# Triple Drain Pinball Podcast Ep 9: A Wild Dennis Kriesel Appeared!

**Source:** Triple Drain Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2021-11-13  
**Duration:** 138m 52s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://zencastr.com/z/4xx5W0M9

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## Analysis

Triple Drain Podcast episode featuring Dennis Kriesel discussing Pinball Expo 2025, Chicago Gaming Company's Cactus Canyon reveal and SE Plus pricing strategy, market pricing trends driven by wealthy new collectors post-COVID, and the perceived inaccessibility of pinball for budget-conscious enthusiasts entering the hobby.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Chicago Gaming Company's Cactus Canyon presentation at Expo was poorly executed—they announced without preparing, forgot to mention special edition pricing, and presenter Ryan had to check his phone for what he could say. — _Travis directly critiqued the presentation; Joel noted the irony that despite poor execution, all games sold out immediately._
- [MEDIUM] CGC's SE Plus pricing strategy leverages licensing terms: Planetary receives a higher percentage kickback on accessories vs. games, so packaging the topper with the SE as a 'Plus' edition and selling it at LE price actually costs Planetary less than selling the topper separately. — _Joel stated: 'my network of spies and informants' told him this; attributed to CGC's 'arrangement with Planetary on the license.'_
- [HIGH] Pinball market has shifted dramatically since COVID: new wealthy collectors with no prior hobby experience are buying 15+ machines (mostly LE/Premium), driving unsustainable price increases. — _Travis: 'consumer base for pinball has drastically shifted during COVID times... there is a crazy influx of just new people in the hobby with a lot of money behind them.'_
- [MEDIUM] A Mando LE new-in-box sold for $18,000 last week on the secondary market. — _Travis: 'I know for a fact a Mando LE new in box just sold for $18,000 last week'; used as evidence of wealthy buyers unconcerned with MSRP._
- [HIGH] Pinball Expo's free play area was disappointing; only the vendor section was a real highlight. Charging for the lecture hall while simultaneously live-streaming it for free online was poor decision-making. — _Dennis: 'Expo is not a particularly well-run event in my view... only the vendor section was really a highlight.'_
- [MEDIUM] Zach Minney created the Cactus Canyon reveal sizzle reel in ~30 hours after being told about it just days before Expo; spent much of that time on the smoke transition effect. — _Joel: 'he was told about it a few days before Expo and, like, drove up, got the machine, drove back, made it just in one go... I'd be just like, George Lucas does screen wipes.'_
- [MEDIUM] SE Plus at LE price does not devalue LE; it actually increased LE secondary market value by $2,000-$4,000 because people now see the SE Plus as the budget option. — _Joel: 'People have been selling it between $13,000 to $15,000' post-announcement; contrasts with Zach's opinion that SE Plus devalues LE by topper cost._
- [HIGH] Tournament streaming at Expo was technically excellent; Tom's setup was praised. However, he had to intervene early the next morning to prevent crew from breaking down classics games needed for morning tournament stream. — _Joel praised Tom's streaming; Tom confirmed he stopped crew from taking down C-Ray and others, involving Tilt to prevent further damage._

### Notable Quotes

> "Expo is not a particularly well-run event in my view... I guess if you're wanting a nutshell summary, it was nice to meet and get together with a lot of pinball folks... But from the decision to charge for their lecture hall while they were live streaming it for free online to a pretty disappointing free play area, I'd say only the vendor section was really a highlight."
> — **Dennis Kriesel**, ~06:30
> _Direct critique of Pinball Expo's operations and business decisions; sets critical tone for discussion._

> "It was almost like they were saying a lot of words in a short amount of time without really saying anything. Like we weren't really getting any information at all."
> — **Travis Murie**, ~12:45
> _Captures sentiment about Chicago Gaming's Cactus Canyon presentation—performative but substance-light._

> "If there would be an industry-wide impact based off of if the SE Plus actually does well on sales... Imagine a world where the only difference between the SE Plus and the LE is the SE Plus is the same exact price, and it's a regular SE with a topper as an LE. And then Stern's just like, all right, we're going to start selling premiums at the LE price because you all do it."
> — **Joel**, ~38:00
> _Raises concern about precedent-setting pricing model; potential industry-wide impact if SE Plus succeeds._

> "There is a crazy influx of just new people in the hobby with a lot of money behind them... people that didn't even start in the hobby until after everything shut down, and they just started summer 2020, and they already have 15-plus games."
> — **Travis Murie**, ~45:30
> _Key explanation for market pricing dynamics; post-COVID wealth influx driving unsustainable prices._

> "I know for a fact a Mando LE new in box just sold for $18,000 last week. What? New in box, yes. So there are people out there... when you have a $5 million home, you don't care. You just, you do not care. And you want the game and you want it now."
> — **Travis Murie**, ~46:45
> _Concrete evidence of secondary market price inflation; explains wealthy buyer psychology._

> "There are people trying to get into this hobby. And they're like, I can't get in it. Like, I cannot afford to get into this hobby right now. There's no used pins that are in a decent price range."
> — **Joel**, ~51:00
> _Community accessibility concern; growing divide between wealthy and budget-conscious hobbyists._

> "When you bought the LE, was the topper a deciding factor or no? ...The topper, it was part of it. It was the fact that the arms move in both directions, right, like a realistic direction and an unrealistic direction."
> — **Tom & Joel (dialogue)**, ~42:15
> _Reveals specific feature appeal of Cactus Canyon LE topper; playful banter about motion mechanism._

> "Tom, you won. You're a winner, Tom. You won, man. You're a winner."
> — **Joel**, ~43:50
> _Running joke about Tom's LE purchase; SE Plus announcement vindicated his earlier commitment._

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Dennis Kriesel | person | Prolific pinball media personality; co-host of Eclectic Gamers Podcast and regular on Pinball Show; attended Pinball Expo 2025 as guest on Triple Drain episode. |
| Travis Murie | person | Co-host of Triple Drain Pinball Podcast; Oklahoma pinball champion; has extensive network of distributors; did not attend Expo but watched streams; primary analyst of market trends and pricing dynamics. |
| Joel | person | Co-host of Triple Drain Pinball Podcast; attended Pinball Expo; provided commentary during tournament streaming; engaged in market analysis and speculation. |
| Tom | person | Co-host of Triple Drain Pinball Podcast; licensed dentist; primary tournament streamer at Pinball Expo 2025; LE collector; intervened to prevent damage to classics games during Expo morning setup. |
| Zach Minney | person | Flippin' Out Pinball owner; created Cactus Canyon sizzle reel in ~30 hours; sold all Escalera units first day of Expo; allegedly spent much of editing time on smoke transition effect. |
| Chicago Gaming Company (CGC) | company | Pinball manufacturer; debuted Cactus Canyon at Pinball Expo 2025; announced SE Plus variant at same MSRP as LE; 1,250 LE units produced before SE Plus launch. |
| Cactus Canyon | game | Chicago Gaming Company new release debuted at Pinball Expo 2025; announced via poorly-executed PowerPoint presentation; all units sold out immediately; comes in standard edition and SE Plus (with topper, no LE bells/whistles). |
| Cactus Canyon SE Plus | product | Limited-run variant of standard SE with moving robotic topper; priced at LE MSRP (~$13,000); unlimited production run (no cap like LE's 1,250 units); same game code as base SE, missing LE cosmetics. |
| Pinball Expo | event | Major annual pinball industry trade show and community event; 2025 edition criticized for poor execution (charging for live-streamed lectures, weak free play area), but strong vendor presence and tournament streaming. |
| Dennis Kriesel | person | Prolific pinball podcast personality; guest on Triple Drain; also regular on Pinball Show and Eclectic Gamers Podcast; first major industry event attendance since 2019. |
| Mando | game | Recent Stern Pinball release (The Mandalorian); LE new-in-box sold for $18,000 on secondary market last week; example of extreme secondary market inflation. |
| Godzilla | game | Stern Pinball recent release; Pro/Premium/LE variants all sold out; large bill-of-material markup vs. earlier Stern games; no ceiling found yet on pricing despite increases. |
| Planetary | company | Licensing partner for Cactus Canyon; receives percentage kickback on accessories vs. games; licensing arrangement incentivizes CGC to package topper as SE Plus vs. selling separately. |
| Triple Drain Pinball Podcast | organization | Pinball podcast; recently launched; hosts are Joel, Travis, and Tom; features guest appearances; episodes discuss game reveals, market trends, tournament updates. |
| Midwest Gaming Classics | event | Pinball event held the weekend after Expo 2025; Tom attended; SE Plus announcement revealed via distributor email rather than official announcement. |
| Back to the Future (Data East) | game | Vintage Data East pinball machine; sold for ~$8,000 at recent auction; secondary market inflation example; rumored new Back to the Future pinball game in development may make vintage version more valuable. |
| Neil | person | Attended Pinball Expo; walked tournament area with Joel early morning; witnessed interaction with crew attempting to break down classics games. |
| Tilt | company | Organization involved in classics tournament operations at Expo; helped prevent Tom from stopping crew from breaking down tournament machines prematurely. |
| Dwight | person | Programmer on Led Zeppelin Zen Pinball table; appeared at Expo; told Joel he was listening to Triple Drain podcast; warm reception to show improved after initial skepticism on early episodes. |
| Eclectic Gamers Podcast (EGP) | organization | Dennis Kriesel's main podcast; mentioned as more popular than Triple Drain; referenced in discussion of Dennis's other media commitments. |
| Pinball Show (TPS) | organization | Major pinball podcast; Dennis Kriesel regular contributor; listeners reportedly tune in primarily for Dennis appearances; discussed SE Plus pricing with Zach Minney. |
| Flipper Arcade | organization | Venue with video tournament streaming setup; mentioned in context of comment about equipment requirements for broadcasting pinball action. |
| IGN Article | media | Recent article on cryptocurrency and pinball museum auction; cited as evidence of wealthy new market entrants driving up prices on high-value vintage machines. |
| Pinball Museum Auction | event | Recent auction where cryptocurrency buyer purchased significant number of games; prices spiked dramatically; evidence of post-COVID wealth influx into hobby. |
| Josh Lyman Code | product | Exclusive code feature of Cactus Canyon LE edition; not included in SE Plus; cited as differentiator between LE and SE Plus beyond topper. |

