# Episode 64 – Jean-Paul de Win and Steve Gouveia

**Source:** Head2Head Pinball  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2018-10-15  
**Duration:** 182m 23s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.head2headpinball.com/2018/10/16/episode-64-jeanpaul-de-win-and-steve-gouveia/

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## Analysis

Jean-Paul DeWin discusses his career trajectory from Williams intern through modern Jersey Jack animator/artist, covering his work on Wizard of Oz, The Hobbit, Big Lebowski, Dialed In, and Pirates of the Caribbean. He details the creative and technical challenges of designing LCD animations and playfield artwork for complex licensed IP, including licensing constraints, asset availability timing, and the evolution of his design philosophy across multiple flagship JJP titles.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Jean-Paul was the last hired employee by Williams before the company closed down — _JP stated he moved to Chicago, worked for two weeks, and was let go after the post-Expo announcement when Williams closed_
- [HIGH] The Hobbit's first playfield design received significant backlash at Expo for muted, gray colors and lack of vibrancy — _JP confirmed immediate negative reaction at Expo, noting the playfield lacked 'wow-ness' and excitement compared to Wizard of Oz; redesign happened within a month_
- [HIGH] Wizard of Oz faced licensing restrictions preventing use of certain munchkin actors' photographs from original 1939 assets — _JP stated munchkin actors weren't in the movie but were photographed at the time; families/estates retained rights and prevented reuse; JP had to blur some faces as workaround_
- [HIGH] The Hobbit's Smaug dragon was an official asset from Warner Brothers despite initial uncertainty about Smaug's appearance — _JP noted initial frontal view wasn't available and first iteration used a longer-distance shot; had to wait for movie DVD/Blu-ray release for full asset access_
- [HIGH] Jean-Paul was brought in as animator/artist on Big Lebowski while still working on The Hobbit — _JP confirmed he asked Jack (Danger) permission to help Dutch Pinball with Big Lebowski as art director without doing animations, initially_
- [HIGH] Big Lebowski's backglass animations use dotted/pixelated style intentionally referencing 90s DMD games and system limitations — _JP explained the dot style was a deliberate choice referencing 90s aesthetics and hardware limitation of the system not being able to run full HD movie clips_
- [HIGH] Universal requested removal of the White Russian and a gun from Big Lebowski artwork — _JP stated these were removed per studio request and confirmed it was 'all good' afterward_
- [HIGH] Jean-Paul claims to be the first animator and artist to handle both display animations and playfield artwork for the same game (on Hobbit) — _JP stated: 'I actually was the first animator and artist to do both in one game' regarding Hobbit, allowing asset consistency between screen and playfield_

### Notable Quotes

> "I was the last hired employee by Williams, I would say. But, yeah, it was unfortunate for me."
> — **Jean-Paul DeWin**, early in interview
> _Captures JP's entry into pinball at the precise moment Williams closed, a pivotal industry moment_

> "This is very gray and doesn't have any, you know, wow-ness to it. The excitement kind of wasn't really there."
> — **Jean-Paul DeWin**, Hobbit design discussion
> _JP's candid reaction to his own first playfield art at Expo, leading to major redesign_

> "There's so many aspects to this that you have to consider... It's always in your mind even when you're not at work. You keep on thinking about this."
> — **Jean-Paul DeWin**, discussing design process
> _Reveals the intensive mental labor behind UI/animation design on complex games_

> "I actually wanted to make them better noticeable when they're lit. That's something that's not really clear, I think."
> — **Jean-Paul DeWin**, Hobbit retrospective
> _Shows JP's ongoing critique of his own work and awareness of player feedback_

> "I wanted something different for each game. I want something different. It's a different theme, so they should have a different look as well."
> — **Jean-Paul DeWin**, design philosophy
> _Articulates JP's design principle of thematic differentiation across games_

> "The hexagon grid was something that came in later. Inspiration came from this board game, Catan, Settlers. It also fits the dwarf theme as well."
> — **Jean-Paul DeWin**, Hobbit UI evolution
> _Shows how external design inspiration informed The Hobbit's distinctive interface_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Jean-Paul DeWin | person | Animator and playfield artist at Jersey Jack Pinball; worked on Wizard of Oz, The Hobbit, Pirates of the Caribbean, and consulted on Big Lebowski (Dutch Pinball); based in Nijmegen, Netherlands |
| Wizard of Oz | game | Jersey Jack Pinball title; JP's first full LCD screen design; first of his games with large-screen animation; faced licensing restrictions on munchkin assets |
| The Hobbit | game | Jersey Jack Pinball title; received significant redesign after Expo backlash for muted colors; featured hexagonal grid UI inspired by Catan board game; IP assets limited until DVD/Blu-ray release |
| Big Lebowski | game | Dutch Pinball (Barrels of Fun) title; JP served as art director and illustrator; faced licensing restrictions and character approval issues from Universal; uses intentional dotted/DMD-style LCD aesthetic |
| Dialed In | game | Jersey Jack Pinball title; JP brought in as animator while still working on The Hobbit; complex ruleset by Keith Johnson; had early design concept with giant robot/robotic arm (mentioned as incomplete topic) |
| Pirates of the Caribbean | game | Jersey Jack Pinball title; JP worked as animator; featured custom hand-drawn treasure map artwork |
| Greg Ferris | person | Williams art department employee who helped JP transition from Williams to Midway after 2000 closure; mentored JP in playfield and cabinet art production |
| Jack Danger | person | Jersey Jack Pinball designer; approved JP's work on Big Lebowski as side project while JP worked on Hobbit |
| Williams | company | Pinball manufacturer that closed in 2000; JP was hired as intern just before shutdown; closure prompted industry transition |
| Midway | company | Daughter company of WMS where JP completed internship after Williams closure, doing video graphics for touchscreen games |
| Jersey Jack Pinball | company | Manufacturer where JP has worked on multiple high-profile LCD animation and playfield art projects |
| Dutch Pinball | company | Barrels of Fun/Dutch Pinball manufacturer; produced Big Lebowski with JP's art direction |
| Warner Brothers | company | Licensor for Wizard of Oz and The Hobbit; controlled asset availability and had licensing restrictions |
| Universal | company | Licensor for Big Lebowski; acquired rights from previous company; had asset and character approval restrictions |
| Martin | person | Co-host of Head to Head Pinball podcast interviewing JP |
| Ryan C. | person | Co-host of Head to Head Pinball podcast; engages with JP on design philosophy and player experience |
| Freak Van Hagen | person | Illustrator who created character illustrations for Big Lebowski playfield; influenced by Medieval Madness and Attack from Mars Williams design |
| Keith Johnson | person | Rules designer for Dialed In; collaborated with JP on UI/animation design; provided design specifications for display layout |
| Yossi | person | Designer/artist who provided tips to JP on Hobbit playfield redesign before joining Dialed In project |

### Topics

- **Primary:** LCD animation and playfield art design philosophy, Licensing and IP asset availability constraints, The Hobbit playfield redesign and Expo feedback, Game complexity and player information display balance
- **Secondary:** Williams closure and industry transition (2000), Big Lebowski licensing and production challenges, Cross-disciplinary art disciplines in modern pinball
- **Mentioned:** Jersey Jack Pinball production and design collaboration

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.78) — JP speaks fondly of his career trajectory and game projects despite challenges. Candid about design compromises and limitations but generally optimistic about solutions. Some frustration evident regarding licensing constraints and Big Lebowski's stalled production, but overall reflective and professional tone.

### Signals

- **[design_philosophy]** The Hobbit's complex ruleset (31 modes) creates tension between displaying sufficient information on screen vs. playfield clarity; audience accustomed to traditional dot-matrix simplicity struggling with new paradigm (confidence: medium) — Ryan C. criticized lack of mode indication on playfield; JP acknowledged challenge of balancing complexity with clarity
- **[design_philosophy]** JP intentionally designs distinct LCD interfaces for each game based on theme rather than using standardized UI layout; prioritizes visual differentiation over consistency (confidence: high) — JP stated: 'I really want something different for each game... It's a different theme, so they should have a different look as well'
- **[market_signal]** JP positions himself as innovator who unified animation and playfield artwork roles on The Hobbit, ending traditional separation of disciplines; this represents evolution in modern pinball artist roles (confidence: medium) — JP claimed to be 'first animator and artist to do both in one game' and emphasized asset consistency benefits
- **[licensing_signal]** Wizard of Oz faced significant licensing restrictions on munchkin actor assets from 1939 film; JP used workarounds like face blurring (confidence: high) — JP confirmed munchkin photo restrictions and stated he had to blur faces to work around licensing issues
- **[licensing_signal]** Big Lebowski faced character illustration rejection from Universal; forced to use only approved photo assets of actors rather than custom artwork (confidence: high) — JP stated initial illustrated characters were rejected; only approved photographs could be used without actor approval
- **[community_signal]** Jean-Paul worked on Big Lebowski (Dutch Pinball) as art director while employed at Jersey Jack, with Jack Danger's approval; represents cross-company collaboration within European/North American pinball sphere (confidence: high) — JP asked Jack if okay to help Dutch Pinball; Jack approved as long as JP didn't do animations that would interfere with JJP work
- **[personnel_signal]** Jean-Paul DeWin transitioned from Williams (closed 2000) to Midway to eventually becoming lead animator/artist at Jersey Jack Pinball; represents talent pipeline during industry consolidation (confidence: high) — JP moved to Chicago for Williams internship, was last hire before closure, moved to Midway with Greg Ferris, eventually became key JJP artist
- **[product_strategy]** The Hobbit underwent major playfield art redesign within one month after Expo backlash, changing from muted/gray palette to vibrant colors; playfield layout also modified to open gateway to bumpers (confidence: high) — JP confirmed redesign timeline and Expo reaction; new playfield with Smaug shown at IAAPA one month later
- **[technology_signal]** Big Lebowski's LCD system limitations (unable to run full HD) led to intentional dotted/DMD-style aesthetic choice rather than capability gap; represents hardware constraint becoming design feature (confidence: high) — JP explained: 'The dots are actually being simulated on the LCD... system not being able to run full HD movie clips'

