# Episode 157 – Celebratory Gunfire

**Source:** Slam Tilt Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2020-12-19  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.slamtiltpodcast.com/2020/12/19/episode-157-celebratory-gunfire/

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## Analysis

Slam Tilt Podcast Episode 157 features Brian Glaude and Jarrett Whitstone discussing the VSU-2, a new replacement speech board for older Stern pinball machines (Flight 2000, Freefall, Lightning, Split Second, Catacomb, Orbiter One, and Gamitron). The hosts also discuss Deep Root's Raza reveal, including gameplay footage, innovative cabinet features (pin bar, glass mechanism, playfield design), and criticism of the video presentation quality.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] VSU-2 is a replacement for the unobtainable VSU-100 speech board at $125 plus tax and shipping — _Brian Glaude and Jarrett Whitstone directly confirming product specs and pricing_
- [HIGH] Deep Root had to redesign Raza without the pin bar for Houston show because it was only 60% complete at that point — _Ron Hallett citing what he read about the development decision_
- [MEDIUM] The VSU-2 is the second-to-last board needed for all Stern Electronics, with only the SB-100 sound board remaining — _Jarrett Whitstone speculating on remaining board needs_
- [HIGH] Raza gameplay video was shot at 30 fps instead of 60 fps, hurting presentation quality — _Ron Hallett observing the gameplay footage directly_
- [MEDIUM] Deep Root showed Raza at Pinball Expo or similar venue where they demonstrated innovations including the pin bar and glass mechanism — _Hosts referencing Deep Root's public reveal and video content_
- [HIGH] Robert Mueller designed the fish tank back box innovation himself — _Mueller stated in video interview referenced by hosts_
- [HIGH] Admin menu on Raza requires opening the coin door to access, addressing security concerns — _Mueller confirmed in video interview cited by Ron_
- [MEDIUM] Total production of VSU-100-era Stern games is approximately 15,000 units, with Flight 2000 comprising about 75% of installed base — _Ron Hallett discussing market size for VSU-2_

### Notable Quotes

> "If these boards fail, I'm screwed. And he puts these on location at the sanctum. So that's a great thing to see."
> — **Ron Hallett (quoting Jim from The Sanctum)**, ~30:00
> _Emphasizes real-world need for the VSU-2 in commercial venue operations_

> "The pin bar is their one differentiating feature from their game to anyone else's game. I mean, it's not the fish tank like pack box or the way the art is or anything else."
> — **Ron Hallett**, ~55:00
> _Identifies pin bar as Deep Root's key innovation differentiating Raza_

> "It looks like it's 30 frames. Yeah. It was not at 60 frames, like the ball motion, which immediately that's like, no, you can't do that. You've got to put your best foot forward, man."
> — **Ron Hallett and Bruce Nightingale**, ~50:00
> _Critical observation about technical quality of Deep Root's gameplay video presentation_

> "The wow is the pin bar. The wow is the pin bar."
> — **Bruce Nightingale**, ~52:00
> _Reiterates that pin bar is the only truly innovative gameplay element in Raza_

> "Everything is for sale."
> — **Ron Hallett**, ~38:00
> _Humorous running joke about Brian Glaude's willingness to sell machines shortly after acquiring them_

> "There is an endless supply of possibilities that you could do with that [pin bar]."
> — **Brian Glaude**, ~54:00
> _Acknowledges pin bar's design potential for future Deep Root games_

> "I really question why they hired John Papadu. No, it was stupid. Nothing personal against them, but there's so much baggage."
> — **Ron Hallett**, ~61:00
> _Criticism of Deep Root's choice of lead designer given Zidware legal/financial obligations_

> "It should have been like The Who or Goonies."
> — **Ron Hallett**, ~62:00
> _Suggests Deep Root's first game should have been a higher-profile IP to justify Zidware settlement costs_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Brian Glaude | person | Co-designer of VSU-2 speech board; collector with Flight 2000, Black Hole, TX Sector, Judge Dredd; interested in Iron Maiden |
| Jarrett Whitstone | person | Co-designer of VSU-2 speech board; collector interested in System 3, Tales from the Crypt, Teed-Off, Bad Girls |
| Ron Hallett | person | Host of Slam Tilt Podcast; based in upstate New York; sold TX Sector to Glaude and Whitstone |
| Bruce Nightingale | person | Co-host of Slam Tilt Podcast; motivated VSU-2 creation through discussion; provided prototypes to Jim at The Sanctum for testing |
| Robert Mueller | person | Deep Root founder/designer; designed fish tank back box; gave interviews on Pinball Profile and Pinball Magazine; appeared in gameplay video |
| Jim | person | Operator at The Sanctum; tested VSU-2 prototype boards; uses these machines on location |
| Steve Bowden | person | Appeared in Deep Root's gameplay video playing Raza |
| Scott Charles | person | Created custom Flight 2000 game ROM with custom speech ROM; can be programmed into VSU-2 |
| Zach Sharpe | person | Co-host/personality associated with Slam Tilt Podcast; owns Gamitron; approves of Black Hole's lower playfield |
| Clive | person | Repair specialist at Coin Op Cauldron; tested VSU-100 boards; reluctant to work on failing speech boards |
| Jerry | person | Previous owner of Flight 2000 sold to Glaude; had extensive pinball collection in basement |
| Jeff Teolas | person | Host of Pinball Profile podcast; hosts referenced him jokingly as someone who could install VSU-2 |
| Glodstone | company | Manufacturer/seller of VSU-2 speech board; website glodstone.com; exclusive provider mentioned |
| Deep Root | company | New pinball manufacturer; released Raza; settling Zidware legal obligations; working on additional games |
| The Sanctum | venue | Location-based venue where Jim operates pinball machines including VSU-100 era Sterns |
| Silver Ball Saloon | venue | Bar near Glaude/Whitstone that opened and sparked their interest in pinball; had TX Sector that they purchased |
| VSU-2 | product | New replacement speech board for older Stern machines; replaces VSU-100; $125 + tax/shipping; supports Flight 2000, Freefall, Lightning, Split Second, Catacomb, Orbiter One, Gamitron |
| VSU-100 | product | Original speech board for older Stern games; uses unobtainable TSI chip; costly to repair/replace ($85-$1,000 on secondary market) |
| Raza | game | Deep Root's first released pinball machine; features pin bar innovation; gameplay video released; John Papadu involved in design; required redesign for Houston show |
| Stern | company | Historic pinball manufacturer; produced Flight 2000, Freefall, Lightning, Split Second, Catacomb, Orbiter One |
| Bally | company | Historic pinball manufacturer; influenced cabinet glass mechanism design that Deep Root referenced in 1960s-70s patents |
| Pinball Profile | content | Podcast that interviewed Robert Mueller about Deep Root |
| Pinball Magazine | content | Publication that conducted 2-hour interview with Robert Mueller about Deep Root |
| Pinside | platform | Online marketplace and forum where VSU-2 and used machines are discussed/traded; drama thread about Deep Root |

### Topics

- **Primary:** VSU-2 speech board product launch, Deep Root Raza reveal and gameplay, Pin bar innovation, Older Stern electronics repair and restoration
- **Secondary:** Collector acquisition and trading strategies, Video production and presentation quality, Aftermarket board manufacturing, Commercial venue operations and machine placement

### Sentiment

**Mixed** (0.58) — Hosts are enthusiastic about VSU-2 product and its market need, offering strong endorsement. However, Deep Root's Raza reveal receives mixed reception: pin bar innovation praised, but gameplay video criticized for technical quality issues (30 fps, poor camera angles, unclear mechanics). Concern expressed about Deep Root's first game choice and John Papadu hiring given Zidware settlement obligations.

### Signals

- **[product_launch]** VSU-2 speech board replacement now available for older Stern machines at Glodstone; addressing long-standing repair bottleneck (confidence: high) — Official availability announcement via Glodstone.com; product details, pricing ($125+), compatibility list, and custom ROM support confirmed by designers
- **[technology_signal]** VSU-2 uses PIC-18F microcontroller with custom assembly code and op-amp audio amplification to replicate VSU-100 speech decoder functionality (confidence: high) — Brian Glaude detailed technical implementation: PIC assembly code, FPGA considered then rejected, iterative board revisions, custom ROM decoder in Python
- **[restoration_signal]** VSU-2 solves critical parts scarcity problem; original VSU-100 replacement chips ($85-$100) and used boards ($150-$1,000) now have affordable alternative (confidence: high) — Hosts emphasize rarity of original components and Jim from The Sanctum confirmed necessity for venue operations
- **[machine_intel]** Deep Root released official videos and interviews about Raza; gameplay footage, cabinet innovations (pin bar, glass mechanism, playfield rails), and design philosophy now public (confidence: high) — Multiple video releases cited: tech video on innovations, gameplay footage featuring Steve Bowden, interviews on Pinball Profile and Pinball Magazine
- **[design_innovation]** Deep Root's pin bar is identified as primary innovative differentiator in Raza; interactive display above playfield with menu system and game interaction potential (confidence: high) — Hosts repeatedly emphasize pin bar as only true innovation; multiple discussions of potential uses (Tetris, video modes, skill shots)
- **[product_concern]** Deep Root's gameplay video suffers from technical and presentation issues: 30 fps footage, unclear camera angles, poor visibility of key mechanics (Ned target), pin bar obscured by player's hat (confidence: high) — Ron and Bruce directly observed video quality issues; lack of camera coverage for Ned mechanic; ball motion appears choppy
- **[design_philosophy]** Deep Root incorporated design features including piston-based glass mechanism (1960s-70s Bally reference), service rails on playfield similar to Jersey Jack/Pinball 2000, two-position glass, locked playfield extraction (confidence: high) — Hosts observed and discussed glass mechanism details, playfield service rails, and cabinet design in video content
- **[sentiment_shift]** Deep Root's Raza criticized as conservative/underwhelming first release given Zidware settlement costs; suggestion that major IP (The Who, Goonies) would have justified investment (confidence: medium) — Ron's direct criticism of game choice and designer hiring; questioning why John Papadu was hired given baggage; commentary that game looks like 1990s Williams from above
- **[manufacturing_signal]** Deep Root redesigned Raza by removing pin bar for Houston venue showing (60% completion); later reintegrated pin bar in final design (confidence: medium) — Ron citing information read about Raza development; note that wasting time/material on temporary redesign was criticized as poor decision
- **[market_signal]** VSU-2 addresses very specific vintage Stern market segment (~15,000 total units produced across all compatible games); Flight 2000 represents 75% of addressable market (confidence: medium) — Ron's market size analysis based on production numbers; acknowledgment that demand will be limited but real for operators and collectors
- **[community_signal]** Deep Root/Raza announcement generated community drama on Pinside forums; described as entertainment but reflecting underlying concerns about game design and business decisions (confidence: medium) — Ron noting 'hilarious drama in thread on Pinside'; acknowledgment that choosing Raza as first game and hiring John Papadu raised questions about priorities
- **[business_signal]** Deep Root has multiple games in development beyond Raza; Facebook video posts indicate progress on multiple titles with varying completion levels; timeline and release schedule not disclosed (confidence: medium) — References to Deep Six NDA revelations about no manufacturing yet; video posts showing work-in-progress content suggesting Merlin and other games in development