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** SE Plus at LE price point (without LE cosmetics) may establish precedent for industry-wide pricing model changes; concern that Stern could begin pricing Premiums at LE price if SE Plus succeeds commercially. (confidence: medium) — Joel: 'I have to wonder about these things. If there would be an industry-wide impact based off of if the SE Plus actually does well on sales... And then Stern's just like, all right, we're going to start selling premiums at the LE price.'
- **[community_signal]** Accessibility crisis emerging in pinball hobby: budget-conscious enthusiasts reporting inability to enter hobby at any price point (new or used); perception of market segregation between wealthy collectors and average players. (confidence: high) — Joel: 'There are people trying to get into this hobby. And they're like, I can't get in it... There's no used pins that are in a decent price range.' Discord community reports cited.
- **[design_philosophy]** Chicago Gaming Company's Cactus Canyon presentation at Expo criticized as poorly executed: presenters appeared unprepared, scrambled to check allowable talking points, forgot to announce special edition pricing, yet product sold out immediately despite weak presentation. (confidence: high) — Travis: 'it was almost like that morning they all woke up and realized that they had a game that they had to debut and they had no idea what it was.' Joel: 'Ryan realized he forgot to even announce the special edition.'
- **[event_signal]** Tournament streaming at Pinball Expo 2025 executed at high technical quality by Tom; however, operational issues required intervention: crew attempted to break down classics games mid-morning for morning stream, Tom had to stop them with help from Tilt. (confidence: high) — Joel praised Tom's setup; Tom confirmed preventing crew from breaking down C-Ray and other classics games early morning; involved Tilt to prevent further damage.
- **[event_signal]** Pinball Expo 2025 occurred recently; Chicago Gaming Company held seminar revealing Cactus Canyon with poor presentation execution but strong immediate sales response (all units sold out). (confidence: high) — Travis watched live stream; Joel and Dennis attended in person; Tom streamed tournament; Zach Minney present at event.
- **[market_signal]** Post-COVID influx of wealthy new collectors without prior pinball experience driving sustained secondary market price inflation; $18k Mando LE, $8k+ Back to the Future (Data East), SE Plus LE secondaries at $13-15k immediately post-announcement. (confidence: high) — Travis: 'consumer base for pinball has drastically shifted during COVID times... crazy influx of just new people in the hobby with a lot of money.' Cites specific recent sales: Mando LE $18k, Back to the Future ~$8k, SE Plus LE $13-15k.
- **[personnel_signal]** Zach Minney created Cactus Canyon reveal video under extreme time constraints (~30 hours after notification, days before Expo) and executed it successfully despite poor presentation context; allegedly spent significant time on smoke transition effect. (confidence: high) — Joel: 'he was told about it a few days before Expo and, like, drove up, got the machine, drove back, made it just in one go... I'd be just like... 15 hours was him figuring out that smoke transition.'
- **[market_signal]** Pinball market ceiling not yet reached; Godzilla and GNR LE pricing ($12.5k+) still achieving strong sales despite perceived excess margins; no resistance from market even at elevated price points, suggesting continued upward pricing pressure. (confidence: high) — Joel: 'I think if anything, Godzilla kind of showed this, that we still have not found the ceiling to pinball. And I think GNR's CEs showed this also at 12.5. I don't think we've found the ceiling quite yet.'
- **[announcement]** Chicago Gaming Company's Cactus Canyon SE Plus announced via distributor email (not official announcement); same MSRP as LE (~$13,000) but without LE cosmetics, includes moving topper; unlimited production run. (confidence: high) — Tom attended Midwest Gaming Classics where announcement was revealed; SE Plus being pre-ordered; established as real product with confirmed pricing.
- **[product_strategy]** Cactus Canyon LE features Josh Lyman code and 'all the pretty stuff' (cosmetics); SE Plus lacks code and cosmetics but includes moving topper; both cost same MSRP, creating value differentiation and potentially increasing LE collector appeal. (confidence: high) — Joel: SE Plus is 'SE with a topper at an LE price.' Josh Lyman code mentioned as LE-exclusive feature not in SE Plus.
- **[sentiment_shift]** Divergence in analyst opinion on SE Plus impact: Joel argues SE Plus actually increases LE value (now seen as premium vs. SE Plus); Zach Minney reportedly argued opposite (devalues LE by topper cost). (confidence: medium) — Joel: 'Zach went the complete opposite direction. Zach said the SE Plus just devalued the LE by the cost of a topper.' Joel counters with secondary market evidence: LE prices up $2-4k post-announcement.
- **[business_signal]** CGC's SE Plus pricing leverages Planetary license terms (higher percentage on accessories) by packaging topper as game variant rather than separate accessory, optimizing license revenue share. (confidence: medium) — Joel: 'my network of spies and informants... is that CGC's arrangement with Planetary on the license gives them a bigger percentage kickback on accessories that are sold versus games.'