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## Transcript

 Welcome Welcome everybody to the Head to Head Pimble Podcast. This is episode 64 and my name's Martin and with me... It's Ryan C. And Marty, our next guest, has worked on such games as The Hobbit, The Big Lebowski, Wizard of Oz, and dialed in and also most recently Pirates of the Caribbean. He's a man responsible for some of the most beautiful LCD animations in the business, but he also does do Playful artwork as well. All the way from Amsterdam, it's John Paul DeWin. How are you going, John Paul? Thank you, thank you. Actually, it's not Amsterdam. I live in Nijmegen, which is a lot more... It's Amsterdam time. I live one and a half hour drive from Amsterdam. I'm going to start again, I'm going to start again. No, it's fine, it's fine. So, JP, we want to sort of start... We know that you've obviously done a lot of animation for some very high-profile games. But I guess let's sort of go back to the beginning. What got you your start into that? Like, what led you to start doing animation and play through it out for pinball? For pinball? So maybe it's interesting to start how I got into animation at all. During my study, I went to the Design Academy here in Holland, and it was Academy for Product Design. And during that time in 96, still 99, I got introduced to visualizing on computer, 3D computer modeling. And so we had to learn these programs to create prefixes of our products. and I noticed that I really liked that and I really got into that. So it was a very early stage of 3D animation. And during my study I had to find an internship and I was playing a lot of Pinball and right at that time Pinball 2000 came out and that was like a perfect match for animation and pinball. So I sent my work to Williams, and that's how I actually got my first job in pinball. I was hired as an intern in the Williams art department. So was that meant to be like working remotely, or were you going to move down to Chicago to do that? Yeah. No, I moved to Chicago, and it was just after Star Wars came out, so I got settled. I got settled. I sat there for two weeks, and then they closed down the doors. So I was the last hired employee by Williams, I would say. But, yeah, it was unfortunate for me. But that's how I got to know Greg Freres, who got me back into pinball when he got involved with Jersey Jack. So did you actually do, I mean, two weeks is not a lot of time to be working for a company, but were you working on, like, Wizard Blocks or Playboy? Well, I was going to start on Wizard Blocks, Pat's game. I remember that I went, so the first two weeks was more selling in, get your desk ready, get all the papers sorted out for actually living happier in the States. And then two weeks after my arrival was that expo, and the day after they announced the news. But after expo, I was really excited to actually get started, and I was going to work on some snake, I remember. I had to model a snake for Wizard Blocks, and that was going to be used. but that morning they came in and they closed down all computers and they told the news so what happens to Jay Pate does he go back to Europe or no so I helped so Greg gave me suggestions maybe you continue your try to continue your internship at Stern which just started as Stern again and just I think they were just working on the first Stern game in 2000 Striker but I actually at that time never heard of Stern of course it was old Sega but I was there to work on Williams games that were my favorite Bally Williams games and the other option was to go home or to help or to continue at Midway. Midway was a daughter company of WMS. And a lot of the people from that art department moved to Midway, as well as Greg. And so I decided to move with him and finished my internship of six months in doing video graphics for a touchscreen game. Well, I mean, it would have been hard to go to CERN because they weren't doing video animations. They were doing dot matrix display stuff. Yeah. And you've been doing that for the next 17 years. Yeah, well, I never did any dot matrix animations, and it would have been interesting as well. and even just being at the art department of a pinball company would have been great. Greg was actually showing me a lot of stuff of how art for the play field and cabinet art was being produced. And actually the first month we didn't move directly to Midway. Greg had to archive the whole art department. So I helped him with that as well. and I came across a lot of interesting archives and stuff. Okay, so we've talked to artists and we've talked to animators before, and it's almost been like a separate discipline, you know, somebody that can create the art and someone that can animate the art. Would you say that you can do both, or is there something that you lean more towards? well I think the one I forgot the word for it but I'm better I guess my the thing I'm best at is animation it's are you taking other people's assets and animating it or are you also able to draw and animate your drawings as well Well, I'm not a very good artist in drawing. I think I create a lot of stuff just using the programs I know. Sure. But what's great is to go back into original drawing when I worked on the pirates, because I had to draw that whole treasure map. But that's probably something we'll talk later. Yeah, for sure No, so going back to the question So I think animation is more my better profession If that's the right word Your strong suit, yeah Yeah, look, there's probably three There's actually probably more than just More than two disciplines around You know, can you draw or can you animate Graphic design doesn't necessarily mean that you animate that means that you can actually take assets and place them, organize them, and enhance them, right? Mm-hmm. So there's that side of it as well. I didn't want to say either you can draw or you animate. There's sort of various disciplines when it comes to... Oh, absolutely. Right. Yeah, yeah. It's maybe something people don't really realize how many disciplines are being used in the games I've produced right now. Dialed In is, I think, a good example of a mix of a lot of disciplines in 3D, but also 2D animation and graphic design and creating the icons for the phone. And there's a lot of different layers on that display with different disciplines. Yeah. Now, with Wizard of Oz, I mean, your LCD animation has come a long way since then. But, I mean, when it came out, it was absolutely amazing because it was the first game with that kind of big, beautiful screen. And I guess you had a lot of real estate. So, you know, was you thinking that, you know, there's still an instant info menu to kind of cycle through because the game is so deep. but is the aim for you always to show as much information as possible on the screen for the players so that they can look up at any time and it's kind of like an extension of the play field? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think that's my goal, yeah. I must be careful not to show too much on the screen because it can be overwhelming or intimidating. but at the same time once people know where to look at they think it's easier to get an overview of everything you're doing with Wizard of Oz I think that was also like learning it's the first time you had to fill that screen and there's a lot of things popping up and going on which is also can be overwhelming and, you know, we have the four quarters, the four screens, and I think there's about 20 different things to show in those, so it keeps on switching to other information. And so would you, is there anything, if you could go back, is there anything that you'd change about how you laid that out? No, I don't really, really want to, would want to go back and really change a lot of it. But I think it works as we, you know, it was a nice evolutionary thing as well because I remember Keith giving me instructions or thinking, showing me what he thought we have to show. and he sort of drew like three D&D rectangles above each other, and then on the left side the scores of all the players, and that was in his mindset of the Sturgeon games at the time, also had that score on the left side, and then the animations in the middle on the right. And so he was sort of thinking, okay, we have more room, so we can stack three D&Ds on top of each other. And then just evolve into, you know, he wrote his rules in a document like four or five pages long, and that's when I actually started creating the flowcharts, the rule flowcharts to digest all the rules and to see what is connected where, and that also helps me to see what's most important on the screen and that's how I sort of got to that, you know, the four jewels in the middle you have to collect. So that came really well together actually, yeah. Was it hard to kind of work with the video animations because it was from a movie that was 75 or so years old. There's a decent amount of clips in there, but it isn't like The Hobbit where... I guess it isn't a mode-based game, but did you have the entire movie available for you to use if you wanted, or was it the only certain animations you could use? I think we were not allowed to use some of the munchkins. Those were quite a problem. Yeah, I heard about that. Yeah. So, I think even the photographs assets from Warner Brothers were like munchkins who weren't in the movie at all. They were just actors being photographed, and they were being used probably at the time in 93 when it was filmed. No, 39, right? 1939. those actors weren't, you know, probably not paid or, I don't know, they didn't have any contracts. So we were not allowed to use those, which is kind of hard. I think I blurred out some of the faces to get around that, but, yeah, you don't really see that. I've never actually noticed that. Yeah, I'm going to have to look. But, yeah, no, I'd heard that there was a couple of those munchkins. The actors were highly litigious. so they'd actually tried to get some of their money for whatever happened back then but I don't think there's any of them left now that's horrible but that's the families right so that's what I was like go back and put them back in now yeah no of course it goes to their estate yeah so okay so I guess after Wizard of Oz was the Hobbit the next machine you started working on I mean, that was conceptualized and kind of announced pretty early on before Wizard of Oz was even delivered, right? So, I mean, that project kind of trumped and changed so many times because you guys didn't have access to any of the assets until, I believe, the movies came out on DVD and Blu-ray. So even when Smaug was shown in cinema, that didn't mean that you got those assets. It was when that movie went to DVD. Yeah, exactly. We didn't actually get to see Smaug until he was introduced in the second movie. So we actually had to go to the cinema to see it. And that was, I think, the whole world was waiting to see Smaug. and then it was, I think, revealed on some airplane, a New Zealand airplane, and that was the day before the release or so, and that was the first time worldwide it came public. And then we had to wait, yes, we had to wait also for assets to be added to the portfolio. So the initial dragon that was kind of on that first iteration of the playfield, was that just something that you mocked up, or is that just something that exists in some illustration of what someone thought Smug would look like? No, no, no, that was an official asset, and one of the few, actually. And the story about that as well is that at the time I did that first iteration of the playfield, the image of the frontal view was not available yet, so we didn't know it was, that image was there. This was originally like a sort of a longer distance shot of the dragon over a mountain, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Now, I mean, when I was, I ended up buying Hobbit and Slept in Martin, I was on the fence about it for such a long time. And one was, you know, I didn't know when it was going to ship, but the other was the kind of first couple of drafts of the playfields and they were printed and people playing them at Expo because the game looked really, compared to Wizard of Oz, which was kind of like, you know, really vibrant. And then you guys kind of went back when you had more assets and the entire, I mean, the layout is very similar, but it looks like two completely different machines with smog in the middle and the more vibrant colors. So was that always going to happen, or was that kind of feedback from customers? I think it was mostly the feedback on Expo. There was a big backlash. It was actually the same Expo as Big Lebowski was revealed, and that was sort of the hit of that show. and to tell you also what happened with that first play field so I was doing that play field my first play field ever I used the assets from Warner Brothers I didn't know what the rules were about that so I used the original art and didn't even saturate anything so all the colors are very muted in the original assets. And so I kept to their artwork, and I didn't see any printed sample before I flew over to Chicago for Expo and saw the printed play field in the game itself. And my immediate reaction was as well, whoa, this is very gray and doesn't have any, you know, wow-ness to it. The excitement kind of wasn't really there, was it? Yeah. So I saw that as well, but, you know, it was not, you know, we're in the middle of presenting the game and you just don't say to Jack, OK, maybe we shouldn't present and let me redo this. So I guess it was just the reaction of the crowd. And I guess that was probably fortunate for you then. And if you've had that reaction, you know it's probably not as good as it could be. And it wasn't just the art at that time. I mean, there was obviously the play field that people had sort of mentioned as well. So in a way, it was kind of a blessing in disguise where you were given an opportunity to go back. And now that there's new assets, actually transform it. because as Ryan's saying, the original art to what was delivered, night and day, absolutely smashed it with the second time around. Yeah, and I got tips from... Yossi just came in for a start working on Dialed In, and he gave me some tips, and that really worked. But the changes were made within a month, and it was presented at IAPA a month later, the new play field, and that's how it happened. And you see a lot of reactions. It's hard to read all the reactions later on sites like Pinside. We have to wait for all the changes on the artwork. It's taking so long because of all the changes in the artwork. Well, that was done within a month. Right, but did you then have the new playfield layout as well at the same time? Because that kind of had to change at the same time too, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That shot was actually taken out later, but adding that was also an easy thing. On my wall here, I have a print of the first changes, and there the gateway to the bumpers is not there yet. Right, okay. I'm not sure when that was added. Yeah, I guess for those listening that don't necessarily know the history, there actually was two sets of banks or two banks of targets effectively that had individually controlled targets and people sort of felt that there might have been this missed opportunity opportunity for the pop bumpers and that whole top right area so that was then opened up but so I'm assuming that that was opened up then you got the new design and you had to do the art or was that sort of happening at the same time? At the same time, yeah I did the new art before that was opening up but the opening up of that area was just a small piece of art I had to add but all these changes are really, can take or, you know, have to go back and change your art lines. Yeah, there's approval every step of the way, right? Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Basically, the design was approved, so... I just want to also talk about the animation for The Hobbit as well. So, because obviously, you know, you've got some really exciting scenes to be taken from the movie, which was great, but the main thing that you're looking at now is obviously the grid, the honeycomb grill that you've got there. I'm just curious to know what your thought process was around what you'd learnt from Wizard of Oz to what you were going to do with Hobbit to inform the player but also excite the spectator. Yeah, that as well is such a long process. it's always in your mind even when you're not at work you keep on thinking about this to start off it was I really want something different for each game I want something different it's a different theme so they should have a different look as well which can make it hard for new players to really they have to relearn the whole interface again but yeah that's fine it's a different game so Hobbit evolved as well you know, also the rules the windows came as a you know, it just came together also by reading the rules, seeing what's possible and then the whole, mostly when I start off, the problem is how are you going to fill the screen even you know, at game start, what are you going to show when the game starts? And you know, you want to, you know, you need to activate things. And once you reach more, more stuff should happen on the display. But even when you start the game, there should be something there. And the whole, you know, hexagon grid was something that came in later. Also, that That was, you know, inspiration came from this board game, Catan, Settlers. So I just, and it also fits the dwarf theme as well. You know, the straight lines and, you know, the shape of the main display or the main window in the center. It's also hexagon. And so there's, you know, a lot of thoughts in this layout. But still, I hear people think it's very busy and one, two, yeah, it's great. Brian says that all the time. No, I say the opposite. I mean, I feel like I'm forever telling people how to play Jersey Jack games, and I get frustrated because, especially for The Hobbit, everything, I mean, I know now there's an info screen for more information, but, you know, until recently, everything you needed to know was right there, and even in the attract mode screen, it would highlight certain areas. Hey, you want to spell lock, L-O-C-K, you know, L-O-C-K, and then it likes lock. You've got to click all the dwarves for feast frames, and it's right there in front of you. And then you get a little jewel or room, whatever you're calling it. Get all five, Arkenstone mode. And it's so simple, but it's like I feel like sometimes you have to just assume that everyone that walks up to the machine is just the biggest idiot ever because that's what they are. I mean, you walk up to the machine, they don't know anything. Maybe I knew it because I was watching the talks that you guys were doing and David Deal and Butch and Jersey Jack at all the events because I was excited about the machine. But everyone else that walks up to it for the first time, they don't necessarily want to learn the machine even if you put it as an animation on the backlash I don't know for me now it's hard to really see through how that works for somebody who walks up to the game and the only reference or inspiration I can sort of find this or experience the same thing is when I walk up to a certain game and see if I understand the rules or how that works, walking up to a new game. And that's the fun about pinball, just finding out stuff. And then each time you find out new stuff. But yeah, it's important that you know what to do. I also think probably more important is it to show on the playfield itself, like inserts to show you there what to do. And that's maybe also a problem with the Hobbit, that there's not much text on there. Well, I mean, with those five things, and you can't show where you are on Erebol, you would need like a million inserts for that, and you can't show which mode is lit because it's 31 modes, but you can see which dwarves you've collected because it changes a different color. you can see your lock progress and lock one, lock two, and you can see the B. So three out of the five things you need to get into an Arkansas mode are actually doubled up on the insiders as playfields. So that's my weird thing, is that people would almost rather, not rather, but people, I guess, are accustomed to just one thing flashing on the screen, and that's it. And for me, that's so frustrating, because I want to know, if I hit a jackpot, and then it switches to, and it's doing some silly jackpot animation, and it switches to something else or something else happens during the jackpot animation, then I don't know how much that's worth, I don't know my progress. I don't know. But this is the challenge, Ryan, and to you, JP, as well, is that you're now working with a really complicated rule set, which if you had just a dot matrix and it just had animation, you'd kind of accept it, but also because you've got that limited medium, maybe you are forced to put more on the play field but now that you've got this screen which is, you know, it is an asset and you've got to tell the story and you've got to then tell people what to do I can imagine that's a challenge for you because it hasn't been done before you did it first on Wizard of Oz then you're doing it on Hobbit so you're the trailblazers here it's hard for you to know how people are going to react and how you are going to read that information and you're right