# Episode 87 – Start spreading the news **Source:** Head2Head Pinball **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2019-04-08 **Duration:** 102m 3s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://www.head2headpinball.com/2019/04/08/episode-87-start-spreading-the-news/ --- ## Analysis Greg Pavarelli and Levi Naiman from New York City join Head to Head Pinball to discuss the NYC pinball scene, the upcoming New York City Pinball Championship (NYCPC), tournament formats including the emerging Flip Frenzy format, and broader tournament production standards. The conversation covers venue dynamics (Sunshine Laundromat, Barcade), private collections, tournament structure (pump-and-dump vs. limited entry), and the push toward higher production value in competitive pinball events. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] New York City pinball scene is 'definitely still growing' with multiple casual and competitive venues expanding — _Greg Pavarelli describing NYC scene growth across Barcade locations, Sunshine Laundromat, and other venues_ - [HIGH] NYC Pinball Championship this year will be 'twice as big' as last year with expanded show elements including live music and free play bank — _Greg Pavarelli announcing NYCPC 2.0 expansion plans with stage, live music from his band The Knobs, and Sean the Storm Grant appearance_ - [HIGH] Flip Frenzy format is surging among tournament directors because new players prefer continuous play over waiting between rounds — _Levi Naiman directly stating tournament directors are 'running Flip Frenzies at the moment' and new players 'like playing pinball' not waiting_ - [HIGH] Brisbane Masters event is now part of Stern Pro Circuit with 15 events over 10 days leading to the main tournament — _Ryan C confirming Brisbane Masters joined Stern Pro Circuit with 10 days of qualifying tournaments before 3-day main event_ - [HIGH] Simpsons is performing exceptionally well at Sunshine Laundromat despite game design criticisms — _Ryan C noting Simpsons 'is just doing insanely well and people keep on pumping money into it' despite modified ball save settings_ ### Notable Quotes > "If I play for five hours straight, that's awesome. If I have to wait an hour between turns, I'm going to leave the tournament unhappy." > — **Levi Naiman**, ~mid-episode > _Articulates core player preference driving Flip Frenzy adoption over traditional pump-and-dump formats_ > "You can list 20 things that you don't like about Flip Frenzy and there's too much randomness and blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day, people that are new to pinball like playing pinball." > — **Levi Naiman**, ~mid-episode > _Explains why Flip Frenzy is gaining traction despite competitive purists' objections_ > "It's not chess, and I just kind of feel like... if you're playing in the final 8 or 16 of a tournament, somebody saying 'lock is lit' — that's not going to be news to you." > — **Levi Naiman**, ~late episode > _Pushes back against cone-of-silence tournament norms, arguing skilled players don't need silence_ > "They really, Jimmy and the other guy is Lambo, they really wanted to focus on making this a world-class event so it would attract people from overseas to come to this event and that's exactly what they've done." > — **Ryan C**, ~mid-episode > _Explains Brisbane Masters' positioning and international growth ambitions under Stern Pro Circuit umbrella_ > "I'm pretty much just free storage somewhere... I wish you luck on the routing business. Pretty much everybody I know who's gotten involved, it's driven them slowly insane." > — **Martin (host) to Ryan C**, ~early episode > _Illustrates the operational challenges and labor intensity of game routing/operation_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Greg Pavarelli | person | NYC-based tournament director and organizer of New York City Pinball Championship; handles tournament operations and venue relationships | | Levi Naiman | person | NYC pinball player and community member; competitive tournament player with experience at Indisc, PAPA, and Pinburgh | | Ryan C | person | Co-host of Head to Head Pinball; Australian pinball operator with one location, runs Flip Frenzy tournaments, plays competitively | | Martin | person | Host of Head to Head Pinball podcast conducting interview | | New York City Pinball Championship (NYCPC) | event | Annual competitive pinball tournament in NYC; expanding to twice the size in 2nd edition with added show elements, live music, and streamed commentary | | Sunshine Laundromat | organization | NYC pinball arcade venue with 30+ games, collector-operator focused on premium versions of games, attracts both locals and tourist crowds; hosts league play | | Barcade | organization | Multi-location bar/arcade franchise originating in NJ with locations in Brooklyn; part of NYC pinball venue ecosystem | | Brisbane Masters | event | Major Australian pinball tournament now part of Stern Pro Circuit; features 10 days of qualifying with Flip Frenzy, strikes, women's, and kids' competitions before 3-day main event | | Flip Frenzy format | product | Emerging tournament format using Match Play software that keeps players in continuous 2-game play with minimal waiting; gaining popularity due to player satisfaction vs. traditional pump-and-dump | | Sean the Storm Grant | person | NYC pinball legend featured in 'Special When Lit' documentary; known for aggressive playing style; confirmed to appear at NYCPC 2.0 as commentator | | Stern Pro Circuit | organization | Official tournament circuit now including Brisbane Masters as part of international competitive structure | | Match Play software | product | Tournament management platform that enables Flip Frenzy format support and score tracking; includes average game time analytics | | The Knobs | person | Greg Pavarelli's band scheduled to perform live music at NYCPC 2.0 | | Logan Arcade | organization | Australian venue that hosted large-scale Flip Frenzy tournament (100+ players) after Pinburgh | | Jimmy Nails | person | Australian tournament director and operator of major pinball venue; runs Brisbane Masters; introduced Flip Frenzy at scale | | Lambo | person | Co-organizer of Brisbane Masters alongside Jimmy Nails; focused on world-class event development | | Simpsons pinball machine | game | Recent Stern pinball game performing exceptionally well at casual/location play despite limited ball save settings | | MAGFest | event | Gaming convention in Maryland featuring pinball with loud environment; uses earplugs/headphones for player comfort | | PAPA | event | Competitive pinball tournament that Levi has attended; referenced as PAPA 20 | | Pinburgh | event | World championship pinball tournament; Brisbane Masters positioned as follow-up event; featured stream commentary experiments | ### Topics - **Primary:** Tournament format evolution and player preferences, NYC pinball scene growth and venue ecosystem, New York City Pinball Championship expansion and production value, Flip Frenzy format adoption and mechanics - **Secondary:** Brisbane Masters and Stern Pro Circuit internationalization, Game operation and routing economics, Tournament commentary and venue noise management, Casual vs. competitive player experience design ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.78) — Hosts and guests express enthusiasm about scene growth, tournament innovations, and international expansion. Optimistic about production value improvements and new formats. Some mild frustration with operator challenges and venue crowding acknowledged but framed constructively. No significant industry controversies or negative sentiments toward manufacturers. ### Signals - **[business_signal]** Brisbane Masters integrated into Stern Pro Circuit with 10-day qualifying structure designed to attract international participation and position as world-class event (confidence: high) — Ryan C confirmation of Stern Pro Circuit inclusion, 15 events over 10 days, deliberate focus on international draw by organizers Jimmy Nails and Lambo - **[community_signal]** Professional tournament production standards improving with multi-angle streaming, dedicated commentary booth, and live entertainment elements becoming industry expectations (confidence: medium) — Greg/Ryan discussion of commentary setup at Pinburgh, streaming infrastructure at NYCPC, and Levi's criticism that tournaments are 'crowded into some drab hotel room' without production value - **[event_signal]** NYCPC 2.0 expansion includes free play bank of 15 games, day/weekend passes for casual players, live music stage, and professional streaming setup with dedicated commentary booth (confidence: high) — Greg Pavarelli detailing 'show element,' free play bank, live music from The Knobs, Sean the Storm Grant commentary appearance, and partnership with Boston-based streamer Mark Petronod - **[sentiment_shift]** Acceptance of noisy tournament environments as industry norm moving toward esports/entertainment model rather than 'cone of silence' approach (confidence: medium) — Levi arguing skilled players in finals don't need silence; comparison to esports arenas with cranked commentary; MAGFest example of successful high-noise environment - **[community_signal]** NYC venue infrastructure supporting both competitive tournaments and casual play through rotating private collections and multi-venue league structure (confidence: high) — Greg describing 15-game shop location, Adam's mint home collection, additional private collections providing social pinball access without dedicated venue requirement - **[competitive_signal]** Flip Frenzy format rapidly gaining adoption among tournament directors as preferred format for new/casual players due to continuous play and minimal waiting time (confidence: high) — Levi noting 'surge of tournament directors running Flip Frenzies' and Ryan C confirming widespread adoption with 100+ player tournaments; Match Play software enabling this shift - **[design_philosophy]** Tournament format philosophy shifting toward player experience and entertainment value over competitive purity; new formats prioritize accessibility and engagement for emerging players (confidence: medium) — Levi and Ryan's extended discussion of Flip Frenzy providing 'most fun you can have in tournament' despite novelty format criticisms; NYCPC adding show elements specifically to 'broaden appeal' - **[market_signal]** Simpsons pinball game demonstrating strong casual/location performance despite design criticisms, indicating disconnect between player skill levels and game appeal (confidence: high) — Ryan C noting Simpsons 'doing insanely well and people keep pumping money into it' with minimal gameplay depth; modified settings still successful - **[community_signal]** Hosts Martin and Ryan increasingly pivoting toward commentary and event curation roles rather than pure competitive play (confidence: medium) — Ryan noting 'becoming less married to being tournament player' and 'latching on as barnacle' to commentary/event roles; Marty interest in professional commentary positioning - **[technology_signal]** Match Play tournament software enabling Flip Frenzy format with built-in average game time analytics for format optimization (confidence: high) — Ryan C explaining Match Play features including time tracking and format support; Andres credited with software implementation --- ## Transcript you're listening to the head-to-head pinball podcast find us on facebook Welcome everybody to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. This is episode 87 and my name's Martin and with me... It's Ryan C. And Marty, we've got two guys from New York City with us. Some would describe them as the coolest cats in the town. Some would also describe them as the biggest loudmouthed douchebags in New York City. It's Greg Pavarelli and Levi Naiman. How are you going guys? How are you guys? Hey, that's excellent. How are you guys doing tonight, this afternoon? Yeah, we're very good. It's kind of getting late at night for you guys, and I think it's, what, is it a Friday night over there? What would you be doing on a Friday night normally if you weren't here? Oh, just lounging about on the Lazy Boy, listening to some Akadaka and enjoying a nice cold Foster's. Just like you guys. Yeah, two things that we never do. You know, I have, like, two very good Australian friends, and I consulted both of them to give me something to work with, and they didn't have anything. They were like, call them c***s or something. They offered nothing to me. I was like, what am I wearing? I was like, what am I wearing? They had nothing for me. No Australian garment. Or like, thongs. Thongs on a wife, they do. Yeah, thongs, right? Those are shoes, right? They're flip-flops. Yeah, right, right, right. They're flip-flops. I'm sorry. Maybe next time I'll come back with something a little better. I'm thrilled to be here. I actually didn't drink all day long in honor of being on Head to Head. Levy doesn't realize. He doesn't listen to podcasts, but it's kind of a big deal, Levy. It's like Jeff Teolis is like Little League, Slam Tilts, Minor Leagues. These guys are the majors. Yeah, I can tell this is way beyond Teolis. I love that. I appreciate the prep. Yeah, awesome. I've done two podcasts, Yeah, so this is definitely, I think, the most exciting one I've been on so far. Because you said c***. Yeah, well, you can say it. That's the only word that we beep, but you can say it. What, teolas? I don't f***ing blame you. He's a, what's that, Granger? What do you guys call him? Ranga. He's a Granger? What did he say? Again, one of my Australians. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it. Ranger. Ranger. Yeah, short for orangutan. That I didn't know. That's good. Thanks for the tip. I didn't know that either, Marty. I didn't know short for orangutan. That's embarrassing. Levy, did you know that Ryan is routing games nowadays? In Australia? No, I did not know that. How's that working out for you? Are you getting rich like all the other ops I know? Oh, my gosh. I'm rolling around in a CX-5 at the moment. It's really paying off. Yeah, no, it's going okay. I've only got one location that I put games at. It's just kind of like I've got too many games. I'm going to keep my friend's goldfish shop for a while. Or you're actually kind of putting the games out. No, it's not a business, so to speak. It's pretty much just free storage somewhere. You guys normally buy games to review them and then sell them, right? No. Just so you can play them? No. That's Greg and Zach and all those guys. Okay, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Although, you know, we will touch on monsters later. That may be the case. You just got your monsters, so that's actually a feasible plan to get some money back. Well, that's exactly right. I wish you luck on the routing business. Pretty much everybody I know who's gotten involved, it's driven them slowly insane. But I'm sure you'll have a better experience with it. It's funny. there's games it really depends on the location but like Simpsons is just doing insanely well and people keep on pumping money into it and I watch them play and I increase the ball time so the ball save time by default is zero so I've put it to like 10 seconds just so people can but the average game time is so low and people aren't deciding modes and they're deciding, yeah, yeah, yeah just the casuals So you're not even coddling these people? they're still putting money on? I'm trying to make it easier for them, but it's true. They're poor at skills. They just will not allow you to help them. Nowadays, I kind of try to help out at Sunshine with this, and one of the things is all the popular games, all the new games, they do have long ball times, and they'll have a lot of multi-balls, and Peter hates long ball times, and he'll want to shorten the multiball save time on Iron Maiden and Guardians. And it just takes the fun out of it, but no matter what you do, those games are going to run forever, but Simpsons is like one of those games that how many times can you shoot the fucking couch? Yeah, everyone knows my thoughts on it. Well, then, so you've touched on Sunshine, obviously Sunshine Launcher Mat. Talk to us about the pinball scene in New York. Oh, that's interesting. I let Greg handle the tournament part, as he's pretty much the only guy here doing that on the reg. Greg, would you like to discuss? I mean, like, whether it be tournament or not, it's definitely still growing a bunch. Outside of the main pinball hubs, we have a franchise thing in Barcade, which kind of took off out of New Jersey. Now there's two locations in Brooklyn. They put out a bunch of pins. Sunshine's still rocking solid, 30 games, all the new stuff. He's kind of a collector operator, a little bit obsessed with having the nicest version of everything. Who's going to Sunshine these days? Because, you know, when I went along, it was one of your league nights, So it was pretty much everyone there, like they were pinball people, and it was a fairly youngish crowd, you know, I'm guessing like late 20s, 30s, and some 40s. Yep. That's youngest to me. Yeah. During the week, are random people off the street coming? Like is this a tourist destination for people that aren't into pinball? Yeah, they get a good civilian crowd there, right, Craig? Yeah, it's kind of annoying even, but, you know, I'm happy for the business. But if you go in there on a Friday or Saturday, you can't even really enjoy yourself. It's so busy. And these are people that are complete civilians in terms of pinball. They don't know the difference in terms of how tough the games are and whatnot. But, I mean, on a normal Wednesday, it could be 35 people. I think we've gotten a little bit more popular since you visited us. but it's kind of one of those things where Jack Bar and Modern and Pioneers, I still see those places getting even more busy too New York City's got a nice little scene settling in We also have a collection of private collections here in New York which is kind of cool because it's New York and people don't really have the space generally to own games I've got my place, my shop with about 15 games Our friend Adam has about 15 kind of mint home use top-end podcast-approved games. Damn, nice handjob. I'll just, I'll just, I'll get anything I can get, honestly, at my place. But, and then our friend Jew has three or four kind of new-starring games. So we have, like, a rotating place where we can just kind of go and drink and play pinball. You know, it's good. It keeps us off the streets. It keeps us out of trouble, which is good. And then there's a bunch of these locations, too. But it's like, you know, locations aren't really that much fun on the weekend, because they're so crowded with all these civilians, these people who don't really understand pinball like we do yet, are spending money and buying drinks and getting in our way. Muggles, we call them. Yeah, exactly. You've obviously got a big tournament coming up as well. Talk to us about that. Ah, this is the New York City Pinball Championships. This is our second go-around. We did it last year, and we purposely kept it a little smaller so we didn't expose ourselves to any kind of life-destroying financial difficulties. And it went pretty well, so this year it's going to be twice as big. And we're doing kind of a show element, too. So beyond the, you know, I know the tournament thing isn't for everybody, obviously. Some people can't even get through a couple hours of it without getting completely drunk and getting thrown out. So we decided to kind of broaden the appeal a little bit. But this year we're going to have a free play bank of about 15 cool games. We're selling day and weekend passes. So again, civilians and loved ones and passerby can just come and play pinball. We're also going to have more of a show in that we'll have a stage. We're going to have some live music. My own band, The Knobs, is going to play a few songs. We've got Sean the Storm Grant, who's a bit of a New York City legend. I know. He was on Special Win Lit. you guys know oh of course yes the storm you know before there were like before there were like 40 pinball documentaries there was one and uh and sean the storm grant was i think a featured part of that so everybody knows who he is now he was the guy who was like he was like a like he was really angry right like when he was playing whitewater he plays angry i wouldn't say he is angry but he plays angry um and that's what makes him so good well that's what i was going to ask about that documentary because um you know obviously you know there's two sides of people sort of saying that it was sort of taking the piss and it wasn't really showing the true thing. And obviously, I knew Sean the Storm Grant from that. And I'm curious to know, because also what I'd heard was that, you know, after that, Neil Schatz kind of stopped and people were sort of saying that it might have been linked because he wasn't happy the way it portrayed him. Do you, knowing, Sean, that you do, do you feel that it was a fair representation or was it more of a caricature of him? Oh, no, that's real Sean. Yeah, yeah, that's Sean. That's Sean. That was all him. We could probably have him on the show. Well, we're going to have Sean in the booth for sure at NYCPC. We're also, we've got a new streamer. I'm getting back into plug mode. Backhand pinball. This guy's out of Boston, Mark Petronod, and he's built a sweet rig just like Carl's. Carl D'Python Anghelo, who everybody's ripping off now. He actually talked to Carl and made a cool rig. and he's going to give us kind of control of the booth so we're going to have who we want in there we're going to put together some interesting teams and I'm pretty sure you'll see Sean the Storm Grant in there offering his insight and commentary into the silver ball and pinball we're pretty excited about that if you guys want to make the trip we can probably squeeze you in there for a couple matches sure, absolutely if you're offering flights and accommodation we'll be there for sure thank you, appreciate that yeah, no problem We have a pretty fat expensic out. What's the format of the tournament? I'll let Greg handle this. Greg, what is our format? All right, so keeping in mind I'm not even one of his tournament directors, but it's a pump and dump. Standard 10-game probably. Best five count, I'm imagining, is what it was from last year. Don't quote me on that one. I can hear those guys snoring all the way from over here. So, yeah, best possible scores make the top 24 in A. There's going to be a B division and women's division as well. Classics. Unlimited entry? Unlimited. You've got to do unlimited to raise money. You've got to do that. I actually like the limited entry format because I went over to Europe last year and played in EPC in Finland, and I kind of like the limited entry format, but that works in Europe where nobody's winning any money and they don't seem to care. but here people expect a prize package so to kind of goose that you gotta do pump and dump and you gotta keep people spending money for two straight days so that's how we're gonna do it and it's basically two days of qualifying and then finals and the classics will be less qualifying time and then finals are gonna be on Sunday once we've whittled it down to 24 in each division and the women's and classics finals are gonna be on Saturday so there's gonna be a lot of pinball action Four player groups, Papa style scoring. Yeah, cool. In the finals, yeah. Put it on record that Levy's favourite format is the last format he did well in. Well, look, I sort of agree with you. I did Unlimited Pump and Dump for Flipout last year. And do you know what? It added probably about another 30%, 40% to the prize money. And so when people actually said, well, here you go, first prize, and it was near $1,000 for coming first, that had a wow factor and and it wouldn't have had that if we didn't do unlimited right yeah exactly exactly you guys play uh you guys play tournament pinball there are two top players over there we we both do i actually i went to well what have i done so far i've done indisc twice i've done papa the last papa which i think was papa 20 um and i did last year and i'm coming back for pinberg again this year ah nice i uh i've never really played traveled for pinball tournaments or here in Melbourne because my limit is about four or five hours before I get bored of playing tournament pinball. Yeah, it's kind of a... Again, you might do better in a limited format where you can just play 15 games and then wait and see how you do and then do a finals. But it's kind of a pump and dump thing. You're definitely strapped in and playing pinball a lot of it for two or three days because people are always nipping at your heels. You can never really rest on your laurels. Yeah, I don't mind any format as long as there isn't a lot of waiting time. If I have to wait one hour to play a game, then that's when I lose interest. And maybe after a while, maybe after doing this for five or ten years or however long you've been doing it for, it just becomes the thing you get used to. but it's very hard to cast your mind back to when you were first into pinball. And for me, it was first into tournament pinball. For me, it was just like a year and a half ago, so it's still kind of fresh. But yeah, people that are new to competitive pinball like playing pinball. They don't like waiting to play pinball, right? That's true, for sure. If I play for five hours straight, that's awesome. If I have to wait an hour between turns, I'm going to leave the tournament unhappy. Like ADHD or just standing around is so fucking lame. If I can't play every 20 minutes and get back on a game, I don't even want to be in the pump and dump. And that's why there's a surge of tournament directors running flip frenzies at the moment. And you can list 20 things that you don't like about flip frenzy and there's too much randomness and blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day, people that are new to pinball like playing pinball. Well, why don't you guys explain to me what this is? I'm not a huge fan of the novelty formats. I'm a little frightened by this one as I don't understand it. It's in between. It's a bit of novelty in that there can be some upsets, but it has gotten a lot more serious as they've tweaked the rules. But Ryan's run a lot of Flip Frenzies. I have as well. So, Ryan, explain it to Levi. Yeah. So it's the format that you need a lot of them all machines, right? So you can usually have 2.5 times the amount of players as there are pinballs. So if you have 10 pinball machines available, you can have 24 people in your tournament. If you have 20, that's 48, etc. And basically the way it runs is everyone gets paired up on a game, two players on the machine. And you play two games in a row, basically, on the same machine. and actually no, sorry, they've tweaked the rules now. But basically, you play the game, you get off the game, you walk up to the tournament director who's sitting at his computer and you say, Ryan won. And then one person goes to a new machine and is playing someone else and one person joins the end of the queue. So say you run it for two hours, basically