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## Transcript

 This is Deborah Shea reporting from Burger World, where a labor dispute has erupted between management and their employees. Why are you gentlemen on strike here at Burger World? Uh, because work sucks. I see, I see. Uh, it's like, we don't want to work, we just want the money. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and um, and chicks. Coming to you from beautiful upstate New York, this is the Slam Tilt Podcast, the show about all things pinball. I'm your host, Ron Hallett, here with my co-host, Bruce Nightingale. Still wrong with the freaking intro. The artist formerly known as Bruce Nightingale and is now the middle finger. Yes, it is. Thank you very much. Fuck you all. You all? It's just me here, Bruce, or is it? No, it is not. Who do we got, Bruce? We have guests because a new product has come out for your older sterns, which is a good thing. We have Brian Glaude and Jarrett Whitstone. Was I right or was I wrong? Good enough. Good enough. I'm just good enough. Not just great, but good enough. What is this product, Bruce? It is the... Let them explain it. That's the best thing. But it is for older Sterns. Here we go, guys. Well, the product is called the VSU-2, and it is a replacement for the VSU-100 speech board that came with a number of older Stern games, which I think previously there was... If your board died, you had to fix it or find the unobtainable special speech decoder chip to put on it. And now that's no longer a problem. Let's go into what games it actually does fix. It fixes Flight 2000, Freefall, Lightning, Split Second, Catacomb, and Orbiter One. That's right. And also, you actually made some tweaks to make it work on a Gamitron for Pinstar pinball machines. That's right. Pinstar. Has anyone ever seen a Sonic? Yeah, I haven't. Ron has played one. Yeah, they had one at Pinball Expo last year. Ah. Different art. Different art? Different flipper bats to the Sonic. The skinnier flipper bats. Other than that, it was the same. So what made you build this board? Wow. Bruce, I hate to give you away as a source of inspiration. Oh, my God. I think this might be our first run after four years. We finally motivated somebody. You've inspired someone. Wow. I know these shows don't really have an upward time limit, but, I mean, how far back do you want to start on this? Let's go for it all. Come on. So, Brian and I, we're pretty new to pinball in general terms. You know, I grew up thinking pinball was kind of neat and sort of mysterious. And it eats your quarters. And it eats your quarters. You know, that was the big takeaway. But when a bar, which opened up very near to us. Ron, what bar would that be? The Silver Ball Saloon? Yes. You know, it's something we kind of got into. And maybe over the course of a year or so, Brian and I realized, oh, you know, you're adults. You can own a pinball machine, too. And at the time, Brian was really enamored with a game called Gamitron. He really liked that. And so not long after, we decided, oh, well, let's get a game. I saw a nice looking Flight 2000 show up on the Pinside Marketplace. And I said, Brian, check this out. It looks very similar. You know, do you want to go to New Jersey and get it? And so we did. And naturally, when one gets their very first game, you have to go consult the gurus. You know, what should we be looking for on this thing? And one thing Bruce pointed out was the fact that it has a speech board that they don't make a replacement for and that you should make sure that it works. So we get it and it does. The game was in really great shape. And the guy we picked it up from, Jerry, was he was super nice and walked us through the whole thing and helped us get it out of his basement, which was filled to the brim with pinball machines. and a pool table being used as an actual table for all his pinball parts, which I thought was, you know, really it was sort of foreshadowing for the rest of our lives, I think. Yeah, after you get one, they just sort of multiply. Yeah. Oh, no. A perspective no one's heard before, I hope, right? So I think it always sat in the back of our minds, like, oh, you know, it would be neat to sort of make a replacement board for that just because you can't get them. And that led to it sort of being a kind of a COVID project where we have a background in electronics and programming and started pursuing it sort of during COVID, you know, as one has a lot more free time nights and weekends in, you know, March, April, May of the year. So I ended up finding some resources online about the TSI chip that runs the whole show. And there was a really great PDF called david.pdf. I don't know if Brian has more details, but it kind of gave a good overview of the architecture of the speech decoding algorithm. So it's like impossible to find a data sheet or anything from this chip. But David.pdf, the guy reverse engineered the whole thing with a pen out and just kind of his theory of operation. And, yeah, that was a. Well, there was also a patent to the patent. And then I think they decapped the chip as well. And that helped figure some stuff out. Now, the chips right now, I think, are being sold if you could find one for like eighty five to one hundred dollars. Yeah. So that's the that's the first scary part about this whole problem. when I had Clive test my catacomb board. He didn't even want to touch it. And I said, I understand if the chip's bad. Would that be Clive at Coin Op Cauldron? Yes, it is. Very good, Ron. Just adding some background. People will be, who the hell's Clive? Clive's the best. Continue. And he said, I don't have the chips. I can't fix it. I said, here, just test it for me. And he recapped it and he tested it. He goes, oh, yeah, it works. Your chip actually works, which it still didn't. we still never figured out a hundred percent of why catacomb was screwing up because I sold it. Yes. And, but, uh, he, he was afraid of it. He's like, I really don't want to get involved with those. It's just, you know, pain in the ass. So hopefully people will realize that once you get this board, hopefully all your problems will go away. Oh yeah. If it were only that simple and it wasn't maybe a broken connector or a funny wire somewhere, you know, there's a million things that could be wrong with with someone's speech connection the board's just the worst one that could it could have been you know oh i agree the signal you could have been losing a signal in the connector or anything like that i ended up writing a decoder for the rom data sometime around april or may and i said oh well i know what would be cool is you know gambitron is supposed to be running the same ROMs as Flight 2000. What if it said GammaTron instead of BlastOff? And so I hacked together a ROM and put it online. And there should be maybe one person who was really interested in it because he happened to have a GammaTron. But nobody else had actually taken the speech board and made it work. And I think part of the reason is who has extra VSU-100 speech boards? They're, like, impossible to find. So eventually we start working on hardware implementation. Brian, who has a background working with FPGAs, actually cobbled together an HDL. But I convinced him that it wasn't maybe the best course of action because it's hard to find one of those kinds of chips to run the show without a bunch of – it doesn't work at pinball voltages. Those things are generally designed for lower voltage. And you need more components on the board to make it all work. So I wrote a version in PIC assembly on a PIC-18F. Then Brian drew up the beautiful schematic, and we had boards fabricated. Yeah, and the first boards we made, we were like, hey, this will be great. Turns out they weren't very loud because there's an oversight in our measurements, And so the speech was actually coming out from minus 10 to plus 5 volts. So it had a 15-volt swing. And we're just PWMing the audio out over a 5-volt signal. And, yeah, so it was kind of quiet, but it worked. So then we did a second spin with a little op amp and made it louder, and I think that was the final revision that you see here. Well, yeah, with the exception of a couple code tweaks due to Bruce. Bruce was very kind and sent one of our prototype boards to Jim at the Sanctum, who actually has some of these games to put them in, because we're just running it on Flight 2000 here at our place. That's all we've really got. And Jim immediately discovered that some of the speech pitches were completely wrong. And some of the volume levels coming out were sometimes essentially zero. So a couple of code patches later, and I think it sounds pretty good. I noticed it's Rev C. At least in the picture it says Rev C. Yeah. But it also has an option for Custom. Custom. So what's that about? So on the original board, you could have two ROM chips, and each of those chips could hold two kilobytes of memory. The Flight 2000 ROM is only 2K. It was the first game made with the board, and I think as a result it was the smallest. All the subsequent games used 4K of ROM. But that chip itself, there's 64K of space dedicated to holding this ROM data. So that means you can have, I think, six or maybe seven custom ROMs. Not that there are that many custom ROMs in existence. But I know that there are some people, like I think Scott Charles has been on here before talking about his custom Flight 2000 game ROM, which has a custom speech ROM to accompany it. It'd be possible to program something like that into one of the ROM slots on the chip. And that way you wouldn't have to program ICs and bring out your old VSU-100 to make it all work. You just need a copy of Python installed and a serial cable, and you can write to that chip and put whatever you want on it. And these are available for sale right now. Where are they available, Bruce? At Glodstone, G-L-O-D-S-T-O-N-E.com. And at a very, very good price. I would so say so myself. So sayeth the Bruce. It's a rigging endorsement there. It is. Well, you think about it. If you find a used VSU 100, maybe get it for – right now there's one on eBay for $1,000. And there's a couple that were on Pinside for the past month that were at $150, $175. This is brand new, $125 plus shipping and handling and tax in New York State. In New York State, we get screwed because you guys are, of course – Yeah. Move out of state to buy it. Yes. There you go. Does it mount to the original holes? Yeah, those holes are the same dimensions. So, same connector, same dimensions. All you have to do is if you want to put your game, you have to flick the dip switches to set up your game. So, say if you have a Flight 2000, you set your dip switches all down, and you're ready. Which there's a picture on the board that tells you what the switches are. Yeah, so you literally don't need instructions. Even Jeff Teolas could install this. