# PNP 653- Enzo Joins: Walking Dead REMASTERED Top 5 Rad+ Beetlejuice & The Office **Source:** Poor Man's Pinball Podcast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2025-11-05 **Duration:** 74m 53s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://poormanspinballpodcast.libsyn.com/pnp-653-enzo-joins-walking-dead-remastered-top-5-rad-beetlejuice-the-office --- ## Analysis Orby and Enzo from Australia discuss the top five improvements to Stern's Walking Dead Remastered pinball machine, including upgraded mechanical toys (Well Walker, left ramp), Elizabeth Gieske's code refinements, the new 18.5-inch LCD screen replacing dot matrix, improved sound design with actual TV cast members, and Insider Connect integration. While praising mechanical and audio upgrades, both hosts express concerns about the artwork's overly bright, saturated color palette that doesn't match the original comic's darker aesthetic. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Elizabeth Gieske helped refine the code and added a new wizard mode to Walking Dead Remastered — _Orby cites Greg Bone from Flippin' Out podcast mentioning the new wizard mode; Enzo confirms Elizabeth is a 'legend in the making' for code work_ - [MEDIUM] The left ramp on the original Walking Dead was made wider or modified to be more shootable in the Remastered version — _Orby states he avoided the left ramp in tournaments due to difficulty, and Enzo confirms 'that left ramp is a bitch, especially in tournaments' and acknowledges the improvement_ - [HIGH] The Well Walker mechanic was upgraded with improved jiggle/vibration response in the Remastered version — _Both hosts extensively praise the Well Walker improvements, noting it now has kinetic energy and solenoid vibration effects_ - [HIGH] Walking Dead Remastered uses actual voice talent from the TV show for call-outs instead of generic XML-style dialogue — _Orby explicitly states 'they got two of the people from the actual show' and praises the authentic sound of character call-outs_ - [HIGH] The Walking Dead Remastered's artwork color palette is overly bright and saturated, resembling a Marvel comic rather than the original dark Walking Dead comic — _Both hosts repeatedly criticize the artwork; Enzo states 'This looks more like a Marvel comic colour palette' and references Ryan Barry calling it 'Deadpool remastered'_ - [HIGH] The Limited Edition model has backwards bullet lighting on the side armor (bullets traveling right to left instead of left to right) — _Enzo observes the bullet direction error; Orby jokes 'are we playing Walking Dead or are we playing Matrix?'_ - [HIGH] The Melbourne Pinball Expo is this weekend with Jack Danger and Eric Menier attending from Chicago — _Enzo mentions traveling to the expo on 'Friday, Saturday, Sunday' with these guests confirmed_ - [MEDIUM] Walking Dead Remastered has Insider Connect integration as a major new feature — _Orby lists this as his #5 most rad feature and discusses achievements/speedrun tracking possibilities_ ### Notable Quotes > "The rules are incredible. The thing that wasn't incredible was, let's be honest, the artwork and the call-outs, and those two things have changed." > — **Orby**, early discussion > _Sets up the central tension: excellent game design held back by aesthetic choices being addressed in remaster_ > "This looks more like a Marvel comic colour palette. Some people refer to it, I think Ryan Barry referred to it as Deadpool remastered." > — **Enzo**, artwork discussion > _Crystallizes the main criticism about overly bright, saturated artwork not matching the dark, gritty Walking Dead comic source material_ > "I don't know if I like those LE lights. I like the idea of it and the implementation of it, maybe on a different pin, but it looks weird with the Bullets A going backwards." > — **Enzo**, expression lighting discussion > _Identifies specific production quality concern: backwards bullet animation direction on Limited Edition side armor_ > "Elizabeth is a gem and a massive asset to Stern. I could listen to her talk for hours. She's very good at looking at something and going, how do we refine it, not evolve it or change it?" > — **Enzo**, code discussion > _Validates Elizabeth Gieske's approach to honoring Lyman Sheets' original code while improving it_ > "Even if it's an arrow going through someone's head coming out their eye socket and you see all the goosem gossem bloody gook coming out everywhere it's just not scary in dots. The second that you see that 18 and a half inch lcd screen with the updated look it looks it takes it from being like a two out of ten realistic to like an eight out of ten." > — **Orby**, LCD screen discussion > _Emphasizes the transformative impact of LCD screens on horror theme credibility compared to dot matrix_ > "I'm glad they've changed that. I'm glad the Well Walker's better. And I feel like they at least did make a couple updates to... I feel like there was some actual physical changes that were made to the machine." > — **Enzo**, mechanical improvements discussion > _Confirms tangible mechanical improvements justify the remaster concept_ > "If this game had came out just a few years later and it did have better artwork like it has now, if it did have an LCD... I don't think it'd be 50th in the world. I think maybe top 25, maybe top 20." > — **Orby**, closing assessment > _Suggests Walking Dead Remastered could significantly improve the original's Pinside ranking due to combined improvements_ > "I'm really happy that the Mechs have had an upgrade. I'm really happy that they kept the plastic ramps. I think plastic ramps have an element of nostalgia to them." > — **Enzo**, mechanical discussion > _Appreciates preservation of original design philosophy while improving mechanical reliability_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Walking Dead Remastered | game | 2025 Stern pinball remake with upgraded LCD screen, improved mechanics, new voice talent, better code, Insider Connect; released in Premium and LE configurations; subjects of this entire episode discussion | | Orby | person | Host of Poor Man's Pinball podcast (episode 653); Canadian pinball enthusiast from Nova Scotia who owns/rents Walking Dead and has extensively played the original; knowledgeable about pinball design and mechanics | | Enzo | person | Australian pinball player and content creator from Perth (Gonzo's Pinball-O-Rama YouTube channel); competitive tournament player; attending Melbourne Pinball Expo this weekend; has not yet played Harry Potter due to geographic isolation | | Elizabeth Gieske | person | Stern pinball code designer credited with refining Walking Dead Remastered code and implementing new wizard mode; previously worked on JAWS improvements; described by hosts as essential asset to Stern | | Lyman Sheets | person | Original code designer for Walking Dead (deceased); legendary pinball programmer known for constant refinement; acknowledged for foundational work that Elizabeth Gieske built upon for remaster | | John Borg | person | Designer of Walking Dead original and Remastered versions; described by Enzo as creator of 'one of Borg's best layouts next to Tron' | | Stern Pinball | company | Manufacturer of Walking Dead Remastered; referenced throughout for design decisions, quality improvements, and market positioning; criticized for conservative approach | | Ryan Barry | person | Australian pinball player/friend mentioned as potential source for Harry Potter acquisition; credited by Enzo as having compared Walking Dead Remastered artwork to 'Deadpool remastered' | | Jack Danger | person | Pinball designer/content creator attending Melbourne Pinball Expo; Orby mentions listening to extended coding discussion with Jack and Elizabeth Gieske at Stern Pro Circuit Finals | | Eric Menier | person | Attending Melbourne Pinball Expo from Chicago; Enzo looks forward to playing Harry Potter with him for first time | | Melbourne Pinball Expo | event | Weekend event (Friday-Sunday) featuring Jack Danger, Eric Menier, and likely tournament play; Enzo traveling to attend | | Greg Bone | person | Host of Flippin' Out podcast; cited by Orby as source for information about new wizard mode in Walking Dead Remastered | | Jeff Teolis | person | Pinball content creator; previously interviewed Orby on Pinball Profile about Walking Dead's gore concerns for young children | | Poor Man's Pinball Network | organization | Network founded by Orby; hosts this podcast and others; mentioned in opening theme as growing listener base | | Insider Connect | product | Stern integration feature enabling achievements, speedruns, and game tracking; Orby's #5 most rad feature about Walking Dead Remastered | ### Topics - **Primary:** Walking Dead Remastered mechanical improvements, Artwork color palette and aesthetic direction, LCD screen vs dot matrix display technology, Code design and Elizabeth Gieske's contributions, Voice talent and sound design improvements, Insider Connect integration and achievements - **Secondary:** Original Walking Dead game design legacy, Australian pinball scene and geography ### Sentiment **Mixed** (0.62) — Hosts enthusiastically praise mechanical, audio, LCD, and code improvements, with Orby projecting top-20 ranking potential. However, both express significant concerns about artwork saturation/color palette being overly bright and not matching dark comic source material. Expression lighting direction error on LE also noted as negative. Overall assessment: worthwhile remaster with excellent refinements undermined by questionable aesthetic choices. ### Signals - **[event_signal]** Melbourne Pinball Expo this weekend featuring visiting designers Jack Danger and Eric Menier from Chicago; Australian tournament event with significant community participation (confidence: high) — Enzo: 'Melbourne pinball expo... on this weekend Friday Saturday Sunday... jack winery and eric muneer coming across from chicago'; traveling to attend - **[sentiment_shift]** Insider Connect integration on Walking Dead Remastered is novel feature not yet widely discussed in community forums, enabling achievements and speedrun tracking (confidence: medium) — Orby: 'I haven't even seen it brought up on Pinball Enthusiast or Pinside yet. I think this is by far the coolest new thing about it'; discusses potential for competitive speedrun achievements - **[design_philosophy]** Walking Dead Remastered artwork color palette criticized as overly bright and saturated, resembling Marvel comics rather than original dark Walking Dead comic aesthetic (confidence: high) — Enzo: 'This looks more like a Marvel comic colour palette'; Orby: 'it just doesn't jump out as a dark scary theme it jumps out as a bright vibrant like happy fun'; both agree artwork is 'most polarizing' aspect - **[design_philosophy]** Walking Dead Remastered balances horror gore authenticity by using animated graphics rather than actual TV footage to avoid excessive realism while maintaining