you're pretty much playing two games usually and then you're having like a three or four minute break depending on how long you want the queue to be and you just do that solely for two or three hours. And by the time you've finished, the person that has the most wins minus losses is the winner. Or you can use that for qualifying and then have a round of three for the top four or something. I have a feeling you've got to do it that way if you want to get full whopper. Well, it really depends on how brutally you set the machines, but because there's hardly any waiting around, and there aren't rounds. It's not like round one starts now, round two starts now. some people will end up playing more games than others, maybe two or three more games or four, depending on how quick they are, because there's an element of how much do I want to blow up this game and waste time, or do I want to stop now because I think I have the win and see if the person can catch me? So some people are very good at doing that. Some people absolutely hate that because they just want to win. They want to spend half an hour trapping up and playing the game as slow as possible. I introduced a new spin to it the last time I ran it the TGP was I think 72% when the tournament was done and I asked the top four, I listed the top four but not in order you four people are in the top four I'm going to award the prizes like the buy tab to the person who came first, I'm not going to mention who it is first but if you guys want you can risk the whoppers and play off in like a best of four, I think it was, or best of three, to make the TGP 100%. And they all said yes, and they're all excited by it. And then I read out the top four, and everyone was like, ah, shit, I should have taken the win. I was number one. That was a fun way to put a little bit of a spin on it. It seems like a novelty, but it actually ends up being pretty cool. I kind of doubted it. I thought it would suck, and then when I saw it in action, it's pretty fucking cool. Well, it is. And again, we say for new people, it's really good because you will, at a minimum, if you play really long games. In a space of two and a half to three hours, you'll get to play 15 games. But some of these flip frenzies that are run, people have played up to 20 and 25 games for that period of time. That's a lot of pinball in a short space of time and it is probably the most fun you can have in a tournament because of the fact that you are... It's a race as well as putting up good scores and competing against other people. The downside obviously is that someone needs to be there putting in scores 100% of the time, and if there is a problem with one of the machines, then it needs to be dealt with really quickly, because as I said, there isn't rounds where everyone can wait on you. It's constantly moving. So you kind of need two people to run it. I've been running it by myself, because I only put in the machines that I know are reliable, that don't have any issues. So yeah, it kind of benefits you to have fast-paced games and have backup games and have some older games. Yeah, you definitely want the average. You know, I would put half the games with no ball saver, no robbers on the outlanes. The games that play fast naturally, I would leave as is. And you can kind of monitor after you run one, it tells you the average game amount for, you know, match play. Like Andres has done an amazing job of including it there. You can see, okay, the average game for The Hobbit was, you know, only 17 games in this time. But for Iron Man, it was 28. so you need to balance it out the next time you run it to make sure everything is as cool as possible. So wait, no rubbers, no ball saves, tight tilts, and fast game time. So IFPA Nationals, basically. Well, you could run it at Sunshine with no issues. Those machines are ready to go, right? I am guardedly optimistic over this format. I'll keep an open mind, and I will perhaps try it sometime soon. Maybe on my next trip to Australia. Well, Levi, what I'll tell you is that it's not going to be for everybody, and there's some people that have played it and don't like it. But I will tell you that for the vast majority of those people that have been sceptical that have played it have come away having an absolute blast, and that in a way negates whether it's a serious tournament and you're going to get all these maximum whopper points. I mean, they are still good points, but... Yeah, you shouldn't be having that much fun in a pinball tournament. Well, this is the whole thing, right? So last year at Flipout, and what we do with a lot of these tournaments, and Ryan does it as well, like he runs a Flipout, sorry, Flip Frenzy at a venue, but he'll also then do match play as well. And with our event that we did last year at Flipout, we had a Flip Frenzy at the end of day one's qualifying. So you do get to have the serious tournament as well as the fun but serious for some tournament as well. It's absolutely well worth experiencing. You're going sweet and sour. I like it. Correct. Well, the best thing about it is that you know exactly how long it's going to last for. So if you need to fill in two hours at the end of the night or three hours, you can run a three-hour flip frenzy. Every other format really doesn't have a set time because it's round-based or strike-based. You don't know who's playing, how long they're going to take. With flip frenzy, it doesn't matter if you have the world's worst players or the world's best plays, it's still going to run for the time that you set it to. Can you forfeit mid-game to save time? If you're sure. Yep. Yes, I know. You can. You can. You just can't agree to say, hey, we're both going to play one ball each, and whoever is at the front after one ball will win. But if you're ahead by billions of points on a game, the other person can say, I'm going to plunge away my balls. You've got the win. Right. Well, that seems like a good way to keep it moving, too, just in case you don't want one game to ruin the whole thing. As interesting as this all sounds, you'll not see this kind of newfangled malarkey at the New York City Pinball Championship. It's going to be old school, Nova style. But maybe next year. Maybe next year we'll do a side tournament or something. You guys can come and run it. Yeah, we'd be glad to. In fact, I think one of the first times you actually saw a Flip Frenzy at scale was at Logan Arcade last year before. I think it was before. No, I think it was actually after Pinburg. So Jimmy Nails, who arguably runs one of the biggest pinball venues in Australia, and he's one of the tournament directors and organisers of the Brisbane Masters, which is coming up, which is now on the Stern Pro Circuit. So he knows these tournaments and he knows big tournaments. So he actually went to Logan Arcade and ran the tournament there. And I can't remember, there would have been 100 people plus. And it was just the most fun night. And those people that played for the first time absolutely loved it. And we have seen more and more flip frenzies now appearing in the American scene. And a lot of that is now due to the fact that Match Play supports it from a software perspective. yeah and maybe to get you excited Levig and you know to close this off to you know so people don't get too bored Brisbane Masters like the biggest event in Australia they run like a hundred person flip frenzy and we're talking about like 50 whoppers in three hours because there's like over a hundred people there like that's how if you're a whopper whore then flip frenzy can get you some big whoppers that's getting me hard just hearing about all these whoppers in so little time. Did you say that the tournament in Brisbane is a circuit this year? Yes, it is. Sempro Circuit. 15 events in 10 days 10 days of pinball levy How hard does that get you Levy What month of the year You don even want to know Is it August Marty Yeah, it's just after Pinburgh. The weekend after Pinburgh? I think it is. Like, the week. The 10 days after Pinburgh. It's going for that long. All right, I think I might actually have another tournament obligation, but I was about to drop everything I was doing and fly out there for this. The main tournament doesn't go for 10 days. the main tournament goes for the final three days, but there's literally flip frenzies and strikes and women's comps and kids' comps and match play, all these tournaments every day and every night for 10 days leading up to the main Brisbane Masters at the end. So, Levy, what you're saying is if you travel there and you were momentarily one of the best players in Australia, you could possibly whopper whore your way up to the first page like you've always dreamed. Easy. and honestly, I'm not saying easy, but, you know, they really, Jimmy and the other guy is Lambo, they really wanted to focus on making this a world-class event so it would attract people from overseas to come to this event and that's exactly what they've done. They've set the platform, built it and hopefully they will come. So we're working something out here. We'll fly you guys in for New York City pinball tournament. We'll fly you there for this Whopper Fest. Well. These guys don't even realize they're putting you up yet. These guys don't even realize they're putting Greg on. This is how every Greg, I'm staying on your couch conversation starts. Two days from now, you're going to be like, he's going to be in your kid's room, I think. There is already, you know, precedence that, you know, we have flown people out to Australia before. So, you know, if you continue to butter us up, we may get you to the top of the list. I like that. And, you know, if you just want to fly me out there to do commentary, I'm pretty much the best in the business. You are. Yeah, and I'm willing to do that, you know. As I've started losing more and more lately, I've become less married to the idea of being a tournament player and maybe just latching on kind of as a barnacle, as so many others have done on pinball, to some other facet of the hobby slash tournament scene. So I'm very open-minded to this kind of thing, you know. It's probably left on like a barnacle. You're not fucking letting go. This is my thing now. That's what we see, yeah. Just imagine Madden 20 years from now when pinball's gone big. Well, you know, we're all doing our part. I feel like we're all doing our part here. I mean, you know, they're working it out down under. We're putting on these great shows in New York. You know, we're seeing more and more tournaments. I'd just like to see people kind of step up the production value a little bit, you know? So many of these tournaments, we're all just kind of crowded into some drab hotel room, and we're all just kind of waiting in line. Let's step it up a little bit. Let's get some entertainment. Well, me and Marley were commentating the Australian Championship Series, and we were about two meters away from where they were playing, and we were whispering. You can't do that. You've just got to start shouting at the top of your lungs, and they'll get used to it, or they'll put headphones on. You were doing that, right, at the New York City Championships last year. It was over the PA system, right? And you were pretty much commentating the game while it was happening? I did. That was a little odd in that, you know, Papa was doing the streaming for us, but they kind of have their own thing. And, you know, I wanted something for the live audience. So, you know, we had about 50 people there. But this year we're going to do it more where it's a little kind of put together in that I think we'll probably maybe just do the actual stream commentary over the PA like they tried to do at Pinberg last year. the sound wasn't great in that room I think in a smaller room it might work better but I think we'll do that we'll give that a shot and see how that goes but I think the idea that tournament players need to be in a cone of silence I don't think it's going to work I mean if you look at esports they do these things in these huge arenas and their commentary is cranked over the PA and it's like these guys are screaming at the top of your lungs you know But, I mean, every single player, right, has usually headphones plugged into their PC, where, like, if you want to do that, you can plug into a JGP game, but how many games? You can do headphones, you can do earplugs. I mean, we offer free earplugs at NYC PC for all competitors, if they don't want the distractions. But I just don't think, you know, I just think people are just going to have to get used to it. But there's a line you can't cross, though, right? You can't say... There's a physical line you can't cross. No, as in, if they get distracted by headphones, I don't like playing with music or headphones. I tried it. It just distracts me even more. I'd rather hear whatever... I can play with earplugs at MAGFest every year. I mean, MAGFest is kind of a gaming convention in Maryland, and that's a really fun show, and it's like there's music being cranked during the whole thing, and there's video games being played, and it's a very loud situation. And if you don't like it, you can put some earplugs in. You can put some headphones on and listen to music. I just, you know, it's not chess, and I just kind of feel like... Well, how about giving players, not instructions, but do you think sometimes... You're worried about coaching kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. I kind of feel like if you're playing in the final 8 or 16 of a tournament like NYCPC or any major tournament, or even, you know, Flip Frenzy down in Brisbane, I