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Jeff Teolas from Pinball Profile can install this? Come on. Yep, 100%. Wow. It's a plug and play. It is a plug and play. And the good thing about this, if your wires are good and everything else, you're going to be very happy hearing your basic older stern talk to you again. And I know there's not going to be a lot of demand for this, But it will bring back, I think, split second. Even Orbiter One people will be like, hey, I can finally get, you know, or if they have a scratchy maybe amp on their board or, you know, just anything else. This will make it so you can enjoy your older Sterns again. And probably, I hate to say it, Ron, make your older Stern electronic games worth more money. Yay. What are we doing to the market for Stern, Ron? I'm going to play a clip right now of what this thing can do. This is Flight 2000 on the VSU-2. Prepare for mission. Player 2, stand by. Player 3, stand by. Player 4, stand by. So there you go. That's pretty good. And these guys were nice enough. I'm going to give them a ringing endorsement. They made my Gammatron speak. Yeah, that was a project. They still have the GammaTron at the house, and I'm very grateful for what they did for me. Yeah, it's sitting here safe and sound. I do want to say, though, I thought playing GammaTron with the speech made it even better. I was sort of halfway on it before, but now that it's more like Flight 2000, it's hard to argue with that, right? It helps us figure out what to do, too. Yeah, I need another board now for mine, because this is Zach's and mine, Gamitron. Oh, I got you. See, you got to get another guess. I see where you're going with this. Yeah. And Gamitron is not a plug-and-play either. I want people to know that, too. Yeah, there's a lot of custom stuff going on there. Yeah, we had to pull up the schematics, because depending which version of MPU you've got in it, you might have to do something different with how the wires are connected to it. And since the game was a conversion kit, there were probably three or four different boards that it could have been mounted with. Yes, it could have been the MPU-100, the Stern original MPU. It could have been a 200 possibly, if you were so lucky, or the MPU-35 or 17 from Bally. Yes, so you have a lot of different things to deal with that. but if you have any questions, if you do buy this board, only if you buy this board, we can ask them how they did it. Don't try to making a, you know, your, your VSU 100 into a speech board for your cabin, for your GammaTron. Oh yeah. That'd be a risk. That'd be a nightmare. That'd be a nightmare too. And for questions, support or purchasing assistance, send an email to info at gladstone.com. There you go. That's right. Check it. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, they check it. And definitely you want to, you know, support people who are bringing out new products. And we've always been very, you know, supportive of local people, especially, you know, right around the corner from me and Ron, you know, Ron's only three hours away. But Zach, you know, of course, everyone knows world famous Zach from Slamtail Podcast. We want to help out these guys. So if you're interested, if you got your older sterns, which we do have a lot of older stern guys out there, buy it. buy it. You heard it here first. Yes, you heard it first. So what, besides the, besides the, we know you have Flight 2000, what else have you purchased? And what do you have in your collection right now as we speak? After Flight 2K, we ended up getting a Black Hole, which is pretty, it's grown on me a lot, actually. When we first got it, I was kind of, I had mixed feelings about it, but it's grown on me. Our Zach would approve. Yes. Can you name a game that has a better lower play field? No, I can't. Not really. Right. Because you have two sets of drop targets on that lower play field, plus the spinning ramp. Yeah, I'd say that. Even Haunted House is good, but I think Black Hole is better. We've got TX Sector. And Judge Dredd. Well, TX Sector, I mean, that was, you know, that's a great game right there. Awesome soundtrack. They actually purchased the one from me that was at the bar. I was suspicious, Bruce, because that game showed up. We played it, like, the day after it arrived at the bar. And we said we really liked it. And the first words out of your mouth were, it's for sale. Everything is for sale. What is two days? What are you doing? Everything is for sale. everything, you know, and I gave them a number and they were like, they talked about it for a couple weeks and then they came back to me and said, yeah, we can do that. And I think it's maybe had like one little hiccup since then. Once in a while it goes, it won't boot fully. Yes. And the display, which actually we narrowed that down to a connector, so I think we'll have to like, I don't know, mess around with that, maybe repin it. But, yeah. So what games are you looking for in the future, possibly? What tempts your tummy to the taste of nuts and honey? So my current fascination, I guess, is the Iron Maiden from a year or two ago. Yes. Which is so fun, but also very expensive. Oh, come on. Well, which one do you want? Do you want the free game? Oh, yeah. So I'd like a limited edition, but you can't really get this anymore. Yeah, you've got to find a used one, of course. Damn, straight for the limited edition. You're definitely on pin side then. Yeah. Oh, man. I actually just sold, I want to say like last week. I was like, oh, shoot. It was in Massachusetts too. I could have driven by and gotten it. See? You could have waved at Ron. You could have stopped at Ron's house on the way to get that game. And that's why I said, right, you know, we have a friend who's a few miles away in Fairport who's got one. That's true. That's true. That's the way it's going to happen. There's another friend with a frill. Yes. So how about you, Jared? What about you? What are you feeling? I'm not 100% sure what the next game of interest is. We had a chance to get Tales from the Crypt over the summer, and I'm kind of now kicking myself for saying no. Yeah. That game is really fun. It's a fun game. Yeah. I like the shots on it. Tales from the Crypt. But honestly, I think I take... I really want a System 3. Then there are some other ADBs that I'd accept if they showed up. And it was convenient to get them is the real issue. I'm not quite like you. I don't want to go drive 12 hours to go get a game. What? Yeah, no. Drive 12 hours. Maybe a 12-hour round trip will do that. But you really set a new bar. 24 and 24, right around. Flip it. You want to surf at Safari? That would be good. Stargate's okay. You need a teed-off? Teed-off, one of my personal favorites. Yeah, I would like a teed-off. I think that would be pretty neat. But I think even something like a Bad Girls would be pretty cool. Well, Bruce is a fan, as we know. Yes, it is. Yes, yes, yes. what else do you think projects in the future do you see yourselves doing? Is this just the one board and done, or do you see yourself maybe, like, you don't have to say what you're doing, but do you have any ideas? I do have at least one idea. Okay, that's good. Since, what's his name, is not making boards anymore, Rotten Dog is no longer making boards. You know, some of these boards are going to be going bye-bye, so, and some are being reproduced by other people, but Rotten Dog had a big selection, so maybe possibly making one of his not-remade boards from other people. But I like to see people making boards so these games will last longer. And this has been a hiccup in the Stern electronic. I think this is, besides the SB100, I think this is the second-to-last board that's needed for all the Sterns. What's the last board? What's the last board? SB-100, the sound board for the older Sterns. Oh, for the older Sterns. The Dracula. Oh, but those things, the sound is so bad. It's terrible. I mean, you're better off just being quiet. Yes, but it is the only board that is left for Stern Electronics not being... I think there's a reason. Yeah, I think there's a reason, too. Or you could make the Gamertron CPU boards. You've seen that now. Ugly thing. For the five people who might have one? Well, there's probably about ten. Okay, ten. Five people each one has two Yeah exactly You got to have two You have the exclusive provider of GammaTron electronics Yes there you go Pinstar 2 But, yeah, I'm glad that you guys are thinking about possibly another project, but support this project for these guys, definitely. We want to see these guys sell, sell, sell! Again, that's the VSU-2 at Glodstone, G-L-O-D-S-T-O-N-E dot com. We won't be offended if you don't, because, you know, if you add up the total production numbers of all of those games, it's like what? 15,000. There's really, there's only so many old sterns out there. And flight 2000 is probably 75% of it. You're right. But when I was talking to Jim from the sanctum, he said, this is well needed because he goes, if these boards fail, I'm screwed. And he puts these on location at the sanctum. So that's a great thing to see. And he said, I'm going to tell people once you guys release the information, I'm telling people that it's for sale. And, of course, you'll be getting some sales and information from Pinside, of course. But we're kind of exclusive. We're kind of exclusive. Kind of exclusive when you're getting the interview. You're getting to talk to the… Yeah, you've got us even if you didn't get invited to Deep Root. There you go. See? Nice. Are you guys going to hang out with us? Yeah, let's hang out here. and since you mentioned Deep Root. That's a good segue. That's a great segue. I didn't even plan that one. So let's get into Deep Root because they finally released some stuff. They did. They released a bunch of videos. Yeah. They were on a couple of different podcasts. They had, I think, Pinball Profile had one. Mm-hmm. And then I think it was Pinball Magazine had like a two-hour interview with Robert Mueller. Yep. And I think they talked about pricing and stuff. See, I haven't had a chance to actually listen to any of those yet, unfortunately. Fail on my part, so I don't really know what was said. So I'll have to wait until the next one. Yes. Unless you, Jav, you listen to any of them? I've listened to a few minutes of the Pinball Profile. I love, I just, I love Jav, you know, of course. Robert Mueller is just, I feel like he's a freaking used car salesman. What do you mean, brother? Yeah, I know. Have you seen the pin bar, dude? Yeah, I know. I'm sorry, Hulk. You know, I think he... The one part I did read about that was that when they showed it in Houston, Raza, they actually had to pull the pin bar because it was already in development at that point. So they had to redesign the game without the pin bar just to show it, which seems kind of insane. It's stupid. You should have never done that. Because it was only like 60% done at the time. I know. No, you wasted time, material, and effort. I don't understand that one. But you watched the 15-minute video, Ron? Well, of course, Bruce had all these videos. They had a bunch of them from the original, whatever you want to call it, the Deep Six, when they were there and watched everything. They had a bunch of video of that. But then they had video of gameplay of Raza, and then they had video of the cabinets. Innovations. Like the innovations, which, of course, that's the one Bruce posted. Yes. From Robert Bueller. Yep. And, I mean, did you guys see the videos? I did not. All I've seen is a little bit of the drama in the thread on Pinside, which has been hilarious. We're not about drama here. We're not about drama here. Just go to YouTube and look up Deep Root, and you'll see their awesome videos. So they have the one that's like the tech video. Like, this is what it looks like. Like, this is the arcade model, this is the extra model, and this is all our innovations. And how the glass comes off. See, the innovative way the glass comes off, that Bally did in the late 60s and early 70s. Oh, the piston thing. Yeah, the piston. That was pretty cool. I will say, well, do you notice Robert said, like, here is the backbox of my own design. So he's the one who came up with the fish tank. Yeah. And he answered my one question, if you remembered, when we were talking about when they showed it off on that stream, and it kept going into the admin menu, and I'm there, man, I hope you can't just get into the admin menu. I hope maybe you have to open the coin door or something. And he said right in there, you have to open the coin door to get into the admin menu. Okay. Okay, I