my criticism of it is and I differ with Ryan is that all the modes there's 31 of them I don't know which one and I know I've got to look at the book as well but then I've got to look at the book then the back screen and then the play field but the ball's playing, right? So it's a challenge for you I'd imagine having to have such a complicated rule set and obviously we're going to go further down into more of the games from Jersey Jackson, they get even more complex. But that's got to be a challenge for you where you're getting complicated rule sets and they're developing over time and you've somehow got to present it in a way that the novice will understand but also the big pinhead will totally get into it as well. Right. How do you do that? yeah there's so many aspects to this that you have to you know consider and also when you see I always save like different stages in my design process like all my sketches and I mainly sketch in Illustrator and you see the development of the Hobbit interface there too and it's also cool to go back and see how it developed. Like dwarves were in a different place, or I didn't even use the hexagons, but the little circles. But it all just came together at one point, and then we actually added those jewels, which are not really in the movie. I added those jewels to the corners, so you could see they were collected. If I would have to go back in this game, I actually wanted to make them better noticeable when they're lit. That's something that's not really clear, I think. But, yeah, since we added the dual animations in the start of the game, that makes it a bit more clear that you have to collect those five, maybe. I don't know if people pay attention to that. So what do you think has really been the standout feedback? that when people are talking about the stuff that you've done for Hobbit, what do you think is the standout feedback that you would have heard over time? Well, that's, I guess, that everybody just really loves the display. You know, it's mainly, you know, all the great movie assets of Warner Brothers, which are, you know, the great scenes from those movies are on the screen and it just, yeah, there's a lot of positive feedback. Also, it was great to see all the great feedback on the play field once that was, you know, final and it all came together. Yeah, and also there it was really nice to be able to actually use the same assets on the screen as on the play field, like connecting the lock coins to the screen and on the play field and then the same these graphics and the inlanes and the same dwarf faces. When you work together with a play field artist, you have to share all the assets to get it to sort of the same look. And that can be quite a process. And here I was able to do it both at the same time. and I think I actually was the first animator and artist to do both in one game. There you go. That's quite a title. Big Lebowski. You were working on that at the same time and the people that were in control of that, I guess, had come from the same country as you, so it would be pretty easy to work in conjunction with them versus staying up late to talk to everyone in the U.S. And you did the play through art for that and also the animations, is that right? Yeah. So the deal was once I got to know that they were going to do this game, I asked Jack if it was okay to help these guys with their game. as art director and at first I said, well, I'm not going to do any animations for them. I'm going to do just art direction and artwork so it wouldn't interfere the work with what I'm doing for Joseph Jack. And he was fine, you know, he didn't know Dutch Pinball, didn't know what it was going to do and it was all good. And then so I started with Big Lebowski and did the cabinet art and the back glass. And we actually had a first, another artist to do, like, drawn characters, and it was rejected by Universal. And we had to use the assets from the guide, so only photographs of the actors, because those are approved and they don't have to go to the actors to get approval. but that was rejected and then the playfield art itself was so the illustrations were done by oh what's his name, I forgot so somebody else did the playfield but I brought it all together placed it on the right spots and made it final but he did a great job on all the illustrations really, you know, we gave him a lot of reference from the 90s, Dally Williams games of Medieval Madness and Attack on Mars and... Freek van Haagen. Freek van Haagen. Yeah, Freak. Freak. That's him, yeah. And he did a great job. We worked really well together. So, yeah, the back glass. So, the problem with the back glass was the assets they gave us were, like, really bad photographs, really low-res photographs of all the actors, all photographed in a different situation and different lighting. And so I presented Universal like, okay, if we use your original efforts, this is how it's going to look. And it was really a bad-looking piece of artwork. And we suggested that we were going to paint over the photographs, give them a makeover in Photoshop, and that's what we did. We got approval to that, and that's how the backlash came together. Were you a little bit upset that the... I mean, the animations on the backlash are very cool. They're very high frames per second, very fluid, but the LCD screen that they used was kind of such low-res that it kind of looks spotty, right? Mm-hmm. Well, there was a choice made by us. We sort of thought it was okay to do Dots because it's a 90s movie and it refers to the 90s D&D games. And I also think it was mainly also a problem with the system not being able to run full HD movie clips. and they developed this system for the Bride of Pinball 2.0 and that's how we just, the dots are actually being simulated on the LC. So how's it been working with the licensor for Big Lebowski because obviously we've heard some stories about changes that they need to make. I'm curious to know and look, people are going to hate me for saying this but I've seen Big Lebowski and I think that it's a great film but it's not a box office smash, right? So it's not necessarily one of the top assets that these licences have got. How easy were they to work with maybe because of that and I'd also be keen to know how that compares with doing Hobbit and doing Wizard of Oz when it comes to license holders and using assets? I think that sort of the problem with Big Lebowski was that Universal was not the original company for Big Lebowski. They sort of bought the rights from the previous company, and so they didn't have a lot of good original assets, or photographs. But they were mostly fine with what we did. We couldn't artistically draw the faces of the characters. That was clear. So that's why that's the only photograph assets on the play field of the forehead. And that's why Bonnie is not illustrated from the back on the on the screenshot. But for the rest, I think they were fine with what we created. But yeah, we had to get rid of the wheat leaf and the gun. And that was like a wish from the studio. And we took those out and it was all good. Do you think, I mean, obviously everyone kind of knows how the story went from there with the contract manufacturing issues that Barry and Yacht have had. I guess you're not really involved with the company much anymore, but, I mean, do you think they'll ever be able to figure it out and come to some kind of agreement with the manufacturer to get them produced, or do you think the writing might be on the wall? No, I don't have any information there. You know, it's for me also guessing what is going to happen. Yeah. Of course, we all hope it just, you know, I don't know how this will be solved, if it can be solved. It's just very unfortunate how it all went. So the next machine was dialed in and you were brought into the project while you were still kind of working on The Hobbit. now the initial direction that Doldin was going to be, I'm reading on Pinball Magazine number 5 you can buy that at pinballmagazine.com and I remember reading and there was rumours that the initial conception of the game was that there was going to be a giant robot or like a giant robotic arm on the playfield that was kind of destroying the city had you started work on the game at that time and did things have to change or was that just kind of in the concept Whitewoods period before yeah that was doing the concept stage also there's a story changed during the design process and here is something really different than all the movie themes you're doing you have to create your own story and create your own world. And, yeah, so... Can you share, like, what, like, you know, roughly what the idea of the game was before it kind of became the, you know, futuristic disaster city game that it is now? Yeah, I think in the first... At first, there was also sort of the disaster theme, but it wasn't mentioned clearly like that, I think it was more meant, the first direction was more of a 50s invasion, disaster theme and not so futuristic but I guess the mix of that is still there a mix of it so the highlights of James on the Dalton guy, that's the 50s It's a giveaway. Yeah. So the white wood that you saw when you first saw the game, was that roughly what the game was, or was there actually a robotic arm that moved around on the playfield? No, that was not there yet. I guess that's where Batty is in that position, and I think the idea was that not going to destroy buildings on the playfield or anything on the playfield would whack the ball off the ramp or divert the ball like it's doing. Yeah, like it's doing. It never clicked to me that that is actually in the game with the robotic arm that goes up and down. Because when I heard the rumor, for some reason I thought of like a Terminator 2 arm that sat next to the playfield and moved left and right. Okay, it all makes sense now. I'm an idiot. You got it? Yeah, cool. So here's the big thing about dialed in, right? So, you know, we've talked about before about Wizard of Oz and Hobbit and even Big Lebowski. You've got assets, right? They're already there. You get them on some drive or on a CD or a USB drive and you can start moving them around. And that's what I was saying before. You know, there's drawing, there's animation, but there's also graphic design in the middle. So dialed in, there's no assets. so talk to me about that kind of process for you and what sort of involvement you have to have it look the way it does the yeah how do where do I start there's so many different things I guess the city idea came in quite early that we have We have this city, and I made some pre-visuals using Google Earth to have a view on top of the city, et cetera, et cetera, and then you present it to the team, and then you have these brainstorm sessions over Skype, and I think Yowsey picked it up, and he was enthusiastic about the city idea, and he made that sketch of so it was me asking hey can you maybe sketch out like a city so I know how to create all these buildings and model them in 3D and he made like a really nice sketch of Quantum City which I just recreated with help of course or of course I hired somebody who modeled like 25 of the buildings and then I textured them and put it all together again and then you have to create all the animations for it and then you have the space where they say okay, so we want to destroy sections of the city like moats and then you have to rethink your whole set up because all the buildings need to be a separate piece and that also is like a new process. I think that the game the city itself has more than a hundred layers which are put in by the programmers and they can individually say like this is the before and the after Destructed State. Okay, so it's not real time. It's not like a computer game where this is happening in real time. This is video assets that are, yeah, so it's just kind of playing and triggering certain videos, but there's like layers upon layers so that it looks like a real world. Yeah. So it's also making it easier or harder than having a real world and kind of, I'm not really up to date on how a computer game would work but you do it once yeah so this was also a decision like we don't have like the system is not as far as I know we are not doing really 3D stuff and that's probably also a different way of programming we there were like ideas to zoom in to certain parts and rotate the camera around it and have some chase around the city. That's a lot of stuff to create. I don't have any experience in 3D, like real-time 3D graphics, so I would have to dig into it. The Progolans would have to dig into it. And this was working with the knowledge we had, I think, and it came together. pretty good, I think. But, yeah, it would have been great to see how it would have looked if we go 3D. But, yeah, this is all mainly done by one person. Well, yeah, I mean, and you're kind of, you're always in uncharted territory. You're in uncharted territory with Wizard of Oz and then with Hobbit, and then Dalding was that next step. And it's not like you're imitating someone or trying to mimic what others are doing in the market. This is, as I said, you're kind of the leader in that space at the moment. So talk to me about the animations on the phone, the LCD screen that's more like a phone on the play field. Some of those animations with the people talking are done. Some of them aren't. Is that the same thing where are they – was that like a separate company that was doing that? and do you give them the text and then they kind of mimic it and send you a video, or how does that work? So the characters are the assets, those were created by Jason J Zielinski. He was hired at the start of, yeah, during Dialed In, because I indicated, okay, I'm not familiar with animating 3D characters. We should find somebody and tag me the guy. And this was Jay-Z, as we call him. And he started doing the characters. And so that's all him. That's not my part. And he's a full-time employee now for Jersey Jack. He did the art on Pirates after DI. But I know he's working on those characters, or he's finishing up those characters for the next update. Okay. So it is coming. Yeah. Yeah, cool. But there, again, that's a lot of work. For each callout you create and you want to see a moving face, that's a lot of animation work, which I'm not really familiar with, but you have to sing the lips with the entire sentence, and there's quite a few call-outs for each character, so there's a lot of animations to be done there as well. For sure. So I guess now we move to the last game, I guess, I think will catch us up on your timeline, which is Pirates of the Caribbean. So I guess this one might be the most restrictive license that you've worked with because you've got the assets of the movie, but there's a restriction of not showing anyone's face. So you've got, what is it, 125 modes, I believe it is. There's 125 sequences that you've had to kind of chop up. And then you've got this live kind of Hobbit-like interface where you've got the progress towards all five multiballs kind of live at the same time along with the mode progress. so did you kind of build on the Hobbit for that as your idea of how you'd like to display everything? Yeah, that's a good question Here again you want to create with a clean slate, clean start on the interface of course you experience that where you want to place scores and such, I think You just want to have that on the bottom of the screen because it's the first thing you see when you look up. But, yeah, the entire interface was... Also, of course, a lot of iterations. Not being able to have that much video was quite a problem. We came, you know, we got that information quite late during, or late. When I started on it, we sort of, yeah, we sent in like clips, what we, we abstracted the movie of what we wanted to use. And then it became clear that we didn't even, we were not allowed to use the actual spaces. So then we had to improvise on all, how are we going to, what are we going to do with this? so that's I think when we decided to create these chapters where we shortly show part of the scene which in a lot of cases I see that as well doesn't really show you what it is about but there was the best stuff I could find in that scene Keith ducked through all the movies and just selected chapters, scenes, which he thought would work. And that's how we continued. And then when I got the rules, I think Eric, the designer, mentioned a treasure map at some point during a brainstorm session, and then that got me thinking, and that's how I proposed the roadmap. It's sort of like displaying the flowchart that I created and showing like an interactive flowchart as a treasure map, and then it all came together. And then the cannon doors in the top, which are, you know, you can sort of, yeah. There is a lot of stuff also being added later in display, like the combo treasures in the upper corners, and then some programmer comes with something else, hey, we need to do this Tortuga thing, and you keep adding and adding, and there's... Is it ARC Frenzy as well? Yeah. So, I mean, with all of that, with all those kind of restrictions, and you, you know, the team navigating around them. Is that still kind of easier than doing dialed in? Has dialed in been your hardest project to date because of kind of the sheer work required to create all those assets? I do know that dialed in is my biggest, like, three project I ever did. And, like, it's also very complex to keep track of everything you're doing. that it would have been hard to actually share my project with somebody else to continue with it because so many things are in your head. Yeah. But with Pirates, yeah, it's still different. You create. I think also with Pirates I had to draw a lot of stuff, so that was also different and interesting to do again, going back to actually drawing on a paper and then scanning it and then starting to put it in the computer and animating it. That was fun to do as well. It's just a different process, but if I count my working hours, it's almost the same. Yeah, okay. So what are you working on now? Obviously, you're probably still working on Pirates of the Caribbean. Obviously, you're still employed with Jersey Jacks. Are you working on the future panels as well? Has that started yet? Yeah. I'm working on Pat's next game and hopefully the game after that. And I think the company is really happy with what I'm doing. And, yeah, we just keep on going. I know you can't give details about Pat's next game, but has, I guess, Jersey Jack and yourself learnt to navigate the licence holder a little bit better this time in terms of what you're getting, and is your job, say, easier or harder than previous titles? With this new game? Yeah. Yeah, I don't really, I'm not really involved with getting the license and speaking all the terms. So mainly it's like you just work with what is allowed. And sometimes, yeah, you have to find out what is allowed and you know, okay, this we can do and this we can't. But this, yeah, I must be careful not to. No, of course. I'm trying to phrase the question in a certain way because, I mean, everyone wants to know what you're working on, but of course you can't reveal it because, you know, partners just come out and that's what everyone wants. So, yeah. Are you just working for Jersey Jack at the moment or do you have other projects going on at the same time or is this your full-time job? It's almost full time now, yeah. I used to do, in between, especially during Wizard of Oz and Hobbit, I used to do a lot of broadcast design work, and that's less and less because they also know when they call me, I'm most of the time busy with Jersey Jack, which is good. So it fills up almost all my time, and once in a while a small project comes in, and I work on it for one or two days. Like now I'm going to do a design for a poster, a pinball exhibition in Germany. And there's all these small things. Also, a lot of them are pinball-related, just small things to work on, which is nice. Because obviously you're a pinball guy. You said before you started working at Williams, you were playing pinball a lot, so obviously pinball has been in your blood for a very long time. Do you play competitively or are you more of a collector or where do you fit into the hobby? Besides being a designer of pinball machines and an LCT animator, where do you fit into the hobby? Mostly as a player. I used to play a lot during my school and college days and weekends going out playing pinball. And then after my internship at Williams, I bought a Twilight Zone, which I used to have in my apartment for a few years, and then I moved out of Amsterdam and I sold it. And that's actually also when my interest sort of was at its lowest point. but luckily a year later Greg called me and yeah the whole Justin Jack story began and now I'm full full time working on pinball and now actually got to know a lot of people in pinball here in Holland, there's a great community we got a national association and I got to know people from the neighborhood and now I'm playing each month in a league and it's just, you know, having fun and playing together and that's the best. That's awesome. Yeah. Well, John-Paul, really thank you for coming on the show. The work you do is absolutely amazing, especially considering the size of other teams and, yeah, it's well integrated. As I said, I think of it, you know, the work that you did on the play field and the animations is probably what made me pull the trigger on buying the machine. So, yeah, your work is definitely appreciated from all corners of the world. So, yeah. Yeah, and thanks for coming on the show, and we look forward to seeing the next games that you'll be working on. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me. It's always good to hear, especially from the other side of the globe, to actually people see my work. That's just awesome. yeah and whenever whenever you're in Holland let me know we will for sure we're always there no we're not yeah sorry alright alright thank you alright JB have a great day you too yeah bye now yeah bye so there we go Ryan that was JP DeWin what did we learn JP DeWin for the win it's a I don't think it was it's a common yep hilarious I don't think it was common knowledge that he was he's been involved in pinball for that long. I know. He was just kind of new on the scene. But, yeah, imagine starting at Bally Williams and then two weeks later they closed down. Well, I do remember, like, you know, a couple of weeks ago when you said he was coming on the show, I said, yeah, I kind of know who he is and I know he's got something to do with JJP. But I didn't realise just how involved he was. And, you know, it's not just the animation guy. He's just done so much. Yeah, and he said that his effort with The Hobbit, with doing the art and the animations. You can kind of tell, right? It blends in, it goes together. It's a bit crazy. Yeah, absolutely. So there you go. So one guest isn't enough money. You're going to get someone else on. Yes. We'd like to introduce our friend all the way from sunny California. I think it is 1 a.m. at the moment. He is the maker of the very famous Red Smoke Witch Mod. So fast, right? So fast. Red Smoke Wishmars. His name is Stingy's Govea. Oh, hey. Welcome. Thank you. You said it perfectly. Oh, I did? Yep. I'm great, Marty. How are you? Yeah, very good. Thank you. Ryan, I would have picked a different name like Falcon Punch or something if I knew people were going to be contacting me. It's just my last name. It's so boring. I figured I'd just hover around Pinside, but now that I'm making something. Sure. So, Steve, if people aren't aware, he has a Wizard of Oz female machine, and he decided that the witch inside the Wizard of Oz female machine was not as... It's a bit shit. It's a bit shit. Just say it right. No, tell me. I'd rather hear from you. I'm saying it. I didn't actually even really think about it. I kind of looked at it and went, what's this tube that it's in? but it wasn't until I saw your mod when I put them side by side that I went, oh, that's a bit shit. So why did you do that? Because Wizard of Oz is so beautiful so you're kind of like, okay, if one or two things aren't perfect then it's okay. So Steve came along and a lot of other people have attempted to make different witches. Steve came along and made the red smoke witch mods. Yeah. You know, it's just what you had said. I didn't notice it when I got the machine because when I got it, I was, God, I think I'm like number 57 maybe of this game. So I really paid attention to Jack when he was selling it, and I listened to the whole thing, and I was really excited about it. And so when you get it, you see it physically, you know, he made this machine. I was just happy to have it. And when you start playing it, you don't really notice the witch and all that stuff. It's just a really cool game. But the longer you play, you think, well, what's going on in that tube? I really can't see it. I could probably do something better. But I think there was a guy on Pinside, and I don't remember his name, but he took, and this is years ago, but he took a Hallmark witch, like a Christmas ornament, and he cut it in half. And he wedged it in there somehow, and it looked great. But he still put it in the tube. And I figured, well, that's a great idea, and I'll try that. and I got the same witch, I took it out in the garage and I just completely destroyed it because it was just too hard to cut it in half the way he had done. And I just started thinking, well, wait a minute, if I make it out of Joshua Clay, maybe I could make it kind of more conformed to the space that's in there and maybe just make it look like it belongs as opposed to just a Christmas ornament. And months and months and months of just trying to make that work really just for myself. I was not going to make this for anybody else. What's your background, though? Because obviously people may have seen this and know that it is a very nice sculpture, so do you have a background in making this stuff? No, not at all. I don't make toys. I'm an actor and a musician, and I've been an artist in other ways. I've done stage design and things like that for theater, but I've never worked with plastic. But I got really excited when I learned how to use plastic. And so instead of, you know, 3D printing some, you know, random toy that you find or just using something that you kind of wedge into your machine or something, if I could make something out of plastic, that would be really cool. So I just got excited about that and just watched a bunch of stuff on YouTube and figured out how to do it and how to make stuff over and over and over again. And I totally was learning. When I started The Witch, I did not know what I was doing. So I got pretty good at it by the time I got to, I don't know, the end. So 250 maybe, 45, 50. Could you mention a few revisions along the way that I didn't see? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, initially when I had made it, it sat too low. and I wasn't really thinking about the ball getting in there, but there were some times when I was worried about it because I don't want to sell somebody something for a good amount of money and then have it break their machine because the machine would have no idea if the ball got wedged up in there. And so I practiced it on my game and I thought, well, it's going to work, it's going to work. And then people slowly started private messaging me saying, you know, you might want to check on this because it doesn't, the ball will bounce into that thing. and you can follow all this on the thread if you ever want to get in detail but yeah, someone had asked me to tie the witch into the castle in the back and at first I thought it was a dumb idea but then I realized no it's a great idea because I can lift the whole thing higher and keep the ball from getting in there so that became a whole other process so yeah, there was a lot of concern over making it right because you know, it is right in the middle of the machine, you know and I wanted to make it look good and I just wanted to I didn't want it to break and I didn't want it to break people's machines Well, I think the main thing that you actually did, because it's not just it's not just the witch, right? You replaced the witch with a much better looking witch. You took the tube away and then you've got this moulded plastic thing that the LED goes through so what you've actually done is you've taken something that's not really all that noticeable to something that stands out. Was that your intention? Yeah, because I couldn't just put, when I made the witch, I kept a tube initially. And I put all this work into making it look really cool. And then I stuck it back in the tube and I couldn't see it. And that's when I started to think, well, what if there's a better way to make a tube, a better way to protect the ball from hitting it? and the hallmark ornament that this guy actually used actually had this little piece of red plastic on the back, like this little piece of smoke with a little LED under it, and if you pressed it, you know, it was like a little scene from the movie or whatever, but I looked at that, and I thought, well, shit, what if you make that tiny little piece of red the thing that protects the witch and just make a big, like, red explosion? And so that's where I got the idea for doing it, and once I started holding some red plastic up to where that LED shows up, I saw how it lit up and I just, you know, thought, fuck, this is going to be great. Are you here to announce today that your red smoke might be in every single new Jeff Kimball moving forward? Is that why you're on the show? Yes, I am. That is why I'm here. It's in the Yellow Brick Road edition. It's not. It's not. you're you're you know you've been making it for a long time and you needed a break because i mean as i said people people sell mods for a living you don't even make toys for a living or you know this was just kind of like a side project that you started to share with everybody and people kind of fell in love with it and when when i got mine i decided to get i think it was 10 of them for everyone and i'm not a mod guy but i was just like he guys like he's gonna stop i could kind of tell by the way you were kind of wording your uh your post that you probably weren't going to make these things forever um so i told everyone uh i'm not the arcade and got 10 orders for him and got 10 down and and everyone loves him so yeah that's great man it was it was stuff like that just made me so proud and so happy and yes i'd love to get it in every single machine but you know some people don't like it that's totally fine but i i had i had big plans just to see how many I could do. And I had some downtime, so I just went in, you know, just 100% to try to make as many as I could. And I realized I've kind of set myself up to be my own little, like, you know, sweatshop sort of assembly line and realized I was burning out on it. Well, because there's actually a lot of handwork that goes into this as opposed to you've got the design and the specs and someone manufactures it, You're actually making these, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't want to 3D print it because everything in this game is molded, and I didn't want it to look cheap. And if you spent that much money on a machine like this, you might as well put some good stuff in it. So that – and I'm a stickler for detail, and I wanted everyone to look exactly the same. So that – I just kind of became obsessed with it. But I got good at it. I got good at repeating the same thing over and over, and I got slowly better at it. But, yeah, I was going to go as long as I could, and then, you know, suddenly work creeps in, and life creeps in, and you're staring at, you know, all these people who are still waiting for a witch, and I was just like, golly, I can't keep doing this. Yeah. So you're back now. You changed that. That being said, here we go again. So you tease that you're doing another mod a while ago, and for one of the machines you owned, and then everyone asked, well, what other machines do you own? And you're like, just Wizard of Oz. And everyone was kind of like, well, you know, the trees have been done, the witch has been done now, the house is fine, you know, maybe the guy on the side, the light-up guy, the wizard. And no one really thought the monkey, because the monkey doesn't really, like, I mean, yes, it's horrible, as if it was thicker, but it's like nothing else would fit until... Yeah, someone asked if I could do it somewhere on the thread or thought maybe I could try to do it. And it was just something that I would do when I was taking breaks in between the witch is just to get in the machine and kind of look at the space and what you would have to do to do it. And it was just a huge challenge to even fit something in there because it's not made to have a toy in there. So, yeah, over the course of time, I just, and, you know, tons of Joshua Clay and tons of broken pieces of plastic, I managed to fit something in there, and I loved it. But it's not, this is before the final version that you guys have. So I created one where the wings didn't move, and I took a video of it and I thought, well, that just looks kind of stupid. It's cool. It fits in there, but it just looks like this angel coming down from heaven. And I thought, if I can make the wings move, that would put this thing over the top. So that was another round of months and months of, how do you make wings move? Do you have some sort of contraption in there that is like a V-shaped sort of spring mechanism for wings? I was just like, well, and I would just constantly think about it, like 24-7. How am I going to make people move in this thing? And I figured it out. But it took a long, long time. Because you're also limited by space, right? Yes. In fact, it's funny. It's a quick little story. Dave from the Mod Couple, he contacted me about a witch some time ago. And we started talking back and forth. and he said, hey, what are you making next? And I said, well, I can trust you because, you know, you do this for a living as well or making mods. And he said, I'm trying to make a monkey. And he's like, oh, shit, we're trying to do that too. And I said, well, here, I'll show you a picture of what I've done. And I sent him a picture of him, and he's like, do it, man. It was so cool. He's like, do it, because this is great. But whatever you need, if I can help in any way. and what he and I ended up talking about is the only way to fit a toy up there is if you put a spacer behind the door and you push the door out. And that gives you, otherwise that plastic that's in there right now, it's like right up against the door and you can't fit anything in there. So a spacer brings the door out about like an 18th of an inch maybe. It's nothing but it's enough to make some sort of toy that fits back there. and I showed him the spacer that I had that I made out of popsicle sticks. I said, I think this will work. And he writes back, he's like, I have the same exact spacer. That's exactly what you need. I thought, holy shit, that's great. He's like, I can make you 200. I'll make all these for you. And so he was really helpful. So that's where the joint sort of mod thing came between me and the mod couple. So, yeah, he made me a bunch of these spacers, and that's one of the secrets to getting it to fit back there. That's awesome, man. So, yeah, you were kind enough to send, you know, I was going to buy one, so you sent an early version down to me and Marty. Marty's still in the box because I haven't come around to fit it in. No one's expecting me to put it in myself, I think. Well, this is pretty easy. You know, it didn't take me too long to install it. it comes with instructions. Do you reckon I could do it? Why? Yes. You could, but it would take five, ten minutes for me to do it. After that, I've done it once, so I'm happy to help you out to do it, Marty. Well, here's the thing. I sent you guys paper instructions just to kind of get my ass moving on it because they were there, and I'm like, God, I really got to, I just got to go for it. And I got to send these out to people who have no idea how to do it or even what it's about and see if they can install it from my instructions. And once Ryan was putting it in, I realized, yeah, I'm missing some things here and there. And so we talked about making a video that would be a better way to show people how to stick it in there. And so you guys are doing the video, aren't you? Yeah. I'm going to get down to the video. Yeah, baby. I'm going to do the video. Yeah, it's funny because my kids, my three-year-old, plays Wizard of Oz a couple of times a week, and I never felt like she really knew what was going on when the monkey came down and got the ball because it's a bit of a weird picture that's stuck under the decal. And then as soon as I installed it, you know, she wasn't there when I was installing it. I installed it, and then she played it for the first time. She's like, look, Daddy, a monkey. And I'm like, okay, well, it works. Oh, that's great. So your target audience of three-year-olds, they're absolutely... Hey, that's my target audience. Of course it is. Okay, now you don't want to drive yourself crazy, Steve, and make an unlimited run of these anymore. And because, as people can see on your thread, it took you a while to make those witches, and every time you had to make a new batch, it was simply because the demand was there, but it was driving you a bit crazy. So give us the details of how people can order, if you want to mention the price, and how many you're going to make. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I noticed because in the last few months I got married, I bought a house. All these things happened that were completely un-Pinside related. And I come back to my thread and there's, you know, five different lists of people who want it, which is awesome. But I wasn't ready to even sell it. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to make everybody listen to your fantastic show. And let's say right now that Wednesday, Wednesday my time, which is Pacific Time, U.S., Wednesday at 12 o'clock. That would be October 17th. I will put a picture up on my thread that says the list is open, and you could just go for it. So if you put on the thread, just you're in, you're in, you're in. So if you really want it, then you can jump on board right at the top. I'm only going to make 200 of them. When I was making The Witch, that's right about the point where I got crazy. Yeah, a little bit nuts, yeah. Yeah, you get a little nuts. And I have other things that I want to make. And that's right about the point where I'm like, okay, I'm ready to make something else. You want to make something for all those other machines that you've got? No. You know what? Well, you misunderstand. I have other machines. I just only have room for the Wizard of Oz. So in the new house, I've got the game room. I've got my – I've got a setup like you, Marty. I've got four games in a room. Perfect timing number. Yeah. Yeah. So if you want to find out what those games are, you can go on to Pinside and see. in my profile, I guess. I think you're perfect. So you are going to limit it to 200? Yeah, this Wednesday I'll put up a picture on the thread and it'll say, the list is open, go ahead. Because I just I don't know how many people are going to be interested. I just don't know. I know a lot of people like it but I want to give it a try. You're going to sell out, guaranteed. How much is it going to cost? It's going to be $279. Mark. Yeah, thank you. Marty bought four flashes for more than that. Yeah, I did. Well, no, here's the thing that's funny, and people also don't know this about the mod, and you guys obviously know it now, but I wasn't telling people about the last part of it because I thought it was a cool little secret, but the UV part of it is, I've never mentioned anybody on the thread and I got so excited about that near the tail end of making the mod I was talking to a friend, it wasn't my idea but I was talking to a friend, and it's kind of the same thing as putting the witch in the plastic tube, you put all this work into this monkey, and then you stick it up in the game in the dark in the back and you really can't see it and he suggested that I paint it with UV paint and that just, you know, that gets the brain working again and suddenly that's another, you know, month and month and month of, okay, what kind of paint can I use? I don't want it to look, you know, like a Bananarama concert, but I want it to look realistic but still pop. So, yeah, it's painted with UV and it comes with a small little strip of UV lights that sits over the monkey and it just makes the toy just stand out and pop. I just love it, the way it looks like that. Yeah, it does look good. All right, so if you want to buy this, jump on the Pinside thread. I'll link it in the show notes. I'm going to read out a URL, and you're going to be using the same thread. There's going to be lots of disappointed people that have put their name down for six months ago, when, you know, just haphazardly. I know, but you know what? Yeah, it's kind of cool if I just use the same thread. You know, it's kind of like fighting the cool bar in the back of a restaurant that you have to walk through the kitchen to get to, I guess. You know what? What's that mean? It's your thing that you're doing. It's a side project, really. It's not like you're making the main living off this. You can do it the way you want. Yeah, and I mean, quite honestly, here's the facts. Once I had made The Witch and I was done with it, tons of people just started to come, or not tons, but a lot of people started writing me and saying, are you making any more? Please make more. Please make more. I would never say that I'm not going to make any more. And the same thing is going to go for the monkey. I'll never say that I'm not going to make more. It's just it's going to be a long time because I get excited about something new, and I'd rather do something else. So I'm limiting this to $279 a US, and I will be busy for the next six months doing that. So, yeah, that's my plan. Awesome. Okay, so 200 asterisks, maybe more in the future, but no promises. Yeah, yeah. I mean, because I don't know how many people want it. If I write 200 and suddenly it's like, what are you talking about? The other 50 people who have The Witch are like, well, what about me? Yeah. So I want to initially just set up 200 because I don't want to get so buried in people who want it that I feel like I have to deliver it, and that's just not fun anymore. so we're going to limit it to 200 right off the bat and that's going to take me a while to make and 1000 for Jesse Jack's yellow degree audition those will be three different awesome alright so Ryan shall we get into some news? yeah Steve you're going to hang around because you are the expert on all things pinball expert because you're our American correspondent Thank you. I'll probably be the only one still awake over here, so go for it. Bring it on. So we have Chicago Pinball Expo happening this week, and there's going to be a lot of seminars. We're going to have a massive show next week. But I guess I thought for a bit of fun we would list all the companies and take guesses on what they're going to show in the show. So who wants to start first with J.J.P.? What are they going to show? Do you know what? They are not going to show anything more than Pirates of the Caribbean, but they're going to show it in its current form, with its current code, and they'll have 20 of them. No, not 20. 