mean, if you've made it that far along, somebody saying, like, lock is lit, it's like that's not going to be news to you, you know? I mean, you're probably going to know that. And I just don't think that's something we really need to be worried about. I mean, again, they did it at Pinburgh. That's a world championship. And Greg was doing commentary at that show. And all the commentary for the final 24 or what have you was broadcast over the PA. And I just don't see it affecting the outcome. I can just imagine someone trapped up and Colin being like, oh, now if he backhands the right rep and hits the multiplier, it's going to do the... Then bricking and it not making any difference. You've got to know the games by then. You don't need to listen to make your decision. Fair point. I appreciate the concern, but I just don't think it's anything that's going to affect a match. And if it does, I mean, if a player has made it that far into a tournament and they don't know the lock is lit, I mean, you know, I don't know how they got that far. I guess that's what I'm saying. And if you really want to listen to my strategy, why would you do that? You're in the tournament. You've been playing well. Me saying, oh, he should really shoot that multiplier and do this or that. How do they know? Have you ever read a Yelp review? Most people are idiots. You want to take my advice on what to do during this final format? Look, I think these days the most important thing is that people have a choice. if you are going to do live commentary, people have got a choice to put earplugs in or headphones or just deal with the noise around them. So it's, you know, people have got choices. Thanks for getting me back on track there. I appreciate it. Talking about people that are idiots, Levi, you're the man on the ground on Pinside. You are Mr. Pinside himself. I mean, some say that Pinside PB might even be bundled around you. What's the latest rumors on Willy Wonka, Levi? What can you tell us? Well, I know what you guys know. It's called Willy Wonka. It's a Pat Lawler game. It's got four flippers. Do we all know that yet? It's not a wide body. It's a standard body, which is great. Thank God. Because, yeah, I just, you know, these wide bodies, ever since the 70s, I mean, they're just overstuffed. It's like, oh, I got an extra six inches of playfield. What do I do? Well, if I'm designing Futurespa, I'll put, like, six outlands on it, you know. I don't know. I think I've heard what you guys heard. The earlier response from the people I know who have played it has been excellent. They really like it. They say the theme is well integrated. It's a Lawler game, so you know it's going to have – and it's apparently a Lawler four-flipper game, so it's going to have that kind of multidirectional action you're used to in a Lawler game. And I don't know about you guys, but I really liked Dialed In. I mean, I thought that was a great game. great game and the kind of high concept theme didn't really connect to people but maybe something like Willy Wonka will so you know I'm as eager to see it as you guys but I really I don't know anything about the game beyond that I have a couple friends who played it and signed their NDA and immediately called me and started telling me all about it well so and that's what we've heard we've heard it's it is it's I guess what we say is you know everything's aligned in that it's a great layout by lola it's a great theme everything's been sat into the machine and it's kind of what we've sort of said about um dialed in that it's great machine except for the theme you know hobbit great theme except for the layout or there's always been something that's missing whereas this i think is the best of everything and i think this is the reason why in fact i know it's the reason why pirates of the caribbean uh has stopped production because people were wondering about that saying well if they still demand why have you stopped production well it's because they've only got one main production line and right they know that willie wonka is going to go absolutely gangbusters so make way for it and then pirates at a later stage my theory my theory would be pirates probably isn't selling so why bother continuing to make let's get Willy Wonka going. I'm not really into the industry side of this stuff like I know is the podcast Bread and Butter. You guys probably know more about this than I do. I just know it wouldn't make any sense to stop making a game that people are buying. I don't know. Definitely not. I guess if you yank it off the line for a little bit it then would create maybe a little bit of a scarcity with distributors not having any and the resale value staying a little bit stronger which then allows them to make some more. I guess Stern has shorter cycles than JGP. JGP are the longer... They'll sell machines over years whereas Stern will probably sell a large percentage of their games within the first couple of months and then they're on to the next. Stern also produces games very quickly. They did Primus and there's people on Pinside bitching about, I'm not getting my Ghostbusters code because they're making Primus this crappy Primus. Oh, now I have to wait for the Steve Ritchie game. You know, they did that entire run in, I believe, a day, as far as what I was told. You know, they just crank them out like cheeseburgers, you know? And a lot of people complain about that and say that's why they don't like Stern, but they can run numerous games at a time, and they can run them quickly. And I don't think they need to make the kind of decisions that Jack has to make. I think it's also pretty clear Jack needs a hit, and Indians won badly. Well, and this is what we reckon is going to, this is going to be the hit, right? Yeah, I mean, look, Lawler never fails to make an amazing game and... NASCAR's terrible. What did you say? Which one's terrible? Carry on. NASCAR. If there's going to be a... I'm sorry, Grand Prix. Grand Prix, yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, well, it's just the coatsides. And by the way, Jersey Jack is one of the sponsors of New York City Pinball Championships. Yes, but we got everybody. You know, we got all the heavy hitters where, you know, I actually, I did try to get some of that Deep Root money. I mean, because remember about a year ago, they were just spreading money all the hell over the place. Yeah. And we were like, Jesus, how do we get some of this fucking Deep Root cash? And, you know, I asked some people I know who worked there. It just wasn't happening. So there will not be any days of Deep Root. So just going back to the whole, you know, pirates and, you know, the fact that it's not selling. I mean, I've spoken to a distributor. I mean, there's only one in Australia, so it's pretty easy to work it out. And he was saying that he's got way more demand for pirates and was sort of like, I don't want them to stop production because I've got customers that want this machine. In fact, I've still got a backlog of people on the list. So I still think that they could have gone some more. How much further, we don't know. But, you know, with Jack now saying they want to announce a machine and you have that machine within two weeks, well if he has to you know follow that promise and he's going to announce on april 12 i believe at the midwest gaming classic and he said that they need to be then shipped in two days so in two weeks they've got to stop pirates regardless of the situation of whether it's selling or not that makes sense and it's also wise because it's what they haven't been doing i mean you know i mean the only company who announces a game and puts it out two weeks later is stern and uh and And, you know, they announced Pirates a year ago, and it had this great reveal that everybody loved. And, you know, 10 months later, the game's still not out yet. So if they're going to change their model where they're going to announce this thing, and they're really going to start shipping Wonkas in two weeks, I mean, great. You know, that's, I think, a really good move for those guys. And I hope it works out. I love Jack. He's very enthusiastic and passionate. He was the first guy who signed up last year to sponsor us, which I really appreciated. He got me backstage for a Guns N' Roses concert when I helped him move some games back there. that Slash did not play. And, you know, I wish nothing but the best for those guys. And I think they put out cool machines, but like you said, they've kind of, you know, in one way or another, most of the games have pretty much kind of missed the mark a little bit. And this could be the one we've all been waiting for. People are dying to spend nine grand on a jersey jacket. Just give them an excuse and they'll do it. Yeah. And it's a prediction that it'll save them, but it'll also probably ship as fast as the game after Black Knight. Well, no, I mean, he said he wouldn't announce unless they're ready to ship. And it was funny, kind of like when The Hobbit was coming out, you know, there's all those pin-side threads, you know, would you rather this game or this game? And it was like, Hobbit versus Game of Thrones. And then it was like, oh, Hobbit's not shipping yet. Hobbit versus this. Oh, Hobbit's not shipping yet. Hobbit versus Ghostbusters. You know, so, but now it's, you know, Jack stood up on stage, you know, at Texas Pinball Festival when he was announcing the Yellow Brick Roads edition of Willy Wonka. and he said, just wait. He knew that Stern was going to announce the Black Knight and he knows that every time that Stern announces a game, millions of dollars get sucked out of the wallets of the community out there and go somewhere. And he knew he wasn't going to announce it until the Midwest Gaming Classic and reveal it there. So he was just saying, just wait for two weeks. But Marty, you couldn't even wait. You've put your name down for the Black Knight. Well, no. Hey, wait. Hold on a second. That's a good move. That's... Our own Tim Jackson. True and not true. So, in that I did put my name down, and on Friday, which was yesterday, our time, I did get a call up from the distributor, but I had such a busy day, I didn't get to speak to them. So, I don't know whether I'm on the list or not, and I don't know whether I want Black Knight now. all it takes is a couple juicy wanker rumors and you're bailing out this is the problem with this hobby right now it's like everybody wants the game that was announced today well I'll get a launch party for Sunshine and then when RLE shows up I'll give you a really good deal on the pro how much does it cost to ship? Marty's not a pro guy I'm not pro I like that I can't believe Marty's about to bail out on his Black Knight already. Just like, we haven't even seen gameplay footage of this thing. You're already ready to go for one? We were at Steve Ritchie's after party in Texas and he is such a good guy, Steve Ritchie. I have full faith that the Black Knight wants to take your money. Okay. It's just timing is the issue now. I would love for them both to be revealed so I can look at them side by side and say, one of them's got my money or both of them have got my money. I don't know. Are you going to this show in Michigan next week? No. What's that, like a three-hour flight? No, they're not going to Michigan. Like 15 hours for us. It was funny. Tim Sexton said on a bunch of podcasts, including the latest one he did with Ron and Bruce, the Slam Tilt podcast, and he said, I love the reception, but the reception I care about is when people play the game. Everyone's patting me on the back and like, ah, this is awesome, Black Knight, Black Knight. But none of you guys have played it. Like, he wants that feeling to be after you've played the game, not from the hype of, you know, seeing pictures and watching the promo video. Well, I guess this hype kind of sells your LEs in the first week, right? And then if the game's actually any good, it's going to sell the rest of them. I mean, you know, like, look at Monsters. I don't think they had any problems selling their LEs. I like the LE of Monsters more than I like the pro of Monsters. Same thing for Deadpool. And Timmy did such a good job on Deadpool. I have confidence in him outside of our friendship. You know, I don't know about everybody else, but Deadpool keeps me playing. Well, look, I mean, Black Knight's going to kick ass. I bet Wonka's going to be good. I mean, Dialed In was so good, you know, that I have faith that Pat still got a little left in the tank to crack out a good game. And, you know, I actually, I currently own a Wizard of Oz, a Ruby Red. I bought it a couple weeks ago. Someone just kind of fell in my lap. Never thought I'd end up with one of these things. And, you know, I've always kind of hated that game, but I have to say, you know, playing it in the solitude of the funtorium with nobody around, you know, and the sound cranked up, it really is a pretty impressive package. And it does crank up, doesn't it, Levi? Like, everyone says, oh, it's kind of like this real girly theme, and, you know, I want something hardcore. But once you get kind of deep into the game and you've got, like, seven things stacked and going on, it's pretty intense. Like, it can be a pretty intense game. It is pretty. It's quite a production. And, you know, I had my girlfriend over tonight playing it for the first time, and she was actually remarking on how gloomy it was, and that she expected it to be cheerier. It was, like, too dark for her. You know, it's just like... She needs some... The light-out double-scoring, Munchkin madness, whatever the fuck it is with the