just have visions of people hacking into the admin menu of the game. the glass, like it has two positions. Yep. As it comes up in the one position, the just kind of access the play field, maybe the on stick a ball or something. And then they have the, I want to pull the play field out and put it up position. So you pull it up even more, the glass. And then you lock it into with a little arm. And then you pull on the play field, which looks like it has service rails all the way down. Like all the way, like pinball 2000. Like Jersey Jack, I think does it too. Yes. and then when you put the playfield up it's like straight up directly in the center of the cabinet I liked it looked cool to me I like the pin bar the pin bar is the best part yep you showed off the pin bar pin bar looks cool and make no mistake the pin bar is their one differentiating feature yes from their game to anyone else's game I mean it's not the fish tank like pack box or the way the art is or anything else I mean, if you look at Raza, honestly, from above, it looks like it could be a Williams game from the 90s. Yes. It's when you see that pin bar. Yes. And it's in the prime location for real estate because most people are looking at their flippers when they're flipping. Instead of looking all the way up, you're looking down. And there's a lot of options with it. You can select your skill shot and… Buy stuff from a store and game-specific things. And he went through the whole menu. Looks very easy to understand. Yep. Listen, brother. Listen, brother. See how awesome and innovative the pin bar is, dude. So, the gameplay, did you see the gameplay video? A little bit of it. That confused me in a couple ways. Yes. Well, they kept on saying you've got to hit Ned. Well, here, okay, a couple of things. That's the thing that really bothered me. I'm going to sound like a dick here, but they started the video off with a cool tracking shot of, like, Steven Bowden and, oh, I can't remember the other guys. name. I'm sorry. They're tracking them walking into the auditorium or whatever, and you see the rig there, and there's the game. Like, oh, that's pretty cool. I've never seen a tracking shot like that before. That looked like a movie thing or something. Yeah. And then they start, and you can see they have camera, like, right on the pin bar, play field camera, etc. It's like, cool. Okay, good start. When Steve started playing the game, I don't know if it did this for you, but it looks like it's 30 frames. Yeah. It was not at 60 frames, like the ball motion, which immediately that's like, no, you can't do that. You've got to put your best foot forward, man. It's got to look like awesome, whatever it takes. Well, like they're hitting Ned in the background. How many times did he hit Ned before it actually registered? Well, you know, I'm hitting Ned. You can't see Ned. I couldn't tell what he was hitting in the back. They really needed one extra mini camera to show Ned because I believe it's some character that like pops up and you got to time it and hit him. and that wasn't happening. I couldn't see it. So I had no idea what he was shooting. And then Steve had his hat on and it kept covering up the pin bar. So I couldn't see the pin bar either. And you had to highlight your parts of the game that you really want to show off. I mean, if you're going to shoot Ned, you need to show Ned. And I couldn't see Ned. Oh, all of a sudden it's supposed to light up letters in the middle. I'm sitting there going Yeah, and Steve says, you know, I need to hit net, and it lights up the letters. Like, okay, and he keeps shooting it back there, and I'm not seeing any letters lighting up. No! Damn, is the game broken? What's going on? That's exactly what I was thinking. But the shots were makeable. It looks okay. It looks okay. I need to flip it. I need to flip it. Yeah, I mean, there's nothing in the game that's, oh, my God. No, no, nothing at all, except for the pin bar. The wow is the pin bar. The wow is the pin bar. Yes. So what do you guys think of the pin bar? I think the concept is pretty cool and I think I agree with a lot of people when I say that there's a lot of potential for a whole extra set of depth to a game because you have different interactions of things happening right in front of you you think of the video mode on a game where you're pounding buttons but what else could be done with that pin bar that takes that to a new level Yeah, and a lot of times when they have the little video cut scenes, you're looking up at the video or something, and you're distracted, and then all of a sudden the ball gets released. Imagine if they did, like, Tetris on it or something. How fast you could do that with your fingers. They'd do boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Yeah. Or the video modes you could do with that. You could. There is an endless supply of possibilities that you could do with that. I just think they need another game. Yes. Raza was... The filler. Yeah, make the Zidware people whole. It was a legal filler. I really question why they hired John Papadu. No, it was stupid. Nothing personal against them, but there's so much baggage. And you've had to spend so much money for these Zidware people, and then this is your first game. It should have been like The Who or Goonies. Yeah. Or maybe they're just like, this is our first introduction. It's going to be a simpler, it's going to be like an old Williams game. And we wanted to start with this just to kind of whet your appetite. And the next game is going to be The Who or Goonies or something. So when is this game coming out? That's the only thing I've heard that wasn't really like. Right. Have they given any details about work that they've put into these other games so far? Because I know that the timeline with Reza was a really huge point of contention. Other than there was a Facebook post of one of the guys who's doing videos for the games, and he posted some of the stuff he's been working on, and they looked awesome. And you could kind of tell what some of the games were. Like, I think one looked like it was for the Merlin game. Another one thought it looked like it was for, I don't remember. but that's all I've seen as far as how far they are along on the other games. I've seen nothing else. And the, the deep six were released for their, from their NDA. And they all said there was no manufacturing. Yeah. That was the main thing that everything else has come out. But the one thing is they didn't see any manufacturing. And there really, I heard, I didn't listen to it all, but there really was no mention of manufacturing in the interviews. Yeah. It's hard to build a game without a production line. And unfortunately, I've been in the manufacturing part of it with large equipment, and it's not easy. It's not an easy gig. And if you're – now we can criticize because now he's taking money. He's taking deposits. I don't know how you could possibly – I want to see an assembly line. Exactly. I'm sorry. I want to see something. Jersey Jacks showed it. Even Highway Pinball showed their assembly line. Yeah. I mean, Jersey Jack, Guns N' Roses, it went out of their way to show – they did all the interviews in the factory. Yes. It's like, look at all these lines behind us. Yes, we're making machines. Take my money. Have we seen American Pinball's assembly line? Some people have, I think. Yes. Because it's more than just pinball. They have the whole – I think they have redemption stuff, too. We do redemption stuff, too. Yeah. But I know people who have been in the factory, so I know that. And they've made games, so obviously – Exactly. They're being manufactured. Exactly. So, but as soon as you start taking money and people have questions, don't ignore the questions. We'll have to see. We'll have to see. Now, did you go over the pricing with this? If you go to Deep Root Pinball, you can actually see the pricing. Oh, they do have the pricing. Oh, it's up. Okay. Hold on. Let's investigate the pricing. Deep Root Pinball. Well, wait a minute. It went to Pornhub. Oh, wrong Deep Root. Sorry. picture oh that looks nice i know it does it does look at that chrome with the topper it's the first time i've seen the topper yeah the topper man you you hate everything doesn't bruce hate everything yes he's very critical he is you better hope you never make a product bruce i did make a product it was called silver ball saloon and everyone liked it so fuck you ron So let's see. Okay, the arcade edition. So it's not $4,900. No, it's not. $5,899. Did they explain, do they have distributors, or is it all just going to be sold through them? They really have not explained that too much either. I think they have overseas distributors right now. They have one or two, but I don't think they've talked about U.S. distributors. So, did you put that regular one in your CD options or anything like that when you bought that first one, or did you not even do that, put that in your cart? Huh? I'm viewing the game right now. You viewed a game. Okay. Yeah. Then if you put it in your cart and viewed a cart, there's options out in the bottom. Oh. There are a lot of options. Let's just go over Sonomote. Yeah, Coin Door can be powder-coated. The Pin Bar Screen Protector you can get. So, it truly is like a cell phone. It's a screen protector. rings, either standard or neon, shaker motor, toys. What does that mean? Standard, dizzy-doozy, stationary net figure. If you want upgraded toys, you get the ramp stickers, atomic shop sign, motorcycle, and Jetstar. Mm-hmm. There's a lot of options, though. Here's the problem, though. If you're going to have a lot of options, the base price has to be lower. Thank you. Oh, did I beat you there? Because if it's like $49.99 with no options, then like, okay. But it's already more than a Stern Pro for their Arcade Edition, which is supposed to be their like Arcade Edition for location, I would assume. They're in between Stern and Jersey Jack. Yeah. But originally, according to Robert, he was going to be the same pricing as the Pro. He stated that for three years, hasn't he, or has he not? I don't know, brother. I don't remember, dude. Yeah, I know. Thank you for your limited memory, Robert Hulk Bueller. So we've never taken delivery of a new in-box pin, but there's an option on here called the PinPod. PinPod, yes. It's a foldable, teardown... Wood box. Wood box. Is this solving a problem I'm not aware of? No. If you want to bring your game to a show. If you want to reuse the box, yes. That's what it is. You can actually break this piece down so it's actually in pieces of wood, and then what happens is afterwards you can clip it all back together and make it into a box again and then ship your game again or bring it to a show. That was one of the videos that showed the pin pod. Pin pod. Pin pod. All right, so that's the arcaded version. I want to see. So the extra edition is $9,500. And there's still options on that. Let's see, $9,499. Damn. No, just a couple. The pin bar screen protector and the shipping container. That's it. Yeah. You can't give me the pin bar screen protector for the extra $90. You have to charge me. What's the super one? The extra, was it arcade extra? Oh, no. I thought there was two different variants of the extra version. I guess not. No. I actually kind of like that. Honestly, the less versions, the better. The less versions, the better. The easier it will keep. Yeah. I agree with that. But if you add every option, so you add the coin door, you add the pin bar protector screen, you add the purple-coated legs and trim, you add the shaker motor, which comes with the standard one, You add the rings. You add the upgraded toy package. You upgrade the GI lighting. It's an LED strip on the bottom of the glass, almost like