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## Transcript

 The Pinball Network is online. Launching Triple Drain Pinball Podcast. All right, Tom, you ready? Most definitely. Oh, so good. Travis, are you ready? Yeah, buddy. All right. I'm sorry. I didn't play it last time. Here you go. Thank you. And now, winner of the Oklahoma Pinball Championship Award, a guy so nice he didn't send the award back to ask them to spell the word Oklahoma correctly on the award. You know him. You love him. You can't live without him. Please welcome a guy that sometimes has all the machines turned on in the background, Travis Murie. Oh, God. Thank you, everybody. What a terrible way. Welcome to the Triple Drain Podcast, everybody. All right, here's a good intro. Here we go. I really, you know, when I play your intro first, I feel like it takes away from the Triple Drain intro. Just not that it doesn't steal the thunder. It just like, it like puts a bad taste in your mouth, and then you eat something good, you know? I don't know. No, it keeps people around. You know, everybody is about to skip our episode. They're like, holy shit, I can't skip now. So, Joe, you're welcome. I think what happens is they actually, they start the skip during your intro. And then it skips into the good intro, and they're like, that's what I'm talking about. And then they keep listening. No, I think they're probably sticking around because they see who our extra ball is. No, we don't have an extra ball this week. We have an extra ball plus. We got an extra ball plus. I forgot. Apologies. Apologies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have the one, the only, Dennis Creasel from Eclectic Gamers Podcast. He's also on the Pinball Show. He's, I mean, everybody, most of the people listen to every other episode of the Pinball Show just for the ones that Dennis is part of. So go ahead and applaud right in the microphone there, Travis. Dennis, thank you. Well, I'm trying to clap, but you're doing this long intro. Yeah, it's Bill. Come on. That's true. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry that you're part of this tonight. The face of the pinball network, everybody. Dennis Creasle. Dennis, welcome. Well, thank you for that very long introduction, Joel, and the welcome, Travis, and the silence, Tom. It is most appreciated. And thank you for allowing me to fully drop on this episode and downplaying the TPS aspects of what I do. I will say I have had people contact me that have said that they do only listen every other episode. Every other episode. Huh? All right. Well, I do. I see. We have our video cameras on. Once again, we talk about this every week that we're maybe going to actually film these and put it out as a video. Why would you do that? Not this week. Yeah. because there's a visual side here that we're all enjoying that nobody else enjoys. Because, for one, Dennis, I'm seeing you're wearing a wonderful R2-D2. Not R2-D2. Hole 2-T2. You don't want any copyright infringement. Boop-bop-be-boop or whatever. That was a great shirt. Speaking of attire, Travis is wearing a white T-shirt with a robe on right now. He looks like he's one cigar away from just being, I don't know. You are, yeah. He just cheered us with his Diet Mountain Dew and Jack. I'm on vacation right now. It's a Thursday night. He does look the most professional. I mean, his camera setup looks the most professional, but the attire is kind of a different story. Yeah. True. I'm happy for you, Travis. Uncomfortable, Joel. I've noticed you have the same hat on. I've seen you have one for a while. I wear a lot of hats. I wear a lot of hats. Yeah. It's a hat. I will say he doesn't have his pinball machines on in the background. Apparently, that's a thing of yours, but not now. Who, me? Yeah, you don't. Travis, that's part of your intro. Sometimes has his pinball machines on in the background. That is true. Hey, I just fed right into that narrative, didn't I? Yeah, there you go. Yeah. All right. Well, that's enough of that. You need to introduce Tom. Forgot about Tom. Well, Tom's ready to go. Well, Tom, we're recording tonight because Tom had to get in some education hours, you know, because he's a true professional. I am a licensed dentist. Licensed dentist, yeah. Do you have a licensed dentist in Oklahoma? I don't live in Oklahoma, so no. I'm not. Travis isn't going to even acknowledge it. And I'm Joel. That's enough for me. Yep, I'm Joel. All right, so what do we want to talk about? It has been last episode that recorded was pre-Expo. A lot of what are we going to see at Expo? What are our thoughts of Expo? How do we prepare for Expo? Three of us went to Expo, so we can do, I know this has all been discussed. We'll kind of keep it short and sweet, but I don't know. Dennis, do you have any takeaways from Expo or thoughts on Expo that you haven't already discussed on your eight other media things? That I haven't already discussed, no. I think I've shared on the other podcast pretty much what my thoughts were. I guess if you're wanting a nutshell summary, it was nice to meet and get together with a lot of pinball folks. It was my first big event since 2019 to attend, so that was nice. Expo is not a particularly well-run event in my view, and I don't know if that was different from this year versus years past, But from the decision to charge for their lecture hall while they were live streaming it for free online to a pretty disappointing free play area, I'd say only the vendor section was really a highlight. But, I mean, that's my nutshell thoughts. Yeah, those are good. Travis, being the person that wasn't at Expo, do you have any thoughts from the outside? I mean, did you watch any seminars live? I'm assuming you watched – well, I know you watched some of the stream because you were giving me a hard time when I was commentating. Well, I did watch one of the – was it Expo Seminars? Yeah. And it was Chicago Gaming's seminar. And what were your thoughts on that seminar? I'm drinking right now, so yeah. It was that good. I can tell you when we started recording this, Joel gave me a start time, and we have started late, but not as late as DGC started. Well, yeah, you know, a little playful banter, but nobody had to run and get an extension cord or anything. There was no code updates to get this podcast going. Well, so I'm not going to lie. I wanted to watch it because I was genuinely interested in what they were presenting, and I wanted to see what was going to happen because we all know how they technically announced Cactus Canyon at a show before then. I forgot what show it was to where it was just a basic PowerPoint presentation. They were like, hey, yeah, here's the game. And I was not disappointed. I'm just going to tell you, I was not disappointed at all with how this came off. It was just, I don't know. It was, I think it was inadvertently funny watching it is what it was. I think that's what it was. But yeah, It's, and I agree it's this type of game for me. It's, it's an okay game. It's not one of the games that I'm just wanting to go play all the time, but I'm sure there's other people that haven't got a chance to play it. So I'm sure a lot of eyes were glued on it, but yeah, I was just, I was absolutely floored by how the overall presentation went because it was almost like they were saying a lot of words in a short amount of time without really saying anything. Like we weren't really getting any information at all. And the funniest part to it, it cracked me up because I clipped it. I sent it to a couple of people that whenever I think it was Ryan that started taking questions, he realized that he forgot to even announce the special edition to it or the special edition pricing, something like that. And so I don't know. It just kind of it was just really strange, you know, checking on the phone, seeing what he could say, what he couldn't say. and it just felt like that it was almost like that morning they all woke up and realized that they had a game that they had to debut and they had no idea what it was and yeah it just kind of reflected it so but hey maybe they're doing something right because apparently they're all sold out yeah yeah so i don't know maybe we should not be doing this shit just be starting a pinball company i don't know yeah the spot open in san antonio right now so because clearly that's the best plot that's the best place to make pinball it is easy so why not pinball is easy streaming's hard we all know that i mean yeah it's uh it's science so i know uh i saw them wheel out cactus canyons on the floor and so to me i was like i don't care about an announcement i'll just play the game and zach to his credit his little sizzle reel was really well done and obviously there was some backstory to that he made that in like 30 hours he He was told about it a few days before Expo and, like, drove up, got the machine, drove back, made it just in one go. I mean, his sizzle reel was great. I heard that playing the sizzle reel during the announcement did not go well. But luckily his release on YouTube went fine. And then nobody saw Zach for, like, the rest of the day because apparently he was in his hotel room taking orders. So the reveal did well enough that the games were selling. So I don't know. I mean, if we want to talk game reveals, who's done it right? Was the last good game reveal what? Like, Jersey Jack. TNR, right? Yeah. Yeah, probably. I mean, they seem to be doing it in a way that makes sense to me on all levels. CERN's reveals aren't terrible, but I still really question a lot of their decision making. Like, they seem to be just sort of in this rut of, and maybe it doesn't matter. I mean, when you're backlogged 5,000 games, I guess it doesn't matter. It's the same with, you pointed out, Joel, about Zach not being on the floor. But what was he there on the floor to sell? He sold all his Escaleras the first day and there was nothing else left. Yeah, good point. He was there to sign T-shirts and kiss babies, right? I mean, that's the... And of that 30 hours of editing, do you think that 15 hours was him figuring out that smoke transition? Because I do. I think that. So you took that out, and it doesn't sound nearly as impressive. That's as cool as it was. Best video transition ever. You know what? I'd be just like, George Lucas does screen wipes. He made a billion-plus dollars. Screen wipes will work. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I enjoyed it, but I get it. I get what you're saying, and I know Zach's shaking his head right now, but deep down it. He doesn't listen to this show. Oh, he listens to every show. What else do you think he's doing these days, right? We're like everybody's sixth favorite podcast. I don't know what you're talking about, Dennis. Sixth, at least. At least. Well, we're behind EGP and TPS. No, you're not. Just another pinball podcast. Oh, for sure. Remember that one, guys? Remember when that guy used to do things on his own? He interviewed Gomez and everything. It just went downhill ever since then. You know, he had just another YouTube where he spent 75 minutes going through every single TwiTurtle's achievement in Connected while the programmer for Led Zeppelin was in there begging for scraps. The programmer for Turtles was in chat as well. And we know which one you favor based off of your reactions. Okay. It became the Joel and Dwight show. It did. I will tell you right now, Dwight actually listens to this show. because when I saw Dwight at Expo, he said, I just want to let you know, I'm actually in the middle of your Triple Drain episode right now. And he pulled out his phone, and he really was. He was in the middle of Triple Drain. He goes, I like the show. I will tell you the first few episodes were a lot of inside jokes. I really wasn't following it, and I kind of gave up on it. I was kind of out on the show. But you know what? I kept listening, and now I like it. So we're doing something right. Episode one was Zach Minney. So that's apparently how we started. We started poorly is what it sounds. What were we talking about? Sharing hot tubs and whatnot? Yeah, episode one of Triple Drain? Yeah, that sounds horrible. I'm glad you don't do that now. All right. Well, I have no transition here. Expo, I will say, Tom, I've said this on stream. Your stream of the tournament was fantastic. I was thoroughly impressed with your entire setup. I commentated for about, I don't know, an hour. Travis watched that hour. He was heckling me almost the entire time. It was great. And, I mean, Expo for Dennis and I was all about walking the floor, talking to people, playing some games. Expo for you, though, Tom, you're just tournament mode for four days straight, right? I mean. Yep. Yeah, I went to the vendor hall a couple of times, but just chilling for a little bit. But that was about it. I didn't even see Dennis at all. I popped into the tournament because I didn't play in the tournament. I did pop in the area a few times and talk to some of the Kansas City players who were participating. And I will say that back home, the Kansas City Discord we have for pinball was pretty pleased with how the streaming was out of Expo. You know, those aren't the most ideal conditions to stream under. I just only wish Tom had taken the time to fix C-Ray. yeah C-Ray was a questionable working game C-Ray was shit let's just say what it was it