multiplayer. You know, and their voice work is amazing, and the way they integrated the old and the new assets is really impressive. And, you know, they've been doing this for, you know, seven or eight years now. So, again, I think the early buzz we're hearing on this thing is pretty positive. But I think there's enough room for people to buy Black Knights and for people to buy Wonkas. And I guess when American Pinball announces Mark Twain next week or some other public domain property, whatever they put out, people could buy that too. If you told me even 10 years ago that there would be 15 pinball companies in 2019, I would never have believed you. It's not sustainable, obviously. More than half these companies are going to disappear, right? I would figure that we might be down to just 12 or 13 companies in a year or two, but what the hell do I know? People have been, ever since I started collecting pinball machines in about 2002, I've been hearing about this bubble that's going to burst. We're going to run out of people who want these things. we're going to run out of. Seriously, people thought that the hobby would be completely gone by now and games would be getting sold off. People always compare it to the jukebox hobby, but it's a different thing, because people still like to go out and drink, and people still like to play pinball, and I don't see it going anywhere. If it can sustain all these companies, I don't know. I would expect a couple of these rich investors to get bored, but some of them haven't even gotten going yet. I mean, you've got this Deep Root guy, like he hasn't even put a game out yet. Is he going to fold up shop before he cranks out his 10 games in three months or whatever he was promising to do? Is he going to get bored with it? Pinball is getting more popular, but you say 11 companies, and, like, right off the bat. That was an exaggeration, Greg. Yeah, I know, but Stern is obviously number one, and you got Jack in the two spot. Deep Root goes to three just on the fact that they announced that they're going to make a game. Well, I know. The Oktoberfest guys have put a couple games out, and they're spooky as well. They put some games out. No, Spooky's up there. Spooky's third. I mean, look, I don't know how these things get ranked. I don't actually follow the side of it that closely. But, look, Deep Root put a big speculation out there about what they're going to do. And I think that they could pull it off. If they do, then they're good. So far, they're following the standard pinball startup model of promise big and delay big. We've seen that many times before with new companies. yeah it was it'll be interesting to see if they ever how do you guys feel about the Lebowski thing I liked Lebowski a lot I was excited for this theme it's my favorite movie of all time that game flipped really well it was fun it looked cool like I want someone to recreate that don't remake Monster Bash someone fund Lebowski give me the money Lebowski yeah I just think that that's the web is too tangled now for for Lebowski to sit in the light of day and I think it's a shame as well because believe it or not I actually have only ever played it once, and that was at Sunshine Laundromat when it was there. And, you know, it flipped well. It was great. I liked the theme. I didn't love the theme. I don't know whether it was anything revolutionary as far as a machine goes, but for those people that love that theme, it was an absolute slam dunk, and I would love for it to see the light of day. I just don't think it's going to happen. Yeah, probably true. But themes like that, like a cult-following theme, can really be a big hit. We've always joked around on Slam Tilt about Beavis and Butthead, the pinball machine, and if you find a team like Lebowski, that could be a huge home run for any company. Something that people latch onto because of it being an integral part of their life and something that they appreciate. Companies should be going for shit like that. I've heard Toy Story might be coming out, if that's true. That's definitely something that would possibly be a big hit just on Namesake 1 as well. It's hard to know these days because right now in Australia, I have no idea what's going on, but everyone has been selling their Iron Maiden alleys. I mean, Marty, you sold yours. Right now there are three alleys on the market. How many of them are over there? I've got one about 50. Geez, how many? Yeah, about 50 or so. I think at least 10 or so have sold publicly. There's three on the market now that are kind of advertised for less than what they originally went for, which, I mean, the first couple of them sold for one or two grand more. But, like, no one's selling the Beatles, for example. I know there's probably less Beatles, but there's certain titles, and I'm not sure if it's got to do with the codes. This might be the theory is that, like, Iron Maiden code was complete, so the game already is the game. It's not going to get better, but it's already amazing. Whereas there's games like Ghostbusters, and people are still, like, to this day, two years on hanging on to the machine thinking it's going to have that one last update that's going to validate my purchase from how many years ago right well ryan i'm not sure if i if i hear you right but are you calling it are you calling bubble bursting are you just saying uh is this it is this is this is this when it happens are you just saying no i'm under people are selling their their le's for three hundred dollars less than they paid for it and this is like a sign of the A sign of a market slowdown. The apocalypse. No, I just, to me, I just don't know why Iron Maiden is the one game that has been having a selling frenzy in Australia versus every other game that came out. Like, even Star Wars, you know, it was a big drop-off before the game came out. A bunch of people dropped out of their order. But, like, you know, it's been steady, where everyone's just trying to sell their Iron Maiden, and I don't know why. And people don't know why they don't like it either. Like, no one can give a straight answer. People don't like it? Or they just want the next game? I thought everybody loved Maiden. They do, but they don't like it enough to keep it. I don't know what it is. And as I said, I ask the people, why are you selling this? They're like, ah, I don't know. It fun but time to move it on I know the feeling I mean I just got an Independence Day so something got to go you know Well, so then let's talk about Munsters if we can, because for me, it's a bit of a segue, because I've now received my Munsters. So I thank you. I did. I got a limited edition. And I did jokingly on the last podcast say, you know, if I don't keep it, it'll be just like I'm renting the machine, kind of what it was like with Iron Maiden. I had it for, I don't know how many months, Ryan, maybe six months, probably, I don't know, something like that, and then got rid of it to pay for Munsters, and I was sort of joking that I would, you know, if I didn't like Munsters, I would drop it to pay for Black Knight, hence renting it, and I'm keen to get your thoughts on Munsters because now that I've got it, I've had all these messages saying, what do you think of it? And I say this, it looks great, it sounds great, it shoots great, but the code. Well, I guess I'll go first. I'm not really a code whiner, but there's not a lot going on in that game. A code whiner? I don't know. I mean, I feel like most of these games are pretty good. I mean, I'm used to, again, you know, I just got an Independence Day, and people are complaining about the code on their Ghostbusters because it only has, like, three wizard modes. I don't know. I mean, I... But, uh, but Munsters is just, there's just not a lot going on, and it's, like, too easy to get the wizard mode, and then you're just back and get the wizard mode again in territory, and I'm also not a big fan of what they did with these jackpots, where it's kind of everything is delayed gratification. You're supposed to, if you really want to get a big score you've got to not get any jackpots and really not hit a lot of playfield multipliers until your last ball and then try and kind of backload it all there and it's like i mean you know what's fun in pinball is like getting a jackpot you know that's fun and it's like not getting jackpots isn't fun so you basically design this whole game around the concept of not getting jackpots so uh well you are not getting jackpots just not cashing out the super i guess So, but I mean, yeah, the jackpots are very, to me, unsatisfying because they're very low value. The wow factor isn't there. It's like, you know, it's every shot kind of thing going on. Yeah, I guess, you know, I think they did this for beginners, especially after the last couple. This is Dwight who did the code on this one? Yeah. Yeah, after the last couple, Dwight messes. But not messes, but they're very complicated, I guess. Don't be a code whiner, Levy. Come on, don't be a code whiner. Shots fired. Just to be clear, code winding is when you're complaining that there has not been a code update. Right. In X amount of hours. So what are your thoughts, Greg? I mean, Monsters is fun. It flips pretty good. I think it's an okay game, but I agree that the code kind of falls short. I'm hoping that they turn it around. The multiplier rules, as this guy tends to get himself in this spot, it's not as bad as Star Wars. but it's a little bit annoying because if I'm trying to win a game, I'm going to take nothing less than a 3x or 5x or 6x super. And it's an all-in game. It's risk-reward. But the shots are cool. I like stacking, you know, Lily into the Herman and then going right into Raven, going for Kitty the whole time. You get aggressive. It's got good shots. It definitely does. They just need to fix the fact that it's one-dimensional. Yeah. People can bag Lonnie D. Roth code as much as they want, but that guy knows what's going on with multipliers, because on most of his games that he's produced, there's that rule where if you hit a shot in a combo, it's doubled, but there's usually just one simple thing you need to do, and you have to time it right to get double scoring, and that's it. There's no 4x, 5x, 6x. You have to do that kind of other ways, like comboing shots and completing modes to get a lane lit for 2x, but multipliers seems to continue to be this one thing that no one has perfected yet, because there's so many different ways to implement it in a game. Well, I'm going to say, my thoughts now on this is I actually really like the multiplier rules in Munsters, because effectively it's by hitting kitty, and it's kind of similar to the super jackpot. You can either start picking them off one by one and then extending them, or you can build up your jackpot and go, right, I'm now going to hit that kiddie shot five times, get my five times multiplier, and then cash it in. So you actually have good choices to make. And it's not ridiculously deep as far as the multipliers go, and at least you don't have to move them around to be able to win the game. But what I tell you... Right, that's true. Yeah, that's right. What I think the problem that I have at this stage is everything's happening at once, and you get to experience everything once, and then when it's back to, okay, well, I got Monster Madness, now I'm going for level two, you feel like you've already seen everything. Yep. Correct. And sometimes you've already, I mean, you've sometimes already seen it all in ball one, you know. It's not that tough to get Monster Madness. But I don't know. I think the game's okay. It's a nice package. If you're a Munsters fan and that's why you bought it, you should be happy. Yeah. I'm happy with it. But my question I was going to ask you guys, being massive pinball fans as well, knowing what you know of Munsters, the layout, the inserts, and let's just say the coder happened to be listening to this episode. He probably will. What advice would you give him to actually improve the code to make it more enjoyable? Because people have complained. People have said, oh, it's too short. It's like, okay, but what suggestions can we give to maybe give it some longevity? Oh, Christ. I don't know. What do they do these days? You add a couple more wizard modes? I mean, I think the game is kind of what it is at this point, and I don't think you'd make it better by making it more complicated. I just think it's kind of a different kind of game. It's kind of a 90s Data East style game, and you're just going to have to take it for what it is. I don't really have any suggestions because I'm not, I've got some suggestions on how you could fix like Ghostbusters but that game is so bad that it's like not hard to do that really. I think Kitty, you've got to shorten Kitty's time man that's the main input I'd have It does last forever. Too easy to keep it going and it makes the game entirely one dimensional on scoring I never want to do anything other than have Kitty running at max when I'm in multiball to try to collect big late in the ball I mean, it's the only thing you really do. You know what I would do? One suggestion I would have is when I cancel the super jackpot, I should know what it's worth. So it's like if that ball goes in there, I should know if the jackpot is $10 million and whether or not I want to cancel it or just accept it and try and beat whatever my opponent has. That is one small change that I would make that I think because I kind of actually forgot about it. So when this game came out and we got it over at Pioneer, we played it a lot, and I haven't been playing it that much