pin stadiums. You add the anti-reflective glass. You add the topper, which is not included on the regular one. Well, wait. I have to add GI lighting? Like it's not bright enough? No, it's actually like a pin stadium. Oh, okay. But they call it GI lighting, which is a bad description of it. You add the pin care kit, which sounds like a goodie bag that you don't get. A support package, you get the enhanced support for lifetime ownership of video support and product quality. The warranty package you can get. Guess how much you're up to, Ron? How much are you up to? $9,494. It's $5 less. So I should get the arcade and just add everything, and I get a $4 savings. savings. Savings, yes. I don't think so, though, because it has a different backbox. It does have a different... Well, if you wanted to have, like... The way they were saying it is you wanted to have the Williams backbox style. So if I don't want the fish tank, I can just get the arcade edition and add everything. I don't think that's going to make manufacturing a bish. Like, all these build to order, like, all these various parts... Yeah, because the amount of options... Just do the math on how many different... Oh, yeah. You can have like 50 different variants with all the stuff they have. Well, luckily, they got manufacturing now with their Octo manufacturing. Oh, the Octo manufacturing. Yes. Well, we'll see. Yeah, I'm just... When I added up all the pricing and people are saying that, it's like, yeah, it's about the same price. And they don't even tell you what the standard warranty is. like you know it says extended warranty US only doubles the warranty period outlined in your customer agreement so it doubles the warranty if your warranty was a month that's now two months yeah but unfortunately it doesn't tell you what the warranty package is maybe that's in one of the things we have to listen to yeah maybe I don't know but yeah okay hey but you get a discount on your box oh yes and then I don't know if anyone really got into the monthly fees with them, but we'll have to listen in and we'll talk about this. Oh, the DLC. Yeah, the DLC. Because you might get all the hardware, but you might not necessarily get all the software. Yes, which is another. Yeah, we beat that to death on the last one, so we'll move on. Guess what? Guess what I've been doing for the past week, Ron? Working. No. Oh, so you're goofing off. Yes. Okay. I'm in quarantine. Oh, oh my. Yeah, a person at my work came in, didn't know he had it, and he came back positive. So for the past eight days, I've been inside the house, only going out for going to the doctor for going for my tests, which I have been negative. I've been negative on the first one, and I'm waiting for it back for my second negative, hopefully. Yeah. COVID sucks. COVID sucks. But I feel more bad for Kathy. She's stuck in the house with me. Oh, poor Kathy. I told her today we're going to take a field trip. We're going to go to the arcade today. What arcade? The front vendor. I'm bringing her out. Moving on up. I took her breakfast yesterday. I made breakfast. I'll take you to the arcade, honey. Wow, thank you. What a romantic. Yeah, I am. Mr. Romance here. Oh, my. I thought he was going to say the garage. Oh, the garage is now a bomb, guys, since the last time you've seen it. The bowler's in there. The coolers are in there. How did you have room for the bowler? It's vertical. Oh, wow. Oh, my God. It's vertical. It does break into pieces, though. Yes, it does. So the height of the lane pieces and everything is eight and a half feet. So now leaning against the wall. Yeah. The Chex Arcade. And then the picture I sent Ron before. You, I don't remember. What did you send me? The NFL, Namco NFL football. Oh. It's like Gridiron Fight, but better. Four roller controllers. So four people could play football. Like X doesn't know it's Atari. Did you know four people could play Alien? No. That's a weird segue right there, but yeah. That's really. I can play with my Alien. That's what I call it. I call it Alien. Oh, my goodness. So Alien, Pinball Brothers, they are going to be coming out with Alien. A remake, right? In two weeks, they said their announcement was going to be, but they sent out a press release. Yeah, which I have here. The interesting thing to me, they still haven't said whether it's going to be wide-body or not, have they? No, they have not. But people are assuming it's still going to be wide body. But they took out a lot of stuff. And one of the important things I think they took out is the bad thing. Oh, they took out the screen display in the center. The screen in the center. But here's the other interesting thing. They're offering this voucher. Yes. Like 50% off if you're one of the people who got screwed. Screwed by who? Highway. And who bought Highway? Here's the thing. On their announcement, they have a thing. Can we help people that prepaid Highway for the first-generation Alien game? We will offer vouchers worth at least 50% of their loss to any private customer who prepaid for an Alien pinball machine from Highway Pinball that was not delivered. Why vouchers? This is Pinball Brothers is not Highway Pinball. Wrong. Wrong. Here's the thing. This is from several reliable sources The last batch of Aliens were done under the Pinball Brothers brand Yes They say Highway on them but if you look at the circuit boards they say Pinball Brothers Yes. So to say they bought the company, so to say that they're not liable or they're not going to pay up is utter bullshit. It is. They took over. They were the investors. They took over, and then they booted Andrew Highway from the company. and then they tried to make it go out of themselves which they made one set of games but they bought they are the investors and I believe they declared bankruptcy or whatever the hell they did and they moved yeah but guess what you still were the original people it's not like you it's not like me or you buying the company Ron it's still the same people yeah it's still the Pinball Brothers the ones who owned the company for the last run so I'm just yeah I mean I mean, I know a lot of people are like, how nice of them giving 50% off. It's like, okay. No, they took your money. They took half your money. They should be saying, hey, they should be almost doing what Dutch Pinball did. Hey, we know we got your money still. If we sell 10 aliens, I'll be able to then, one of the original people who put their money in will get their piece. And what they also don't talk about is all the kits they sold for the aliens. it's alien everyone calls it aliens and it bugs the shit out of me okay so alien but they sold a lot of kits for the alien and they never shipped one of those so all those people who had the other game what was it uh full throttle your full throttle and wanted to swap in like they were supposed to be able to never was able to and their money's lost and they don't bring that up in their questionnaire thing. No, they don't. Yeah. Yeah. What's with Dutch? They're actually making games. They're trying to make us look bad after all the shit we said. And they want to make games I heard for the Pinball Brothers. Yeah, that's a rumor. Yeah, they're going to manufacture these alien games. Yikes. Like, wow. Don't finish what you first started. Let's try to take on some more things. Are they saying how many of these they're planning on making? Well, no, not at all. So no real details. No real details. No money, no cost, nothing. Yeah, no nothing. So we're still left in the dark, and maybe we will get information later on, but would I trust this company? Not at all. I would actually buy it from the original distributors from – Cointaker. Cointaker. I would buy it from them because they at least weren't giving the money until they got the machines or they were shipping the machines. I would not buy direct from these people. And if that's the only way they do it, I'll get one used eventually. And we see how good their support's been for the older Highway games. I heard people trying to contact them like now since they say they're going to remake it. Like, hey, I need these parts. And they're like ignoring people. Hmm. Yeah. So what does that tell you? everything's dead to them except new alien exactly exactly lovely okay well there was a gary stern interview on the super awesome pinball show hey guys how we doing it was a good interview you should listen yeah yeah was he drinking yep and man he really went off on the mod makers and shit too. Really? Oh yeah. What do you say? Because they're violating trademarks. If you put an R2-D2 topper on the top of your game that you made yourself or you're selling one. Okay. Well basically he said even making one for yourself and putting it on your game technically is a violation but nobody cares. No one's going to go after you for that but what you can't do is sell it. You can't bring it out to a show and have like, hey look at this non-licensed topper I have. Or look at this non-licensed software version I have. Because he said what we said when we talked about this, the example I used, if somebody involved with Iron Maiden went to Pinberg and saw that Iron Maiden there playing all the disco songs, and be like, what the fuck is this? What have you done to our game? What is this? This is not right. And basically that's what Gary said has happened on at least one occasion. There are licensors that come back saying, you're letting this happen? it's just getting really bad we see it with twitch and now what did you hear about the one state senator who wants to fine people for doing uh issues with twitch they think they should be fined i think twitch should just pay like youtube did like youtube made agreements with the people so you notice you don't have issues on youtube well for the most part but i mean you're not going to get... I've had stuff muted or said was a violation, but they never put strikes against me or said they were going to pull my channel. You said pull. Yes, I did. What do you guys think about that? Well, I know that YouTube has a number of issues where people will put in stuff that is in the public domain in the background, and it will still get copied, striped, or muted just because of really overzealous automated claims against channels. But I don't know what the real solution is here for the pinball scene because one big factor I think that needs consideration is people love modding their pinball machines. And the whole history of personal ownership of these games is steeped in that. Yeah, but what Gary was basically saying, if you go to a show like, say, Texas, where you have all these high-end games that people have made all their own mods for, and you've got some super-duper Tron topper that says Tron on it. If that wasn't licensed, that's a violation. That's a problem. What if you're in Texas, and you've got a real gun on your Guns N' Roses topper that fires off bullets? That seems like that's a good thing for Texas. That's fine. As long as it doesn't say Guns N' Roses on it, you're all set. Okey-dokey. Yeehaw! celebratory gunfire is a staple of texas tradition exactly so you get multiball i took my cactus canyon replaced those fake plastic guns with the real deal yeah i shot my hands out i literally shot myself playing the game uh yes i don't know there's really no easy solution so now if you let's just say this so gm should go after every copyright holder that puts a decal on the side of their car saying gm rocks or you know or anything like that unless they bought it from unless they got it from gm Unless it's licensed from GM. You see those Calvin and Hobbes? Yeah, that's a violation. I know it is, but do you see them hunting these people down? No, of course not. It's just overzealousness, I think. You can't control this. Even commenting about it is a no-win situation. So you think you just screw it, just open the floodgates? No, you can't do that either. I mean, you can't have Stern, who paid a ridiculous amount of money for that wonderful, awesome R2-D2 topper, and then have someone else just do the same thing but not pay a cent and then sell it? I don't see anybody who's done that. I know, but I'm just saying. I've seen mods out there of like an Iron Man shooter rod and all that. When you're charging $1,000 for a topper and I can make it for $250 and be maybe just as good or maybe even better, maybe I will make my own for $250. You can make your own. That's fine. You just can't bring it to a show. Yeah, bullshit. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Bruce is giving the middle finger to Gary Stern. You got it, because you vodka bastard. Great. He's never coming on our show now. Thank you. No, he never will be. Just like other people won't be. Couldn't we have him on the show, like, just talk about old Stern? We could. Because that would piss people off, too. It would be, hey, we're going to have Gary Stern on. We have an hour-long discussion on Orbiter One. The problem is, he was probably such a drunk stupor back then, He probably didn't really remember what happened. Oh, no. Supposedly, I've been told from multiple people, he has Stern Electronics stories all the time. That's a good thing. Yeah. So, Gary, forget what he called you. Come on. Come on our show. I don't see anybody really. I think it just makes bad blood. Why piss off your consumer? All right. It seems like that's been the goal lately for these people. Well, you know what doesn't piss me off, Bruce? The fact that new nine-ball playfields are available. Yes! Do you love these segues? These are incredible. Nine ball playfields and plastics are available from... Mirco. Mirco. And I've already seen at least one post showing how the art's wrong. Yes, I know. It didn't take long. No, it didn't. The shadows on the pool balls, you know, the main thing in the center of the play field, isn't correct. Yeah. But, I mean, I guarantee you, though, it looks way better than mine. Oh, it does. Mine is pretty hosed. You know, it's getting worse all the time, of course. Really? I thought yours was decent. It's decent. Compared to mine. It's the one you got at Pentastic, right? Yeah, the one I got at Pentastic, but it is chipping because it was at the bar for a while. And my lock save lane, you know where the lock is, and it ejects out of the lock hole. My 3000 is barely readable. It's mostly worn away because it pops up. What we need to make, guys, I'm sorry. We need to make stern spinners and stern extended spinners. That is the next goal I want to see somebody make. Extended spinners? For nine ball. For nine ball, the one game it was used on. Yep. I don't know if you're going to get that, but at least make the regular spinners. Yeah, make the regular ones, guys. Come on, that's the next thing I think we need to make. And you only have to make the stern ones, the S, the Seaburg, the S, you know, with the. Yeah, that's fine. That's fine by me. I don't need the specialty ones for Sea Witch and all high hand and everything else. No. Just give me a stern one. I'll be happy. Pinball life. Get into it. So would you pay $900 for your plastic set and your nine ball play field? Yeah, sure. I would too. Even though I only played $800 for the game. Yeah, I know. I paid $12. $800 for the game, including an extra populated play field. I know. Hey, you could swap that over easier now, right? that I've ripped so many parts off of that poor play field. No, no, but I mean, you at least have the wiring harness there and everything like that. Oh, I've ripped stuff off of that, too. Oh, boy. At least you have your guidance. You have your guidance and your posts and everything like that. Hopefully, they're all in the right spot. Hopefully. You have another one to look at, too, so you have two to look at. So that was nine ball. Yes. Would you guys do a play field swap, Jared and Brian, if you had the chance? Well, for which game? Let's just say nine ball, if you had a nine ball. Yeah, if I had your nine ball, Bruce, I would do a play field swap. That thing has seen better days. It's not that bad. You haven't seen Ron's. You haven't seen mine, then. When he got it, when he first got that, I was like, wow, way better than mine. Yeah. Mine was bad. Ron's is worse. Have you seen one that hasn't been played to death? There's a couple out there, but they're very rare, and they're expensive. Did you see the auction yesterday from the guy in California? The guy in California. Arnold Schwarzenegger? No, the one IFPA always talks about on their website, the Captain Jacks or something like that. Let me see. Hold on. Billy Joel? You're being an asshole. Yes, I am. How do I say that? I know that. That's why. When you say guy in California. Captain's Auction Warehouse. There you go. That's exactly what it is. He had an auction yesterday. It was online, and they had a cheetah on there. Collector's Quality. Oh, boy. How much do you think a Collector's Quality cheetah went for? $6,000. Oh, hold on. Let me give you some ideas of what the other prices went for. The other prices went for? You mean the other games went for? Yep. Cyclone went for $3,700. Okay, $7,000. Hold on. 4K Stern Harley-Davidson. A Day to East Jurassic Park went for $4,900. What do you think a Cheetah went for? $7,000. $7,000. Jared or Brian, any guesses? I'm going to go with more than that. I'm going to go with like... So you're saying higher. You're saying higher. Higher. Brian? Yeah, yeah, probably around there. I mean, well, you said it was like... Did they say collectibles? You have to give a number, Brian, otherwise one of us can't win. Sure. I'll do $8,500. $8,500. Okay, okay. You're all wrong. It was $1,000. $4,300. $4,300? $4,300 for a collector quality cheetah. Wow. Yeah. I mean, that's lower than all the inside wants. I guess it's not as popular as we thought. Yeah. So, you know, you could have – what would you rather pay, $4,900 for the East Jurassic Park or $4,300 for a cheetah? I'd probably take the Jurassic Park, to be honest. No way. You can get a much cheaper Jurassic Park. Yes, exactly. You know what? I think the only part of a cheetah I need is the back glass. The back glass is the worst part. Yeah, it's iconically bad. How about Stargazer? That's got a good back glass, right? That's got a great back glass. That's a great game. It is a great game. We all love that game. Yeah. So that's what some of the pricing went for yesterday at that pop-up auction in California. And plus that's not including fees, which were the tax was 8.5%, the fee was 15%, and then you've got to think about shipping if you're going to ship it across country. So your $4,300 Cheeto went to $5,500. Yikes. Speaking of pricing changes, segues are gold. Stern Rewards Program. Yes. Are you familiar with the Stern Rewards Program? I have used the Stern Rewards Program twice in my life. For those who don't know what the Stern Rewards Program is. What is it, Ron? Basically, it's if you're in the top 1,000 ranked in IFPA. Or if you're the monthly best qualifier in the past. Like you're the top three in the month. Okay. If you're one of those things, you are eligible to get a discounted game from Stern through IFPA. Yes. One a year. What kind of discount are we talking about? I will explain. I might even use some numbers. We like Josh. Well, here's the thing, though. It's not Josh anymore, and that's the other part of it. Yeah. So the way it used to work, like my Deadpool. So you send an email to IPA. It's like how much for a Deadpool premium with the rewards program. And they'll give you a price. And what they used to do is Josh Sharpe works for Raw Thrills. He's their chief financial officer. Yes. So they would use Raw Thrills as shipper. And it would be like for me, it was like 179 bucks. Yep. Which is good. That's cheap. That's cheap. And then you would get the discounted price. And there you go. Sounds good. It worked great with Deadpool. Worked great with Batman 66 and with Iron Maiden, I think I did. Yes. So what's changing now is starting in 2021, and here's where – games shipped in 2021. So if you already ordered this the old way and it's not going to be delivered this year, which pretty much, unless it's Stranger Things or Beatles, it's not, you are going to now be affected by this. IFPA is no longer going to be, it's not going to be through Raw Thrills anymore, and Josh, for the most part. You still send him an email, but it's going to go to Stern, and you're going to buy it through Stern directly. Yes. Which is a first. Which is, well, Stern just started selling the Star Wars, the pin, on their site. Directly. And they have said they are going to start selling more games directly. For some people, this actually doesn't affect them in any way because the price will not change. Well, it will change slightly. The one difference is the shipping is now a flat 300 fee. So if you lived in California or way far away where your Raw Thrills price would have been 300 anyway, maybe it won't affect you. Or if you're a commercial and you had a loading dock where they used a different truck, they didn't need a lift gate, that kind of stuff. it doesn't affect you either. So the issue is Stern will be charging tax depending on the state you live in. Huh? Yeah, it's part of the Wayfair Nexus thing. The thing that happened like two years ago where they enacted this and it affected certain distributors. Once you sell like a certain amount of product, you have to start charging tax or something like that. You actually have to have a sales tax ID in that state you're selling it. So if you live in Illinois and you're like 10 minutes from the factory, you have to pay tax. So what a lot of people will do is they'll just have it shipped to somewhere in Wisconsin, which is 20 minutes away, grab it, and then come back because Wisconsin doesn't have the tax. But in our case, we live in the Nazi state of New York. Hail Cuomo! Hail Cuomo! You know that there's going to be a tax. Of course there is. And there was. Here's the funniest thing. They have to deal in the state of New York. Each county has its own sales tax base. Did you know that, Rob? Yes. Yep. Yeah. So where I am, it's like 8%. My tax, which I pretty much gave away the price, but it's $535 more than I would have had to pay before. Yes. That's the best way to say it. Well, yeah, I just gave it away. I did give it away because I just said the percentage. So if you're good with math, you already know what the price is. Yes. But if I lived in Massachusetts or New Jersey, I'm all set. I'd pay the same thing I would have paid before, well, except the extra shipping. Yeah, the extra shipping. But that's not a big deal. So now, if you get this game. Yeah. The thing is, because I first heard about this through the one thread we're in. I'm in New York. I'm 20 minutes from Massachusetts. So in theory, if I had friends, I could have a ship somewhere in Massachusetts, and I could go pick it up. In under like an hour, I'd probably have it. So you could do it in a way that wouldn't affect me. If you're in California, and it takes you seven or eight hours of driving just to get out of the state, you're screwed. Plus their taxes are probably even higher than ours. Eight and three quarters in California. Yeah, and they have a lot of top players in California. I'm sure they have a lot of people who use the rewards program. Oh, I guarantee it. I guarantee it. So it is a detriment because literally the pricing now with the tax charge and people on eBay sometimes don't charge tax is almost equal. I showed Ron where it was free shipping and no tax, and