20. They will have a lot. They will take up that space with that machine. I reckon they'll have eight of them and then maybe a couple of others dialed in. But, you know, it is their flagship title at the moment. It's just started shipping. They would, as a company, want to be taking more orders from this show. Okay. And no Wizard of Oz Yellow Big Rose edition? No. No, I don't know. What do you think, Ryan? Maybe, yeah Why not? That'd be a nice surprise I will be surprised Well, no, I won't be surprised or shocked I will be Happy, I guess If they do announce it Because it's something new But it's not really something new Yeah, Mike Next up Steve, what do you think Yes, Stern is going to show. Oh, God. I'm supposed to see the monsters, aren't I? Because I think that's... But I don't know. Are they going to show it? I don't. I mean, they didn't show anything last year, and then that's when J.J.P. shows Pirates and everyone. Is it that thread that started the Dark Day for Stern, where they were sitting there talking about beer plus pinball because money? I think they are going to just show Deadpool. and because Deadpool is still new, Deadpool's still not finished, it still has a bit of spotlight to be had, I think they will reveal the next game in November. So I think they're going to be there showing the, like, 10 games they have in production at the moment, and that should be enough. Well, wasn't it, Ryan, a while ago, and I don't know whether this is something we discussed on the podcast, but something we certainly chatted about, where you had almost looked at the interval in which they were releasing them, and this would kind of seem a little bit out of their routine. Yeah, it was... Yeah, I think it was when we were trying to guess Iron Maiden, or maybe it was Deadpool, I can't remember. Yeah. But I think... Yeah, I think Stern even books, like, maybe a year in advance or however early they need to book Deadpool at Comic-Con, and then they didn't reveal it at Comic-Con probably because it wasn't ready. So I think CERN wants to have a presence at the big shows, but they don't necessarily think they need to reveal anything because they're really... They're going to sell it anyway. Yeah, they're happy with their position in the market percentage-wise, so I don't think they feel the need to compete. You know, the worst thing that can happen is someone can start some thread on Pinsize and get lots of upvotes, and then everyone will realise how silly it is a couple of months later. So if they were going to release one, so we talked about it's either going to be Munsters or Beatles. if they were going to announce either one of those titles what one do you think it would be? are you talking to me? yeah I think the same thing is going to happen that happened to John Borg two years ago where Aerosmith was meant to be out before Batman and then I remember Dirty Donnie had that book that came out and it had pictures of Aerosmith in there so everyone kind of knew Erisynch was coming because that was their release schedule. So the same thing might happen here. But who knows? Who cares? I want to be surprised. I want Stern to wake up and see either the Beatles or the Munsters. Which one? Which one? Beatles. It's going to be Beatles next. Because we've been told it's the Beatles, it'll be the Munsters. Just because the information that we've given is just so wrong most of the time. The only reason why I'm saying it is because those pricing little bits of rumours, they would only come from possibly... Or it could be made up, or it could come from distributors. If distributors are hearing about it, then it would usually be next. Anyway, it doesn't matter. We've got a bunch of puppies to get through here. Let's go to P3. What are P3 going to show? Oh, God. Who cares? Don't be like that. No, no, Steve. Stays in. You're an arsehole. Yeah, look, they are a company. We don't know how many units they've sold. I don't know. What I would love to see from P3, if you are listening, is, I don't know, a licensed add-on or a licensed theme or, I don't know, it's just really hard to do what I want them to do and that is not have everything so far up the back of the machine. Yeah, that's my problem. Everything's way too far in the back. Yeah. So it doesn't feel like you've got the same sort of variety of shots because everything's up the back. Right. So, I mean, they re-engineered the whole Pimmel machine just to have floating mechs, right, the slingshots and everything. Do you want them to add, like, say, a pop-up troll? but it pops up from the side. No, what I'm wanting is, so where the screen finishes, they've got those, I can't remember what they call them, but there's a row of like 10 of them that can pop up and they can actually, you know, eat the ball and then spit it back out, right? Yeah. What I want for them to do is have an add-on that goes to the back that actually has ramps or things that actually overlay over that and maybe even on top of the screen so it actually comes down further into the machine so you're hitting shots closer to the flipper. Ah, okay, so it kind of can float on top and it can be closer to you, but not... Yeah. Yeah, okay. Well, you know... They'll do that just for you, Marty, and you won't buy the machine. If someone can work out how to put a fucking flapping fucking monkey with lights on it in a window of the box in that tiny space, someone can work that out. Oh, that's exactly right, Laurie. You know... I think Steve has made more money than P3 at the moment. All right, let's go CDC. Will we see Monster Bash at... No. Do you have inside information, mate, that it's still not approved? I am not saying that I do or don't. Okay. I'm just saying, I'm just saying they've... What I think is, I don't think it's in their hands. I think that they're still waiting on approval. If they've got it now, great. if they don't, they won't be able to show it. So it just hard to know Okay Yes we know that there something that still needs approval We don know exactly what it is surely they can take that out of the pinball machine and show 98 of the pinball machine right steve would you would you like not buy a monster bash remake if there was like some powder coating or some rule tweak wasn't in there that that oh would i care about the remake no not really I think the topper looks kind of cool yeah but I don't know I don't know I'm on the fence about the remakes I think they're great the Attack from Mars one looks great I used to own an Attack from Mars until the remake was made and then I sold it did you sell it the right time? did you sell it before? of course not but I didn't buy it for a whole lot but I had it in storage It was just sitting there, and it's in great condition. And I saw what was happening. I was like, oh, my God. Then I played the remake in a local bar, and I thought, this is great. If I even need to play it back from Mars, I'll just come down here. And so I sold it and got an Iron Maiden. Yeah, you did. Yeah, I did. Yeah, I did. Yeah, you did. Yeah, look, Ryan, I don't know whether it's as simple as, oh, you know, there is a Kahlua glass on it that says Kahlua. We now need to make that just a glass of milk. I don't think it's as simple as something as minor than that. If they need to have full sign-off, they need to have full sign-off. Okay. That's what I thought. Well, clock is ticking. Let's see. Yeah, let's see what happens. I think it'll be there because it has to be. It just has to come. It was meant to be at Texas Pinball Festival. That's the only reasoning I have. Spooky Pinball. I guess will have all of their machines there, as many as they can, including Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle. So... Yes. The only thing I've heard a rumour of is Scott Donisi perhaps bringing his cabinet. What, an empty cabinet? Yeah, some cabinet art, maybe. I don't know. That's what I've heard. That's what someone told me. All right. We'll see. As I have said that many times on this podcast, don't believe a thing that people tell us. Haggis Pinball, Marty. Haggis Pinball, they're going to have anything there, Marty? No. They might be there. Did you know that Haggis Pinball, Marty, one of the members lives about five minutes walk from my house? Yes, I did know that. Because I told you during the week? Correct. Yes, they will be at my next Tom and Marty exclusive head-to-head, we'll have Haggis Pinball, and we will talk to them about it. They're going to have exclusive information, buddy. We should do an exclusive video on there. Yeah, we might even be in their blog as well. Awesome. Let's do it. Exciting. I don't think they're going to be showing anything at... No, of course not. Of course not. Team Pinball, Steve, what do you think about the Mafia pinball machine? Do you have your pre-order in for $7,500? Yes, for two. I don't know. Hit the flipper. Hit the flipper. Oh, my God. You know, I don't have to be nice. It's not my podcast. No, we're not nice. Yeah, oh, I don't know. It's certainly not worth it for what it is. Just completely not interested. Okay, well, since you're not being nice, Steve, I'm going to ask you. Oh, God, no, don't put me in that. It's late. Home pin. What do you think that home team's going to show at Chicago Femalesto? Oh, my God. That's the Thunderbirds guy, isn't it? Yep. Oh, God. Well, I think it's nice that you've referred to him as the Thunderbirds guy because people refer to him as other things. Well, you know, that's one of the reasons that I sent you guys the monkeys. I thought, well, shit, you guys can't even get a Thunderbirds down there. It's going to Canada. I might as well get you something first. That works. Pinball Brothers. I have a quick question. Do you guys like the Thunderbirds? Like, did you watch it as kids? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, did you grow up watching it? Yeah, I did. I'm too young for that. No, I did. I absolutely loved Thunderbirds. Thunderbirds was the show I watched before going to school. So it was ritual. It was the last thing that I would do before having to drag myself off to school. So I freaking loved watching Thunderbirds of the Morning. Yeah, I found out. I found out that my kids, my seven-year-old, watches Thunderbirds, the remake, and she knows all about it. I'm like, what? You know more about it than me. You educate me. Yeah. I always thought it was creepy. Just like marionettes and smoking marionettes. I was just never into it. And I saw it a couple times as a kid, but I don't think I'm speaking for most people here in the States that it wasn't that big of a deal. No, it certainly wasn't. Just like Munsters. Munsters wasn't a big deal in Australia, you know. Yes, it was. Yeah. It was not. It fucking was. Okay. It was. So, no, honestly, because when did the Munsters come out? I don't know, 1920s? Wasn't that, yeah, like 20s, maybe the 30s. They came out in the 50s or 60s, but in the 70s, what you've got to remember was there wasn't a lot of TV. And because of that, a lot of shows were repeated on TV. Munsters was on Australian TV throughout the 70s every single week of the year without fail. Munsters was huge in Australia. What a horrible existence. This is just before MeloPens existed. I am not saying I enjoyed any of it. Marty, I'm with you. They played it all the time here on TV, like the reruns with Gilligan's Island and all that. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, it's the same thing. We've obviously got a Gilligan's machine, but if someone said, hey, I'm going to do a Gilligan's Island pinball machine today, people would go, what? Is that even a thing? Well, it was. I get it. A lot of people that we speak to now weren't alive back then, Ryan. I know. I know, we always complain about it, you know, got to make pinball machines for kids. No, you don't, because no one buys them. They will sell more monsters than they sell Deadpool because it's old and everyone's old. Okay, pinball brothers, let's skip them. Okay, the last two, the big ones, possibly. Deep Root. What will Deep Root divulge at the Chicago Pinball Expo? Steve. Nothing. No, I'm serious. Well, here's a question for you, because I haven't been paying attention. Everyone's guessing it might be back to the future, but is there serious consideration it might be diehard? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a little tease by Jeff from This Week in Pinball coming in the thread and saying, you think I A, and maybe he was instructed possibly to say that, to steer the conversation away. Jeff is a really clever person, right? We know he's not going to stumble across that and put that out there. That was absolute bait. Oh, well, then I was baited. That's the one thing I saw. So I'm going with Back to the Future. Yep. I don't think they are going to talk about their titles at all. They have an hour-long seminar. Between, like, seven people that they have there? I think they're going to spend 45 minutes of that defending having John Popadute there. No. Defending. It's facetious, Ryan, obviously. But I'm still curious to know. Like, you know, Ryan and I have spoken about this offline as well, about, you know, how's it going to be with John Popadiuk there? And you know what? At the seminar, he's going to be fine. But he's going to be walking around the expo and people are going to be pointing at him going, there he is, he's the guy, he's the one that stole everyone's money. This is what's going to happen. That's my prediction. No one does anything because... Because I remember there's that thread, I think it was about Chicago Pinball Expo, where some guy was playing and he was behind two women and he was screaming and calling them cows. And he was just being the biggest turd ever. And someone took a picture of him on Pinside and then everyone was like, well, why didn't you say anything? And oh gosh, the thread was so long. It's just like the story of what happens at Pinball Expo. People are upset about something, but no one ever says anything. So it'll be an interesting talk. Nevertheless, I think they've got a lot of talent there, so it'll be interesting to see what they say. Now, the one I left for last is American Pinball, because we know they are going to bring the Oktoberfest pinball machine. Steve, you're our U.S. correspondent. How big is Oktoberfest in California? Is it big? Oh, yeah. Yeah, do you like beer? And pretzels and all that, yeah. We know about it, you know. I don't know. I go back. I was listening to you guys when they talked about unthemed and themed and all that, and I think it's great. You know, it's like junkyard, whitewater things everybody was talking about. There's no theme there or no license there. Yeah, I think it could be cool. I would hope it's got lots of toys and lots of fun stuff to do in there Marty, thoughts on what we're going to see from Oktoberfest? I don't know I... Let's just wind it back one second We did see a picture this week that was, we'll say leaked because it wasn't meant to come out before Expo and it was the picture of Otto the bartender and she who who doesn't deserve a name because I can't remember her name and she looks really weird, on the flyer. Marty? Oh, we've been arguing about this all week. And then we've literally been talking about this all week. I don't mind her face at all. I kind of get the Tony Island-type art style that they've gone with. But, you know, whatever. What do I think? I think people are going to be pleasantly surprised with Oktoberfest. I think that everyone has hopefully gotten over the theme. The theme got leaked out a while ago, and the uprising over that has stopped, which is good. You don't want to come out like dialed in, and then people aren't talking about how awesome the game is. People are talking about, oh, the theme is stupid, mobile phone. If you say the theme is stupid now... I hope your dad would like that too. Yeah. If you say the theme is stupid now, then you're six months late to the conversation, so no one wants to hear what you have to say. So, good, let's push to the side. I think the only thing that people could possibly complain about maybe is the art because we don't know what the art's going to be like, and we just saw that little tidbit. I think Joe Bolsa is a great designer. He designs some very unique Kimo machines like Wizard of Oz and Simpsons Kimo Party that I really like to shoot. He's had a lot more time on this, Marty, than he had on Houdini. That's right. I think there will be absolutely zero tight shots on the place for pills, and I think it'll be an amazingly fun game to play. Yeah. And they keep talking about the fact that, you know, it's not just about beers and boobs. I'm not sure that I'm actually quoting them directly, but I think what they're trying to say is it's going to be more about the festival side of Oktoberfest. Do you think if they go too far one-way money that people will complain that it needs more boobs? Yes. Oh, man. You know, wow. Yes? Yes. People are going to complain that there's too many boobs. People are going to complain that there's not enough boobs. Boobs, boobs, freaking boobs. Okay. I mean, fuck me about boobs. Seriously. Just, I don't know. I just, you know, it's probably a cop-out for me to say, oh, you know, you just can't win. but I think it's up to these companies to know where the tolerance points are and maybe take a couple of steps over. That's all. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, so American Pinball are unveiling October 1st, I believe, on Thursday night. Yeah, we're going to have our episode next week and thanks for everyone that reached out to us. I kind of wanted to be our roving reporters. We've chosen someone that we might also, if we have time during the day, I'm not sure if we will, do a bunch of different kind of interviews with some people, some five-minute Jeff Teal stuff interviews to see everyone's reaction. But, yeah, we look forward to it. And there might be possibly an episode 64, what are we up to, 64? Yeah. 65. 