since. But that was kind of one of my original complaints, was that there's too much guesswork. And I don't really like guesswork. I think you should be given some information so you know what you're canceling or not canceling. So that would be my suggestion. Pretty simple suggestion, really. I think the game does really well on-site with people that are new to pinball because of the theme and what's going on. But I guess maybe another way to phrase the question would be, is it possible, and if it is, which pinball machine does it? Is it possible to make a pinball machine that ticks all the boxes for location pinball, people that are new to pinball, and the collectors, like everyone? There's so many different types of people that are judging these machines. and I don't know you guys ever play Adam's Family I can't stand it the modern come on Guardians or Tron is like the modern version of that for me you got a theme that's likeable with good music and good sound you know Guardians has some of the better like background music because it's from the movie Tron has that cool like techno Daft Punk thing going on and if you can make anybody that's not into pinball see it and say I want to play that and the operator is making money because people drinking want us to play that game, but it's also a good player with good rules and everybody's into it. Those are the slam dunk games. It's not easy to come by. I think Deadpool is, for Sunshine, Deadpool is a total slam dunk. A game like, again, it's another old game, but a game like Attack from Mars, Medieval Madness, these games did that really well. I know if those came out today, people would be horrified at how shallow the code is. A game like Monster Bash does it well. Levi, what is it about Adam's family, because Attack from Mars, Medieval Madness, you've got that big bash toy in the middle. Once you start multiball, everything's a jackpot kind of thing. Well, in Attack from Mars anyway, every shot is lit. In Adam's family, is it just because everyone knows how to play the game? But when you're in multiball, you've got two shots lit, I guess, for jackpots, but they're all from the side flipper, which half the newbies that play the machines don't even know how to use that flipper. I think you're looking at it a little wrong. I think what that game did so well was, first of all, it had a great theme that everybody liked, at least around here, because people were either old enough to remember the old show, which ran in syndication forever. When I was a kid, that was on TV all the time, or they knew the movies. It looked great. It had awesome sound and music. It had great gimmicks in the magnets, the power and, of course, thing. It was just really easy for somebody who hadn't played a lot of pinball to grasp the concept of the mode-based rule set, get into the cool gimmicks, and, you know, get used to that upper flipper, too, and the ramp. Like you said, it's got the bright arrows. I just know when that game came out in college, I was hooked, and I played it a lot, and so did everybody else, and that's why it sold, you know, 23,000 units or whatever. I feel like on a newer game, something like Batman, it seems like a lot of kind of new players gravitate to. They seem to like it from what i've seen you know all the boxes that's always going to be tough especially now now that you have so many different kind of expectations out of people um you know collectors the kind of money they're throwing around uh i don't think you're ever going to get a game like adam's family that just appeals to everybody don't forget people weren't buying games for their house when that came out you know at all yeah true and it still sold 23 000 units it was only operators were buying and they sold 23 000 of those things because people like playing it on location uh but now it's like it's it's kind of so fractured the way people collect and play and kind of consume their pinball i don't think you're ever going to get anything quite like that again so you just kind of have to keep the operators happy and really keep the home buyers happy and uh something like monsters i don't know if it just does enough of that uh it might be good for location but is that really enough these days you know we'll see how's it doing on location ryan well yeah i gotta i don't upper right one, but I know someone that does and got a message today saying you have to come in empty because the cash box is full. We had to tilt the machine backwards so it would accept more coins. Right, but you guys have large coins in Australia, right? They're like pancake size, like diggle-a-boom. We only have to put one coin into play. You guys are still putting quarters in, right? The older you get, the more quarters you have to put in. Right, right. Yeah. It is painful shoveling those quarters into machines over at Sunshine. Mm-hmm. Do you have your games on? Are you giving out free games? Are you giving out matches and replays on your location games? I think for me and the lot of travel that I do and everywhere I go around the world, I do try and find a pinball location. Sunshine Laundromat is the only location I've ever been to where they don't give out free games. Well, I'm of mixed emotions on that. I kind of feel like it's a relic of the past. Pinball is so expensive to buy and maintain that I don't know that you need to give out free games. Nobody else does. I mean, you know, you can play a NASCAR race game or whatever. You're not going to get any free games. But I guess it is part of the fabric of the pinball experience. So I don't know. Yeah. It's funny because there's so many ways to win a free game, right? There's the replay value. You know, obviously there's a bunch of... Yeah, special. and then you've got match which has nothing to do with skill it's just like if you leave it at like 10% you're giving away 10% of your revenue for pure like gambling like this is your chance to just get 10% of your money back kind of thing so I don't know yeah matches are set to low but replay values you know people I guess and what are you charging for a game over there? well in Melbourne it's $2 a game $2 Australian, which I guess is around $1.50 US. In Brisbane, where I guess the centre of pinball in Australia at the moment, it's $1 there. And they think they make more money at $1 a game than Melbourne at $2 a game. But I guess it depends on location. And what's the split there? Are you doing 50-50 now with the location? Yeah, 50-50 or 60-40, depends on the location. But a lot of people are operating their own games. They get all of it. So you'll have your Simpsons paid for in about six years? But, you know, that's not really the point. I mean, pinball is doing so well right now. In the old days, I mean, I'm sure you've heard the stories. I mean, I bought a creature for $800 from an operator back in, like, 2000, and he was happy to get it, you know? And I was curious if I'd overpaid at the same time in 2002. But nowadays, you can sell your game. After you operate it for several years, you can sell it for 80% of what you paid for it. So it's not really necessary to pay for your entire Simpsons game to make this a profitable venture, I would say. That's the problem now with the strong US dollar. Stern Pro is $9,000, pretty much, like $8,800, right? Like American money? No, no, Australian dollars, Australian dollars. So I was going to quote in Australian dollars, right? That feels approved. Someone is trying to sell their Munsters now for $1,500 less, and it's not selling. It's sitting on the market at the moment. So it's only been out for a month. I don't think it would have made $1,500 worth of profit. So it's one of those things where you really have to have it for a long time to make the money back. it isn't aligning at the moment. It's not like you can just buy a game, rat it for a couple of months, move it on, and start the next one. It's definitely a much different market. I mean, if Greg wanted to sell Peter's Monsters Pro right now, he could probably have no trouble getting, I don't know, $4,300, $4,500 for it, which is only a $700, $800 loss, I would think. And he could probably do better than that. So, you know, it could be your market is a little different down there. I mean, you've got fewer collectors, right? Yeah, Quebec. Yeah, well, we consume more pins per capita than the US, but the market is, I think, more fragile because it's smaller. But let's move on to some more news, Marty. What else have we got going on? Well, let's talk about Deep Root. I can talk about them. They didn't give us any money, so I'm not bought on. I'm pretty much owned currently by Stern and JGP. So I can't really say anything bad about them. But Deep Root, sure, sure, let's do it. What do you want to talk about? Well, let's talk about there's a patent that has been revealed, and Ryan was the one that shared it with me. And it's kind of interesting because if you remember very early on when Robert Mueller was talking about how making pinball is easy, well, I know he sort of got a bit of flack for that, but what he was saying really was, why is it that we have to now manufacture pinball machines the same way they've always been manufactured? So that's when he was talking about quad assembly and then octo assembly and whatever assembly is coming up. And so what's actually now just been revealed is that he's actually put a patent in place for how you can actually take the play field out of the machine. And it's done by some sort of hinge mechanism. with almost like the playfield glass coming up on a hinge, like what Highway Pinball does, but the actual playfield itself sort of lifting out of the entire machine so you can actually work on it outside of the machine. Hopefully the link will still be up there. And I did send it to you guys beforehand. What's everyone's thoughts on this? I'll let Greg go first, and then I'll offer my thoughts. I mean, I'm taking a look at it now, and I didn't actually look at it too closely before. Greg, for all of his talents, is not exactly what you would call a tech guy. No, not at all. I will look at this thing, and I will say it looks over-engineered, would be my... I don't know. I mean, I don't see what's wrong with the way they've been doing it for 70 years. Feels like I'm playing Pirates of the Caribbean. Yeah. I don't know. Is that what they've spent the last couple years doing, figuring out this kind of hinge system? The glass doesn't come out. It's going to kind of fold up like my 72 Fireball does. And then you're going to somehow remove the play field? I don't know. I mean, great. Is this the only thing we have so far, patent-wise? The entire 80-page document was that play field system? yeah i had a look through the uh patenting thing and it was the it's the only thing that's it's been painted by um like the names that are on that paint i kind of did like a cross cross-reference search to try and find what else they've painted but this is it and it's very hard to describe so i mean please click click on the link in the description so maybe you can look at it while we're describing but it's like a double hinge system so um the glass goes up in a frame kind of like an old ballet does. Well, like highway pinball. Yeah. Highway did that too, right? Definitely should take lessons from highway if you want to run a successful football game. The hinge is on the inside of the cabinet, which is the important part. So the, you know, I don't think anyone's complaining about that 5% of the artwork on the side of the pinball cabinet that gets taken away by the hinge. I'm sure artists, you know, Christopher Franchi and Zombie Eddie hate it because it's like dead space. So the entire cabinet art is available on the sides. The backbox kind of looks different in that the screen is underneath the backbox, so it's kind of like right on top of the cabinet, and then you've got the head box above that. And I'm not sure what the head box is going to be. It looks like it's going to be further away from the player than we're used to. The whole kind of backbox screen assembly. But, I mean, who knows? Maybe the screen comes out of the bottom and just kind of folds over onto your face or something. Who knows what kind of crazy shit they're coming up with over there. It was a little hard for me to exactly decipher what this thing would be to look like. I just know they've definitely put a lot of work into redesigning the cabinet. If you're tired, everyone always says they want innovation. It's all I ever hear. We want more innovation in pinball. As far as I can tell, every time somebody innovates, it's usually bad. Like, you know, Pin 2K was, you know, these were terrible games. And like, okay, great. You know, they're going to create a brand. Remember the last guy who completely re-engineered a cabinet? Wasn't that the Magic Girl, I think, was a completely re-engineered cabinet. And I don't know. it's weird right it's like all the like we're all used to like we're all pinball consumers right and we used to whatever pinball is like whatever pinball is we've accepted it and I'm not sure if any innovation like this is gonna say hey I can now change the rubbers and fix the flipper mechs on my machine in a really tight knit space better than a JTP game, so I'm going to buy this over that, you know, for that reason. It's not going to make a difference to a home buyer, and an operator is not going to make a difference to them either. An operator is not going to change a rubber because it's 10% easier than it used to be. He's either going to do it or he isn't. So, I just hope that it turns out okay for them. Yeah, the playfield