here you go. And Ron was like, yeah, it's about the same price. yeah but you could get if you get one from the right distributor you can now get it cheaper than you could with the rewards program depending on what state you live in and it's not the fault of ifpa well it's not the fault it's not the fault of stern they they have to follow the law they have to follow the law it's just a disappointing thing where certain people will get affected more than others right now yeah i was disappointed eventually everyone will be effect because once they start selling into the states more and more, they have to, by law, start charging tax. And if not, if you don't get charged a tax, you should be reporting this on your IRS. Yep, you should. There's a thing right on there on the New York State one. Have you bought any out-of-state blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? And not been charged sales tax. What do you feel about that, guys? Ugh. Yeah, we're in an 8% tax zone as well, and it's pretty terrible, especially for expensive items. Yep. Here's the funny thing. I'm 15 minutes away from these guys, and I'm only at 7 1⁄4 because I'm in a different county. Yeah. Each county in New York State is different. So I should have my game shipped to you. Yes. It'd be a little cheaper. So you could do that. But the funny thing is, if you live in Utica, it's 10%. Wow. Ouch. Yeah. But what do you think, guys? Do you think this is going to be a – Well, it's only going to affect 1,000 people. Yeah. I was going to say I feel better about not being good at pinball. Yeah. Where's your benefit for this? Yeah, I mean, for me, that was – honestly, at this point, that was my whole impetus for having a higher ranking is to take advantage of this. This was like the main reason. Yep. and now you have all this extra money because you're not going out, you're not shipping. Yeah, and my ranking is going to hold because I actually played in January. Yeah, so did I. And did good. I got a crap load of points in Indisc due to ridiculous classics performance over my head two days in a row. So I got all kinds of points. I did pretty good in New York State. I would be set for this year and next year. I would have another opportunity to get a game. You just have to have it shipped to my parents' house. I could do that. And drive it six hours. Oh, well, no, I don't want to do that. You're going to need a whole new exclusive benefits club for top players now. Yeah. You shouldn't tell anyone about it. It's got to be a secret. Or you start a service, like you have drop-off zones, like certain addresses. You just sit in the parking lot you know like the Western Massachusetts Pinball Club or something Yeah that the address The truck shows up in the parking lot You already already there Like yep I the guy Here my ID Come on Sign it Put it in the car You off Boom Just have them drop it off at one of the service plazas along the mass plate. There you go. I wonder if you could do that. You do it at the UPS store. You guys take all the packages, don't you? That's what you do, Ron. You rent out a P.O. box at a UPS store. I don't think they can do P.O. boxes for free like that. They do personal mailboxes. Yes, they do. They do personal mailboxes. And then you get a real street address, and then you ship it to there, and then you pick it up that same day. Yeah, you better. You'd be probably pretty upset if you didn't. That's a big box. That's a big box. But I think you do that, and then there you go. I figured out the whole thing. We're around it. You figured out the whole scheme. All right. Order it all up, Ron. All right. Only two things left. What? Yeah. we have I had to mention this Led Zeppelin ugh what what what Jeff Deolis is in his prime he's he's in his prime no he's in his glory he's not in his prime he's got oh wow it's the fast poor Jeff episode he's got he's got wood beyond all belief right now as soon as he heard this he's probably calling every distributor getting on every LE list well I'm sure his LE list LE's already been confirmed yeah this will most certainly be Mr. Richie and Timmy. Hey, Timmy. So, Timmy, you've got the youngest guy there, Stern, and he has to do this old man rock theme. Yeah. But he has the training. They figured, like, you went to rock fantasy all the time. You should know everything about rock bands. When was the last time Led Zeppelin played? Um... You should know this. Really? I should? Yes. You should. I mean, they're a good cover band. I'm not a... A good cover band? Yeah, are they going to have issues playing all those songs from the first album that almost all of them are co-written with other artists that sued to get credit? Just saying. I don't know. 1995? The last time they played all together. Oh, you mean before John Bonham died? Yeah, well. That would have been in Europe somewhere. Yeah, 1980. Yeah. But after that, they played one. What was it? They played Live Aid. They played Live Aid, and they played one time in 2007. Yeah, they had one other thing they got together, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so a band that's only played twice in 40 years. Well, how about Queen? They played no time in 35 years. Yeah, exactly, but I'd rather have Queen. Queen's a better band. Wow. Jeff, to all of us, you heard it here first. Queen is a better band than Led Zeppelin. Yeah, I have to agree. The only thing I have to look at is this. If it's a great playing pin, I get to play it at Jeff Toulouse's house. Because guess what? I am never, ever going to play this. I'd rather play Guns N' Roses than Led Zeppelin. But you haven't even seen Led Zeppelin yet. How could you say that? I hate Led Zeppelin. The only song that is good for them is the Valkyrie song. Now, folks, this is the same guy who said he hated Guns N' Roses. No, no, no. I hate – But you hate Led Zeppelin even more than Guns N' Roses. Oh, yeah. Like a different level of hate. Okay. If Stairway to Heaven – honestly, I feel like I'm in Wayne's world where Wayne grabs the guitar and starts playing Led Zeppelin, the Stairway to Heaven, and the guy points to the sign. No playing Stairway to Heaven. As soon as I hear Stairway to Heaven, I have to turn off the radio. Okay. I had to – I lived next to a place that – that's all they played was Led Zeppelin. They used to have Get the Lead Weekends Out. Get the Lead Out, baby. Yeah, I was like, oh, God. Just play it backwards. Yeah. It was terrible. So what do you guys think? Are you on the pre-order list? Are you ready? No. No, I'm not on any pre-order list. But, you know, maybe it'd be good. I mean, I heard the game will – the only featured song is going to be Stairway to Heaven. And, in fact, the entire play field will be shaped like a stair. you get 13 minutes 13 minutes of music there's a Jeff Teolis prom dancing mode yes there is hi I'm Jeff Teolis I approve of this Led Zeppelin pinball machine when I was 12 years old I love Jeff Teolis we really should be more excited about this new game are you surprised being that they're 5,000 behind or whatever and trying to get these games out That's the surprising part. You have such a backlog. I mean, unless it was a licensing thing and it had to be before the end of the year. Maybe, but there's such a backlog right now with the lines. Have they ever had so many games available at once? I don't think so. No. I don't think so. It's amazing when you go to their website and they always have the current production and you just keep scrolling and it's like one game after another after another. It's like, Jesus. Is this a cornerstone? Yes. Yeah, that's what I thought. It's not a boutique game. Boutique game. No, no, no. It's not going to be a repurposed Quicksilver like the rumor was forever. It's going to be some kind of original game. Which still leaves me out for the hope for the pin being Stern Electronics. Which Gary Stern has in his – oh, see, you got to listen to the interview. He talked a lot about the old Stern Electronics, about making those games again. I'll just leave it at that. No, tell me. Because I don't want to listen to the interview. I don't want to listen right now. I want to know what you just peaked my interest. What's up? Basically, he said the main issue with that is people keep thinking that if they make those games, they're going to cost less than a pro. And he's like, they're not. They're going to cost more than a pro. Basically, because all the drop targets, all of the, if you're going to do the plasma displays, instead of an LCD. The LCD costs less than using the original displays. That's true. Well, you don't do that. You do what they did in... What, you make an LCD and do all new programming? Okay, now you just made it more expensive again. All you have to do is make it into digital. I was buying what he was selling. I could see that. We did that on the show. We went through Beatles and counted the mechs, and it has more mechs than friggin', what was it? Guardians of the Galaxy. Oh, so you're going to tell me it charged – we get charged more of $4,000 for the Diamond than the exact same game except for the artwork. Oh, you're going about – just stop changing the subject. Just talk about art again. And, well, that's the only difference in that game. I'm not talking about Beatles. Well, you brought up Beatles. I'm going to go back into that one. Okay. But it's still no – okay. I don't buy it. I still don't buy it. Still don't buy it? Okay. All right, Brucie. So Led Zeppelin coming to a – when do you think we'll see that? Maybe this upcoming week? This week. This week. This week? We're recording on – Sunday. Sunday, December 13th. Yes. We should be more psyched. It's a new game. Come on. Where's the excitement? Are you excited about it? I'm excited about all new games, Bruce. Okay. Are you excited about Led Zeppelin pinball? they're all right like i said they're good cover band they're good cover i mean my my buddy chris you know chris the o show it's been over to my house a few times he's a big zeppelin fan he sent it to me and i'm there like oh you're gonna buy one and he actually wrote back how much are they which he's never done before i gave him estimated pricing and i didn't hear back so i guess that was like oh no no no well there's been so many new games released this fall that I feel like some of the new game energy is kind of waning. That's true. And the thing is, the releases this year have probably been the best. They've been even better than the previous year, and it's been like COVID year. It's kind of crazy. But don't forget, machines have been in development for, you know, over a year. Yeah, but it sure as hell hasn't hurt sales in any way. No, because people have all this extra money. They're not traveling. I mean, Harry Stern did say that they were hurting that time that they were closed. Of course, yeah. But I think they've made up. Oh, yeah. I mean, they are swamped. They are cranking the games out. Here's the problem. And this is the biggest problem I have with the 5,000 back orders. If something good comes out, like a Guns N' Roses, like maybe even, you know, something else, maybe even aliens, even though I would never buy it from them, Or maybe even like if American Pinball brings out another pinball machine and Haggis brings out another pinball machine. And people say, but I'm going to use Guns N' Roses as the best example. If Guns N' Roses were still able to get all these games out faster and Jersey Jack was able to, I think you would have seen that number drop off stern a little bit. Oh, people like, you know, I don't want to wait four months. I want my Guns N' Roses now. I want my Guns N' Roses now. Now, if Guns N' Roses were actually shipping as much as they could, which people want them to. Yeah, they're shipping as fast as