arcade-appropriate content for younger players (confidence: high) — Orby discusses parental acceptability of animations vs TV clips; Enzo agrees animations provide 'fine line' between appropriately scary and too realistic - **[licensing_signal]** Walking Dead Remastered hired actual TV cast members to provide character voice call-outs, moving away from generic dialogue to authentic performances (confidence: high) — Orby: 'they've got two of the people from the actual show... They are the real characters'; addresses primary complaint about original game's weak call-outs - **[market_signal]** Walking Dead Remastered positioned to potentially rise significantly in Pinside rankings from #50 to top 20-25 due to combined mechanical, audio, LCD, and code improvements (confidence: medium) — Orby: 'I don't think it'd be 50th in the world. I think maybe top 25, maybe top 20... had this came out later' with current improvements - **[personnel_signal]** Elizabeth Gieske credited as primary code refiner for Walking Dead Remastered, implementing new wizard mode and rule refinements while honoring Lyman Sheets' original design (confidence: high) — Orby: 'Elizabeth Gieske... was the one that was kind of updating'; Enzo: 'she will definitely honour what Lyman's done, arguably the best coder that ever existed' - **[product_strategy]** Well Walker mechanics upgraded with improved jiggle/vibration response and solenoid activation; left ramp widened/modified for better playability in tournaments (confidence: high) — Both hosts extensively discuss mechanical improvements; Enzo confirms left ramp shootability enhanced; Orby notes Well Walker now has 'kinetic energy' and solenoid vibration - **[product_concern]** Limited Edition model features backwards bullet lighting animation on side armor (projectiles traveling right-to-left instead of left-to-right), creating directional inconsistency (confidence: high) — Enzo: 'the lighting should be going from left to right... backwards bullets... are we playing Matrix?'; Orby agrees it's a 'small detail' but problematic - **[technology_signal]** 18.5-inch LCD screen replacing dot matrix display significantly enhances horror theme credibility and visual impact for gameplay and scores (confidence: high) — Orby: LCD 'takes it from being like a two out of ten realistic to like an eight out of ten'; both agree this is major improvement for theme-appropriate design --- ## Transcript All get around, he's on the rebound, hear the sound of our buddy, oh lordy, it's Orby, pinball now to rejoice, he's tugging pinball, craft beer and coffee, mixed with syrup and honey, he hopes to laugh with his family in a random tangent, stories of his boys, he's on the poor man's pod network, we're gonna get more listeners, Welcome back Pinball Nerds to episode 653 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name's Orville Elbert and today we're going to be counting down the top five rad and one bad of Stern's newest pinball machine, the Walking Dead Remastered. And I've got all the way live from Australia, exactly 12 hours differential of me. It's 9pm here in River Herberts, Nova Scotia and all the way over there in Australia. I've got Enzo, you might also know him from Gonzo's Pinball-O-Rama of course on YouTube. He does live streaming. He does interviews. And now he's kicking butt in tournaments. That's right. Enzo, learn to putt. Enzo, welcome to the show, my buddy. Thanks, Obi. Thank you. That's a great intro. How are you going? I am doing well. And I love that you say, how are you going? Because that's like one of the most Australian things that Australian people really do actually say. you know it's it's not one of the other colloquialisms that uh people sometimes joke about but that that is one that they say and i love this as well even if you do something remotely rad an australian will call you a legend a hundred percent i love that kind of like that's our go-to word i love it because here if someone's calling you a legend you have to basically be wayne gretzky and score a thousand goals you know what i mean in australia someone could just like someone could just give you a really nice pint of beer it sounds like and uh maybe maybe you know maybe you know let you win a game of pinball or two but anyways that's not what we're here to talk about today you are in a big hurry to get out the door you are heading to the melbourne is it uh pinball expo melbourne pinball expo yeah which is on this weekend friday saturday sunday uh we've got uh Jack Guarnieri and eric muneer coming across from chicago so that's going to be cool. So yeah, looking forward to it. Wow. And you've obviously got to play Harry Potter, but I bet you haven't got to play Harry Potter with Eric Meunier yet. So that will be pretty cool. I actually haven't played Harry Potter, will we? You have not? Okay. Are you in a pinball desert kind of like me? So for your listeners that don't realize, I'm in Perth, which is the most isolated city in the world. I'm 4,000 kilometers away from melbourne uh so it's about a three and a half hour flight um and that's where all the pinball distributors essentially are wow so eventually someone in perth will get a harry potter probably it's just not there on location or at any of your buddy's houses yet uh i'm sure your friend ryan barry might uh i think ryan and kimba both love harry potter so there's a tiny chance if they have any money left after getting back from their north american whirlwind trip I'm sure that they might get their hands on a Harry Potter someday. Yeah, probably. I am looking forward to it. Yeah, our good buddy Glenn Glenn Waechter there, he honestly can't shut up about Harry Potter. I'm like, I don't want to hear about it until I can play it, Glenn. He just keeps saying that that and Evil Dead are easily top ten pinball machines of all time for him. So I'll have to trust him on it. There you go. You go play it. You let me know how it is. But let's just jump right into it. let's get into this top five rad for The Walking Dead. I know that The Walking Dead wasn't necessarily top of the list like Tron would have been to be remastered, but I would say that, you know, it definitely was one of those more modern games that, you know, everyone loves the rule set of. I myself did, I won't say I owned it, but I did rent for three months from my buddy Mike Dimas, actually. The Walking Dead, I did my very first ever Pinball Nerds podcast live stream on The Walking Dead. I've done a 12-hour live stream wearing a 40-pound pack that I was practicing for doing like a week-long hike in. And I just, you know, I played the crap out of it for three months straight, or I should say it played the crap out of me. By the time I had that thing for three months, I went from being like probably like a C-plus player to a solid B-negative. and that's where I have stayed, my friend. But I'll tell you what, if it wasn't for The Walking Dead, I would be a way worse nudger because those outlanes, you know, getting bored, they're so dangerous, that will make you a better player. The rules are incredible. The thing that wasn't incredible was, let's be honest, the artwork and the call-outs, and those two things have changed. But I'm just going to, you know, you can hear I'm having a little bit of a love fest here. I get the impression that maybe you're not on the exact same, you know, level as me, and that's okay. Look, I'll be honest, right? Like, I love The Walking Dead. The game, like, slaps. I think it is one of Borg's best layouts next to Tron. The code is just phenomenal. I didn't, I loved the playfield layout of, sorry, the artwork of the original. You did? Okay. Yes. Yeah. But the trans light and the cabinet art, I wasn't a big fan of. you know so for me hearing that we were going to be getting a remastered I was like okay well that's an interesting game right and the show hasn't been relevant since like 2014 essentially no even though there's like we're up we're up to season 132 with 64 spin-offs yeah but like I you know I was excited to see what John had done and what the team had done and like I don't mind it right uh i have to agree with you walking dead made me a better player as well i owned a pro because it was so hard to get a premium here in australia and if you found a premium you were paying new inbox pricing still right they were holding their value so well um and you know i was always sitting on the fence i wanted it to be comic version with comic animations and i wasn't worried about seeing the TV stuff, you know, like, sure, whatever, but again, the show's not that relevant anymore, and it's interesting to see that they've gone down the path of, you know, using the, they're basically just remodernizing the DMD. Now, we didn't see a lot of it, and that probably tells me a couple things, that A, it's not really ready, and B, you know, they probably don't want people pulling it apart already, but I'm okay with that choice, I don't mind it, I just feel the artwork colour palette doesn't match. Like, it's comic, but it's not the comic that it should have been, which is the original Walking Dead comic. This looks more like a Marvel comic colour palette. Some people refer to it, I think Ryan Barry referred to it as Deadpool remastered. But, you know, and, like, if I was buying one today, I'd be buying a premium just because I feel that the premium has the better artwork on the trans light. And I just, I'm not a fan of the expression lighting and the way that the expression lighting has those little holes that go up the cabinet. And they're quite distracting. Like I would take pin lights all day long and incorporate into the gameplay. The other thing I didn't like was the side armor on the LE. I don't know if you noticed this, but did you notice that? Sorry, let me rephrase that. I love that CERN has done a colored, lighted side armor where it's using the lighting to move the bullets. Right. What I don't like is that that's going from right to left. So if the bullet is coming out of the gun, the lighting should be going from left to right. Small detail, I know, but I've got this CD. Yeah, backwards bullets, right? backwards bullets. I mean, are we playing Walking Dead or are we playing Matrix? Yeah. So that is the things that, you know, I just think the colour palette of this one is not as dark and gritty as I would have liked. I still think I prefer the playfield on the old one. I love the fact that it's got new mechs that were improved. The bow and arrow was always a bit of an issue as a mech, and that's been improved. there's a bit more interactivity with the fat man zombie so look all in all it's okay I just think Stern likes to play it safe and I'm okay with that as well but I just feel there was a miss with the artwork well don't tell me you've given us lots of bads let's not jump to the one bad all the listeners know we saved that for the very end I will say this because the artwork is not my one bad. I