64B, maybe. We'll see. There might be an exclusive interview that we have sometime during Expo against Marty's will. Marty wants to be part of the non-webisode. Completely against my will. Okay, let's ask Steve. Steve, if we had an exclusive interview during Pinball Expo, say it was Deep Root or say it was Pinball Brothers, whatever, and this was information that no one really knew and it happened during Expo, would you want that on the night that it happens, if we could interview the person, or would you want it as part of the normal interview, the normal scheduled show on Monday? Oh, no, no. Yeah, you should do it then. Full money. I win. There you go. We should do it on the Monday. That's exactly right, what he said. If you want to have a breaking story, yeah, sure, go for it. Yeah, if you want to. And you would appreciate that, right? Because it's new information. Sorry, mate. I win. Oh, my gosh, guys. You don't have to realize, As we're sitting here talking about all these companies, I've got Ned online. Should I get Ned into the call to see if we can get some juicy nuggets home? For sure. All right. Let me just add him to the call. Hey, Ned, is that you on the line? What do you want this time? Yeah, we were just talking about Chicago Pinball Expo. I've already been. From the future. But, yeah, back to the future. Talking about Deep Root things last week, do you happen to know what the 80s theme from Deep Root is going to be? What the fuck do you think? Of course I know what it is. They asked me for advice. So, are you willing to divulge that? What do I look like? A fucking idiot? I'm the pinball that banks you as the graffiti man. I'm keeping this one secret. Do I have to say please again? It wouldn't hurt. Please. You're so pathetic It's not back to the future What other 80s theme could it possibly be? Who was the biggest star from the 80s? Think about it, me dad E.T.? Little Shivered Up Alien? More than one movie Indiana Jones? For fuck's sakes, are you an idiot Sylvester Stallone! Okay So what movie is it going to be? Rambo? Think again, bigger Bigger. I was born in the 80s, so I wasn't watching those movies. Rocky? Child's Play. Bigger! I give up, man. Just tell me, please. His greatest movie, over the top. The greatest room wrestling movie ever. God, you're dumb. Okay, I don't know that movie, Ned, so once again, I'm actually doubting that you know anything. I feel like this might be a big waste of time, but... Oh, yeah, and you're a fucking expert. Well, I know that the Chicago Pinball Hall of Fame coming up, it's kind of been announced, and there'll be a bigger announcement soon on the details of it. Can you share any information about that? Of course. I know everything. Going to have all these great trophies, all the second place awards Josh Sharpe ever won. It's going to fill a whole frickin' hall. Your voice is breaking a little bit. What? My voice? What's wrong with it? Any other information about the Pimple Hall of Fame? Yeah, yeah, the greatest collection of Gary Stern things you'll ever see. Pimple machines? Oh, no, idiot. Empty vodka bottles. Is that all there is in the Hall of Fame? Oh, no, really nice. They've got Roger Sharp as your tour guide. It's a 15-minute tour that takes three hours to explain. I know all about that one, so maybe that is a bit of information I could say. I don't know what's going on with you, Mike, but just lastly, Ned, who's going to win Expo? Me, I'm the greatest. No, I meant what company, what company is going to shine? It's easy. It's going to be the best thing you'll ever see. Hey, what the fuck's wrong with my mic? Is that you, Pete? I've got to go. Hey, hey, hey, you stay on, dude. You've been doing all these drive-by shootings on us and sending all these nasty messages on Facebook, trolling us. It's time for you to answer to your sins, mate. What's going on? We need a wine. All right, Petey, look. Sorry for screaming at you, but look. I don't understand why you're so angry. Maybe you can explain it to us. The world isn't horrible. The world doesn't hate you. Why can't we, head-to-head pimple, be friends with Pimpside Petey? What did I say? Like, we're gonna be best friends all of a sudden? No way I hear the way you talk to Martin You know, buddy, buddy Like, friends are cool to have Forget it Petey I'm all open arms And I'm gonna extend the olive branch to you And let you know that I love you, man I'm here for you I got something to say to you too, Ryan Yeah? Fuck off! And there we go. So, NJ Ned with Pimpside Petey all along. He was blowing us, mate. What a surprise that was. So much effort. That's the zero Marty laugh. Oh, just loved it the first time. Move it on. Alright. All right. That brings us to our next topic of the conversation. Everyone's going crazy about this, Marty and Steve. It's the Zen Pinball reproductions of the Belly Williams titles. And, Steve, it's really good that you're on for this, Steve, because you're a musician, you're an artist, so you, out of everyone, would probably value the integrity of an original, right? Maybe a yes, though? Yes, of course. Yes. What's your question? Well, Zen Pinball have censored the machines that are being released for Pinball FX3 so they can keep their, what is it, like an E rating? Like the youngest audience rating. They've also said that they believe that the Pinball Arcade was actually in breach of their classification. So, don't know if you know, they've taken some blood off some things. They've covered up some wenches. I don't know, stuff like that. Taken a cigar off someone. Really? Yeah. This is what's happened. Removed gambling. There was, I think, a gambling in the background of medieval madness. It's just anything that it doesn't, you know... They've left the king as a queen, so there's a homophobic little thing there that seems to be okay, but not anything else. Not like how they hit off a dragon. Do you already own the game on Thimble Arcade? Yeah. So, look, I'm not interested in this, but a lot of people, well, so what's actually happened is they've had to sort of, I think people notice it or they've had to confess that this is what's happened. A lot of people have been up in arms about it, saying, oh, you know, how dare they do that, you know, they should be preserving the original. And then some of them in Zen Studios came out and said, well, you know, really it's only the vocal minority that they're complaining. Yeah? You don't care, money? No, no. I don't care either. I just saw people going all crazy about it. People have been going nuts. You know, if... Okay. Ryan. If you were interested in a Medieval Madness remake, the actual machine that came out, and they had censored that, would you care? Yes. Because it's a real pinball machine. Exactly right. Because it's a real pinball machine. And also, it's a $6,000, $7,000 machine as opposed to a $3 to $5 download. Yeah. Steve, any other thoughts on this before we move on to the next? I would agree with that. It's kind of like when they redid Christopher Lloyd on the Addams Family just to get that thing printed on Pinball Arcade. And at the end of the day, I don't care. Because it's just on your computer. It doesn't cost that much money. Is he not in the Pinball Arcade? No, I think to get the rights to do it they had to change his face down by the flippers because he didn't agree to sign off Well there you go, I didn't even notice so if you hadn't told me I would have never have known No fear as well no fear when they do like it's time for skydiving with Glenn blah blah like some American dude that I don't know Jummy Duval whatever his name is and they censored that out on I think one or two of them because they didn't get permission from whoever that person is Interesting. But there was a funny comment that I saw on one of the websites from some random person. I didn't write down her name or the username. He said, I'm all in favour for the modifications. While playing Medieval Madness as a kid, just seeing the cigar and the bloody sword was enough to send me into a chain-smoking rampage of knife-fighting and edge-gang warfare from which I'm just now recovering from. I'm glad the current and future generations won't be exposed to such cartoon items and spiral down to the depths of such artwork that such artwork sent me for those years. I'm glad someone is thinking of the children. So thank you, random person, that I didn't know. Yeah, because you are hilarious. You won the internet today, fine. He got at least seven upvotes on, I think it was Artists Taking the Count, so I bet he felt pretty cool about that. So shall we talk about code updates, Ryan? I love talking about code updates. Spit and Polish. Yep, Batman codes come up. added gas attack multiball mode for completing one TV mode from season one, one TV mode from season two, and one TV mode from season three. This is selectable along with Batusi multiball and Robin's Holy multiball. That is the game. Super exciting stuff. Super exciting. What about the... Steve, you've got Iron Maiden, Wizard of Oz. What are the other two machines that you have? Theater of Magic and Indiana Jones. Okay. Okay. Um, Hobbicoad, yes. I copied and pasted. That went nowhere. Were you waiting to say that I had a Hobbit? Well, I was waiting for you to say you have a Batman so we can finally talk to people about Batman and why it's so good because we just haven't had, well, we had people on that I know like the machine, like Josh Sharpe, but we forgot to ask him, so, and Keith, I was playing it the other night with a friend of mine out at a bar. It's fun. Yeah, I think it's cool. The fact that he keeps redoing all the rules, or not redoing, but building on it, I think it's great. The fact that he's finishing the rules that they did. Yeah, he just keeps building on it. Eventually he'll be done. Eventually, yeah. Hobbit code, yeah. You edited all of the notes out, Marty, so I forgot what's actually in there, but there is a Hobbit beta code that is on the private Jesse Jack forums. I will probably not update my machine because it's on site and I don't want to put a beta on my... Yeah, look, I've got the thing at it. Really, I did say spit and polish, because that's really what it is. You know, fix our concern mode champs to not reset to default at power-up. There's at least, like, 15 or 20 points there, Marty. Don't read the dumbest one. Okay, okay. That's like reading the dumbest one on the Aerosmith. Added some orders that were missing from our concern modes. Added music for Super Spinner. Fixed Feast Frenzy to include a grace period for scoring. Added Feast Frenzy and Super Spinner champs. changed colors used for the ring button to make them more distinct added adjustment to inhibit beast hurry up during book modes changed book mode hide beast to inhibit beast hurry up on inline all right you're in double scoring for beast hurry up added a few display effects in various places made a bunch of small changes to existing display effects i'm halfway through you in spit and polish okay added some new speech there you go Next, let's go to something that I know absolutely nothing about. There was a post on Pinside where someone said something like, hey, I've been listening to interviews from Primus, the band, and they've been talking about an upcoming pinball machine that they have in interviews. And I didn't look at the thread since then, but it's a couple of hundred posts long. Steve or Marty, does anyone know anything about Primus, the band? Yes. Okay, good. Yes. Marty? Well, to most people, they wrote the theme song to sound South Park or Les Clayton. Ah, that must be really cool then. Going down South Park, going ahead, my drop's on air. But here's the question. Marty, you bought Iron Maiden, sight unseen, and then I heard like a few weeks back that you're getting sick of the music. How dare you listen to my podcast? How dare you even say that? That's the best part of the game. You can't play the game loud enough. But if you got sick of that music, I think Primus would top that. I saw them in concert once, and it's interesting music. It's very talented music, but it's interesting. And I don't know how long you could play a pinball machine listening to it. Is it more hardcore? Is it more like an alternative than Iron Maiden? Yeah, in fact, you know, I was surprised because I haven't listened to Maiden in a while, and once I got this machine and started playing it, Iron Maiden is very melodic for as heavy as they were when, you know, we all thought it was devil music back when we were kids. Primus is very, like, atonal sort of, it's just weird music, but it's got a really cool groove to it, a lot of his stuff, or their stuff. Okay, that's how everything's happened to me. Yeah, yeah. And Les, as a bass player, he's amazing. Okay. The funny thing is, Dirty Donnie himself and Zombie Yeti have both made Primus artwork. I know Zombie Yeti has done, yeah, geek posters. I'm not sure about Dirty Donnie. If you just Google Dirty Donnie Primus, there's stuff, but I'm not sure if it was officially promoted by them or anything. So if there was a Primus film machine, it would be very interesting to see who would do it, because I'm guessing they'll both be gagging for that title money. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so it'd be a fight to the death. Or maybe they could both collaborate and do it. They're the first Dirty Johnny slash... What if they re-team an old machine? Do enough people like Primus? Are they that low on the... Five people like them. Okay. Yeah, I don't know. That's a very, like, specialized sort of band. It is specialized, yeah. That's why they have to have a really good designer on there, right? Keith Elwin is on Primus. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The next story, Marty, I'm going to ask you, we might just gloss over this. A bunch of people have messaged me, including Nick from Pimble Party, but also two people that are not into pinball said, hey, have you watched Drunk History? They did an episode on pinball with Roger Sharp. Yeah, Roger Sharp. It was out ages ago. Oh, it was out ages ago. It's not a new thing. This is not a new thing. Did we already talk about this? No, we haven't, but this has been old. It is one of the most hilarious things ever. And why do I watch it? Do I need Stan to watch this? It sounds like you need Stan. Oh, really? Maybe. Stan's like a shit version of Netflix. It's a different version of Netflix Okay Yeah, no, have you not seen it? No Oh, it's hilarious Okay, I need to get it I thought I might have even seen it on YouTube YouTube, okay I need to find it Yeah, no, absolutely It is, I mean, I think there's a series of drunk history they do for a lot of things Why do they call it drunk history? Do they literally get drunk and talk about something? Absolutely smashed them in trying to recreate and talk about historical events. Because the funniest thing was the guy who's not into pinball said, hey, I know you have a podcast. You should interview this guy called Roger Sharp. I'm like, done it. Like, just... Did it. So, did they interview him drunk or is that part... No. No. No. They are telling the story and it's been a while since I've saw it, but I think they're telling... And then maybe they're cutting into like a reenactment of it or something. Something like that. Okay. But they are telling the story And it's just It's like two blokes going Oh this fucking guy Are they Aussie? No I don't know But it's like two Aussie blokes going Oh this Rogers And you know he saved Pinball And that's all they're doing They're just absolutely blind Telling the history of Pinball Okay Sweet Yeah So Alright Next section buddy So we were, I say we but me in particular were called out on the Slam Tilt Podcast this week, that is the Slam Tilt Podcast because apparently they were not happy with my comments saying that Bally Machines of the Azies were better than Sternachance and basically said that I was wrong they are massive fighting words right so I'm putting it out there. I would put the top 10 machines from Bali from late 70s and 80s so early solid state against the top 10 stern machines of that era and they would kill those stern machines. And to give you Is this going to be a face off? Wait, we should do this as a face off. It will be a mega face off. But you know, I've already got my list. I'm trying to narrow it down to 10, I've got 13. There's so many of them. There's so many of them. And they literally, like, they got higher ratings on IPDB. They sold, like, three times the amount that Stern did. So, I think Stern, you've got the exclusivity, but they are not better games, guys. Okay. Let's do this. Let's do this. I mean, I might not even be on your side, because I haven't divulged, you know. No, I know. We're going to talk about you know, your ever-expanding Stern Electronics Collection, but... I'll pretend to be on your side, Marnie. Yeah, you would have to, somehow. This is head-to-head versus slam-to. We have to figure out a way of doing this, though. A team-side vote. The first time you're playing any of these games is when you're buying them. Like, a lot of the Bally machines I'm going to talk about. But I just want to say, I'm not actually a massive Bally fan of this era. My favourite games from this era are Williams. I love Williams games from this era. but my point I was making to you was these Stern games, they're very collectible and they're low run but they're not really the better game, guys. So we're going to have to do a mega face-off. The problem is the Stern games, I mean, they made like 29 of them, I think 30, were made from 1977 to 1985. So are your belly games between that era or are you just going all of the 80s? Because obviously if you go past 1985, there's better technology. 78 to 83 for Bali. Oh, okay. Cool. So I'm just doing that era. I think they might have changed names after that. So it really, it starts with Evel Knievel. Letting you know now I wouldn't have that in my list. Or, you know, 78, Powerplay, Mata Hari, right? Mm-hmm. and goes all the way up to Baby Pac-Man and BMX. Okay. But... You mentioned this really once. I'm telling you, the start and the end. But in the middle, you've got some absolute legends of pinball. Don't worry. Stern has Orbiter One and all that junk. Steve, do you have an opinion before this ends up being like a month-long duel between Head to Head and Slangtail? I thought Pinball was created in 1993 exactly he gives a fuck about these old games except Orbiter 1 I have played Orbiter 1 and that you know what can you say about that game yeah it's a piece of shit what you can say is play it once have a smile yeah you play it once and you're like what the hell is going on and then that's about it that's it just like the Pinball Circus there's a group of people that are trying to be creative and I don't know why. I know. Exactly. Both of those games. Yeah. Yeah. So there you go. So the challenge is out there, guys. Take my challenge. It's on. Okay. Cool. I look forward to it. Yep. Haggis Pinball Money. Yes. Episode four is out. Have you watched it yet? Yes. I think he was out in the pastures talking about something. I'm just waiting for him to actually start talking about the pinball machine. you know 10 out of 10 yeah no they their episodes are now re-released without that insane loud that weird frequency that gives you a headache so you can't actually follow their their journey we will probably find out before others how serious they are in making this pinball machine because as I said I found out that one of the guys involved in Haggar's Pinball lives right around the corner from me literally I could walk to his house and I invited him along to my tournament this week and he said yes, I can even drive you if you want and all of them are coming, there's three members, he's expanded already Martin, he thought it was two, now three, so we're going to have him there and everyone can kind of pick their brain and it's exciting because as much as Australian Homepin he's in China we disowned him a long time ago right after our interview right after our exclusive interview episode 8 oh gosh this is a prime money for social media what oh this is my favorite part of the show liar are we finally going to get a Ghostbusters color DMD last year Randy, Mr. Color DMD started teasing because they always show a Color DMD for the first time at Expo, it's a reveal they do and last year they teased that it was going to be Ghostbusters and the last one was, we came, we saw we kept this ask but the ask was the A in the ask was the insignia so it was Star Trek this year they're doing the same thing so maybe they're not trolling this time and Ghostbusters just absolutely screams for a colour D&D because it was the last game. Am I mistaken in that? Or was it the last game before they went to LCD? You don't know? Steve, do you know? I'm pretty sure it is. Steve, you beat me. What do you think about Ghostbusters? I don't like it. Okay. But it would look good with a colour D&D, right? Am I right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it would look great. It needs a colour D&D. Yeah, I like all the other colour game. I just don't like playing it. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. So I can see that they've released We Came, We Saw. It's got like a hazard sort of background. Yeah. The first, where it says We Came, it says this thing's familiar. The next one says sensing some trust issues with this one. The problem is Ghostbusters Forever has been teased on the CERN of the union update to be receiving an update, and they've kind of pushed it back and back and back, and I think KISS is going to be next, and then Ghostbusters. So any work that they do is going to need to be tweaked again, which they don't, I guess, have a problem with, but they seem to want to release Color D&Ds when it's finished to minimize re-releasing ROMs. So we'll see. By the time this episode is out, people will already know. Yeah, probably. What's next, Marty? So apparently you can win an entire streaming rig via Jack Danger. What's that about, Ryan? I think he'll be at the Chicago Pinball Expo doing a talk, possibly. And, yeah, people are up in their game, man. You've got an entire streaming rig. He's literally creating competition against himself in his own Expo seminar. That's like Jeff when he's up there doing the Twitch thing saying, here are all of my sources. Please go and create another. This way you can pinball. yeah I think that he knows nobody can compete with his secret sauce his genetics his good looks his what I've heard of you Matt no did you give him a bag Marty yeah I was going to say why didn't you edit that from the last episode yeah exactly mate you're leaving that in motherfucker No, I wanted to. Ryan told me to keep it in. That's true, actually. And that was the funniest bit of the episode. All right. Stern are apparently doing the last run ever of Metallica's again because they already did the last run about a year ago and did the last run a year before that. Apparently this time it's for realsies. This is for real. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Steve, why don't you have a Metallica? Why do you have an Iron Maiden over a Metallica? You know what? That's a good question. Because I've never owned a Stern before. This is my first Stern. Oh, okay. Yeah, and I've played Metallica enough. I think it's cool. I really like it with the hammer and the rising cross and all that. But why do I have Iron Maiden? Keith Owen. And Iron Maiden. Both of those together. Okay. What makes you like Keith Elwin? Because you're not a tournament player, are you? No, but he's a San Diego guy. Ah. You know what's funny? If I can tell you a quick little story about Keith Elwin. When I didn't know who he was, when that movie Special and Lit came out, maybe like six, seven years ago, maybe probably longer, I was on a plane watching it, and I was going from New York City back here to San Diego. And when... I didn't know anything about your tournaments and nothing about that. And so I watched the whole movie. I get home, and I've got my Indiana Jones sitting there, and I needed a part for it. And I was just going to work on it on this vacation I was on. So I call up this local company, and I ask them about the part. They're like, yeah, come on up and get it. So I go up to this place where they're working on pinball machines. I say, yeah, I called about this part. And this woman goes, oh, yeah, hold on a second. She goes, Keith, Keith, this guy needs a part for his Indiana Jones. and I go in the back and in this warehouse Keith Owen pops around the corner he's working on this machine and I'm staring at him and I'm just like you're Keith Owen and he's like yeah he was real shy about it I'm like no wait a minute you're like the greatest pinball player in the world and he's like yeah and I'm like I just watched you on a movie and it was like I had seen Harrison Ford or something and that was my story with Keith, but yeah, he came over and he worked on the machine, and since then I know who he is, obviously, and it's the idea that he put his design in with Iron Maiden. I thought, yeah, I've got to get it. I played it once, and it was cool, so I bought it. Especially when, was that the one that was kind of about, I mean, it was about a whole bunch of things, like personalities in pinball, but there was that whole section about Papa, right? and he ended up winning. I think Lyman Sheets beat Keith. Is that what happened? Possibly. I remember him saying that he thought the movie made them all look kind of like dorks. Yeah. Ah, yeah, okay. That's the one. Wow. People have been lying about that, yeah. Man, that movie was depressing, man. I remember saying, Hey, Chanel, do you want to watch a movie documentary about pinball? She's like, sure. And she's like, are you going to turn into that? Yeah. I enjoyed the movie, but... No, go ahead. No, you go. No, that's all I have to say. I love watching it. I think it covers the history of it well. When it gets to the tournament stuff, it's not that interesting, but I think the history of it being a Pro Vision game and Roger Sharpenel, I think it's a great film for that section of it. Yeah, I agree. Actually, I've watched it many times. In fact, it's my go-to movie when I'm going over to the States and I'm competing. I always watch that movie on the way over. Mine is Tilt the Battle Today Fimble. I absolutely love that more than... But I guess those are the two famous ones. And Tilt's also on my iPad as well. But, you know, Tilt is one topic that goes for two hours. Right. The other one's got some sort of different themes. But, you know, Keith was right. They sort of made everybody look like dorks, not just at the tournament. But, yeah, anyway, it's still a good film. Yeah, it is. Talking about Keith Elwin, here's our next topic on Social Media Watch. Keith Elwin, George Gomez and Jodie Dankberg were in California. California! And they were at the Hogwarts little thingy at Universal Studios. So, ooh, what does that mean, Artie? Ooh, ooh. Oh, don't be like that. Steve, what he's doing there, obviously, just in case you didn't notice, and I'm just going to spell it out, he's making it sound like I am the only person that wants a Harry Potter fucking pinball machine. Right, and you want it in a really big cabinet too, like a Hercules cabinet, that's what I remember. Thank you. So, like, I'm the only one that wants this. It has topped the polls on just about every poll where people say, what is your dream thing? Harry Potter. Do you think they were trolling by taking that picture or do you think they were just trying to have a nice day? Has Stern ever trolled before? Have a nice day. You know, any of those people in that picture ever trolled before? Jodie Dankberg is the master troll He is a troll In a good troll I don mean like In a good way yes In a nasty horrible funny on the internet way Yes yes yes yes, yes. Good save. The last one is, well, we got this as a submission. People are now submitting Marty to social media watch. So, I was watching Buffalo Pinball, because I do that every day. I watch pinball online and they're, Is it Rudy? I think Rudy went to fix something in his pinball machine and found a soda that he left there at some other time. Hilarious. We will leave that in the show notes. Awesome. Social media-wise, the best segment we have. By far. The second best segment is... Pimple Amp. We renamed it a couple of weeks ago, unofficially. Unofficially. And, Steve, you have survived long enough. It is now 2.30 a.m. there, and you will play Pink Slam with us. All right, Jesus. You know what? When I said I wanted to play, that was, like, months ago, and now you're into, like, 101 to 200. I know. I'm like, fingers crossed, Wizard of Oz. Fingers crossed, Wizard of Oz. I'll play, but someone's got to be on my team. For sure. We'll do it that way. But let's just recap on last week. So last week we had NBA Fast Break versus Radical. It was very close this time, mate. Do you know why it was close? Why? Because of the gif. You had the... I couldn't stop watching that goat in your clip. Like, honestly, one of those... I don't know if you've ever had those things where people have posted things on Facebook and it's just a gif that's repeating and you can't look away. This was one of those. I couldn't stop watching it. So, I got 37 votes. You got 35 votes. I won anyway. But an NBA fast break is a better game than radicals. Do you know why NBA won? Because every single person that voted has one for sale at the moment that is trying to sell one. Yeah, probably. And no one wants to buy because the market is flooded with NBA fast breaks. Fair enough. All right. Steve, would you like to pick someone? And you could probably pick Marty because he's destroyed me like five times in a row at the moment. Or would you like a random number generator to choose from? No, because Marty flew all that way to give me a kangaroo nut sack. That is true. I will have to pick him as my teammate. Yeah. Nice. All right. I'm going to generate a number, and the first one will be mine. Please generate a number from 100 to 200. Okay. Okay. 190. Oh, God. God damn it. Godzilla! Godzilla! Oh, Godzilla. Haven't we already done Godzilla? No, of course we haven't done Godzilla. We just started smiling. Wait, what number was it? 190. Were you guys looking on the Pinside page? Yeah, but then you've got to go to the next page. Yeah, I see Heavy Metal Meltdown. That's 191. Do I need to update the page? Maybe because I'm a day behind you guys. In the future, Godzilla's coming out. Is it Godzilla when you're at the party? Yeah, it's Godzilla 190. Go ahead. What the hell's going on? Okay. I don't know. It says 190, heavy metal meltdown. Please generate a number from 100 to 200. All right. 149. I swear to you, I was just looking at 149. Are you serious? I hope this comes up. I swear to you, I was just staring at it. Ladies and gentlemen. Roller Games. Roller Games. Roller Games. Oh, Ryan, you're fucked. You are fucked. Yes. Yes. Okay, so who, okay, Marty will probably talk about how much he loves Roller Games because he bought the pinball machine. and Steve, if you want, you can talk about how much Godzilla sucks or you can continue to talk about how good Roller Games is. It's up to you. Oh, gosh. All right. So, Marty, do you want to start us off? Oh, everyone knows my love of Roller Games and not just because of the cheesy theme. The theme is cheese overload and that is what's so great about it. But this game is so amazing that even fantastic companies like GamePro, Slice, Thermos, ShareData, and Pepsi put their name to this machine. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Yeah, exactly right. So, okay, it's a Steve Ritchie game. It's got flow. It's got the first original warp ramp. But it's got this really cool feature where it's got a magnet, the MagnaSafe. So you go into the vertical up kicker on the left, pushes the ball all the way over the other side, stops on a magnet at the end of the flipper. Don't flip. Flip! The ball goes up that freaking wall and around and locks some balls and comes around, does some loops. Light show goes off. When you lock three balls, they have this little sort of loop that comes around, and all the animation stops and the light stops, and it just goes, Roll that games. Roll that games. Right at that moment, you are feeling like massive. Oh, my God. I love this game. It kicks butt. Do you see what it did there? No, you wouldn't know because you've never played it. I played it. I'll talk about how she did soon. Go. Okay. But first, I want to talk about Godzilla. Marty, did you know that Godzilla is the meanest, greenest game on the street, mate? and Godzilla appears as if he's coming and... Coming. As if he's bursting out of the place of Marty, just like Jurassic Park, except not as good. It's quite funny because on the flyer, it says nothing in this game, so they say stuff like nuclear captive ball, right? It's a captive ball, but they put nuclear in front of it, so it's really cool. Now, they only made about 500 of these games, so it's quite rare. it's you know the software is not great but it's it's godzilla man it's it was after an amazing 1998 movie starring matthew project what a great what a great great movie where they and then they they realize oh yeah godzilla's like he's a good guy after all and he's got a heartbeat because his heart was so big you know beating so hard they could feel it and they're like oh my gosh i'm gonna cry what a shit movie but a great machine i give you godzilla which I've never played, but I love Godzilla. It's so good, Marty, that they're going to make another Pimple Machine. That's how good it is. You know a Pimple Machine is good, a theme is good when they make another. But you said the rules were good and you've never played it, so how do you know the rules are good? I've watched streaming footage of it at the Buffalo Summer Open a year ago before they had enough of everyone bitching and they decided to call it quits. Steve, over to you. That's all you have, right? That's all I have. I'm sorry. It has monster ramps. Just the normal stuff that's in a pinball machine, like slings, just put, like, green nuclear, you know, a fierce Godzilla ball divoter. It's just a ball divoter, but put fierce Godzilla in front of it, and it sounds cool. Well, Ryan, Roller Games is pure Williams pinball at its best, featuring genuine Williams parts, craftsmanship, With a mechanical and technical reliability that is unmatched in the field. Mic drop. Is that all? Yeah, that's all I got. That's all I got. Come on. You don't want to talk about how bad Godzilla is? Marty's itching for it. Come on. Godzilla is okay. But God, if they remade it, oh, man, what a good game that would be. Only they would make it. If only they would make it. Okay, Roller Games. I'm going to tell you why Roller Games suck. Roller Games suck because they only did, like, one or two revisions of the code software, and then they gave up, all right? They gave up because the show got cancelled. And, yes, the show is hilarious. I watched it, and it is funny. It is, like, what I want wrestling to be, but wrestling sucks. There's a whole bunch of bugs. What's his name? Ron from Science of the Podcast, he knows what I'm talking about. He's OCD enough to know all the little quirks. Go for the wall. They had a whole segment on their show the other day where I think it was Soren emailed in and said that this go for the wall feature just happens randomly at chance. The magnet where it's like flip, don't flip, guess what? It's like whirlwinds. Half of the games that you play out on site, the flippers aren't strong enough. So it's a massive tease. He's like, here, I'm going to stage the ball for you perfectly, and you're not going to get out the fucking ramp because, you know, your footballers aren't strong enough. Yes, Steve Ritchie is a good designer. No, this is not his greatest game. And Marty, you love this game so much that you destroyed it. Yes, that's right, ladies and gentlemen. Marty destroyed a pinball machine, his favorite pinball machine, and re-themed it into God knows what for a client that ended up never talking to them again. If you don't vote for me, then you're voting for the mindless Tad Taki destruction of an old machine. All I did was I put a decal on the outside, which can be peeled off, and I changed the sack glass, but put the Translight in the machine, so they can put it back to its original That's all you did? I thought you meant like you did a whole playful swap and changed the sounds around. I was a fucking liar, Marty. I didn't like the client that much. And they got rid of it a week after. I'm glad I didn't do anything more than just that. Where is that Kimmel machine, Marty? We need to find it and save it, rescue it. Yeah, I don't care about it anymore. Exactly. Because the game sucks. I win. Okay, that'll be up on Facebook. But what Steve was going to say about the club after he mentioned that was a thing of mine, was how repetitive Godzilla is, and just a decent-ish layout with really uninspired rules. Okay? Just a terrible game. We'll see. I'm going to have the most epic Godzilla gif ever. I'm sorry, I stepped away, guys, but I had one more point about Godzilla. I wanted to say that it's repetitive. Repetitive. Oh, did you already cover that? Sorry, I know the game like the back of my hand. And whatever else Marty probably said. You said you don't know any games before 1993. This is 1998 Sega Classic. Sega was actually destroying Battlelands at the time. Oh my gosh. Battlelands making such games as Medieval Madness and Godzilla just absolutely destroyed it. Yeah. Yeah, you know exactly. Alright, Steve. We are going to talk about boring tournaments for the next half an hour or so. Oh my god. We will finally let you go and go to sleep. Thank you very much for joining us. It's been a pleasure. Oh my gosh, yeah. It's been so much fun. Thanks, guys. And honestly, keep up the good work. Your podcast is so much fun and the longer the better because I need something to listen to when I'm working on these things. That was one of the first emails that we exchanged. You were like, Yeah, man, when I'm sitting here slaving away making these Red Witch mods. Yeah, listen to the podcast, though. I'm glad. We're going to get Roger Sharp on every week. Yeah, no, you guys, you're doing great. Just keep it up, and it's a pleasure to talk to you. Thanks, mate. Thanks, Steve. I appreciate it. My monkey mod installed on my machine, and we will do a video for you. Fantastic. All right, I'll talk to you guys soon, then. Awesome. Thanks, mate. Bye. Bye. So, is it time for This Week in Pinball? Sure. What did we both get up to this week? Oh my gosh, there's so much stuff. I know. Well, we went to your Flip Frenzy. Yes. Jeez, it seems like more than... What day was that? It seems like more than six days ago. It seems like it was a month ago. Yes, me and Marty ran a Flip Frenzy. As much as we talk about Flip Frenzy, it was the first one that was run in Melbourne this year. because there just aren't many venues that can support Foot Frenzy. You need a lot of machines, and you need the machines to not break down. And to be on free play. And to be on free play as well. Sorry, that's the big kicker. You can't be feeding the machines unless you want to go broke. Correct. So 33 people rocked up. So we sold out of the 30-people allocation, and three people rocked up on the day that I didn't want to turn them away. it went surprisingly well but we both looked at each other five minutes in what do we say marty oh i can't remember but you know i think this was the fifth one that i've helped run so i i know exactly what it takes to run these things it's hard work just yeah i've just got just selective memory obviously i only remember good stuff i still do get pissed off about stuff that's happening or that happened the week before but i just totally forgot how non-stop it is it It's not like it's half an hour of craziness and you get a 10-minute break. It's just chaos for three hours. So, yeah, I wouldn't have been able to do it without you because... Oh, thank you. I know that's true. Yes. And the best thing about it was this is the first time we've run it with the new rules where it's wins minus losses. And I believe this is the first time it's been run in Melbourne where people didn't know how they were going all the way through. Yes. And that really, you think that's not much, but that added a layer of excitement to the end of the competition, especially the announcing of the results that I've never really seen before. Because you see it, I saw it with Jimmy when he went up to Logan's Arcade in Chicago. Yes. And everyone was around cheering, and I'm like, is that what it's really like? Kepon seems like overly happy and supportive, but yes, that's what it was like. No, that's right. And look, you'll obviously mention who won, but that person that won, you know, at the end of the night, he was sort of coming up to me going, you know, can you tell me the scores? I'm like, oh, no, you know, we're not doing it to the end. He goes, oh, I just don't know. Like, I've done well, but I don't know. And what people don't know is how other people are going. So it's all real and good to say, you know, look, I've had six or seven games that I've one in a row, but somebody else might have had eight games in a row. So you just don't know where you are until right at the very end, and that's fun. Yeah. So in second place was Wes, who's a local guy who's just on fire at the moment, and he was really his best result ever. And first was Simon Peel, and I, Marty, absolutely love watching people win a tournament for the first time, and I don't care if it's their first comp and they win for the first time or if they've been doing it for five years, but it's just like this huge sigh of relief. And I can tell that he was trying to hold back. He was kind of smiling. His grin was from ear to ear. Yeah. And it was just great to see that. And the coolest thing about the competition, there's so many cool things about the competition, but the coolest thing, Marty, is that almost everyone there, half of them, were noobs, right? Half of them were unrated, never played in a tournament before, definitely haven't played in a sub-frenzy. So there was no one complaining. No, but so many, quite the opposite. So many people kept coming up to us during the night saying how much they love the format and how much of a great time they're having and meeting new people. And there were some people that were in their first tournament for the very first time that had come on their own. And to then just be swept up into this excitement and fun was just great to see. People were just smiling the whole night. Yeah. there were two females there. We don't usually get females in Melbourne tournaments. And the coolest thing about it is they were, that they came there on their own. As we said, they weren't kind of, yeah. So I kind of got the idea that we should maybe try and introduce a women's league in Melbourne. I'm not sure if we have the numbers yet for that, but it's something that I'd be interested in supporting and to try and help get off the ground and then pass it off to someone that would be involved in it because, you know, I talked to a female that was there and she kind of said it was a bit daunting walking in there for the first time because it was a bunch of dudes. Oh, yeah, sausage fest. Sausage fest. And the funny thing is was she then said, everyone helped me because she's pretty new to pinball. Everyone helped me, gave me tips on how to play the game. And I'm glad she was open to that because I've seen posts about people not liking men giving tips. But the biggest thing she said is that, like, it ended up being that everyone is nice. Everyone in the Melbourne pinball scene is nice, and, you know, it's just I think they're confronting because it's a sausage fest, but they're not. But that is obviously holding a lot of females from trying it out to begin with. So if there was an all-female league, then surely that would help grow the hobby on a very small scale, but it would help, right? Yeah, absolutely. Agreed. So, yeah, that was for Frenzy. I have no idea when we're going to run one again because, yeah, I feel like I don't get to play, Marty, you don't get to play. It's almost like we're just... I'm an employee of the company, I don't know, and I don't do pinball for money, and I like to have fun as well. And as much as I like running tournaments, I still like to play as well. Yeah, I'm not that fast. I actually enjoy running those. Would you run one every... What does Netherworld do? Every month or every two months? Oh, God, I don't know. Probably every month. I don't know. Yeah. Anyway, the other big event this week was Melbourne Match Play. I'm going to go first on this one, Marty, even though we did it together, because I unfortunately only went to one of the events for myself. I went to the opening night, which is the Fair Strikes tournament. I performed pretty bad. I just never won a game. I never come last, never won a game. It was six strikes, so I was out after the six. I came second or third every time, and I had so many chances to come first and just failed horribly. I hung around that night because I wasn't joking when I said I like people watching people win for the first time I really thought Marcus was going to finally win his first tournament that night and he got down to the final three and I stayed around for another two hours watching and then I drove home and for some reason I had insomnia and I