's awesome yeah i think it reflected in the interview how just how down to earth he is and he was very open and honest so we appreciate that and thank you so much george for coming on thanks george too bad we can't get him as our third co-host oh my god how cool would that be so yeah thanks george had a great time and uh also the fine folks at coin taker want me to remind you that they are running low on the francie pinball wear so if you are interested in getting those shirts and you are waiting you'd want to scoot in there because i think there's only you know some random sizes left and whatnot and limited quantities so check that out they also have teenage mutant ninja turtles premium and pros and they also have willie wonka so check that out and also dear pens chris marquette from coin Taker asked me to personally invite the two of you to come visit their facility, take a tour, play some pinball. They said that you are, you know, you're in Pennsylvania, they're in Pennsylvania, and there's no reason why you guys shouldn't hook up and hang out. We'll be there in about two hours. We'll be there. Just let us know. He said something about exotic free foods and free pinball all day. Exotic free food offer available at participating locations in El Salvador only. Wow. I'm really looking forward to that. We were going to go out there to play the Stranger Things that they had when they first got it, but I forget why we couldn't do it, but we had some conflict. No, one of the kids got sick or something. Yeah, we would absolutely love to do that. So, Chris and Melissa, if you guys are listening, we would love to take you up on that offer. Yes, and if you're ever down near Hershey, Pennsylvania, you just let us know, because we know that park like the back of our hand. And we have eight sweet pinball machines that you're welcome to come play. I mean, really, that's going to happen. You're not playing your 600 pinball machines that you have. Maybe one of them is one that they don't have. That's right. Right? Oh, God damn it. Barlow just farted. Jesus Christ. Oh, it smells like he shit his pants. He doesn't have pants, Christopher Franchi. He's got fur pants. Dude, this is like our sponsor that we're trying to shout out, and we're talking about dog farts. Blah, blah, blah, blah. All right, so that's going to do it for this show, but we have to remind you guys we have a contest that we are going to initiate right now. It starts right now. Hey, Franchise, stop. Stop. I just need to call you out for the fact that you totally jacked my contest. I am just going to call you right the heck out, mister. Okay, well, it was your husband's idea, so you might want to smack the shit out of him while he's right next to you. Christian! It was his idea. Ow! Hey! Yeah? Watch yourself, buster. No, it's okay. I think your contest sounds pretty amazing. Honestly, that's the first thing I thought when he brought it up. I'm like, wow, he's stealing from his wife. What a piece of shit. No, he was probably thinking, oh man, he's stealing from his wife because his wife is so fucking amazing. And the content was like a bomb.com. Here's how it really played out. Chris said, let's come up with a question that we throw out there. And whoever gets it right gets this amazing prize. And I said, dude, if we're going to give out something so good, we've got to make it work. We've got to get some content for our show. So what can we do to create content? And no one did it better, I think, than Mrs. Penn, where people actually made songs. Oh, God, they were so amazing. And we gave out a Penn Stadium live set, which was phenomenal. And you have a $100 gift card that we're going to give out. And I figured, you know, we don't have to make people make huge songs, but 30 seconds? No, we want huge songs. 30 seconds? 10 seconds? Well, let's tell them what they're getting before you get into all those details. We have a $100 gift card for Back Alley Creations. Now, if you know Back Alley Creations, they make some sweet-ass pinball mods. and he offered us some pretty cool stuff to give away. But the problem was it was very specific to a particular game. And I said, you know, rather than people who just own that game could win, let's make it accessible for everyone. So he said $100 gift card. And I said, yes. How awesome and generous is that? Freaking amazing. So Back Valley Creations is copping up a $100 gift card, and all you have to do is make it a wrap. You can wrap if you want, But it's basically, you just have to sing a song about our podcast. You can have music. You can have bongos. You can do acapella. You can have three people with you. You can do it by yourself. It doesn't matter. You can be complimentary, or you can totally talk shit about us. Anything is acceptable. The super awesome pinball show couldn't suck no more. Please get yourselves out the air and out the door. Well, you win. And so the contest is off. Oh, shit. Sad. So, yeah, you can top that, which it will be very hard to do. But if you can and you want to win $100 to Back Alley Creations, send us what you got. Can't wait to hear it. This is the best idea you've ever not had. This is the best idea you've ever stolen. You've stolen from me. But I really love it. All right, so there you go. We'll give you guys, like, two weeks. Let's see, this thing is going to air probably on the 20th, I don't know. So let's just say the end of the month. We'll give it to the end of the month. I like August 1st, Branchie. Yeah, August 1st. Sounds perfect. Good day. Yep, so do whatever you want. Insult us. You will not get marked down for insulting us. Or you will not get marked down for doing acapella. Don't think you have to make a big production and that's going to let you win. That's not it. We're not even sure what we're looking for yet. And you better believe I'm going to be listening to you. We might have to call in some superstar judges on this. So let's see what I can do. Chris has an idea, and if this pans out, it will be the most epic pinball contest ever. I'm just going to throw that out there. But Chris, let this float, and we won't even bring it up until it happens. Until it doesn't happen. Yeah. There's a megastar that could possibly, possibly come in and help us judge this contest. And when I mean megastar, I don't mean in pinball. I mean in the world. Yep. So that's going to do it, guys. Dearest Lady Pam, thank you so much for joining us. We had such a fun time with you. Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure. Yeah, you know it was my idea because your husband's like, I deal with her all the time, and I'm like, I don't care. 100%, I would agree with that. I would never say that. In fact, if I could have her co-host this permanently, I would do it because, as I've said many times, I am her biggest fan. I know, and that's great, but it's wicked past my bedtime. Why don't you let people where they can hear more from you if you ever get off your ass and do a podcast. I actually have one in the works. Episode 83 of Mrs. Pins Pinball Podcast. It's going to be up on Podcast Garden, and I put it on my Facebook page as well. And Pinside. So there you go. Shameless plug. If you're not familiar with her, you've got 82 episodes sitting there waiting for you to listen to. Oh, man. And I highly recommend it. So thank you for joining us. You had a great time. We are not going to tell you who's coming on the next show. Because we honestly don't know. it's a big fat surprise to us as well as you we have a long list and we're just going to pick a name and go with it that's right so don't forget to get your franchise t-shirts at coin shaker enter the contest you got a little more than two weeks to enter a song and that's it we will talk to you guys in about two weeks stay safe wear a mask don't be a tool i love you we love you thanks guys for listening uh it's always fun doing this and we appreciate you guys tuning in every two to four to six weeks. See you guys. See you guys. See you guys. If you'd like to drop us a line or ask a question, we can be reached at superawesomepinball at gmail.com. Questions or comments may be read on the air. The original content of this podcast is copyright 2020 Asshat Radio Productions. The comments, your opinions, shared by the cast and guests do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the sponsors, Cointaker, Chicago Gaming Company, and Back Valley Creations. Their sponsorships of this show only serve to add to their continuing support of the pinball community. Because we're going to be legend Going to get their attention What we're doing here ain't just gaming It's the time to be legend too Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies. It's the bathroom. Okay, bye-bye now. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Later, Dears. Goodbye, goodbye, good friends, goodbye. Is this over? I know I say it's over! Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Good day, sir. Get the fuck out of here. I gotta go. I'll see you later. Wait a... Okay, okay, show's over. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Hasta la vista, baby. Hey, a fucking chalupa sucks, dude! Well, based on high, high demand, I have another fast food story. Or, if you will, the super shitty fast food podcast. Because we got such a huge, huge response to my last one. Did we though? No, we didn't. We didn't. I don't think anybody mentioned it at all. I'm taking these fuckers down. I'll make it quick. But wait, first our snappy intro. Hello? I'll have a cheeseburger and some onion rings and a large orange soda and a... Shut up. Go away. Did you get all that? Uh, we're like closed or something. Go away. God damn it, damn it! Welcome to Fast Food Horror Stories. Please drive through. okay this of course involves another trip to mcdonald's where i pull in and i again have my choice which lane do i go in right or left i don't know i'll take the right one it's closer it looks like it might be moving faster oh there's only one car in both lanes so i get behind the one car instead of the left car i take the right car and of course the left car moves forward ah and then somebody pulls in and goes forward and goes through and another person comes in and goes through. I'm still waiting. The guy in front of me is not even making his order. So three or four cars go through that came after I got there. Fucking bird beak nose finally makes his order and goes through. And then I make my order and then I go through. I pay, I get to the window. It's taken a good 10 minutes to get to the window from the time I made my order. They hand me my Dr. Pepper and say, can you please pull into spot number three? I'm like, you guys had 10 minutes to make this order. It's two double cheeseburgers, fries, and a Dr. Pepper. No special order. That's it. So they make me pull into a spot. I counted 14 cars that went through the drive-thru, got their food and left while I was still waiting. Then they come and they go, here's your food, sir. Thank you. Have a great day. I'm like, great. Put the bag down, pull out, open it up to get my fries because you have to eat those first or they suck. No fries. So you got to pull back around. I pull up into the Spaces where you wait for your food, and I go inside to get my fries, but I don't have a mask. Well, I wasn't planning on walking into the fucking McDonald's to get my fries, so I had no choice but to walk in without a mask. What happens when I get in there? Fuck off. Got my fries and left. Driving down the road, grabbed my fries, ice cold. You lose! Good day, sir! Branchie, I have got the best advice for you ever. What? Stop eating McDonald's. I said I quit. Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here? _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: a54711a2-d4a6-439a-9f05-ff2ee2a1e8f6*