will say there's a hell of a lot of, Ryan Barry is right, there's a lot of red, there's a lot of orange, there's a lot of yellow, and there's a lot of, you're right, I own probably, I don't know, 20 to 30 Walking Dead comics. I don't have number one. I do have the reprint of number one, of course, which was way over reprinted and given away here in Canada on Free Comic Book Day a couple years ago. so but I think I think I have like I think I have like number 17 is the lowest I have but it is a very dark it looks a lot more like you're right the OG art that's how the comic book art looks and so even though I didn't like how a lot of the the you know the the artwork on the original was kind of looked like it was just copied and pasted this obviously is more hand drawn and when you zoom in on the artwork I think it's gorgeous but when you pull back and you look at the artwork as a whole it just doesn't jump out as a dark scary theme it jumps out as a bright vibrant like happy fun like you said marvel-esque almost like this is a marvel version of the walking dead not like a dark scary creepy and and uh the gentleman's name uh i i had written down here um uh i will find it but the gentleman's name who did the artwork i went to his website and he does really good dark fantasy sci-fi really cool artwork and so I know he does great artwork but maybe this is his first time like composing the whole thing and maybe just like I hope to God in person it doesn't like it doesn't stand out as bad I know even myself like AIQ when I saw it Avengers Infinity Quest you know before once I saw it in person I didn't mind it but before I saw it I thought oh this is too saturated it's too bright there's too many yellows once I saw it it was fine I'm hoping this will be the same. But let me go in order here, and you tell me your thoughts and opinions on each one of these. So, number one on this list, you did mention it before, I already love the Well Walker. I'm probably the only person who loves the Well Walker. I knew well enough not to hit him. He's not a Keebler elf. You don't hit him in his belly like, whoo-hoo. You can't hit him right there. You've got to hit him on the left or the right to make his belly fat jiggle. and so it is a it's not a it's never a safe shot but geez if during your ball save unless you're in a really tough tournament with the ball save like you know the sharp brothers made the ball save like three seconds like you can usually get four or five hits on that well walker fairly safely fairly easily during your first ball save which means that even if you didn't touch it again to your second ball ball save you can start that multiball of course uh it's not really worth it to start Wellwalker, of course, by itself. But, number one, you already mentioned it, they made all three of these mechs that were problematic before. The Wellwalker was just boring, because you would hit the Wellwalker with brand new flippers and he'd barely move. Now he's got this little jiggle jiggle under his belly, so he does this extra funny, like, when you hit him, it's this kinetic energy that goes into him, and then it vibrates in the solenoid above that as well. Plus, once in a while, he'll probably taunt you and be like, I'm assuming they'll probably have it programmed where when you've got one hit left on well-locked or multiball, he kind of jiggles or whatever. So I thought this is an improvement. The other issue was I was never that good of a player as far as accuracy goes, but I avoided that left ramp unless Bicycle Girl was up because that left ramp for me was just so freaking hard, especially on the premium and the LEs, and apparently they've made that either a bit wider or they've made the part come down so the ramp is more shootable and easier. And I thought that was the only unfair part of the entire game, to be honest, because when you're playing it in competition and it's set up really steep, it was hard to hit. So I'm glad they've changed that. I'm glad the Well Walker's better. And I feel like they at least did make a couple updates to, like, I know with the rollovers from the start. So I feel like there was some actual physical changes that were made to the machine. Can you agree that at least a couple of those are pretty rad? Yeah. Yeah, I do. Like I said, I'm really happy that the Mechs have had an upgrade. I'm really happy that they kept the plastic ramps. I'm a sucker for plastic ramps. I think plastic ramps have an element of nostalgia to them. I've said it before on our channel. So I think that's great. And you're right, that left ramp is a bitch, especially in tournaments, because it's the Stranger Things ramp where you hit it and then it comes straight back and it drains. See you later, game over. Game over. So, look, all those things are great. And we knew that these mechs were going to get love, right? It's just what they're going to be doing in these remasters. But, yeah, look, I think that's definitely a huge plus. And having a little bit more kind of – they're toys, right? We want them to do something with us that we don't want them just to be static. Exactly. so I was hoping that the barn doors would open and you had like I would have been like you know the big head kind of doesn't match the size of the barn and it's kind of like why is the guy's head swollen um but like I would have been happy with like a flat plastic that had a whole heap of horde of zombies as opposed to one head um it was a little bit like the John Wick car versus the size of the car versus the size of the hotel next to the car like i know we're trying to get toys into a game but because they're so close to each other the ratio just doesn't look right the scaling yeah no you're right you are right so so that's all i would have thought you know i know that had the head before as a bash toy but it could have been like a solid plate with a sticker on it that had a whole heap of zombies um or yeah something that was different but hey it's fine and at least it's upgraded yeah and the other thing was too those doors i don't know if they had like a sensor like a light sensor but a lot of times in tournaments they wouldn't work or they'd have to turn it off or a ball would get stuck so hopefully they'd fix that as well but um fast forwarding to number two on my list i think she's a big up-and-comer in the coding and rules world elizabeth gieski it was actually announced that uh she was the one that was kind of updating and we i don't know for sure like lyman def sheets obviously rest in peace awesome dude i'm not sure like if he like thought he was 100 done the code but we know that lyman would go back and fix machines even after he thought he was done he would think of something or he'd see a tournament and he'd like to always be refining and refining and perfecting his code and that's really what made him such a great coder and uh unfortunately because he's no here not here any longer he couldn't do any more refining or any changes for like the crossbow rules or like i said with the you know the lighting we know there's rgb lighting and that kind of stuff that they've included and of course and i do agree with you i will jump back for one second to a mini orby tangent to say i i i don't know yet if i like those LE, those lights. I like the idea of it and the implementation of it, maybe on a different pin, but it looks weird with the Bullets A going backwards, and I don't know if it looks corny or tacky or if it looks cool. I don't know. Right now, I'm going, I don't know. I really will have to see that, I think. But for right now, it's not on my list, I'll tell you that. But Elizabeth Elizabeth Gieske coming in and helping update a lot of the rules, I believe I heard Greg Bone over on the Flip N Out Pinball podcast talking about, you know, there's, he had mentioned that he believed there was a new wizard mode added. Obviously, there's changes in rules with how the crossbow works, I think. Obviously, the rollovers are completely different. So it sounds like with all the fine-tuning, and I even got to listen to Elizabeth Elizabeth Gieske talk about coding on and off for 12 hours the other day with Jack Danger, maybe 14 hours during the Stern Pro Circuit Finals. And, man, just listen to her talk about code, knowing that she did all these updates on the code, I feel like we're in good hands moving forward with this thing as well. Any code updates that need to be done. I'm excited to see what she's done to it. If you take already what is known to be either the top two or top maybe five codes on planet Earth and all pinball, and then you take Elizabeth Elizabeth Gieske who helped refine and make JAWS even better, and you get her to help implement some of this new wizard mode and some of the new rules here. I think, honestly, people are underestimating how much good code is really changing from a great game to an incredible S-tier game. You know what I mean? I totally agree with you. I think Elizabeth is a gem and a massive asset to Stern I could listen to her talk for hours I am very excited to see what she does to it She's very good at looking at something and going, how do we refine it, not evolve it or change it? And I think, you know, she will definitely honour what Lyman's done, arguably the best coder that ever existed. and I'm looking forward to they've had this new Wizard mode, not that I'll ever see it, and the rules with the arrow and just some other fun bits that kind of, it's capturing that theme and integration, right? Like you want to feel like you're smashing zombies. You know, you want to use that bow and arrow more often. You want to chuck walker bombs. It's one of the things I missed about having the pro is we didn't get the action button with the walker bombs. So yeah, I totally agree with you, Orby. I think Elizabeth is a huge asset for Stern, along with Raid Day. So it'll be interesting to see what she does. I'm excited for it. Number three, okay, number three, I put a fancy little title here. Oh, wait, oh, wait, I just thought of this. In Down Under, you might call Elizabeth Elizabeth Gieske a legend. Am I right? A legend, correct. A legend in the making, at the very least. Okay, if we had to take the Canadian... A legend in the making. Yeah, the Canadian nice version. I'll tell you something, just to go back to what you said when we first started. So I went into my coffee shop this morning, and I opened the door for the guy coming through. He had like four coffees, and he goes, thanks, legend. So just basically you doing a simple act of kindness makes... I love this. I honestly think that maybe Australia and Canada we're kind of like brothers from another mother we're both known to be very nice but also we're known to be very nice but don't piss us off also because we're going to be open and honest with you at the same time which is a little scary for some places we say hey a lot and you guys say hey a lot there you go, they're