was horrible you know what was hilarious about C-Ray and the classics so I woke up and I got up and I decided I was checking out of my hotel early and I'm like I was talking to Neil, we're walking down, and I'm like, I'm going to go and just see, go in the tournament area. I wanted to check my stuff because I had left some things out, and there were a lot of people in the tournament area. The women's tournament went till 3 a.m., and there were people playing the games because the vendor hall had closed. So I went in there, and everything was fine. Then I look over at the classics games and they had five of them and two of them are broken down. And I just looked at Neil and I'm like, aren't we supposed to be streaming classics this morning? So I went up to the guy and I was basically like, I don't think you're supposed to be taking those down. And he proceeded to tell me, yes, he was. And I'm loading these up right now. And I said, okay. So I ended up getting the people from Tilt to basically stop him from ruining the whole Classics tournament. So that was kind of funny. So, Tom, you're telling me somebody was trying to take C-Ray away and you didn't let them? That is correct. Okay. So everybody, you guys have heard this here. You can blame Tom for staying in classics. That turned out to be very dramatic. I thought you were going to say you had left some stuff, came back down there, and they all had Rob Burke stickers on them. Yeah. Well, all in all, though, Tom, fantastic job. It's clearly a thankless job because that is just nonstop, and I understand that that's stressful trying to keep commentary going and keep the chat active. And I've watched back and, you know, some chat is all about playful banter. Other chats are like, can you please just stay focused on announcing the games? And it's like, you know, if you want to sit there and commentate play-by-play pinball action for hours on end, like, that's work. That is work. But so thank you, Tom. Yeah. If anybody's up for it and can do a better job, we're here for you. Yeah, yeah. But what's even crazier about that. So you did Expo, and then what? Was it the very next weekend, or was it two weekends later? You were the only one that went, but you went to Midwest Gaming Classic as well. The very following weekend. Very next weekend. But you didn't stream that. I did not stream that, no. But you were there for a big announcement, though, right? Oh. Oh. What big announcement? Texas Canyon, SV Plus. Oh, that's true. Plus. Yeah, plus. That is true. I was there. I didn't hear it as an announcement. It was more of an email from one of the distributors. Did people just lose their minds? Have you placed your order, Tom, for the Plus? No, I actually have an L-E on order. Oh, you do? Knew it. No. What was it? You, like, weeks ago were like, I don't think I'm going to get one. Oh, my goodness. Mister, I'm going to stop doing this. I think I'm going to be done with this hobby. That L.A. was a steal. It was under $10,000. Anything under $10,000 is a steal now. How does that work for you, though, Tom? I mean, you're like, I don't think I want it. And then what? The distro hits you up. Hey, Tom, you want it? You're like, yeah. It's kind of actually how it happened. I think he gets back from an educational seminar, cracks open a beer, and one beer in, he's just like, I'm going to buy it. I got to buy something. I got to have some retail therapy. Oh, boy. Tom's like Dave Chappelle, the crack addict character that they had, where he just, like, scratches the – just need more LEs. He's got to have more of those LEs. I like to imagine that when he gets done with this, he turns all those games on there behind him, and he puts on a mink coat and just, like, a big old hat with a feather in it and just starts playing his prizes. I don't even play them. He does, like, pimpin' in the background and everything. I love that chocolate. And I don't even play them. I just keep buying them. I don't know. Okay, so, Tom, well, listen then. As an LE buyer, what was your reaction when you heard about the SE Plus? Were you angered? Were you mad? Were you like, ah, whatever? You know, I mean. I wasn't really angry, but I questioned why it was done. Well, I know I was done, I guess, but I, yeah. Why not just sell a separate topper? I mean, that's basically why they're doing it, correct? Well, because that's the only thing is it's the SE with a topper at an LE price, but with a plus on it. And my understanding through my network of spies and informants, because, you know, I have tons of them, is that CGC's arrangement with Planetary on the license gives them a bigger percentage kickback on accessories that are sold versus games that are sold. So by packaging it as an SE Plus and selling it as an entire game, the amount that goes to Planetary for that additional topper is actually less than if they were just to sell the topper outright. That is what I've been informed. Okay. It makes sense, but it's kind of crazy. I mean, I don't know, as somebody in the hobby that's just looking at this, it's like, well, that kind of sucks. But the reality is, like, for CGC, they just, so they had, what, 500 LEs? And now they can make as many more SU Pluses as they want. There's no limit. No, they had more than that. I think it was 1,250. Yeah. Oh, what am I? I'm smoking crack. Okay, so 1,250. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 1,250 LEs. Tom has one of them. He doesn't have it yet. You just wait. He has a deposit down. Six months, probably. This guy makes room. He's got to get rid of that Paragon. No, not Paragon. 1,250 LEs, and then now they can make – there's no limit, right, on SE Plus? So it is actually less of a game. There is less in that game, but they're making just as much money as they made on the LEs. Well, one place the same. Yeah, but there's no – all the little bells and whistles. I mean, Tom pays for it. Yeah, but Tom buys the bells and whistles. He doesn't care about this SE Plus. It didn't devalue his game. No, it made his game worth a lot more, I think. I think if you're an LE buyer, you're jumping for joy. I think you should be that an SE Plus exists. Because right now, that means a bunch of people are going to be buying this game at MSRP, right? And so if you have your LE new in box, or even if you have it used after a while, It's the value went up at least $2,000 to $4,000. It's already been confirmed on a third-party market. People have been selling it between $13,000 to $15,000. I think the thing that I would be concerned about isn't about this game, but whether there would be an industry-wide impact. I'm not saying there would be, but I wonder. I have to wonder about these things. If there would be an industry-wide impact based off of if the SE Plus actually does well on sales. And the thing I'm thinking of is, you know, everyone had always pointed to that when Jersey Jack entered the scene, that Stern raised their prices because JJP said, top them. Hey, look, you're not charging enough. You can charge way more for people. Imagine a world where the only difference between the SE Plus and the LE is the SE Plus is the same exact price, and it's a regular SE with a topper as an LE. And then Stern's just like, all right, we're going to start selling premiums at the LE price because you all do it. I think that's correct, because I think, if anything, Godzilla kind of showed this, that we still have not found the ceiling to pinball. And I think GNR's CEs showed this also at 12.5. I don't think we've found the ceiling quite yet. Look at all the people that were desperately trying to claim there was, like, a huge increase in the bill of material on Godzilla Pro versus Mando Pro. That's not fair. That's not true. But people, they look for it. They need it. They want to rationalize that this has gone into the games. And Stern's been transparent about it. They're like, no, we have new supply costs. And then, you know, at least $200 to $300 went to cover that connected system. Well, that's why I'm glad you brought that up because that's something that I was kind of thinking about earlier. And I think we can kind of dive into this a little bit. The other thing about Chicago Gaming Company pricing their SE Plus at the same MSRP as the LE, and yet they don't have all the bells and whistles as the LE, right? It makes you wonder, like, how much of a markup is there truly, and how much was the LE actually to put together? Because I've heard from various dealers that there's really not too much margin built in there for the LE itself. So I'm really curious to see how much the SV Plus actually costs to put together in order to get to the price that they got to, and how much is the LE actually together, bond-wise? Yeah, I'm wondering if the distributors, when they, you know, their profit margin, is it exactly the same as it was on the LEs? Are they still only getting that same percentage, or are they getting a bigger amount? Since we know the end price to the end user is the same. Is CGC pocketing this whole difference, or are they sharing that with the distributors who might have felt like they didn't get enough on their LEs? Well, that's a good question. I mean, none of us are distros, so we don't know that. But I do think it is interesting to me that when this news came out, Dennis, you and Zach talked about this on the pinball show. We did? And Zach went the complete opposite direction. Zach said the SE Plus just devalued the LE by the cost of a topper. There's no way. Yeah. To be honest, though, I think it makes sense now that, yes, if you're saying, well, if you want to pay MSRP for this game, no, the SE Plus is that value now, and the LE has much more in it. So you're going to have to pay more than an SE Plus. Right. I think Zach would have been correct if the whole reason people – let's assume that the only reason people wanted the LE over the SE was for the topper. If the SE Plus was less than the LE and that was your route to getting the topper, then it could have, in theory, been a lot of people – if that was the only motivating factor to get an LE was to get that topper. Because you know you're not getting the Josh Lyman code with it or anything. Yeah, yeah. That was really the only deciding factor. Then I think he'd be right. But with the SE Plus at the same price as the LE, everyone who got an LE won. And anyone who wants an SE Plus, if they've researched things, they're going to be mad. Because they're going to be like, why is this the same price as the limited run? Tom, did you hear that? I don't know. I heard that. Tom, you won. You're a winner, Tom. You won, man. You're a winner. I don't know. Typically don't win. He says that as he's surrounded by LE. Surrounded by all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tom, but, yeah, so I don't know. I mean, you buy LEs, that's just what you do, but it's not. When you bought the LE, was the topper a deciding factor or no? I mean, it's just, well, if I'm going to get one, I want all the pretty stuff. You better be honest here, Tom, because I know the answer to this. The topper, it was part of it. It was the fact that the arms move in both directions, right, like a realistic direction and an unrealistic direction. I know that's what Dennis really loves about the topper. It's such a goofy fake look. Does it really do that? Because I was wondering. Yeah, look at the scissor reel. No, look at the scissor reel. Yeah, I thought it was just broke. No. It really does that? It really does. I think the actual reality is the motor only goes in one direction. And so if the arm goes up, it can't go down. So they just got to keep spinning it around to get it back into the regular spot. I don't know. Dennis loves it. Dennis loves it. I love like photorealistic toppers like that. So we talked about, so price feeling. You're saying Godzilla LE has not hit. I mean, they all sold out, and even premiums, the pros, everything. Godzilla, the pros, premiums, LEs, they've all sold a ton, even though there was a huge markup in cost. I don't, I mean, I haven't talked to, I don't have all the spies that Dennis has, and I know, Travis, you talk to like eight different distributors on every morning. It's like, good morning, hi. And I don't think these price increases have really hurt sales, even on other titles that will be manufactured next year. Well, the thing to keep in mind right now is that, and it's obvious with the way that Cactus Canyon was priced, I'm not so sure that even manufacturers have caught up to this, but the consumer base for pinball has drastically shifted during COVID times, during 2020, 2021. and there is a crazy influx of just new people in the hobby with a lot of money behind them. I mean, there just is. Just like the article that came out on IGN a few days ago talking about cryptocurrency and somebody buying out a lot of games at the Pinball Museum auction, there's a lot of people that have a lot of money that are buying games left and right. I've talked to several people that didn't even start in the hobby until after everything shut down, and they just started summer 2020, and they already have 15-plus games. And we're talking, you know, LEs, premiums. They're trying to find everything that they can find. So a lot of people have gone down the rabbit hole. And just to give you an example, I know for a fact a Mando LE new in box just sold for $18,000 last week. What? New in box, yes. So there are people out there. Because here's the thing. Here's the thing. Everybody thinks just because it's an MSRP and there's only so many of them out there that everybody's going to pay a price right around that. All it takes is for one person to really want that game. And when that one person has a lot of money, there's literally no difference between them paying $10,000, $11,000, or $18,000. When you have a $5 million home, you don't care. You just, you do not care. And you want the game and you want it now. That's the prices that people are paying right now. And it's happening in real time, and it continues to happen. Just look what happened with the auction, Tom. Like, everything went crazy. Back to the Future was what, like $8,000? The day to East one? I mean, it's something nuts. So, I mean, that's where we're at right now. Well, I mean, a lot of people have been rumoring Back to the Future coming out sometime soon. So it sounds like an $8,000 day to East Back to the Future will actually be the cheaper Back to the Future at some point because the way these price increases are going, I mean. That's true, but no matter, I don't care. I don't care what price you get that Taddy East one. That dog don't hunt. Well, I understand. I mean, Tom, we obviously give you a hard time with your collection, and you should be proud of your collection. It's an awesome collection. But I understand, like, I got into this hobby a few years ago, and I mean, even still, every pin that I buy or flip, I am counting every single dollar. I am trying to make things to build up my collection. And I am not at that point where I can just like, eh, why not? I'll buy it. I mean, and I feel bad for there are people trying to get into this hobby. And I know that because on Discord, I'm part of the pinball community Discord. And it's great. And there are people trying to get into this hobby. And they're like, I can't get in it. Like, I cannot afford to get into this hobby right now. There's no used pins that are in a decent price range. There's new. I mean, you can't even – even if you want to buy new, it all depends on who you know and how quick you get on a list. So it's very – I feel like we have very – I don't know. Segregate is not the word I want, but it's just like there are two spectrums here of people trying to get in and then these other buyers that are just eating it all up. It's an expensive hobby. Yeah. It's an expensive hobby because you go year over year, everybody has said the same thing. It just happens to be now that obviously prices are way up because of inflation and a lot of other reasons, getting raw materials and all that. But, I mean, year over year, I mean, it was the same thing. When I was looking at getting an ACDC nearly a decade ago now, or maybe it was a decade, I mean, even on the message boards then, everybody was talking about how expensive the hobby was. And it's not near as expensive now. So that's always been around. And I'm sure Tom, who's been in it for a long time, he could probably attest that some of the games that he got early on, now that are just absolute stills, I'm sure back then there were still people around saying, hey, this is an expensive game. It's not necessarily cheap. So it's easy to kind of view this through the 2021 prism of everything. But I think this has always been an expensive hobby. It just happens to be to where this hobby is very much to where people can buy games online readily now. And that's the huge difference. There's been an explosion of online content. Even us doing what we're doing now, we're reaching new people all the time. Even if it's just one or two people, it's still one or two people that get the bug and want to get something or want to look at something. So I think that it kind of adds to it, I guess is what I'm saying, to where the prices will keep going up. And I think it's just one of those things that that's just how it is in this type of hobby. True. So back in the wood rail days, Tom had it easier, is what I'm hearing. Yes. Yeah, okay. We can still probably get you a good deal on a wood rail. Gobble hulls are a huge turnoff to the modern players. Oh, they're fun. Well, Spooky would have something to say about that, Dennis. Yeah. I got all the scoops. Who was that? It's me, Ultraman. It's, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyways, the only other thing I see, we have very little notes here for the listener, but the only other thing. What are you talking about? We have everything. We're professionals. This is scripted, very scripted. Every one of these jokes, I mean, they're just, we're just, yeah. We had rehearsal yesterday. Here's the real thing. I'm on line 437. Oh, of the notes? Okay. You've just met the chief programmer behind Legends of Valhalla, and that's why he's going to be retreading. I was going to say, free play Florida. That's the only thing left convention-wise we haven't talked about. It's coming up. Travis, you're going. Tom, you're going. I don't know. What are you looking forward to? Thoughts? Just the tournament for me. Disney World. I'm looking forward to that. Are you going to buy the pass so you don't have to wait in line? No, actually, I go there just to go to Epcot to do a pub crawl all around the world thing. All the different beers of the world. Yes, Joel, that's correct. That would be a pub crawl. You know, I can explain things sometimes. There's some people that may not know that. Get some Jack Daniels in them. Yeah, Jack Daniels in Mountain Dew. It calms them down and revs them up all at the same time. Tom, would you like to come out with me to Epcot? When are you going? I am going Thursday morning. Stay in there all afternoon. Yeah, I, too, love to do my pub crawls at about 6 a.m. I will be there until Thursday evening. And then we have the tournament on Friday. So, yeah, good luck. I be on a flight down so I going to have to pass Well then I just drink one for you too So Tom you said the tournament Are you streaming this tournament as well or you just playing it No No I think Pinball Asylum I believe is Asylum or Lounge? Or Pinball Lounge is putting it on. Pinball Lounge. But I don't know who's streaming it. Well, it won't be as good as if you did it, Tom. It would be for her. What is her list of her? Well, then it's motivating. Let's see if they can. I know. Maybe he's too motivated now by Joel's kidding on you. I would have heard that, and I'd just be like, well. Thanks, Joel. Now everybody in Florida is going to hate me. Thanks a lot. I guess me and my Logitech 920s just give up. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. All right. Well. And that's Free Play Florida. There's Free Play Florida. Yeah. If anybody sees Tom and Travis, feel free to ask Travis about his pub crawl. and if you see Tom, tell him, hey, I wish you were streaming right now. That's all he needs to hear. That's all he needs to hear. Well, let's go ahead and roll into – we received some – okay, so we received some feedback where last episode we did not do a triple combo. We did not do a triple combo. And I know there are some people that feel like you're the worst, Dennis. I thought Travis was the worst. No, David, Dennis is the worst. Yeah. Some people are like, triple combo, where's triple combo? Or they're requesting games for triple combo. There's a lot of people that really enjoy triple combo. And I know when we released the first episode of triple combo in our TP and Discord, Dennis here was one of the first to say, like, you know, talking about the same game three different ways is kind of a lot of talking about the same game. With no images. You're asking people to know the layout, imagine it in their head, try not to crash their car while you go through it thrice over. I'm just telling you, logistically, it's a mistake, but it's your show. Do what you want. All right. I'm only here to be honest. Hey, I appreciate your just-fitting facts. I appreciate the constructive criticism. I'm just a truth seeker. Yeah, that's fair. Why don't you – Zach should have made that hat, right, instead of – what is it, Moment Maker? True Seeker. He only does his logos and slogans and catchy things. So what I will say is our favorite, least favorite person, David Dennis, he decided to talk smack on TPS. And he was saying something about it being, well, we were talking, Zach said, what if the next award show had favorite pinball podcast segment? And I was like, well, we got Tom Talks. That's a shoe-in. Or at least triple combo. and David Dennis came in saying, I don't know. It was dumb. It's typical David Dennis comment. So we decided for this episode we are going to dedicate Triple Combo to David Dennis. So we're thinking what game would fit David Dennis. And there's only one game I can think of. When I think of David Dennis and just that feeling that he provides, there's only one game that matches that, and that is Thunderbirds. So we are going to do triple combo on Thunderbirds. Dennis, feel free. I'm so sorry that you have a name that kind of is shared with David. I don't, I mean, but anyways, Dennis, if there's anything you want to add into this triple combo, feel free to add to this. I've never actually played Thunderbirds. It was at TPF in 2019, but it was broken. So I wasn't able to play the ball directly. Sounds like it would be beneficial to you. That's really good. That's what I heard, Tom, but I still was like, you know, part of doing podcasting means sacrifice. Oh, it's really the, you know, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is the easiest. And I was going to do that one easy step. Unfortunately, the ball was, like, balanced on a palm tree or something. It was stuck out. I mean, you could see it was just not going to feel the play. All right. So, David Dennis, this triple combo is dedicated to you. So here's another good intro. Welcome to Triple Burger. How can I help you? Yeah, can I get the combo, please? Did you want the single, the double, or the triple? I think I'll have the triple combo. Yeah. So it's like... Are you done? Yep. Sorry. Go ahead, please. Sorry. I apologize for my presumption. I was going to ask, is 20% of this show just you guys dropping in sound bites from other people? Yes. Yeah, I can see that. The sound bites are so good. And Dennis's brain, that's why I was just dying to have it. The sound bites are so good. Are you done? Nope. Yep. Apparently he was not done. So, wait. Behind the curtain here, when you record the pinball show, does Zach actually play the sound bites during your recording? No, but he throws them on. Oh. Well, that sounds professional. We don't do that here. We play them live. No, we take like 15 seconds at it. We're good to go. We? All right, it's me. I'm the only one that Tom shows up, he says his few words, and he is done with Triple Drain for two weeks. He is good to go. All right, so triple combo. My job is to talk about how do you approach the game from a novice level? So if a beginner, friends and family was stepping up to Thunderbirds, what do they need to do to have fun? If you were playing Thunderbirds, you don't have any friends. Oh, wow. So my suggestion is you look at the game. You take a sharp right, you head towards wherever the cord is plugged into the wall, and you unplug that. That is how you get your friends and family to have a good time playing Thunderbirds. Then approach literally any other pinball machine, and it will be a better time. So that is the, I think, I don't know. Did I miss anything there for the novice approach? No, that was pretty good. That's pretty fair. Okay. Okay. All right. So that's it for novice. Wizard mode. Wizard mode. Who's on wizard mode? Am I on wizard mode? Yeah, go for it. Okay, so I don't think the game has a wizard mode, so segment done. Okay. Well, Dennis, you didn't have a chance to see the wizard mode because the game wasn't working. Yeah, I'm afraid. I have no tips on how to play this. I do take it back. So I did play it one time, and I planned on getting to wizard mode, and I played my ball one, and I promptly walked away from the game. So, yeah. Okay. I don't even know if it has a wizard mode, but if anybody owns the game, please put the time in on it. Go ahead and play it nonstop. And if you're still alive after you're done, please tell us how you got to the wizard mode. I'd like to know. So is Spelling International Rescue not the wizard mode? Because that seems like a lot of work. I don't know. I don't know. I spoke with someone who has this game, and he modified his and put a spinner on that center ramp to help him spell. The spins help spell international rescue. Really? And he said it made it a lot more fun, yeah. Oh. And supposedly, that was Mike from Home Pin's original plan, was that was supposed to be done via spinner. Was it? Interesting. The person who did the mod, he's like, this is what they plan to do. I don't know why they ended up doing that. They decided it was just too much fun. Too much fun. F it. F it all. But all of a sudden, you know, an international rescue with spins makes a whole lot more sense than shooting that ramp to oblivion and waiting to get your ball back for one platter. Didn't Mike at home, like, wasn't their whole thing, they wanted to manufacture all their parts, so maybe they just couldn't figure out how to make a spinner. Joel, the