fully comes out of the pinball machine, kind of still on hinges. I'm not sure how it doesn't topple over. Yeah, balancer. Yeah, and you can pretty much rotate it 360 degrees. It's like on a rotisserie? Yeah. Yeah. All right, I got to admit, I got to admit, I got to see this. Hey, chicken, not beef. I'm pretty intrigued now. Now we got you interested, yeah. I'm pretty fucking interested. I want to see this shit. I want to see the rotating 360-degree play field with the glass still attached. I'm ready. Bring it on. Bring it on, guys. Well, the question then becomes, if you can remove a playfield on hinges so easily, like you can get it outside of the pinball machine while it's still hooked up, is this a mechanism to have a stoppable playfield system? Oh, Christ, this again? A fucking swappable playfield thing? I kind of read through the patent. Well, I didn't read through it because it's like 60 pages or something, but I kind of look for some key words, and there's no word swap in there. You can easily swap out a play field. So maybe this is just like it's going to be a singular system. It's just easy to service. But you've been around for a while, Levi, and Greg as well. Do you think the pinball industry needs that? Look, if they use it to make their game slightly more appealing and their game is awesome, perfect. If they're using it as a selling point, that's not going to win people over. Peter at Sunshine, he is cramming pinball machines in there to no end. Yeah, you're about to have to put your beer on one. Yeah, exactly. So when a new game comes out, wouldn't he benefit from something like you can take a place around? He would not benefit from it, just like nobody has ever benefited from it when they've tried to do this before. A lot of people don't know this. They sold, I believe, Doctor Who and Congo kits that you could swap your playfields out. They also, of course, Pin 2K had the same thing going. And, of course, Andrew over at Highway tried to do this. And the main problem is that you still have a cabinet that's going to have art on it. So either your art is going to be totally half-assed like Highway and you'll swap it out that way. or you're going to have a Revenge from Mars and a Star Wars cabinet, which I've seen before, and that just looks stupid. And not to mention, you've got to put this playfield somewhere. So, you know, playfields aren't small. So it's like, what are you going to do? You've still got to pull this thing out of the game. You've got to keep your playfield somewhere. And most people don want one game with four playfields They say they do but when it really comes down to it that my opinion on it You know you can have a pinball party with one cabinet Yeah, it's like, okay, guys, okay. Yeah, it's like we finish this game. Do you want to play the next game? Okay, if you guys can just wait 45 minutes, just sit over there whilst I go and swap everything out. Actually, let's do two hours so I can sober up first. And then you guys can help me put this play field in and we'll hope it actually works. And then whoever's still awake, we can play another dollar game. So let's do it. Well, look, I'll tell you who I think has got it right as far as that goes. And, you know, I don't know whether you guys will agree or not, but the whole multi-morphic system, because I have actually, there's a person that we know, we went over and we streamed Cosmic Heart and we've been and we've streamed Lexi Lightspeed before. And the way that you move the part of the play field in and out is one minute, two minutes maximum. Wow. It honestly is. I've got it on film. I can show you just how quickly it is. But that thing is absolutely engineered within an inch of its life, and therefore it works. And because it's only really, let's say, a quarter or maybe just shy of a third of a playfield, you can actually take it out, put it in a box and store it. So it's actually easy because it's not a whole playfield. I agree with these. I think the, wasn't, I don't know whether it was PIN2K or whether it was Highway, where the premise of it was you could actually store the playfield underneath, so the actual cabinet itself became storage for the other playfield. That kind of works, but. Well, that's a great theory, but you know how much shit I have under all my games? No, but it's actually in the cabinet itself, not under the cabinet. Oh, okay. But under the playfield. What? But here's the point. Yeah, I know. But the point is, and I don't know whether this is the majority, but operators didn't care because if you're going to have an extra machine, you might as well have two machines there so you can get additional income. And from a home player, I want to see two machines there. I don't want to have one that I have to swap over. I want to be able to have two separate machines there because I've got more machines in my collection. Right. Your wife and kids and guests who don't give a shit about your crazy hobby anyway are not going to be impressed by the one game. Correct. I still want to show them the three games, even though it's not going to make a difference. Oh, no, but it is impressive. I can swap it out, and two minutes later, they've lost interest in me swapping out a play field. So this is the whole thing. Nobody wants this stuff. I think it's good from a servicing standpoint. I think it could be a good thing for sure. I mean, any of us who work on games have really gotten fed up sometimes trying to work on a play field while it's still in the machine. So, you know, if it can help with servicing, I think it's probably worth their time. So as a selling point, I just don't think it's ever going to help move extra units. Yeah. We're just speculating. It doesn't say that. So we've got the figures of the diagram of what it's going to look like, but we don't know how that, I guess, integrates with it. It is not speculation to say it is some crazy shit. And I have to tell you, if we're going to get a flood of 90-page patents on crazy shit like this for every small part of the pinball machine, I'm definitely looking forward to the Deep Root era. Because I've definitely got something to do at work on Monday now, which is read through this patent. To put this into perspective, we've got this patent document and we're making a big deal of it. they may actually not care. They're just like, you know what, this is just how the machines are. It's not a major selling point. It's just something that's a convenient way of doing it. You know, it's similar to when HomePin released that they had a four-way levelling bubble, right, in the apron, and everyone was like, oh, that's kind of cool, but they didn't go out there saying this is a major selling feature, but we see these things as isolation in the pinball community because we're desperate for news, and that's kind of why we make it bigger than a piece. Something new to pop up. I think you're right. I don't know. I don't think that that's a selling point for them. I think that they're just adding a convenience that's something someone else isn't doing. Something I was saying to Steven Bowden, who's really going to be the crucial aspect for Deep Root, and I think he's going to make a really good game because he's such a smart guy. He knows everything about pinball there is to know, really. But I was talking to Steve, and this is a feature that any company should add. Convenience, not a selling point, not making your game amazing, just any company should do this. You should be able to turn your game off, have it save all of your progress, and turn it back on like a computer can. And I've seen old pinball machines save the score and get turned off. We were in Canada for the World Championships. I won a Becker's EM's Butterfly, I think it was. You could shut it off, fix something, turn it back on, you're still on ball three with your 33,000. So did you say that's a feature or that's what you recommended to Steve to do that? No, we didn't recommend to do it for Deeper. I was just talking to him before he was working on a game. In general, every game should have that. If you're playing Ghostbusters and you're on Ball 2 and you've got however many millions and this is your progress on locks, that's the piece that any machine should have. That's not a selling point, but this convenient playfield thing, it's a plus. And if they revolutionize it and it ends up working, they're going to look smart. yeah i think this i think this patent was filed about six months ago so someone's just 2018 yeah someone's just uncovered it but it's been around for a while we're just all very slow what else we got money stern of the union um came out uh for april really there was only a couple of things that were noted one was that zach sharp right yeah for sure right so i mean obviously they talked about the competitions that he won because he's amazing um but really only the other two things of note. Star Trek is going into its final production, and the final run of pros are going to have a special plaque saying, Final Voyage. Ooh, that'll definitely add value in a couple of years. Yeah, that might not be Yellow Brick Road value, but definitely. What do you want? Do you want sparkles, or do you want a 20 cent plaque? Which one do you want? Sparkles. I gotta tell you, I saw those sparkles in Texas, and they were very sparkly. It looked very nice. It does look nice, doesn't it? The pictures don't do it justice. You really can't see how good it looks. Yeah, you've got to see it. But it's still the price. The price is high, yes. That being said, they're making 200 of them? How could they sell those? Yeah, they said they've got parts to make 500, but they're initially going to make 200. Yeah, I think they'll make 200 and they'll sell 200 it in maybe a year or two from now when Wonka's sales have cooled off. Maybe they'll crank out some more yellow. This is their vault edition, which helps them with production. But you can still buy the Ruby Red games, new in box, right? They're not hard to find. Yeah, but red's not the hot color at the moment. It's yellow. It's all about yellow. Yellow's the new black. The thing is, Jack was pitching that in the room to the wrong people, right? I guess you have to pitch it somewhere, but maybe just an online video would have sufficed he's being judged by the pinball community and Pinside starts 20 freaking threads about the same thing oh my god I think JGP is the worst look what they're doing and they're shitting on the hobby blah blah blah that endeavor was not profitable for them bringing a game there wrapped in garbage bags to show off to a crowd that's what I'm saying everyone's Seeing Wizard of Oz, I don't think anyone in that room, maybe one person, might be interested in buying it. But there's a different market out there that will buy that machine. But it's just like, if you stand up in front of those people and tout that, then you're going to get judged. It's just he was pitching to the wrong people, that's all. It's just their last few reveals have been so disastrous. I mean, Dialed In was disastrous because people didn't really get the high concept theme and they still don't Pirates was disastrous Pirates was amazing the reveal was amazing the 15 months were not amazing exactly, but the reveal was amazing meanwhile, Dialed In was the best game probably yeah, I just think this thing's going to happen next week I don't know, it's going to be, you know, you're going to have the Blood Knight there, you're going to have this mystery game from Jack there. And who knows, you know, maybe American Pinball will surprise us with, like, some public domain theme that blows us all away. They're going to have to do with a license eventually, right? It sounds better. Who's recreating Magic Girl? I heard somebody was going to do that. That's on the Deep Root Docket, docket, docket, yeah. That's one of those 15, yeah. Before we move on to the next thing, Levy, tell us about your love for cliffies on pinball machines during tournaments. Why, did I complain about that somewhere? Yeah, I remember reading. I'm not anti-cliffy. I know why people put their games on there. And as I've played in more of these tournaments, I've just kind of gotten used to it. You know, you want to put a cliffy on there to protect your game, that's fine. What really annoys me is your... Have you seen this insanity with the switch protector? Have you ever played one of these things? Where somebody put a switch protector on the game? You know what I'm talking about, Brad. These are these metal things that people put on in-lane switches to prevent the in-lanes from ever wearing. Oh, no. Come on, guys. Yes! This is a thing that people are putting on their fucking games. And the ball will just get stuck there. It's insane. Yeah, I've seen that before. The reason why the ball gets stuck is they've put it on backwards and the only games people usually put them on are the ones where the ball drops on the switch. So if it drops right above the switch, there's usually a bit of mylar there and it's fine, but if it drops a billion times on the switch it just chews up. So what? So ten years from now your game has a little bit of fucking wear on the lane. At least the game plays normally. I don't know yeah I know but it's the same well I think it's the same that people that put Cliffy Protectors on you know the shooter lane and you know I've got this too yes my beloved Star Trek that everybody knows my Star Trek limited edition which is just my my favourite possession in the world and it's an amazing game and people are like you know and I've actually bought the Cliffy I've never put it on and people are like