very close we just took off the H that's it so what's the next one I titled this one I thought I was being clever here maybe not but I call it dots can't be scary so before they had these scary stuff happening on the stupid dot matrix and like blood when you see blood in dots it's just not scary even if it's an arrow going through someone's head coming out their eye socket and you see all the goosem gossem bloody gook coming out everywhere it's just not scary in dots i'm sorry but the second that you see that 18 and a half inch lcd screen with the updated look it looks it it it takes it from being like a two out of ten realistic to like an eight out of ten it's not photo realistic or video realistic like the tv show but it's scary as f like i was watching that going oh my god because i remember many years ago i was doing an interview uh with uh jeff teolis on pinball profile and he goes now albert you have a walking dead at home with two young kids I would never have that in my house because it's so bloody and gory I was like Jeff it's dots it's dots it's not scary like you know what I mean it's just not now this if I had a four-year-old and an eight-year-old in my house okay maybe not this one because it actually looks like a real arrow going through someone's head splattering everywhere right not as impressive as a tv show that would have been cool but I still think that you are paying it's not homage it's homage okay it's a french word we're paying homage to you know the lyman f sheets like the walking dead he knew but we're just updating it making it better so i'm okay with that would the tv show have been better maybe but maybe not do you agree that this lcd screen at 18.5 inches is not only scarier but just way more rad way way cooler way easier to see everything the scores are going to be easier to see like i just it's more crisp it's more fun and yeah it's scarier do you agree the lcd is just like a huge massive improvement oh yeah look i mean any anything with a huge screen um and uh the and i mean the way they've done it is i don't mind the the dmd dot matrix but i think you're right i think it has to be theme relevant and i think for a horror game it just doesn't work um the the red you know the red is like all right well the dmd was red but as soon as you put a color screen that helped a little bit but yeah look from seeing what we saw in the trailer it is definitely a lot more in your face and gory which is great don't get me wrong I'm glad that it's not like flat animations like we had on Avengers because that was a concern of mine and you know and I'm happy that it's not the TV clips right because I think they just don't age well and And, you know, it's one of those things that I think there's that fine line of that's probably too gory versus some animations that are just pretend, right? So, well, I mean, the show's pretend too, obviously. But what I'm saying is that it's more in your face, especially in an arcade or in a home environment, if you have the TV clips of zombies eating brains and people's heads being blown off versus it being an animation. And so? So that was a really good balancing act, Buster. You are so right. I never thought about that. Like, I don't think too many parents are going to be offended if they see a cartoon of it as they're walking by. You're going to see ten times worse than that at multiple other arcades that you're going by. But if it was the actual, you know, if you had a very young child with you, like, you know, four, five, six, seven. Sorry, I had to throw one in there. But if you have a very young child with you and it was actually those video clips from The Walking Dead, no, those are scary to me. Like, they're so realistic. I had to turn around. I only watched the first two seasons. I think I gave up, like, the third or fourth episode of the third season. I've heard I should have gone back in season four. Who knows? Maybe someday I'll go back and check it all out. I don't know. but if I was going to say something for number four I would say that the one thing I learned that when I got this machine everybody said Albert you're going to enjoy it my buddy had installed the new pin sound I don't know if you've heard it for the walking dead but it's half radio head and half nine inch nails I think uh yeah I haven't heard a sample of it yeah it's it's so it dude it slaps so when I got this it came with a subwoofer that was in a two foot by two foot box that you had to bring with it and honestly I could only have the volume on like halfway and if my wife was sleeping even the opposite side of the house now we lived in a pretty small house to be fair but I had to have the subwoofer off if I was live streaming when she was sleeping because even on the lowest volume you could hear it everywhere so I got so used to hearing Radiohead I had one of my favorite bands, and it was maybe Nine Inch Nails, I think, did the other two songs. But I never had to hear the Walking Dead song, other than right when you press the start button, basically. So I never got used to it. But the one thing I hated was the call-outs. Coral! I don't know if that was in it. But the call-outs were really lame. They didn't sound real. They just sucked. And now they actually got two artists. So the call-outs and the sounds were the big pet peeve of mine that I would always have to get pin sound from if I ever got a future one. and now I wouldn't have to do that because they've got two of the people from the actual show. The call-outs sound good. They sound like they're taunting you. You're not getting XML-type call-outs where you're like, wow, even I can tell those aren't the real characters. They are the real characters. Thankfully, they listened. Thank you, Stern. Are you listening? Hopefully, maybe. And you even heard the sound of the spinner. The spinner sound was totally different, really cool, and more updated. So it sounds like everywhere they could have integrated the sound better. They listened. We didn't like the art. They did better with the art. arguably the art is going to be the most polarizing for sure I've heard all the Cliff Albert clown puke, I've seen that on Pinball Enthusiast, he is the trolliest of the trolls, I do think it is very saturated and the art is going to be the most polarizing but what's not going to be polarizing is the better call outs with actual people from the show and way better sounds and way better music, sound everything, integration I think that especially not at an arcade pinball is so much what you hear in a home arcade yes that this is now even more important because before the sounds it wasn't just the dots that weren't scary on the lcd screen or the lack thereof on the dot matrix but it was the fact that the callouts you know in the sounds and everything just seemed dated by now and people actually made fun of them they were that bad and now on the flip side of it they sound that good that people are going to brag about and say hey they got two characters and again i know how big these characters are on the show maybe they're like c level or maybe they're level i'm not sure do you have any clue do you have you watched it more than two seasons no i i watched the first three seasons a long time ago and i don't really remember any of it but all the people's names but look on on that note mate you know the other thing i know what people are going to say they're like yeah but what about evil dead that's gory and stuff that's true understand a lot of stern's market is also 30 40 is arcades whereas you know spookies is is not it's probably like 0.5%. So, you know, for a home market, you know, to have the gore, I think it was the right move doing these animations versus having the clips from the film. It could have also been a licensing thing, who knows, but you're right, and the sound effects used to be, like even the munching from the zombies was just terrible. Like it was so cheesy, the old one. You know, so having that change is definitely a huge plus. Now, I want to do something kind of fun here. I did hear your summary at the start, and feel free to delve into any of these as you're guessing. But my number five, some people are going to think are really lame, but I'm curious to see if you could guess what you think my number five most rad thing about Walking Dead Remastered is. What your number five is? Yeah, yeah. So we've done the top four. I have one thing left that I think is the biggest improvement so far, and I've heard no other podcasters mention it. I haven't even seen it brought up on Pinball Enthusiast or Pinside yet. So I think this is by far the coolest new thing about it. Any clue? No. Okay. I want to try and guess. I mean, I don't know. The way the magnet grabs the bolt? Nope. That is different. That is different, I think. Okay. I'll give you a hint. it sounds like this beep boop beep boop beep boop uh the inside of connect yes so for instance i did a six hour live stream where all i tried to do was speed run bloodbath i think the closest the if memory serves i did it in around three minutes and 55 seconds i got into bloodbath but that was after trying for days and days and days and i wasn't trying to do anything else but just get into bloodbath where you do i think you hit the drop down targets like three times and you do some other stuff and some, I don't know, you do some magic or something, right? And I totally forget, I haven't played this game in years. They don't have any here on the East Coast of Canada. Unfortunately, maybe we'll see some more now. But having Insider connected on this machine really opens it up because now they can have, you know, you can try to do a speed run maybe. That could be a certain achievement. And you just have all these different other achievements for this game that really, I really think that if this game had came out just a few years later and it did have better artwork like it has now, if it did have an LCD, again, it was just, what, two or three models off of Stern having an LCD on it, right? So, I mean, had this came out later, I don't think it'd be 50th in the world. I think we're going to see this remastered. Do I think it's a top 10 game in a year from now? No. But maybe top 25, maybe top 20. I do think so. And part of that reason will be what was preventing this from being an incredible machine originally and not in the top 20 wasn't the John Borg layout. Everybody agrees the layout's pretty darn good. Like you said, if not his best. Tron, I do agree. I like Tron slightly better. That's just me. I do agree with you that's better. But yeah, so I mean, it's got a great layout. It now has a great artwork package. Arguably, arguably, I think most people like the back glass. The cabinet's pretty good. So I mean, I don't like the red on the LE. To me, that's a bit too much red. Already with red on top of red on top of orange. That's, again, in person, it might be okay. That's a bit of an eyesore. it's a