they can. They are shipping as fast as they can. But if they could get the game to the people in three or four weeks. Oh, that was the other thing. They made some kind of announcement that because they had issues with the playfields again on Guns N' Roses. Mirco supposedly said they've now changed something. They've fixed the problem. It's like, but you've had this problem on again, off again. For years. For years. Years. So, I mean, is this the final fix? Is this like, oh, we really got it this time. We've totally figured it out. It's Europe, the final countdown. The final countdown. Sorry. Okay. First, when you say Europe, it's like, well, Mirko is in Europe. I know, exactly. Or is it Mirko? I never say it right. Yeah, I know. All right. But, yeah, I don't know what to say about that. I don't know what to say about that. So, we're going to end this now. with some reviews. We got some reviews. Our guests can hear what people think about us. Yes. Because Bruce kept begging for reviews at the... And we didn't care either one, good or bad. Oh, yeah, yeah. The promoter's database on This Week in Pinball. Hi, Jeff. Yeah, Bruce really wanted some more reviews. I'm kind of respecting their bad, since Ron's all giddy with anticipation. Well, okay. Here we go. We got a few. Okay. Ron and Bruce wanted more reviews. Check. And he gave us a five-star review. Thank you, Sean. Okay. Thank you, Sean. Clearly, that's the comment. Then we have, Ron and Bruce are very fun to listen to and provide great information. I'm always happy when a new episode is uploaded. Five stars from Tyler. Thank you, Tyler. Okay, this one we got a three-star review. Ooh, good. Pretty good pod. Ron and Bruce are a good tandem. However, too much specific tourney talk and too much inside tech talk. Oh, he's really not going to like this one. Yeah. At least the first 30 minutes. I like the topical content, though. I like the topical content, though. This is one of the three pods I listen to. So I'm thinking if he only likes one of the three things we talk about enough that we are only one of three podcasts he listens to, we must totally rock that. I know. We must. That's the way I look at it. And we really haven't been talking much about tournaments, so. Well, just to be fair, I mean, we try to keep the tourney talk to one section and the tech talk to one section. So if you don't like it, you can always fast forward through it. You got it. So. To put it on 2X. So thank you, Ian. So what do we got here? And this one, yeah, this one I wanted to address myself here. Uh-oh, uh-oh. No, this is a four-star one. Okay. This is from Prince H. I have enjoyed this pod over the years. lots to like about it could do without tournament talk. Wow, people do not like it. I notice either they like tournaments or they fucking hate it. Here's the funniest thing. They don't like tournament talk, which we haven't really been able to talk to about in a year, and the final round, which was created for tournament talk and hasn't been able to use it, is now considered one of the best podcasts. Not a bash on them. It's just like, what the fuck? People don't want Tournament talk, which is, I love, this is funny, which is like listening to a five-year-old tell you about a meaningless dream with excruciating detail. That was good. Bruce, bitching about games often sounds pouty. Oh, it sure does. Oh, it does. Fuck it, I'm a pouty. You are a pouty bitch. Yeah, God, stop it. Elsa said they also like the pinball banter, and they like co-host Zach when he's on. So a Zach from Slam Tilt fan. Mmm. And here's the line I want to address. And they swore off Chris Kaneda-Kalouris. Refused to say his name, which I just did, which seems completely childish. It totally is. Yet it's pretty obvious they listened to him. No, we don't. No, we don't. Just to explain. So if you want a more complete explanation, you can listen to episode 92, which we explain why we don't mention him anymore. But I can do a just brief synopsis, if that helps. As far as listening to him, I listened to him before this incident occurred two years ago. Yes, I did too. We are in several threads with people who do listen to him. That is probably how we are getting our information per se on what he says. But as far as actually listening to him, we do not. Nope, we do not. Basically, two years ago at the New York City Pinball Championships, Chris and his wife, I think she was a fiancé at the time, they took out Lyman, Sheets, and Penny. They took them out for dinner. and then when they came back to the tournament, he came back with them, and he was somewhat inebriated. Pre-lubed. He was pre-lubed, and then they had alcohol at the tournament. So he got more and more... Pre-lubed. Pre-lubed. And when the women's final was going on, he started to be somewhat disruptive. He was asked to calm it down, and... And hold on, I'm going to say one other thing. Ron was there. Oh, I'm getting to that. So then the women in the tournament, basically, they complain. So he was asked to leave, which in his quite inebriated state by that time was doing the I ain't fucking leaving. I ain't fucking leaving. And this is happening, I'd say, two feet in front of me. I'm literally standing right there. Steven Bowden was standing right next to me. He basically just was belligerent, wouldn't leave, shoved his fiance. That wasn't cool. Then he went off and sat in a chair, refusing to leave. And then he stood up and threw his drink in Tim Sexton's face. Tim Sexton, the Stern employee and the tournament director. And a friend of us. And a friend of the show who's been on here multiple times. Yes. Again, all this was witnessed. It was actually filmed. If you don't believe us and it's fake news, I mean, you can ask me, Steven Bowden, Levy, Naaman, any of the women in the finals, the Papa announced crew that were sitting there watching it as they turned the camera away. He was then thrown out. Well, he was horse collared out. Then in a drunken episode he recorded that night, asked Timmy what flavor drink he'd like thrown in his face next time. And then he pulled it the next morning because he must have figured even for him that was pretty bad. Yes. And that's why we don't mention him anymore. Yeah. I have nothing personal against him. I mean, just that you screw with our friends and that's it. That's it. You're done. I mean, and that's why Stern, that's why he can't get anyone from Stern on his show. And, yeah. That's all there is to it. I mean, that's common sense. Guess what? If somebody picked with your friend and then later on a half-ass apology about it. Which I don't think was even directly to Tim. It wasn't directly even to Tim. Yeah. It was a half-assed apology just so we can try to get people from Stern back on. And we felt the best way was just not to mention him. Literally taking the most high road we can take. Exactly. Even though it is kind of childish, but I mean, it's better than just sitting there and bashing him every week or something. Every episode or every couple episodes saying he's stupid. Which we just kind of did. But like I said, maybe every 50 episodes we need a refresher course on the incident. Yeah, because I think people think we're being childish and we're not being childish. Like, why won't they mention him? But that's all I got to say about that. So we only got a four-star because we didn't like Kaneda. Well, no, I think the tournament talk, too, brings it down an option. But otherwise, I mean, all positive. We're still high up on that second page. Ooh. But we can always use more comments, folks. Bruce always likes to hear about himself some more. Nope. I'm just going to laugh because, as I said, we don't talk about tournaments much. The last time we did talk about it was the first turn. Big Slash. We just talked about tournaments last week. But before that, what was the last tournament we talked about? I don't remember. That's exactly my point. It sounds like those comments are working. What? Getting a rise? I love it. Because then we can actually get feedback. Did we get an email this week? We did not get an email because the new episode just literally came out. Yes. With Mark. with Marc Silk, who was awesome. Yes. He asked me more information about the thing for Kathy, so hopefully he'll get that to us. But our guests this episode have also been just as awesome. They have been. Again, the VSU2. Check it out at glotstone.com. Anything else you guys want to plug? Hi, Mom. Wow. That's a first. I feel like I'm in a football game. Hi, Mom! No, I don't have anything else to add. We're hoping to add another product next year, but I think that's it. These are ready to ship, right, too. So as soon as you pay off the website and get that all done. We've actually had one customer so far. Nice. Yeah. So come on, go grab it. Have it for a backup. Grab their product, not it. Yes. Yeah. Grab the VSU-2. Yes, the VSU-2. And it's an electric boogaloo moment for you guys because it's two. And grab that board as fast as you can because support these guys. Support the people who are trying to keep pinball up. But, you know, the way I look at it is, guess what? They have a great idea. They have a great product. Buy it. And it's going to work. And it's going to work well for you guys. If you're planning on buying a Flight 2000 and you don't know what the condition is going to be, buy the board. It's not like you can't resell it if you have to or sell it with the game afterwards saying, hey, I got a new board with this. If I ever sell this Flight 2000, get it, buy it, use it, love it. And this has been episode 157 of the Slam Tilt Podcast. Thanks to our friends out there in podcast land, which we have Christian, Dr. Penn, and Mrs. Penn, Jeff Parsons of the Pinball Players Podcast. I said it right that time. Jeff, you also took a lot of heat from us. Sorry. And Marty. Marty and Jeff in the final round podcast. Hello, Raymond. Hello, Ryan C. Ryan C. Marty. Hello, Scott and Josh, the Loser Kid. Pinball podcast. Hello, Crystal. The Plum. Steven Bowden, final bonus. Steph. Zach. We did forget to mention at the end. Slam Tilt Zach. How could we do that? Zach, thanks, everybody. again we are the Slam Tilt Podcast we can check out our website SlamTiltPodcast.com in the upper right hand corner has all our links you can email us at SlamTiltPodcast at gmail.com you can see you can hear Ron again in the upcoming Silver Ball Chronicles episode that was recorded just yesterday excellent what's the topic? the topic is going to be Pat Waller the stern years dead silence. I own one. I own one. So I'm not going to say anything bad. You own one of the special ones we talk about. I am. The Platinum Edition. Yes. And just for my own curiosity, what square is yours again? I am Vettner. And it comes with a plaque? Yes, plaque. And I have the original receipt from Jersey Jack Pinball. Nice. I have all the documentation for this machine. We're not going to be on for the rest of the year. Per? Mr. Hallett. Yeah. Yes. I need a break. I need a break big time. You know, if we don't know you personally, have a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, Happy Hanukkah. Happy Holidays. Happy Kwanzaa. Happy, what's the Festivus Bowl thing? Happy Festivus for the rest of us. But, you know, have a safe holiday. Please be smart. please take care of yourselves we want to listen to you guys and we want you to listen to us next year thanks everybody thank you thanks to our guests again, thank you thank you Brian, thank you Jared and until next time say goodbye Bruce goodbye and happy new year Oh my, my, oh my, my You can do me if you try Oh my, my, oh my, my Guaranteed to keep you alive Oh my Oh my Oh my. Oh my.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: aa430884-f4a5-40c6-83c5-b9906681cbef*