important thing is to get to the wizard mode. You just don't. You just stop. I feel bad. I think I rushed through my statement because one of the key parts was do not let your friends or family touch the flipper buttons because apparently they are sharp and they are not comfortable on the fingertips. So just another important step. Another important step. I think they're like convex instead of concave or something. Something at the center. So the flipper buttons are like the David Dennis flipper buttons. I mean, this whole game, right? This whole game. Gotcha. I think we can all agree David Dennis would be a better person if he had a spinner. I'm just saying. I mean, it would be an improvement. It doesn't matter where it goes. It would be an improvement. So let's move on to tournament. Tournament strategy. All right, Tom, you and Escher are going at it. You know, you made it to the final two. Congrats. Time to play Thunderbirds for the win. What's your strategy here? You walk up to the machine, turn it off, and look for another game to play. Okay. That sounds – I don't know how well that – I mean, is that a viable tournament strat in normal play? You just – oh, hands broke. Time to find another one. It would be for Thunderbirds. There would be exceptions. The TD would allow that. Okay. Tom, would you take the red card and just, like, take second place to avoid playing Thunderbirds? And probably Usher. Yeah. Tom, I'd like to know, what would you do if someone was organizing, let's say you were streaming, but someone else was organizing a tournament at District 82, and they put Thunderbirds in the tournament. What would you, like, would you intervene? I try to. I try to. It's almost as bad as having Judsons there, and that was actually at District 82. If you had Judsons, and he also streamed Police Force also. Oh, poor furry cops. I've had to play that in a few tournaments, actually. Well, any last words? Dennis, was this an appropriate amount of time for a triple combo? I think we actually ended up dragging it out a bit. That was partially my own fault. And the only way to drag it out a little bit longer is to insert another soundbite. So here we go. Oh, my God. Yeah. You're loving this. I know you are loving every bit of this. You can't tell me. Do people just send these to you, or are you guys buying these at this point? You would be shocked, Dennis. No, I wouldn't. People are just desperate for... There's so many awesome fans of the show. I appreciate everybody. Awesome fans. I mean, we're all related to them and married to them, but still, some awesome fans of the show. So speaking of awesome fans, if you are a fan of Triple Combo, please email us at tripledrain at gmail.com. While you send that email, go ahead and cc silverballchronicles at gmail.com and say something along the lines of like, hey, Triple Combo is my favorite segment of pinball. David Dennis, go choke on something. Just write whatever you want, and we'll just see what happens. And then put at the end, P.S. Screw you, David Dennis. and then he'll know it wasn't for money. Now, if you don't like Triple Drain, then when this is posted on the TPN Facebook, just put a comment there because they're going to suppress it otherwise. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can say what you want about David Dennis. I don't care one way or the other. But we could possibly kill this segment and kill two sidebites at the same time. Hey, we will read hate mail. If we get hate mail, I will read it live on the next podcast. I don't know who you were, Travis, but Joel looks like he's got a little bit of hate mail. bit of a censor streak in him. His favorite color of pen is red. Oh, I see what you did. I got the robe of Jack Daniels. Bring your worst. Let's go. All I can imagine is David Dennis like, Hey, we got emails. Like, we got chronicle emails. Chronicle emails are like 80% Bruce Nightingale emailing corrections in. So, honestly, it's probably not any different. That'll be great. Alright, so that's Triple Combo. So let's roll into another segment, which we don't have a soundbite for. We don't have a soundbite for. And believe it or not, Dennis, this is all for you, man. This is an idea popped into Travis's head a whopping few hours ago. And it's all about how do we get the guests? You know, normally we have an extra ball and they contribute. But you're the extra ball plus. So we want just that little bit more. And we're going to pay the same amount. But we just want that little bit more out of you. So, I don't know, you call the hot takes. We could probably think of something better. So, yeah, buckle up, really. Each of us have one question for you, and we just want your opinion. So, I don't know. Travis, this is your segment. Do you want to go first? Yes. Okay. We don't have a prompt, do we? No, we don't have a sound bite. Okay, yeah, we're going for the sound bite. Okay. You thought of this three hours ago. How are we going to have a sound bite? You know what, Joel? I'm sorry, okay? Every time we come up with a segment, somebody already has a sound bite ready to go. I'm spoiled, okay? I apologize. All right. Dennis you are my favorite person in pinball you're my favorite person in Kansas City you're like my second favorite there you're my favorite person on TPN screw Joel, screw Tom can I have your hoops for $1500 I'm afraid not well, shit I guess I moved down to third Yeah, was this whole segment just to try to buy us hoops? Is that what I'm hearing? Yes. Okay, all right. All right, proceed on with the segment. It's going great so far. So I actually, maybe I'm a de-idiot. I actually thought of a real question, which was, okay, Dennis, if your room was magically a little bit wider and you could slide one more pin in, and Zach was like, hey, I've really loved having you on TPS. Any modern pin that you want right now, what do you want? I'll send it to you. Which one would you pick? Godzilla. Which one? Godzilla. Pro or premium? Oh, sorry, premium. Premium. And why is that? I really like the diverter that's done with the center building, so I think that is enough to, especially if I'm not paying, just to sort of takes it over the edge versus the pro specifically. So if, follow-up question, even though I'm only supposed to have one. Yeah, you're only supposed to have one. Let's say your room didn't magically get wider, and Zach said, hey, I'll give you a Godzilla premium, but you've got to give me one of your pins, which would be the first one you'd take out? Probably Super Orbit. Super Orbit. Okay. No, sorry. I tried to get your hoops there, Travis, but he won't even swap it out that way. Tom, are you hearing this? He's encroaching on your question time right now. Hey, it was a gentle follow-up. If you want to throw in a follow-up of your favorite. Okay, I would like to throw in a follow-up. Thank you, Joel. So this is Hot Takes Plus. Okay. $2,000 for your hoops. You know, that is what the seller actually listed it for back when I bought it was $2,000. That's not what I paid. I'm hearing you with that. That was, oh, gosh, 2018, I believe. So I guess what you're saying is you're not going to take $2,000 in 2021. I'm afraid not. Oh, gosh. I sold a Sharky shootout for $2,000 back in, what, 2019? That's all I get for nowadays Holy cow Travis, if you want a crappy Gottlieb game, I'm sure we can find you one Don't you say that Did you just call hoops crappy, Tom Graff? Well, it's for better the street level games, but yeah, I did Hey, does it have powder coat? Does it have anti-reflective glass? Does it have a topper? And if the answer is no, it's crappy so okay that's true it is not and yeah i sorry guys i forgot turtles pro you know any pen that is not in tom's collection is automatically crappy i i forgot i apologize you're getting smarter all right tom so it's time for your question and feel free to have a follow-up okay my question will be in three parts he's been inspired by his continuing education class today so we've got a three-part I've never known you to talk in three parts all right never mind I want to hear this okay now I'm intrigued let's go Dennis part one how do you put up with Zach? Well, I only have to do it every other week. You might recall that we did try and run the pinball show with me on it every single week in 2020, and I had to request that it stop. I couldn't. I was burned out. I was going to quit the show. So I was like, now it wasn't just Zach that was burning me out. It was way too much. So the secret is I actually don't talk to Zach outside of, I mean, other than like expo and stuff. I don't actually verbally talk with him except on the show. That's the only time I talk to him. Unless there's an emergency with TV. Text or messages or anything like that? Yeah, no, text and stuff because I can just answer those when I'm set. Sure. And it's less contentious than, like the show is the show, but outside of that it's not the same. So it's much more sane outside of the show. It leaves Zach wanting more. Joel, this is my time. Thank you. You just got served, Joel. You're just Tom. Tom, you're in here. Part two on a part two, Tom. Part two. Part two. How badly do you hate market trends? Not as much as I play up on the show. My problem isn't the idea behind market trends. I actually think the idea behind market trends is solid. It's that it's super, super fake. So and they're screaming goats. Well, all right. The goats and people still write into TPN, the pinball network at gmail.com. And they complain about almost wrecking their cars and stuff because the goats are louder than everything else. And it scares them. It scares their wives. It scares their children. It scares their dogs. And so that's that's. But again, I don't hear that when we record because Zach drops all that in in post. My problem with the market trends, though, is that he just makes up the market number. He says he doesn't, but I think he does. And as you've probably heard, it's gotten so fake at this point, half of the trends aren't even about pricing anymore. It'd be like, Cactus Canyon trending up. It just got announced. Whoa. Whoa. What a shock. What a shock. And it's like, I hear there's still some even at distributors. How is it trending up on price? It just is, Dennis. Don't question my numbers. So I'm like, okay. Numbers don't lie, right? Right. So I usually just slip in a few what I think of as jokes. or if I'm really tired, that's when you don't hear me talk during Market Trends at all. Because I'm just like, it'll go faster if I don't interrupt. I just assume when you're not talking that you're like, all right, I've had enough. You can record Market Trends by yourself. That does happen sometimes, but not usually. That's only if, like, okay, the Chiefs game is starting at noon and you start at 45 minutes late, Zach. So I'm done at 11.55 and hanging up. Nice. All right. Part three. Part 3 Have you ever had a dream where you strangled Zach? Not strangulation, no Oh, okay, perfect Drowning? Smothering In a hot tub? In a hot tub We're getting closer We're getting a little more above ground than that Oh boy This is a good segment I think we're on to something with hot takes If anybody could think of literally any better title than that, or if you have a soundbite for it. Oh, my God. No, don't give them a soundbite. There we go. We've got a soundbite next time. Stay tuned. There's your end, Glenn. Your triple drain at gmail.com. Here we go. Glenn, we're calling you up, buddy. Here we go. All right. What else do we have on these? Legends of Valhalla. I see it on the list. Tom, you made the list. What do you want to say about Legends of Valhalla? I played it. I thought it shot pretty well. My only complaint is there's, what, like 22 modes or something like that. It just seemed like it was shoot this flashing light kind of game, and I didn't know. Did you play it, Joel or Dennis? Yeah. I know Travis. Yeah, I only got one game on it, though. Yeah, I played a couple, and I just thought it just, to me, it seemed like a little unfinished, but I was just wondering what your thoughts were. So once you got through the 22 modes, there was just nothing left? Correct. Here's a good question. Is Bowden coming in to refine the code? Is he associated with Legend of the Hall at all? He wasn't hired for rules. I think he's like a marketing, I don't want to, I can't remember. But I don't think he was listed as job title as rules there. That's what I was always thinking. Yeah, I was always just thinking that wherever he would end up, you know, when everyone was speculating, oh, what's going to happen with Steve after Deep Root? You know, I was always in that box of, well, I was only thinking rules, and that meant, well, probably either Spooky or American Pinball because they were the only ones where I thought they might have rules people that didn't have to be computer programmers too. But then I don't remember what his – if someone wants to check the Facebook, I think on their American Pinball's page it lists what he was hired as. I mean, you'd think that even if he was hired as something else, they'd still probably value his input on rules. My personal guess regarding Legends of Valhalla is that they are basically changing nothing beyond what they had to change from what Riot Pinball did. So I think the code is done and that he will not touch it regardless of his title. So then, Tom, it's