little bit of a and especially on stern's web page like when when i went to go look at the two uh machines the background of the stern web page is red and then those are red so they really it really just you know it doesn't make it stand out very well there but uh i think insider connected is a game changer and for people who maybe owned a walking dead three four years ago 10 years ago whatever or have never played it they're going to be more likely in an arcade to go up and play the remastered even if they don't like the artwork like you and they love the og artwork tell the truth would you go play the og one without the insider connected or would you go play the brand new remastered to you know what i mean like even though you love that other artwork you'd be drawn just are you an insider connected guy are you as addicted to most people to this yeah yeah look i am and i totally agree with you and i think if they were clever what they would do especially because of locations, is make it that you could go to different games in different locations and collect and slaughter different zombies, you know, a bit like John Wick Contracts, but you've got to go to that arcade because there's a zombie apocalypse happening at that arcade and that game needs to be cleared of zombies and then you get a reward for that. You know, there's a massive opportunity with Insider Connect and I think the whole idea of Insider Connect is the addictiveness of seeing your name on the screen is a huge drawing card to get people to arcades. And, you know, the thing is with Stern Games, we don't have many arcades over here, but it does pull people to go and meet there and, you know, log in. And the arcade that we have here doesn't have a TV. I keep telling them they need a TV up because I want to see my names in flashing lights, especially now that I'm letting out a pot that's right we gotta talk about that let's put a bow on the walking dead for a sec, I know you have to leave pretty soon you're literally getting on a flight I told my son that he could start playing Fortnite if I went longer than 45 minutes so I'm gonna try to keep it relatively close to that we've kind of talked about tournament pinball, you know I'm huge into tournament pinball, you've been playing tournament pinball for a while and it seems like well let's put it let's before we go to talk about that for a second is there anything else you want to say about a walking dead remastered uh tell us your one bad you mentioned a whole bunch of small little things what do you think the number one bad thing about it is if you could just put it you know out of all the things you summarized at the start what is your biggest disappointment i guess with the pinball machine i i have to say it's the play through that i think the color the problem with all the stern games lately in the last however many years three four years you put them all together they all look the same right the the color palette and the style of artwork are very very similar and you can see where franchi was there when franchi was not there right because he has a different type of color palette and a different way of drawing um whereas a lot of it is very comic color palette marvel influenced obviously there are a lot of marvel games we know but they just start looking very similar even dnd which is a completely different artist in between a whole heap of stern still looks very similar because there's that particular tone that stone stern go for i'm not talking like color palette but just like maybe color palette is the right word but you know that you just know they're stern machines because of the style of color that they're using and the way they do artwork and i just think this looks really good up close when you look at specific items like you said but as soon as you pan out and you want to look at it all right it looks a bit too much now in saying that king kong was the same for me king kong when i saw it i was like oh man what are they doing with the neon colors and i'm a sucker for neon noir right i'm a sucker for that type of color palette and pinks and purples king kong in person wasn't as bad right but it's still not great like it's not my choice of the way i would have done it and i just feel that the playfield artwork on this one is a miss for me i i would have preferred to go more browns and dark reds and um you know you can still do the yellow but not vibrant yellow uh if you to be honest if you actually put this new playfield artwork next to the harry potter artwork they got very similar tones and colors um and i just don't know like i just think that's probably the biggest disappointment about it yeah i i'm i need to like i don't know i need to marinate on it for for longer i guess i i mean i I think originally when I see almost any pinball machine, I do get honestly overexcited. Even though I don't even have enough money in my bank account to just go out and buy this thing, I still get excited and I still get calm. But I know what you're saying. Just something, I can't put my finger on it, but something about the artwork. I don't want to say it looks sternly, but it looks... Definitely the colors are just too vibrant, too much orange, too much yellow, a little bit too much red. there should be more contrasting with darkness so the darkness of the theme comes through better. I will agree with you on that for sure. So that totally makes sense. Now, my one bad, you'll never guess because we haven't talked about it so far. It's very simple. My one bad is those... I'm sorry, please. If Stern, if you're listening, cover your ears, okay? I already got in trouble once in the last week for being rude about a pinball company I don want it to happen twice okay I already got spankings The zombie heads I sorry Stern What is up with the zombie heads on the stupid slingshots What is happening? They're big. They're gaudy. If you have little kids going up there to play, even like I was saying, my son, when we originally had Walking Dead, I think Owen was only like eight or nine years old, right? Literally, he wouldn't have been able to see over those. They look giant. They look like you took like a big, I don't know, a big orange or a big apple, like the size of like a pool ball. And you put it right on top there. And they're just gaudy and they're ugly. And like you said, the same thing when you've got the well walker there at that size, then you've got the barn at that size. You know, one is like 1-100th scale. Then one is like 1-50th scale. Then all of a sudden those heads are like just right up there in your face. And they're a totally different scale. I totally agree with you. I think those two heads, I think you're going to see mod videos of people just unscrewing those heads day one and throwing them in the garbage or, I don't know, burning them or throwing them off buildings like you would with a crappy pinball machine. Someone's going to do something funny with them. I don't know. They would literally be better as shooter rods, and they'd still be ugly as shooter rods. The one thing we didn't talk about, and I'm curious your thoughts on this, still to this day I believe the most expensive topper in all pinball, is that aquatic fish aquarium topper, which I still think is right up there in the top three, if not the top two. Maybe the Black Knight Sword of Rage topper that the Knight taunts you is maybe a little bit better. But do you think they're going to bring that topper back, or do you think they're going to come up with something totally new? I hope they bring that topper back and maybe make it a little more updated, but I hope they bring that topper back. Do you think they bring back the fish aquarium topper or something new? Look, I think in this situation they would be mad not to. I think it was such a popular topper, and on the second-hand market, they go for silly money. So it would be silly for them not to. It would be a very good business decision to start remaking that topper. So, no, look, I think they will, and I totally agree with you. I was going to bring that up before, and I forgot. Those zombie slings, you know, they had the skulls on the Metallica slings, and that's fine. Now it looks like they're just trying to put stuff, you know, and I know Stern get criticized for having less mechs and toys than other companies. But I think you've overdone it with those skulls, with the zombie heads on the slings. And I just don't think that was necessary. And if they weren't there, people wouldn't have even noticed, to be honest. You could have got away with it. Yeah, you're right. They're doing too much, as they say. So before we jump into talking about, I'm going to do a classic Orby pivot here. I don't want people to think that I'm unbiased. I'm not having you on the show. just because you happen to be a top-tier Patreon of the Pinball Nerds Podcast. Thank you so much for that. Shout out. But honestly, you and I have been chatting a little bit in the mornings, and it kind of works out because I'm up in the morning, and I'm kind of bored while I'm waiting for the whole homestead to wake up and start my chores and stuff, and you're probably just getting ready to go to bed around that time. So we've been having some nice chats, which is really cool. You own a cafe there, and you've previously had other cafes. you're probably the only person on my Patreon list that isn't going to try my coffee and say this is the best coffee I've ever had, Orby because you're a coffee snob but yet you still are going to get some of my awesome coffee so I've got to ask you here, live on the show are you a light roast guy so you can make an espresso with it are you a medium roast or do you want a good strong dark roast with lots of chocolatey type flavor? Yeah, look, I'm a sucker for dark roast so I tend to drink long macchiatos which are a double shot latte ultimately, and in a, you know, in a six ounce or an eight ounce cup. So I am actually currently drinking and I know I had a feeling you were going to ask me this. So I was like, he's going to ask me. And what I actually did is before I left the house, I actually took a photo of wherever the hell it's gone. Let's have a look. So I took a photo of, which is Murphy's Law. So the bag, I was drinking a Modus coffee bean, which is a Louis Annabelle from Columbia. It is basically hazelnut, chocolate, and citrus flavoured. And it makes a mean long mac. And I know we have a really awesome coffee culture here in Australia. I've had multiple cafes in the past. Long Macchiato's or Long Macs are basically an Australian staple. It should be on our flag. But yeah, that's what I'm drinking at the moment. So how would you make that? Would you put it through an espresso machine and then? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, so it's just two shots of coffee in a six ounce or eight ounce cup or in a glass if you're at home. And then basically topped up all the way to the top with, traditionally they just put a blob of milk in it but in Australia we do topped up or three quarters I guess and it would it be like a froth milk no no it's just textured milk okay and like a latte textured milk we tend to drink I drink almond milk I just I don't have normal milk I'm not a milk drinker you can have it with oat milk or soy milk whatever but yeah look an almond long mac is the best thing. I'm looking forward to going to Melbourne. I'll leave soon. The coffee in Melbourne is out of this world. So yeah, Long Mac coffee it is. Wow, that's so cool. I don't drink really cow's milk at all either, but I definitely use like 18% cow cream in my coffee in the morning. But that's the only time. I mean, obviously I eat cheese and other stuff. I'm a meatitarian really. I'm basically allergic to all vegetables. So I eat a lot of that. But the milk that I love for any time I'm having, I've got to bring up a Seinfeld reference. You know me. It's the number one thing I want to see in pinball. When I am having any type of breakfast cereal or oatmeal or anything, I have it with oat milk. But all my other milks, I use something wild and weird. You probably have something similar to it there, but it's called Marc Silk Next Milk. And Next Milk is some weird next-level crap. It's like 25% almond, 25% this, blah, blah, blah. How do you milk an oat? I don't know how you're milking out. Do they even have teeters? I don't know. But anyways, I've gone totally off topic here. Let's reel it back in and talk about Enzo, the now legend who learned to putt. Because guess what? You've been playing tournaments for a little while. And just recently, they started to click for you a bit more and more and more. And whenever I see anyone's name on the same page in a big tournament as Jason Lambert, I know they've made it. I remember listening to him on head-to-head. years ago I could tell you the time and place I was walking upstairs while my wife was driving the school bus in London Ontario walking the upstairs track well watching hockey that's how weird of a memory I have I couldn't tell you what I had for breakfast this morning but I know that Jason Lambert is a king because I couldn't understand anything he was talking about when he talked about rules and stuff so he's good and you you recently had two very high place finishes at what looked like some pretty big tournaments when you have that many people going to finals tell us first of all how you placed of course but even maybe more importantly what do you what do you think is like clicking now like how many tournaments have you played and how long you've been playing tournaments for stuff to really start clicking in tournaments look I am not a tournament player I mainly because I'm not a great player you are now easy player I don't I don't yeah I don't nudge and I don't slap I'm doing more of that now um I've been uh for a couple years now I've done a couple here and there. I've probably done a handful a year. And then I haven't done one for a long time. I'd say probably over six months. But I've been practicing and I've been playing a lot more games than ever, kind of more time and I guess the training, if you want to call it, of playing pinball and you become a better player. And all of a sudden I've rocked up to this. we had the Southern Hemisphere Championships in Perth which were hosted by Jason Lambert who is one of the most down-to-earth people you'll meet true legend I can't be putting the same sentence as him as a player because he's just unbelievable his ball ones are like my 10 balls on like 4 games but it was really cool to finish in the top 7 in one tournament and the top 20-something it was. It was a big tournament, so there were like 50 people. And we had people come from New Zealand and Melbourne and Sydney and Queensland. It's a long way to come. Perth, like I said, is one of the most isolated cities in the world. But I just feel that I've played a lot of games that have just made me a better player. You know, the aiming, the shooting, the understanding of rules. And just saving the ball. Like, I notice the more I try and save the ball and slow it down, the better the result is for me. And it is just kind of just slowing it down. You know, just slowing it down. So to everybody out there who's been playing tournaments casually for a couple of years, and maybe it just wasn't quite clocking yet, to quote my compadre fellow Canuck, Justin Bieber, okay? He's just standing on business right now, all right? it will all come together just keep practicing just keep playing we're all going to have that moment I remember I had like gone to finals six or seven times in my my just my Monday night league where we only had maybe 12 to 16 people usually and I could just I always got third or fourth I could never even get first or second and then it was literally my birthday weekend my nemesis wasn't there who always beat me and it was like a free birthday gift and somehow I just got first and I walked away going, wow, that'll never happen again. And then it took me a year and a half to get another first. And still to this day, this is, that was like eight years ago, seven years ago, still to this day, I think I've only got like five firsts out of 200 tournaments. So I have a very, very, very bad percentage of winning even these small tournaments I'm in, but I still love it. And you know what, to this day, it's a rarity that if I go with both of my sons, that either myself or one of my sons, in fact, this entire year of 2025, you can look on IFPA, one of the, either Hayden Owen or myself, we all went to finals. So it's just a numbers game. Once you just keep playing pinball for so long, keep putting yourself out there, keep taking the risk, don't give up. If you're someone who's played only a couple tournaments, get back out there. Just the biggest advice I would say, and I think I talked about this a little bit with Aaron Davis recently, go back and listen to that show Pinball Nerds if you haven't. That was so good. Homebrewing legend, fast pinball gentleman himself. But don't go into like a really big tournament maybe your very first tournament ideally start with a smaller one that's less serious maybe a little bit less structured you know you're not paying as big of a fee when you have to go pay a hundred bucks or something to go play in a big tournament of course you're going to be taking it seriously go find a five dollar or ten dollar like a you know a just for fun tournament but um yeah oh i wanted to talk to you about this as well and i mentioned it earlier but you and i we are we are the maybe the only two voices of reason comedic reason in all of pinball I'm sure there's other podcasters out there who brought this up and who would agree with us but like, you tell me this, is not what makes Attack from Mars great, the comedy is not what makes Medieval Madness great, the comedy, they don't take themselves too seriously, all of these games that are like, renowned that maybe the code's not that deep and maybe the shots aren't that great, but you know what's great, is how funny they are and that's what keeps you coming back, like, Sakurai you know, like they get you really into the moment and we haven't we need just off the top of my head community okay maybe that would take a fifth maybe i'm the only one who wants community but like uh seinfeld cheers curb your enthusiasm the office even parks and rec come on we need a ron swanson give me all the eggs and bacon you got you know like which am i wrong why is it that all the pinball companies they love to do they'll go to texas chainsaw massacre which is great for spooky they love doing spooky type themes that makes sense for them but why have we never seen even a jersey jack or uh uh stern or any any of these companies the boutique companies they're even going for sci-fi and scariness right like even barrels of fun they're all three of their first three ones were basically sci-fi why is why are so people so afraid and i understand like action and yada yada yada there you go seinfeld reference but why on earth and when will we ever see a comedy like why has no one gone for Seinfeld what what would be your favorite of all the and don't say flight of the concords just because you guys are neighbors no I'm just kidding but what would be your favorite or what are your thoughts on why we're not seeing a single solitary comedy pin in literally like 20 or 30 years yeah look I I agree and I think the biggest issue is probably theme integration how you take Seinfeld for instance which is the one that I would love to see it's my favorite show and you know how do you take soup nazi and turn that mode or that episode into a mode right that's the one mode you can't have yeah like you know how do you take episodes from comedy shows and turn them into modes and that is probably the most challenging bit um and i think for a comedy you you'd have to look at it differently and go and just turn like every mode into a multiball or something like like they used to in the 90s with some games where it was just really multiball heavy because you just want to experience that episode those call outs those laughs i wouldn't even hear the fake audience in the background laughing like you know so it's challenging and i understand why they don't do it but i definitely think there's a market like i definitely think there's a market for the office pinball you know and oh god yeah you know staple stapler in the jelly and just there's so much you can do and i think you just got to be smart and i think having coders like elizabeth uh and ray day they can they'll know how to do theme integration with code yes on something like you know um uh i don't know um the episode where uh George is touching himself like he's on an amusement park ride. Oh, yeah. He doesn't know whether to pick up his mother or zip up. You know, stuff like that where, like, you know... That would be challenging. Like, it is challenging. Like, how do you take classic episodes of... And even The Simpsons struggled with it a little bit with their party pinball. You know, they had so many episodes. and even that was still a challenge to you know it was kind of just little bits from every episode chucked in there and it's hard it can be done no questions about it I just think that's the reason we haven't seen it is because of the episodic theme integration and how you do it but you know if I just want to be in that universe what's that? Oh sorry I said you're being too nice like they gotta do it someone's gotta do it I love comic books. We don't need another superhero pinball machine. I'm sick of it. I think we would see an Office one before, because in the Office there was far more episodes that were about stupid activities that you could easily turn into a mode, right? And, you know, like build a fort in the warehouse or, you know, beats multiball. It's just things like farming beets or