oh my god but you know it's a limited edition I'm like you know what the way in the shooter lane the way in the shooter lane is part of pinball. That's part of it being used. That's right. It's the scars of a life. Correct. That's what I think. This is a home use game, right? Correct. The fact that people are putting these on home use games is absolutely mind-boggling to me. I'm not anti-cliffy. There are some games where you just have to do it. I have an attack from Mars. I have a cliffy on the hole. And this is a game that's not on location. You just have to do it. Monster Bash, you have to do it. Addams Family, when I get an Addams Family in, I don't put a Cliffy on it. You don't need to. That hole doesn't get chewed up. Same thing with Star Trek Next Generation. Those holes are fine, bro. There's nothing wrong with those holes. And Kiss, the game is unplayable with a Cliffy. You cannot hit that fucking hole. speaking of kiss do you guys know the song shandy yes that wasn't that of course you do that sang that uh that was bad but uh i just saw i just saw kiss a week ago at the garden with an australian and she was crying for candy because uh shandy because apparently that was actually a number one hit in australia and nowhere else uh but i digress uh we were talking about cliffy protector what i was gonna say Good story. Awesome story. So what I think is people that have Cliffies on their machine at home are thinking about the resale value at a later stage. Right. It's grandma with the plastic on the couch. One day she's going to sell this fucking couch, and since it's had plastic on it for 10 years, it's going to be worth $5 more. That's right, whereas I prefer to enjoy it along the way. Or where it's a flaw in the actual design of the machine, where, let's say, sometimes Mylar cracks or sometimes the paint cracks because they haven't done it right. And that's just fixing a flaw in the design. But, yeah. Or it's on site. That's fine. I don't know. I think you guys know my take on it. These people are all fucking crazy. Unless it's a chronic blowout like Attack from Mars, you don't need to do this stuff. You certainly don't need lane protectors. I mean, give me these fucking switch protectors. They're insane. And the playfield protectors as well. You don't need a playfield protector. You had it dialed in unsigned. Did you put Cliffies over the phone and SIM card scoop? Didn't it come with Cliffies, that thing? Or some kind of pseudo-Cliffy? The later models did, but the first production run didn't. You can't blame an operator for protecting the game. You don't want that hole getting chewed out. It's not operators who are buying these things, though, and for the most part. and dialed in the side hole, that's not going to get chewed up. Nothing comes out of there. If it goes in and it doesn't come out... It goes near it. Exactly. It's impossible to hit. It's like that hole's not getting chewed up. The scoop for the phone start is... I've never seen a dialed in where that hole was chewed up. It is, man. You're on pin side a lot, Liv. You need to go into the club threads and check out the people with chipped holes. Anyway, alright. I'll take your word for it. I don't have a problem with Eclipse Youngholds. I think where it gets a little crazy is with these in-lane things and these Switch guys and even these playfield protectors. What are you putting a playfield protector on a brand new game for? Or any clear-coded game. I just don't get it. It's like, all it can do is hurt the way the thing plays and make you look stupid because you have a bunch of stupid shit on your game that you don't need. So, that's my take on it. Do you guys like speaking of stupid shit on games? all these LEs I see on location, people spent a bunch of money on the mod kits. And I don't even notice them most of the time when I'm playing. I don't understand the fixation on souping up your game. And then when you try to sell it, all these guys are selling it for above value because of all these mods. Well, guess what? We don't fucking want the mods you slapped on your game. It's wasting my time. We've talked about this before because the parallel I've drawn is with cars, right? When you buy a stock standard car, but you put additional options on it, upgraded stereo or keyless entry when you go to sell that car people don't want to put a value on that stuff they like it and it's a nice to have but they're never gonna if you say to them well i'm actually gonna you know it's gonna be twelve thousand dollars because of all my mods someone's gonna go well fucking i don't see the value in it i'm only willing to pay ten thousand it's really hard to get your money back on those kinds of mods i think it's better off you're better off removing the mods, like a shaker, a topper, and selling them separately to someone who owns the game, and then just selling the machine for a smaller value. That ends up working out better, I think. Letting me sell the fishtails topper and kept the game. No, it was the other way around. It was the other way around. I sold the fishtails and kept the topper and then sold that for $500. That's not even a mod, but I kind of feel like it's paying me ass to take all your mods out of a game. And I'm not buying new games, I'm not really buying mods. If you're going to go mod crazy, you've just got to accept that you're going to put a little money on it and not expect the next buyer to pick up the tab. Correct. Yeah, I got my Guardians and it came with a topper and I when I was lifting the head box up, I lifted it from the topper because I couldn't really see because I was lifting the head bosses, folded down. And it's a bit of perspex, right, with the cutouts of the guys. And it just snapped straight off. And I'm like, all right, who gives a shit? It's a bit of perspex. This will cost like $20 or $30 to get replaced. So I emailed the distributor, and it was about $180 delivered for the bit of perspex. And I was like, all right, I'm super gluing it back on. Yeah, exactly. By the way, you want to use goop. Amazing goop. I don't know if they have that stuff down there. Much better than super glue. Okay. Just a little tech for you guys. Okay, there we go. I've heard of it. I saw recently advertised here the Iron Maiden topper. I don't even think it's the one that's got the guy in the airplane. It's just the Egyptian one. That's $600 here. Jesus. That's a Stern topper? Yeah. I've got Stern credit. Should I be buying toppers for games I don't own? buy them and sell them to Australia you'll make a fortune because they'll be less than what they are here anyway so that's it for news we're going to almost wrap up but I think someone here's got a bit of a story about what they did this week who would that be Ryan? ah yeah I bought a mind ball this week is that what you're talking about Marty? no it's not congratulations on that buy that's a you need more games like that over in Australia as far as I'm concerned Yeah. It was funny. I actually talked to a guy. He was like, hey, Ryan, can I buy you a whitewater? And I said, no, not really for sale. And he's like, oh, I'll do a temporary stop with you. I know you want a nine ball. So we had that all lined up. And then out of nowhere, I was literally talking to my wife. And she's like, do you really have 29 games, Ryan? I'm like, yep, I do. And my phone went ding. And it was a little ad popped up that said, you know, there's a nine ball, you know, 10 hours away from you for a decent price. and I'm like, alright, number 30 and I just went outside and made the deal and it was just rolling your eyes. Earlier this week, actually on April Fool's during the window, because you're not meant to trick people after 12pm or whatever it is, you know, I get a call from I don't know, isn't that That's early, yeah. You've got to do your tricks before noon. I don't care what continent it is, that is the dumbest day of the year. It is. Jack Danger. I loved you. I loved you, Jack Danger. Love. That BK thing is hilarious. Yeah, they were all pretty proud of themselves for that. Oh, yeah. He and Jack eating a burger, too. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Whoppers, baby. I get jokes that people do on April Fool's Day between friends. Ha, ha, ha, you're very funny. But if you're trying to sell a product, your April Fool's Day trick can't be a trick to fool people. It has to be just like a hilarious joke that people laugh at. Like, oh my gosh, look at what Google's doing. That's hilarious. If you make people like take time out of their day to sit on their computer and watch a stream, that kind of negatively impacts your brand. Does that make sense, Marty? Yep, I agree. Yep. Yep. Okay, anyway. I thought it was funny. I got a call from Marty saying that there was a TV station that wanted to do a piece on people that clear pinball machines and would I be interested. Of course, I spent like what, half an hour saying, is this an April Fool's Day joke? You had half an hour at least going, nah, you're joking, surely. I'm like, this is fucking real. When I actually got you on the phone, you're like, oh, haha. I'm like, no, dude, this is actually serious. Yeah, that's how much I hate April Fool's. But anyway, I called the guy up. He came to my house to scout it out. We talked for, geez, like an hour plus about pinball collecting, and he was so interested. And it was like one of those conversations that you have with someone who doesn't know anything about pinball. And I haven't had one of those conversations in a long time, that like everything you say is just gold. Like, oh, I didn't know this, and I didn't know that. And they're genuinely interested because all my conversations now with people that already know everything, right? And then yesterday, it was Friday, I get a knock on my door, and it's Brian Taylor. And if you're from Australia, he's a famous football player from back in the day, and he's on TV all over the place in Melbourne with commentating. And a model, basically, who co-hosts with him for a show called The Great Weekends. And, yeah, we filmed for about an hour or two about my collection. I've showed him the old CERN games as well in the garage. I spent about two days cleaning up the place because, like you said, Levi, you just shove shit underneath your pinball machine. I had four years of shoving shit underneath my pinball machine, so I took it all out. I found so much stuff I've been looking for for a long time. I keep on buying fuses and shoving it under the pinball machine, and then whenever I need a fuse, I can't find it, so I just go down to the road and buy it. So I found like 100 fuses. I have fuses for days now. but yeah they filmed I'm not sure when it's airing I didn't say anything too embarrassing but the segment is literally going to be like two or three minutes and the funniest bit was when they said we need an angle where we can see their face and I'm like okay well I can just move the pinball machine around so you can kind of get behind the head box like no we'll just get them to I wish I took a photo of it basically they were leaning over the pinball machine sideways So they would go to where the buttons were, lean over sideways, and they were pretending to play pinball. And, of course, when you're watching it, you'd probably never know. But, yeah, it's going to be on national TV, and it's primetime right before the news on Sunday. That's cool. Did you get a chance to plug the podcast? I plugged so many things, but I know they're just not going to. I got Lime and Sheets' name in there. I got the place where I run tournaments. I plugged everything, but I just know they're not going to include any of it. The producer was into pinball, and he wrote so many notes. The two presenters that came down, it was all just about banter. Like, oh, how are you going? I'm better than you. It's just TV, right? They can do voiceover. That's really what it's about. You guys are understated. I think the segment's going to be awesome. Yeah. It's not a small TV station. It's literally the, like, there's three big stations in Australia and it's one of them. So it will be watched. Between, like, Mad Max showings and... And Paul Hogan ads, you know. Of course. Yeah, I can't wait. I'm really... That's really cool. Over a million people, I think. You're helping market people. That's exactly right. And so... And you know what? You're going to get an unexpected side effect. you might start getting calls from people who maybe have games or this or that uh you know you might you might have some cool stuff fall in your lap because of this uh this media bonanza that you've uh helped initiate so congratulations i'm looking forward to see it to seeing the piece yeah we'll definitely be sharing it when it happens i can tell you now yeah and thanks to marty for hooking me up because you could have you could have chosen anyone marty i could have chosen everyone but as soon as they said to me we're looking for someone that kind of comes across like a bit of a nutter. I thought, that really narrows it down to one person that I know. They sort of said they're trying to highlight people's obsession with certain hobbies and they want to talk about pinball. I went, well, fuck, if you want somebody that's obsessed with pinball, just go to this guy's house. Yeah. And I mean, there was one bit which I was, I mean, there's going to be a bunch of embarrassing things. Like, they didn't knock on my door. They said, we want them to be walking by the street and we want you in the front yard doing something _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: b6023239-b6e1-409d-ba04-39c48d50b5f5*