didn't sleep Marty you know all about being tired because you work and have a social life outside of Pimble way more than I do. Sure. Well, you seem to have a hold of it all. Like, you're good at being tired. I'm not. I'm perpetually tired, is what it is. Yes, like my wife. My wife is so good at being tired. It's just now her life. Whereas if I don't get good sleep, I... Well, okay, I was so tired the next day that I vomited. Wow. And I was actually, I felt like I was hallucinating. And I slept an extra two hours during the day, and I still didn't trust myself to drive there. So, unfortunately, I didn't go to the Friday night comp. None of us did. I think it was run by Robert McCauley. Is that right? Yes, it was. The next day was when you come in, Marty, Melbourne match play, the big event. This is, yeah, this is the big event. And so, this was interesting, because this was the first time I'd ever played in what's called... Target match play. Target match play. So it's like match play, except the first 16 people that get to 50 points get into the finals. So you're in groups of four, you play a game, you put your scores in, then you get regrouped, and you keep going round after round. And I had a good qualifying day, Ryan, I would say. Well, not your first game, Marty. You came second on your first round. How dare you? My very first game, I came second. But I had eight rounds all up. So the next round, I came first. After that, I think I came first again. And first and first and first and first. First and first and first. I came second and then seven first in a row. So I qualified first. So that means as soon as you hit that target, you are now out. You've qualified. You can go home or you can hang around, but no one has to play you because they don't need to because you've qualified. Correct. So the group of people gets smaller and smaller and smaller, and this kind of like logjam of people when it comes down to that round is just like, I don't know, there was like 10 or so people that could qualify. I'm making up the figures, but I think it was around 10, and only I think two or three could have made it. So then it becomes who makes it to 50 plus how much. They get 55 because they're on 49 and go to 6 or other 6s. But anyway, everyone that I talked to seemed to like that target format. And I think it was the first time it happened in Australia, but I think Carl D'Python Anghelo is the mastermind behind this format, possibly. I don't know. I think it is him, though. Well, it is a genius format. So I would imagine it was from the mind of Carl D'Python Anghelo. It was awesome. Saturday night was the Storball. I didn't go to that. I didn't go to the main tournament yet. And apparently it was the most fun that people had the entire tournament. And it finished so quickly that they ran a second unofficial one. Now, the way Storball has kind of been run by everyone is if 20 people want in on it, then it's a line of 20 people. The way this was run was like a strikes tournament. You have six strikes and you get matched up randomly in groups of four. The person who is the last person standing in that group of four doesn't get a strike. Everyone else gets a strike. And because it's everyone else getting a strike, it was over pretty quickly because no one's playing three balls. It could be over in a minute. so yeah that was won by I can't remember I think Richard Rose won the unofficial one and I think Rob Miller Rob Miller that won it yes correct yes so the next day everyone woke up Marty woke up super fresh because he got the most sleep because he was first qualifying I did have a good night's sleep that is true and the way it worked the next day is because I qualified first I got to remove a bank of machines Yes, mate And how did you come to that decision of removing the bank that you did? Well, it was really what I felt was Not just games that I wasn't necessarily good at But I felt that I took out some games that Either I didn't understand the rules Or it was probably a bit too much randomness to it And this bank had The Shadow which I'd actually had a couple of really good games on during qualifying. So that was kind of a game that I really liked and I would have kept. But you had Black Hole next to it. You then had Star Trek Next Gen. You then had Grand Prix, which is NASCAR. And your ACDC. Yep. Which, again, I actually had some good games on it, but it did have a tendency to go down the middle. But it was more so Other banks had machines That I really did want to play on As opposed to those So I cut that bank out And so what that meant was In the first round So groups of four Because I was the highest qualifier I got to pick the four machines That we were going to play on I think, if I can remember I picked Medieval Madness Dialed in Phoenix The novel Williams game and Aerosmith. And absolutely tore it up, came first in that round. So I got into the semifinals. And in the semifinals, because there was, you know, winners from the four groups, two people that were the winners in each group got to pick two machines each. So I picked Dialed In and Phoenix. Okay. Why did you pick Phoenix? No. No, no, Aerosmith and Phoenix were already picked. So I picked... Oh, I'm getting confused. I think, yeah, Aerosmith and Phoenix were already picked and I chose Medieval Madness and dialed in. Dialed in in particular because I was just tearing up this machine completely unstoppable on dialing. Just the best player ever. I just keep outing it all over the place. But I was surprising myself. In fact, one of the games that I had in qualifying, everybody else was on probably about 70,000 to 90,000 points. And what you can remember, this game was set up hard. The left out lane ball save, ball kick, whatever it was, wasn't on by default. So people were having low score games. On that last game, I was the last player. So ball three, I was on 15,000 points. and everybody was on about 70,000 to 90,000 points. And on that last ball, I ended up on 650,000. So I could have easily had just failed, but had this great game. On the next round I played it, I then got over a million, and I think the next highest was about 90,000. So that game was just, I was destroying it. So I then won, I came second in that second round, So I got through So I was in the final four The final four Yeah But Because I didn't come first in my round I didn't get to pick any machines So you can imagine Darlene wasn't picked In fact Just the games that I I wasn't really good at Were picked Who was picking? So I think We had Andre And Reggie and I think Stacey maybe. I can't remember. Anyway, so the four machines that were picked were... I've got to remember this. Indy 500. Indy 500. Playboy. Why would someone pick Playboy? Well, that was Andre. Thanks, Andre. And I can't remember the other one. might have been Aerosmith. Yes. Which I think it was. And so I didn't get as great a score on Aerosmith as I would normally have liked. I didn't do too well on Medieval Madness. I think I came, like, maybe a third and a third. But then on Playboy, I managed to win that. But because of the way the scores were, the last game, whoever won the last game, I think except for Andre, could have won the tournament, and it was only to 500. And you know that one. Your favourite game. Yeah, I specifically remember you were talking to Dennis Nordman and saying that out of all the games he's made, that is the greatest one. I do love that game. This one... I also remember him saying that the lock kick-out issue where it doesn't lock the ball is non-existent, and he doesn't remember that. No. Well, that's the problem with this one, was that lock ball. Also it's got fresh rubbers on it It's been shopped out So it plays very fast and very bouncy I just couldn't get my real groove on So I think I ended up coming third maybe So in the end I came third And it was then up to Greg G and Stacey Borg Because they were on 14 points each I ended up on 13 points And the fourth player was on 11 points So it was really close Was it pretty close? So if you got second in that game, you would have won? I would have come second. Second overall? Yes, correct. Ah, okay, okay, okay. So I had to win to win, really, just depending on where the other players were going to end up as well. So then it was up to Greg and Stacey. No, Andre came first. If you came second, you would have won because Greg G and Stacey would have come... No, there you go. Yeah, but I didn't. Sorry It doesn't matter I've already you know Spent you know Hours of therapy Over the last 24 hours Trying to get over that So thank you Anyway So they played it out On Demoman Greg G absolutely Destroyed Demoman And came home with a victory So it was Greg Stacey Myself And then Andre Greg G messaged me the other day He's only up to like episode 20 He's never ever going to listen to this He's like a year behind No So the last I think that was Best play That was best play The last event was Why I was there on Sunday Was the Greg Berry Cup Which is the annual Kids event Both my kids Marty Finished in the top ten Isn't that remarkable Yeah That's awesome How many people played Ten Okay Sure They had fun They won a medal And it transformed this thing It's Yeah It was good There was more kids last time There was a bit less this year, so... Yeah. Everyone bring your kids along. Yeah, do. What else, Marty? Well, so that was it for tournaments this week. I think that's enough. That was a big one. So, we all know that I got my Lord of the Rings last week, and I streamed again this week, and noticed that I could not destroy the ring. Not very good at getting in that ring, are you, Marty? No, I'm not good at destroying that ring. Other rings, though? So, and someone was shouting out on chat, on Twitch, saying, oh, you know, apparently there's this switch behind the ring that could be the problem. And so I did a bit of troubleshooting and I found out that's the problem. So I need to have the switch changed over. So thank you, Ryan. Whenever you're free to be able to do that, that'd be great. Have you, is there a wire that's hanging off the switch? Because micro switches usually don't go faulty. No, I've had a good look, so. I even took photos of them and sent them to you so when did you I can't remember when you sent them to me but I was so busy doing something else I didn't even it was on Thursday night when you were at the ah yeah when I was playing the song yes have a look back and see them so no I checked for wires and I even you know toggled the wires just to make sure nah they were all connected so anyway so I have to buy you a switch and then come and install it in the back of all the rings holy shit it's in the worst possible position I quit the podcast I don't want to look at it yeah yeah I could understand why you would. But anyway, so the other thing that happened, you know, I talked about the fact that I've had ghosting LEDs, and, you know, you chastised me last week because I said that I wanted to go and get a LED kit. So what did I do, Ryan? You went to the greatest LED manufacturer of all time. I did. I went to Comet Pinball and I ordered a kit of LEDs, including flashes and I also got the OCD board so it is going to look amazing when you install those. No. Whilst you're doing the switch as well and whilst you're fixing the trough as well which doesn't work. I'm so busy at the moment, Marnie. I just... I'm so sorry. You're so far away as well. You're 10 minutes away. Yeah. Yeah, right. Fair enough. Cool. Okay, Marnie. Tell her D&D. We were talking about them before. I'll put to you that the colour D&D on Lord of the Rings is possibly the greatest colour D&D of all because it really brings the pinball to life. That's it? Okay. That was pretty easy. Yeah. I was kind of thinking about getting one anyway. Well, do you know what? I will get one when I decide that this machine's a keeper. Okay. When you destroy the ring. Yes, when I manage to destroy that ring. what happened in your week um I was really bored kind of refreshing pressing F5 on Melbourne Match Day on the weekend that I ended up buying a machine sure why not yeah why not yeah it was on eBay I've never actually bought an eBay pin before especially not um I don't even remember the last time I bought something on eBay as an auction oh my gosh so exciting I was about to back out of it I messaged you and I said hey is this pinball machine good Marty and you're like yeah fucking awesome I used to play it all the time like alright like if you said no it's a piece of shit I would have actually not bought it but well what I did was I used to play it all the time I like it but it's a really brutal game well that just adds to me wanting to get it because it's really easy and you're going to be playing it playing it 15 minutes and anyway it was a Stern Magic it came in today and it oh man I wish my other Stern Pimel machines especially Christopher had this playfield. I don't mean the playfield layout, just the quality of playfields. And maybe it's because this isn't as good as Quicksilver so no one was playing it back in the day, but it has a very finch beat of Mylar over it, which has preserved the playfield perfectly and is just in great nick compared to my other machines. My Meteor and my Quicksilver next to it look like absolute trash. But yeah, it was cheap enough for me to get it. I don't like the sounds that are coming out of it compared to... Like my start is coming that has no sound. That's the chimes. Then Stern Magic was somewhere in between all my other pins coming out so that the soundboard, I think, wasn't as developed. So very basic computer sounding sounds, which apparently you like, Marty. Yeah, I actually quite like. I know it is monotonous and repetitive, but it was that, you know, that 79 sort of era of Stern. I just love the sound palette that they used. Yeah. Another reason why I bought it, well, I mean, I always buy a pin if I think I'm not going to lose money off it and this was in good enough condition, I trusted the person I was buying of, I knew who he was on eBay. I now have five classic pinball machines, Sterns, so I can run a classic tournament at my house, Mali, if I want. I'm in negotiations with the missus about whether or not I do that in December sometime. There's a bunch of interested people interstate that might come down for it because I want to run three tournaments in one day. I know Mr. R of Geometry wants to come down too. He's been messaging me saying whenever I do another comp, he'll fly down. So I'm interested in doing it. It's just I know it's going to be a lot of effort to get all these machines running perfectly, especially running a tournament. And I'm trying to get my wife out of the house because it'll be like a 14-hour event. And not a 14-hour like death by pinball, three full-on, you know, well-run tournaments. And, yes, I will stay tuned. Okay. We'll see if that happens. Quick question for you. Yes. Would you say Pinside ratings are more accurate than IPDB's ratings? Yes. How far down is Stern Magic, Marty? Well, I know that on IPDB, it's been given a rating of 7.4. So that's higher than Big Game, higher than Quicksilver, higher than Stargator higher than Nineball Oh, gosh. Definitely higher than Dragonfist. I'm just saying. It's not higher than Star. Star's is 7.5. So, 5,000 times. The small machine is really cheap in the US. Hey, do you know what I've never been able to do, Marty? Is Shafts lanes on purpose. Maybe once. Like, I'll do it once out of every five. on this machine, Marty, I tried it and I shat. Did you shat your pants? I shat my pants three times in a row. I felt like a fucking god. And I was like, why can't I do this on this machine and not others? So, I don't know. These machines are cool to test stuff out on. So, I also got another pinball machine this week, Marty. Just to make this three-hour podcast go even longer. It was a Stern Grand Prix pinball machine that you mentioned that was in Match Play. It was bought over by someone interstate, and the idea was that he's going to donate it to the event and then drop it off at my house, and I would play it for a little while and then sell it. What are your thoughts? Quickly, Marty, give us a 10-second review on Stern Grand Prix. Okay. Well, Stern Grand Prix, which is also NASCAR, right? Yes. I think it's an underrated game. I actually really do enjoy it, But I also like shiny things. What I love about that game is the way that the ball goes all the way around like a racetrack. I freaking love that. It's a good game. It's a Pat Lawler game. It's a good layout. It's fun. Yeah, it's a good game. I want to know why Pat Lawler insists on making certain lock inserts not green. Can someone message me in and tell me why he's the only person that did it on Twilight Zone, NASCAR, and I think some other games? The two lock inserts are green, but then the multiple start is like yellow or something. Anyway, just the first thing I know. I've only played one game and I'm not getting pretty busy, but my one game impression is that this is a game for... If you were to recommend someone to get into pinball and you would say, hey, you can buy a Deadpool for $8,500, how much they cost in Australia, or you can buy this Stern Grand Prix for $4,500, then it's a good machine for them. Well, you know I nearly bought one, well, I tried to buy one a couple of months ago. Oh, how much was that when you bought it? I think it was $4,200. Okay. But I messaged the person and he said he was too busy to see me, so... Okay, yeah. Well, this is just a little bit more than that. It's, you know, around that mid-floor range. So if anyone's interested, let me know. But, yeah, I want to keep it for a couple of weeks to play it. Yeah, play it. Yeah. Play it. Do you want to come over to my house and stream it, Marty? Yeah, I probably will, actually. Thursday night. I can't stream Wednesday night. Yeah, it's one of these things where I understand why people don't like it. I understand why people do like it. It's very mid-range, but I think it comes at a good price these days. It's pretty much the cheapest, like, 2000 Cern game, besides, like, Shiky's Shootout, whatever. My other thing I'll talk about just really briefly, thank you, everyone, for listening this long, is my Sea Witch. There's little connectors on the transformer, and you can hook it up to 240 volts or 220 volts. I think it was Dave Peck, Rode Dave, who I talked to once, and I was talking about how my TV was just a little bit sad and not that snappy compared to others that I've seen. And he said, oh, you can always kind of like supercharge it by hooking it up to 220 volts. So it's getting like about 8% more power. And I just, the other day I was just playing a bit of game and I said, fuck it, I'm going to do it. now the weird thing is on the diagram it tells you how to do it it says connect it up to lug number 12 and there's a diagram underneath it where it highlights lug 13 so I was like ooh which one is it is the text right or is the diagram right there was already a different coloured wire on 13 so I'm like fuck I want to go with 12 and I should have done more research right This could have been the end of my Sea Witch. And luckily it worked. And my Sea Witch now plays like 10 times better. So it still needs work, but it is, yeah, probably not the smartest thing to do. I will, apparently there's a way to adjust it so the spades aren't getting too much power. But it was a really bad idea. I asked the Slamsuit guys today on their live podcast and they had a bunch of suggestions. So if anyone has some more, please let me know. Awesome. That's it. I think that's it for the week. Fuck, this is going to be a... It's another long one, but, you know, people keep writing into us saying, you know, two and a half hours, that's not enough. We need more. Well, you might be lucky enough to get two episodes this week, ladies and gentlemen, so keep your podcast feeders updated. That makes sense. Your feeders updated. if you've survived this long subscribe because I know that half the people that listen aren't subscribed because if you were subscribed we would get almost all the downloads within the first 24 hours and that doesn't happen does it Marty? no not really so subscribe so you automatically download the episodes and stay tuned for a super exclusive maybe episode sometime during expo awesome thanks everybody and we will definitely be speaking to you next week after Expo. And we look forward to all the stuff that comes out. You can check us out on headtoheadpinball.com. Email us at headtoheadpinball at gmail.com. Check us out on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. And thank you to Shannon Paul, Mr. Deadflip himself, and Aaron Berserker. What a mad name. I would love that last name. Who are our new Patreon subscribers. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Hey, hey Can we sing out South Park? Steve cut us off when we were singing South Park I know Fucking money I'm going down South Park Going to have my South Time Running faces everywhere Humble folks without temptation I'm going down South Park Going to have my South Time People started outing it up I'm going down South Park Going to have my South Time I actually forgot it now I like girlies with big titties. I like girls with a big vagina. That's what he says. Oh, he does not. He likes girls with a big vagina. That's terrible. We're stopping this now.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: bb4c6f43-c7a8-4862-a2a5-dbb1d7d403c8*