pranking Dwight, you know, the annoying, stupid, you know, that's what she said, multiball. And like, you know, like, oh, the ball's gone in the hole. That's what she said. You've just hit my, I don't know, you've just drained your balls. That's what she said. Like that type of stuff, right? The office is probably the best one that you could do very easily because of the silliness in the episodes, right? Whereas Seinfeld, yes, it had its silly moments, but they were still pretty kind of relevant situations, like the Chinese restaurant where you're literally just, the whole episode is them waiting for a table, right? Genius episode. How do you turn that into a mode? You're right, genius episode, but that's going to be so difficult to come across there. Even Michael Scott falling into the koi pond, you know, that would be hilarious. I just think there's so much opportunity because people out there, it's not just you and me. Like I learned in marketing when I went to Fanshawe College back in the day that every client that says something, so if someone's client says, oh, I think this product is too expensive, it means 10 other clients thought the same thing before that one client most likely said it. So if there's only – Yeah. Let's say there's 20 to 30 pinball podcasters out there on planet Earth that cover pinball. I mean, honestly, if two of us are shouting from the rooftops, we need, like, if it had to be 80s or 90s, I would take a Cheers one. That would be the hardest of all the ones I mentioned. Community, easy to do. The Office, super easy to do. Seinfeld, a bit tougher. You'd have to dodge around, like, the Cuban Day one. There's, like, six or seven episodes that are a little hot button. You'd have to avoid, like, obviously the soup Nazi. No soup for you! you know you'd have to avoid a couple the different you know the competition the treating your body like a playground with his mom coming home while he's looking at the Glamour magazine or whatever yeah there's some stuff you'd have to avoid but believe me if Stern can figure out a way to do John Wick where we have like dogs being murdered at point blank and they can do it tastefully or at least try to even though they didn't add any guns I'm sure we can pivot and out of nine seasons of Seinfeld we can find enough funny things that are PC enough. Also Seinfeld would be very very hard because I sure as you know Jerry Seinfeld like a quadrillionaire or something I don know who richer him or Larry David yet Whereas if you look at The Office Dwight Schrute come on I think his podcast gets less listens than mine. And mine was 20th in the Twippies, for God's sake. So, like, Dwight Schrute is doing nothing. He's begging for someone to call out, sure, give me a free pinball machine. I'll do it. Yeah, what's going on? What's happening? I'll tell you what we should be the catalyst for change so what I reckon we should do, let's talk about this off air me and you should start doing we should come together let's focus on the office let's work out some mode ideas and then let's do an episode about the office pinball homebrew dude, let's do it we can even compare notes and we can figure out where it would go even guess at which companies might be best yes if enough people liked that episode we could get signatures just to prove, who wouldn't want an office pinball machine as a Canadian I would have said Kenny vs. Spenny, have you ever even seen that in Australia or no? no I haven't, no look it up, don't do it while you're in the airport unless you have earpods on it makes South Park they literally were hired by Matt and Trey and Matt and Trey were like no you guys are too effed up, like the show is pretty obscure. Start with a mellow one, like who can stand the longest, or who can go the longest without talking. It's just a Canadian competition show. It's absolutely hilarious, but that would never work. Letter Kenny I would love. That would never work. All these Canadian things, they wouldn't work. They're good Canadian comedies. There's not enough people. The Office, I think you're right, is hands down, it's still to this day the number one most watched show on Netflix. They had to renew it through NBC to not allow Peacock to have their own freaking show on their own network. Netflix had to pay more than they had to pay for even Stranger Things, their own show. So like, you know, The Office is still, even both my sons who are younger, my youngest son, Owen, absolutely refuses to watch The Office. He cannot handle the laugh track. I get it. I get it. It's very aged. You know, he's 17, okay, fine, whatever, 16, 17, 6, 7, whatever. But, if you're talking about The Office, I think almost everybody, whether you're, even my dad, my dad, who's, I should know this exactly, I think 68, he's soon to be 69. My dad almost pushing 70. He will quote Michael Scott's, that's what she said from time to time. He screws it up most of the time, but he's at least trying, right? Like, you know, he's getting close to that age where, you know, he's not, it's not that funny all the time, but he tries. He would love it. I would love it. You would love it. Literally like, okay, I'm sure there's some kids that are like, you know, under 10, maybe that haven't watched it that much maybe with their parents and don't really get it yet but almost everybody that's a teenager up to like 70 years old is a target market for it it's got it's you know it's it's overall just really funny and it's honestly pretty safe there's not that much vulgar stuff that happens in it there's no swearing in the college there's no there's no violence like it's a very family-friendly uh type of theme so anyways we've talked about the comedy too much i'm getting really close to that one hour i know you've got a plan to catch i don't want to keep you too too much longer um sorry the main thing that i i was just curious from you i wanted uh i know i just watched part of the video i didn't get all the way through it you record uh on tell us a little bit about your live streaming and the youtube channel channel and how that works with you and gonzo and everything and uh i did just watch one of your videos you were talking about helping light up a spook spooky pinball machine spooky has got way better at lighting we know that evil dead is It's lit up very well. But a couple of pinball machines ago, and they were still growing and learning, they did, is it Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle you were helping? Yeah. Right. Correct. Tell everybody a little bit about your, you know, give yourself a little plug and just tell us a little about what you do there with Gonzo and your live streaming and your interviews. You've been doing a ton of interviews, by the way, recently. Shout out to that. So, yeah, tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, so I started basically just being, looking for really good kind of pinball content, you know, three years ago, whatever it was. And I really gravitated to Gonzo because he has a nature and a tone about him that is very calming and soothing. And his stuff is, I like the way he reviews things. It's a little bit like the top gear of pinball. And I reached out to him because we had a common interest, which we both love football, soccer, you know. And we just hit it off and he loved my story and he said, do you want to come on the channel and tell your story about how you got into pinball and how you dumped all your old hobbies and put all that money and energy into pinball? And then, you know, I would just offer to help him here and there. And then next minute, you know, three years later, here I am kind of co-hosting the channel with him. He's a very busy man to get hold of. He's well aware that he used to take too long to put out episodes in the past. We used to get one a month from him, if that. sometimes it would go longer without an episode and he basically said may I give you free reign he made me an admin on his channel he I said to him I'd love to do Q&A's because I like engaging with the community he wasn't doing that and he goes yep go for it more interviews mainly because he just never had the time to organize those interviews so you know we kind of filling holes in the channel that were there, which were interviews, Q&A with the listeners, and I started doing some streaming of just playing some terrible pinball on camera while I drink whiskey and talk to the people. So we got heaps more content. It's kind of like 300% more than what it used to be, and I'm loving it. Having my own channel made no sense, even though everyone said you should because now most people know who you are in the pinball community. But, you know, I'd be a bit late to the party and I'd rather really promote a channel that is as diplomatic as Gonzo's and as soothing as his. Ironically, everyone's starting to think that I'm Gonzo because my name is Enzo and that's the closest thing to that. Ironically, that was also my nickname at school because of my massive Italian nose. Oh, no. No, he's actually Gonzo. His name is Chris. And, yeah, we just coincidentally share a very similar nickname. And the rest is history, mate. Well, I'll tell you what. You're a smart guy because I started a YouTube channel not too long ago. And although it has very light on pinball content, I think I only put up one pinball-esque video so far. and they're mostly just kind of me having fun goofing around doing blog style stuff but I am at like 60 subs maybe less than that maybe like 50 and Gonzo's has 7,000 so it's smart for you why would you want to start from square one I'm sure you could get to 7,000 but it just makes sense if he's only post if he was posting every day or once a week it wouldn't really make sense you know like you would have to fill those holes but it really does make sense if he's not doing lots of live interviews. I did watch his review today. I agreed with almost everything he said with that. I know he wasn't originally a big Walking Dead fan, but no, I think it's great that you're over there, and everybody should go like, subscribe, and comment on all the videos on Gonzo's Bimbalorama, because you're not only supporting Gonzo, but also Enzo, and that's kind of, you know, in a roundabout way, that's really what the community is about, and I really liked what you guys were doing with the interviews, and then, you know, of course I like the live streams, because I can jump in there and and, you know, talk to you or talk to Ryan Barry or, you know, anything else that's going on. It would be a big miss for me, though, to not at least ask you your just general thoughts and feelings. We are exactly 10 days from the release of Beetlejuice. Tell us the truth. Did you get FOMO'd in? Did you put the money down on the Beetlejuice? Were you thinking about it? Do you want to play it before you pay, like I always say? Like, what are your thoughts on it? well I've done a lot of business with my local distributor in Australia so I kind of automatically make the list I guess in that sense he tends to look after his regular clients so yes I am on the list I do like Beetlejuice as a theme probably more than Evil Dead and you know for me it's kind of like look let's just get it in between me and my buddy Shane if we like it we keep it if we don't we move it on after six months. You know, someone's always going to want to play it. But from what I'm hearing from Don and Kerry, who have actually seen it, they're saying this is better than Evil Dead. So, like, what's there not to love? So I'm looking forward to getting it on the channel and for us to show it off and talk about it. And I'm excited by it. You know, even the voice integration, the colour scheme, I'm a big Franchi fan. So, you know, looking forward to what he's done there and the call outs being a lot of the movie assets and stuff. So I'm really excited to see what they've done with it. Yeah. And the only question that I even would have had was similar to what I know Cale from Electric Bat had mentioned. You know, back when they had Looney Tunes and stuff, there was some issues with reliability and especially even before that with like Halloween and such. It sounds like if you have an arcade where the machines are on 16 to 18 hours a day, the machines four or five times a go, maybe you got a mate on Friday, dud, or maybe just they need some more work on the code and some of the mechs and stuff. but I did episode 641. I was in a live stream with Bug and basically said, hey, everybody is saying that Evil Dead is far, far, far more reliable than any game you've made before. What are you going to do to make sure the next game is more reliable? And would you say that it will be as good or even better? And he basically came back saying that he believes that the improvements that they made on Evil Dead were huge, but he thinks the improvements they've made on the reliability are even better for the next pin, which we now know is Beetlejuice. So I think theme-wise for me personally, other than the Jetsons, come on. Like, Spooky's best theme ever was the Jetsons. I don't know if the layout gave it a, you know. But, I mean, their second best one ever is by far Beetlejuice. Evil Dead did nothing for me. Texas Chainsaw Massacre does nothing for me. I can't watch stuff like that. I get really afraid and freaked out. I could be watching Harry Potter and have to, like, turn away and my wife laughs at me. I'm serious. like I just don't like no I don't like bloody gory stuff like that I don't know why I don't know how again jokingly I have watched I mean like I have watched Kill Bill by Quentin Tarantino and to me that that type of blood and gore is not realistic at all like you know when the girl's head comes off and you can see the tube squirting out the red kool-aid like that type of stuff I can handle but if it looks real like you're really watching like it looks like a real person's leg being put into a meat grinder or like whatever they all happen with the wood chopper in Fargo I had nightmares for months after I was like why did I just watch a lady go into a wood chopper I can't do that so I literally I can't even watch Black Mirror anymore that type of stuff gets in my head and I end up having nightmares but yeah this is all to say that the the the this is a humorous this is what we were talking about Enzo this is funny when you go to watch it no one is scared of what even when you're a kid when you're watching Beetlejuice it's funny you know it's it there's tons of humor in it so I'm really excited for that I'm excited to see the mechs because the mechs blew me away on evil dead i'm really stoked to see the artwork because christopher franchi's never i the problem is every time franchi does a new art package i say okay well this one was better than the last one now at some point yeah will every art package be better than the last probably not i mean for probably 250 shows i'm sure you didn't go back and list to my first 250 and please don't but for if you did enzo you would have heard me say at the end of like 250 shows i would have said the most beautiful art package on planet earth is by far the munsters black and white premium and uh even though francia might not have agreed you know so i'm excited to i am really excited to see it i don't want to be a negative nancy or debbie downer but i hope that they continue to get better and better with the code because i know in some tournaments there were some issues with that type of stuff but i think as long as they keep working on the code it sounds like they hired a new coder if the reliability is good i already trust the shots are going to be good. The mechs are going to be good. We know the artwork's going to be incredible. Spooky Speak, I'm really interested to see how they implement it. I'm still not sure about it, but we'll see. So I'm overall generally excited, and now I'm excited for you. Someday when I get to come and visit Australia, you know, it's possible I'll get to play it with you, and that would be super rad. That would be really fun. How long do you guys have to wait? I know in Canada we have to wait usually at least a month over the Americans, but you guys have to wait what is it probably three months four months for a stern or for for stern it's normally three to four months for spooky we pay the deposit in december we don't get the game till september it's a long time so the evil dead we got air freighted in july because we were like well look you know we really want to get it on the channel uh gonzo was going to be playing at the uk pin fest around the same time and it made sense if we both did content on it uh you know we're trying to grow that channel when i started with gonzo we had 5 000 subscribers so we're we're two and a half thousand subscribers more and uh this type of this type of content is the content people want to see and we said let's get let's get it air freighted let's get it in uh yes it's more expensive but at the same time you know it's not much more expensive uh and it saved waiting so i'm really looking forward to it unfortunately we do wait the good thing of waiting though for us in Australia is by the time the game gets to us, the code is flushed out, any issues have been resolved, and there's tweaks and stuff on Pinside everyone is talking about. So, yeah, that's the only silver lining. Awesome. Okay, well, listen, I can hear my dogs barking, which means that at least one of the two of them has got to go for a pee break pretty soon. And myself, after having my third angry alpaca coffee uh you know i've got to go do the same but i'm excited to send you out some samples honestly i know there's a good chance that you probably even get better coffee there because you're a cafe owner who is very selective about which coffee companies you serve and where you get it from so go easy on me but i'm excited to hear your thoughts on that after we get it and i did just want to say thank you so much to being uh part of the patreon i've tried my best I'm not good with like group chats and stuff like that. I always feel like whatever I have to say isn't important enough for the group to hear. So I'm much more likely to like a single message someone than be part of a group chat. Like I'm just even part of the poor man's pinball group that I'm part of here. I don't really like talking to group chat. So I won't say that the group chat on the pinball nerds podcast is fire. But what I will say is I've done even more private episodes than I thought possible. And I'm open and you know, I'm open to doing even more. I want to make sure for the $1 a week on the lowest level that people are getting by far their best money's worth. And I'm not going to tell you that you have to tell the listeners that they have to join. But would you say if someone joined for $1 a week, would they feel like they were getting their money's worth? Yeah, but it's not even just about that. It's also about the fact that making content takes time and effort and energy. And that's time is money, right? Like anything contributes and helps. and look it is because the community you've got and the people that listen to you are fantastic a lot of them are across everyone else's as well like Don's and Kerry's and you know it's it's just a it's a fun space where you can kind of talk with like-minded people and contribute to you know you supporting you buying more coffee if that's the case if anything amen praise the lord hallelujah thank you so much for coming on the show. Anything else? Yeah, anything else you want to mention? Like, can I just say good luck to you? Like, tell me about maybe just really, really quickly, what's the main tournament you're excited to play at the Houston Expo? Is it a big tournament or is it more just like a pinball expo? At the Melbourne Expo. Melbourne. I said Houston. Melbourne, sorry. Yeah, I'm not going to be doing tournaments over there. Unless there's a fun one maybe late at night, like a Flip Frenzy or Strikes. It's about the people. A lot of the areas, I'm going there just to shoot content, meet some people, and then ultimately do a little bit of mingling with, we've got Jacqueline and Eric coming across. That'd be so cool. I've been talking with Eric now for a couple of years, and I'd like to think we'll become a little bit buddy-like, and we're going to be hanging out before the expo. We have a common interest of barbecue and meetings, So we're going to be indulging in some of that before we go to Expo. I'm so jealous. Well, you know what? I'm sure he doesn't know who the hell Orbital Albert is. But if you could be so kind, buy this man an IPA. I know we both have a love for IPAs. Get him a local IPA and say that Orby told me I had to give this to you. And he'll go, who the hell is that? And you'll go, don't worry about it. It's fine. He's a big fan of yours. And, you know, he loves all your pins. And so especially, and I still, it's so funny because I still haven't got to play Harry Potter. And like, as much as I want to play like a remastered, sure, yes, okay. But like Harry Potter, like if, you know, that would be, that's probably the number one pinball machine on planet Earth that I want to play that I haven't got to play yet. But who knows? It will happen someday. Enzo, thanks for coming on the show. My pleasure, mate. Thank you for having me. And I'll talk to you soon. I will do this office homebrew brainstorming episode. Let's do that. honestly like I'm gonna the wheels are already spinning you hear me talking to you I'm already thinking about that's what she said a joke so you know yeah hey have yourself a rad day good luck hopefully the flight is good and we'll talk to you soon and until next time pinball nerds remember to eat sleep and breathe enzo _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v1)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: bc69e2c8-811d-430b-b26f-fd0fbbd78a6e*