safe to say that you are not impressed with the code or you think something is lacking? I just think something's lacking. You know, you basically, from my experience anyways, you start a mode which is, you know, battle some character. And then you're out of that mode, whether you beat it or it times out. and then you're going right back into it. It reminds me a lot, actually, of Star Trek to a little bit of an extent, but without more stuff in it, I guess. I know I only played a few games, and, yeah, it was easy for me to like, oh, it looks like I hit one shot and boom, I'm battling this person, but this person doesn't seem, besides a few different shots being lit, But it's not – I didn't see much variation there. But what I will say is there were a few because the TPN booth at Expo was literally right next to a bunch of Valhalla machines. And there were a few of the other TPN – some of the more competitive players actually were like, I'm actually liking this now. Like, once they learned some of the rules, there were things about it that they started to enjoy. So I don't have enough time on it. It didn't – I mean, there are other games. that I've stepped up to and immediately enjoyed. This wasn't one of them. But with that being said, there may be something there that I just haven't. What did you not like about it? See, I've got to ask the questions because I've never played it, and you three have. So what did you not like about it, Bill? So when I stepped up to Godzilla, I looked at the shots, and I was like, all right. And I started shooting, and none of the shots felt familiar, but they were fun. Like it was easy to find the shots. Are you about to compare an Elwynn game? Legends of Valhalla they were 10 feet away you're right apologies Joel go ahead just because the shots weren't like on Godzilla just because the shots weren't where I assumed they were when I first started flipping doesn't mean I didn't enjoy myself when I stepped up to Legends of Valhalla there's a center ramp and I trapped up and I went to hit that center ramp and I missed it by a lot like a lot a lot and a lot of I had a few other people do the same thing that's in a ramp you have to hit that thing super early and it barely had enough energy to to hit that so once I finally found the shots in the game I wasn't I don't know I wasn't enjoying them like they weren't I didn't I don't know I didn't have fun with those shots but were you so were you looking at it from the standpoint that if you were just playing this as a whitewood with nothing else you felt like you would not enjoy just the layout itself because typically whenever I play a pinball machine for the first time I try to think of it as if I'm just playing a white wood I just want to fill out the shots like no sound no code no anything yeah what did you if you look at it from that standpoint what do you think well yeah in that standpoint I mean I think it's been clear or they're basically saying like the code is essentially done on Legends of Valhalla and there are people including Tom that are saying like I maybe I'm missing something maybe that you know and then I know this is unfair but you compare it to Godzilla, Godzilla's .8, and there are people already raving about how amazing this game is, and the code isn't even close to finish. Right, but I mean, to be fair, and to be fair, letter-kidding reference there, that if we compare anything to Godzilla, it's just not going to be as good. So let's look at it this way, and Dennis, this is a good question for you, too, since you played it as well. I think you said one time or two times, however much you played it. Just one for me. One wasn't enough for me. So if you compare this to anything that's out currently that's new that's not Godzilla, how do you feel, Dennis, that this stacks up compared to everything else that's currently out? I thought it was fine. I mean, geometrically, I did not find all my shots in one game. However, I thought that it was a reasonable shooter from that perspective, and I just didn't have enough time to really get a read on the rules. and, you know, I thought that, well, I kind of understood what they, I felt that they didn't seem to know, like they didn't have a plan to take advantage, probably because of the size of the team, to take advantage of, say, the screen, for example. And so you see a lot of static imagery rather than going with animations because that's what they were equipped to do. So, yeah, I think that layout, you know, it's a lot of shots were sort of towards the back and such. I think it, you know, the layout's okay. I think that people can walk up to that and probably be like, you know what, this shoot's okay. They'll probably be saying, eh, okay, yeah, it's not a Godzilla. Maybe they enjoy the Mando shot more. Maybe they think TMNT is an inferior shooter comparatively. Maybe that's kind of where I would sort of place it. And then you can start saying where rules start to make a difference, of course. So, yeah, I just thought it was fine. It's fine. What's the straight down the middle approach? To B? Well, they'd give it a B+. Maybe I'd say, you know, I'd say somewhere in that, like, B- to B range. The layout seemed reasonable, relatively safe. I can't say there was anything, like, in the homebrew section that was creative about it, but it also wasn't, like, a mistake either, where you're like, no, we don't need a wrestling ring at the top of our game. So what was one of the machines at Expo that you actually played more than once? Like, you're saying Legends of Valhalla didn't give you enough in that one game to want to play it again or wait in line again or push start again. is what was a game that did make you want to play it more and more. Like what new game? Yeah, that's the important part. What new game? The only new game I played multiple times was Godzilla, a manufacturer game. I played Castlevania twice. Yeah. See, I heard Castlevania for everything. I've heard multiple people tell me that game was actually really, really good. I enjoyed it, which is why I played it twice. That's what Dennis does when he enjoys something. And then I went over to say roller disco. And I have checked. So Steven Bowden's title at American Pinball is corporate account manager and creative and marketing consultant. That blows my mind. I just would have figured that he would have been a part of rules and stuff like that. And it's not because of Deep Root. It's because if you ever talk to Steven Bowden, his pinball IQ is just off the charts. like he just includes pinball and he has high end knowledge so i'm very surprised that that's his title well maybe the creative part of creative and they're doing creative ampersand marketing consultants so i can strew that as coming up with marketing plans but maybe the creative side is weighing in on suggestions on rules but like kugler is going to still be lead on a lot of that uh if stover is still there lead on you know on some games are you know i always assumed that American Pinball had enough. I mean, like, I was like, like, I didn't like Alien as a layout, but I thought Shober's rule set for it was good. And so I always thought that, at least with him, with American Pinball, that they had a strong rules guy. But of course, yeah, Steve's so into, and when you saw what he went into on what he planned with Raza and trying to make that layout work, I thought, you know, he was really creative about trying to solve a lot of those layout problems that Raza had. Code can only go so far, of course, but he did what he could, and I think he did better than most would. Yeah, but account manager. But there's an ampersand in that title. It sounds like he's going to do a bunch of stuff. This title is too long. He's the Camp Kamaka. That just flows right off the tongue. Well, I think it would be, we also have to put it out there too that apparently from our understanding that american pinball turned down the power to the flippers as well so anybody that played legends of valhalla you might have experienced it to a point to where the flippers weren't at their full power either i could make my shots with it so my misses were mine they weren't yeah so i mean because that's one of the things i heard from multiple people that they were saying you know the flippers were underpowered and they felt like they couldn't make the shots. And then I heard from other people as well, and I think, you know, Tom, Joel, you guys know what I'm referring to here. We were told by other people that they heard from the American pinball team that the flippers were actually turned down at some point. I don't know at what point that was, whether that was super early or later on or in the middle of the day, but keep that in mind. So if you were at Pinball Expo and you played Legends of Valhalla at some point, Keep in mind that the flipper power might have actually been turned down, and we all know that if you alter the power of the flippers, that that could drastically change how the layout actually shoots. Yeah, maybe they did that later. I mean, I did play it the first day that the vendor hall was open, and that was before all of the Valhalla's were becoming Hot Wheels magically. So, yeah, or even. And maybe the flipper power was blamed for why the magical Hot Wheels transformation was happening. I heard a lot of people commenting that, and this happened to me as well, the balls getting stuck in the lock mechanism on Valhalla. But when the game showed up at MGC, there were no problems. Magic. Magically fixed. Did you get to play it anymore at MGC? I played it more at MGC than I did at Expo. Was there a big difference between that model and the one that you played at Expo? Well, I only played it once at Expo, and when I hit the lock shot, the ball got stuck. So that was my experience. Did you have a better experience at MGC? I had a better experience at MGC, yes. So when are you ordering your LE one? I did not order one. Hey, nobody called them up late, you know, after the finale. I will tell you three, after watching just some of the older streams of Legends of Valhalla, I haven't seen anything recent, but just the older stuff that's been around out there for a while, the layout intrigues me. The theme doesn't really intrigue me at all. I have no idea what's going on. I haven't dove into it enough. But the layout intrigues me enough. So what I'm kind of worried about when I had a Hot Wheels, you know, the flippers, they were kind of all over the place. Sometimes it felt like they were overpowered. Other times it felt like they were underpowered. It was just the most bizarre thing. And I've had Jersey Jacks. I've had Gottliebs. I've had Williams. I've had Stearns. I've had, you know, American Pinball. So it's just different things just they shoot different ways. So I'm really curious how this shoots, because if the flippers are powered up properly, it looks like it could be a fun layout, to me at least. So, I mean, would you three agree that it could potentially be a fun shooter if the flippers are powered properly? Sure. Yeah, but yes. So as I noted, I thought the layout was okay, but I don't think – I mean, compared to some other games that already exist, I just don't think this layout would blow you away. Yeah. Okay. Sure. I mean, it felt fairly flowy, but if you want flow, you can always go get a Spider-Man or a Star Trek. If you want to chase the blinky light, you can always get a Star Trek, too. So you're two for two there. The funniest thing, and I should have mentioned this during the expo thing, I've heard from multiple people that they felt like the Sonic game was the game that shot really well, and everybody was pleasantly surprised about that Did any of you three get to play that at all I did not play it I didn You didn So okay so Joel how would you compare that against Legends of Valhalla Because American Pinball announced that they were looking for potential homebrew 10s for next year. So what do you think about that? I mean, if you're saying shot better as in did I make my shots, yeah, I made way more shots on Sonic Spinball. And that's because the guy who made it, Ryan, he basically said he wanted to make the game an easier pin. He wanted to make it more accessible to different ages. So a lot of the shots, I mean, it was far from like Houdini, you know, where it was just crammed with tight shots. There were plenty of makeable shots. Those shots are findable on Houdini. That's right. True. My bad. But like the shot on Sonic Spinball with the right flipper, I mean, that it's huge. Like it would be hard to miss. So I have no doubt Sonic Spinball, if, I don't know, if they made that a production game, would they change the geometry in any way to make it a little more challenging for competitive players or whatnot? I don't know. But, I mean, I felt like a better player playing the Sonic games than I did Legends of Valhalla. The flippers felt good and snappy. And, I mean, it felt, I don't know. I didn't have any complaints with the way it shot or felt, the Sonic Spinball game. I mean, so if Sonic Spinball happened to be an actual production pin, do you feel like a lot of people that play it would thoroughly enjoy it, the way it's shot? Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you right now, people are going to enjoy it because it's freaking Sonic, and that's going to be enough for it to sell out immediately. Yeah, that's true. If somebody made a Sonic pin, I mean, it would be game over. Yeah, and I'm not saying anything against Ryan and the guy who made it because it's great. I mean, it is really impressive what he's made. But I don't necessarily know, like, I don't know, it's not fair, but it's like Godzilla. If Godzilla was a Whitewood, I would want to play it again because the shots are so unique. I can't, I don't really know of many other games that just give you that experience in shots if you're just going to strip away theme and everything else. Yeah, but again, you know, and I agree with you. I'm glad you're making that assessment, Joel, because I would tell anybody that's listening, whenever you're playing a new pin, definitely think of it from a standpoint, if you're trying to figure out whether or not you like how it shoots, think of it from a standpoint that what if this was a Whitewood? How would I feel about shooting this right now? But the fact is, is that it's, you know, Elwin is obviously the best designer in the game right now, probably in history at this point. So it's awfully hard to compare anything to what he's doing. You know what I mean? So it's just because there's nothing that really does compare. But, I mean, it is interesting to me to see that American Pinball did put that out there, that there could potentially be other homebrew designs coming out. So I'd be curious, Dennis, what do you think? Because you played Castlevania. I mean, how do you think about that? Did that – you played it twice. So, obviously, it hit something in your course. So I heard something about that. Apparently, there's a ramp in that game that changes, or you can hit it from two different spots, or what exactly is going on there? You're probably thinking of Ghost in the Shell. Is it Ghost in the Shell? Which has a ramp that has two – the load and the unload work both ways. So you can – You'll have to look at a picture. It's a unique ramp. The ramp exits as a ramp entrance as well. So you can go into the ramp either way. It has like a 180, so it spits up or down. Castlevania is the one where the left orbit is sort of guarded by a two-pop against the edge of the game. The shots – it had a mix of easy shots and somewhat challenging shots. And it was just a different twist on the layout, which is – and so was Ghost in the Shell. And that's sort of, I think, something that stands out with a lot of the homebrews. And, you know, I have no idea what American Pinball. I mean, part of the thing with Castlevania, of course, that would help it is, do you get to keep the theme Castlevania? Because that in and of itself is what most people are going to be interested in. You're seeing little clips from the video game of Simon's Quest or whatever one he was pulling from while you're playing it. And so you're hearing the sounds from the video game, and, you know, you got all that. Plus, it was a fairly unique layout. So it seems that, by and large, most manufacturers, in my view, don't take particularly extreme, especially lower third play field modifications. We've seen a little bit of toying. Like, that was the big thing with Rick and Morty was, hey, look, we got a pop bumper instead of a sling. Yeah, you know, like how Game Plan used to do it. But now, you know, most people don't take a lot of those chances. I mean, that's sort of like the – well, that was what P3 did. Why can we have a screen here? Well, because people don't really change up the bottom portion of the games much anymore. So it's a safe thing to do. So, yeah, I'm not saying those were that extreme of changes, but I'm not sure. I'm rambling in the sense that I'm not sure American Penal Ball ultimately is going to go for a game like that. But it would be interesting if they would. But we'll see. I mean, when I look at Valhalla, I don't get, like, again, the layout. I think the layout can be fun to shoot. But I also, when I see that layout, I didn't just go, holy cow, this is something that's just blowing my mind. We got magnet Newton balls and stuff. No, we've got scoops that might not give Thomas Ball back. That's what we've got. So maybe this was the question. Why did American Pinball decide to make this game? Like what was, you know, I know like Stern's all about we've got to keep the line going, and they're having no problems doing that. But was American Pinball just, is it, do we need to keep the line going? Here's a game that's 98% done. It's good enough. Or did they really see it as like, I see a high demand for a Viking-themed game? I think your former presumption is correct. I think that, I think they need to keep the line going for a while. They're trying to get geared up to do the Dennis Nordman games. and I think that, let's see, because I want to think I had heard that, what was it, I don't know if it was August or September or whatever, one month was going to be them running Houdini's again, and then another month was them going to be running Oktoberfest again, and I didn't hear they needed to do another run on Hot Wheels. So based off of that, if my sources were accurate, it sounded to me like they were kind of scraping the barrel in terms of running the three games that they have, which, again, given how long they've been having these same three games available, makes a lot of sense. So I could see them kind of being, them being at the point of, oh gosh, we just got to move on. Hot Wheels bought them a ton of time because it was a lot of, it was perhaps, I think safely was their best perceived game of any of them. It's their only game with an actual license, even if it is a D tier one. And, but at some point, I mean, they've been running it for a year and a half. So they got to move on at some stage. This isn't like Stern where it's like, you know, we took one of the hottest Disney properties of all time, Mando, and we got a slew of backwaters on that. And then Elwynn, the designing god that we've never seen before, drops the best game he's ever done before on top of it. And they've still got backwaters on things like Turtles, which are super popular licenses. So it's just a different environment for American Pinball. And I think that, yes, I think their line had slowed. Good point. I don't know. I mean, I think if that's the idea of, hey, we need to fill the line for X amount of time, this game, boom, and then they release it. Oh, boy, we got a ton of orders. Let's actually release double that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, look at what they did with their LE. Setting aside that weird Facebook post about we didn't mean for it to be limited, so now we're just going to up and still keep it limited. Whatever. I don't get it. It doesn't make any sense to me. Maybe there's something Steve can fix as the new marketing consultant. Hey, maybe don't speak out both sides of your mouth. It doesn't make sense. But going with what the numbers tell us, I think they were clearly surprised that there was that level of doing it. I think their thought was, hopefully we'll sell close to these 300 of these, no plans to do a standard edition whatsoever. And then, ideally, the length of time it would take them to make the 300 would buy them enough time into the spring when they're hoping to do their next game, which I'm not even clear. I don't think the next ones have done snortman either. I think it's Sherlock Holmes, and they've had it in the bag for a little while now. But I think that probably for supply issues, they're not ready to drop it yet. Yeah. Yeah, and we can, I don't know, supply issues, we can transition that way if we really want to. I mean, or we can keep it real short. I was trying to rack my head. I mean, you hear, I mean, Zach, obviously on the Pinball Show, complains about it every week. It's just there's such a backlog of games, and yet more new games are coming out. What's the logic there? And part of it's like, well, why doesn't Stern just increase their capability? And what I've come to learn is it's not that they don't have enough space to make games or they don't have enough workers to make games. The problem is they don't have enough parts. They don't have enough parts to make games. Uh-oh, Travis is pointing his finger there. Well, here's the key of it all, because didn't Stern at their, I guess at the seminar at Expo, didn't Jack Danger say that they are producing more games than they ever have before? I thought I heard somebody tell me that, but I didn't see the seminar, so I don't know that for sure. It wouldn't surprise me if that's true. I'm pretty sure all the lines are going as fast as they possibly can. Well, that's the question then. And, I mean, we don't know because we're not behind closed doors, but if they added a third line, would that solve these issues? Or, no, they haven't added a third line because they don't have enough parts to make a third line's worth of machines. Well, plus the third line is probably pretty expensive, too, overall. Yeah, I'm pretty sure the primary issue is parts, parts related. That's what Gary's been telling the distributors in their meetings, and there's no reason for them to be deceptive about what the law is. So if it's about getting stuff and shipping stuff and the container prices and, you know, and who they're competing with. I mean, when you're talking like chips and stuff, it doesn't matter how big Stern Pinball is. They aren't Ford. They're not going to win against the real large manufacturers that exist in the more needs-oriented spaces. So the bottom line is that I understand the conundrum they're kind of in with they've got these license schedules. And I think there was a discussion where it was Gomez who was sort of explaining that, yeah, you know, there's a need to – there are agreements that they have made. Now, I'm wondering have they now at this point, given how long this has dragged on, had the foresight to think about either they're planning to ramp up and – they've got to catch up at some stage. There are only three ways it works. They either up their capacity so much that they can get through the backlog eventually. They're going to have to slow down on the licensing deals so that they quit doing the triple cornerstone at some point so they can finally finish the backlog. Or they're relying on people to finally just give up on their order and drop ordering entirely. And that's how they catch up is people just abort the order. Those are the only three options I know of. And obviously, all of those kind of suck for anyone who wants a game. None of them are quick. I mean, the reports I'm now receiving are that there's discussions from Stern that 2022 is not expected to be good. In fact, it's expected to be worse, so much worse that the pros and the premiums are going to start being rationed out to their distributor network. And that's something that typically has only happened with the LE models. And we're talking significant. Like, I'm hearing 10 to 20 percent of what their wait lists are at those distributors. yeah um travis has given a thumbs up like he's heard all this and uh i'm agreeing with dennis yes what what he's saying yeah it's the same exact thing i've heard too and that to me i feel for the i mean apparently we're not supposed to feel for him but i feel for the distributors right i mean they if they're out there busting their butt and they want to sell more games or they have sold more games, doesn't matter. They can't, now if they're going to be limited or rationed. The irony of it all, Travis talked about like the crypto money and all of these people that are willing to pay sort of any price whatsoever, and you have all these distributors now, that there is this unprecedented demand for games from people that even with the price increases, there's more demand now than there ever has been since the 90s. and you cannot, in a lot of cases, you cannot get the game new. You would have to. Now, those people with those means, they'll be able to get them on the second-hand market through flippers. But for those, yeah, those distributors, there's no real way to grow your business right now, and they only get paid when those games ship. So unless they've made an exception, like I'm taking money up front or whatever, which, of course, poses its own risks, because what happens if we've already seen pinball has been plagued with the new shiny syndrome, the FOMO types, where it's like, oh, I was in on the Turtles, but then I saw Led Zeppelin, so I was in on that, but I didn't get it, and then Mando came out, so then I moved my money over to that. I mean, people do it a lot. Like, I would have no patience for that. I'd be like, no, you're blacklisted. You've got to go. You've got to go over to Game. Well, does that mean, or CoinGiver or whatever, yeah, so does that mean that it's almost like you need to treat every game like an elite? Like, put me on a list for whatever the next game is. Put me on the list for the next pro. and you're going to be that guy where you have to buy that pro, and the one time that you say no, you're now way down on that distributor's list of taking the pro. I mean, possibly, but, you know, here's my read, and I don't know, because different distributors are going to have different ways to do it. My sense is most of these lists aren't particularly – like, it's already probably a confusing mess, because the way it seems a lot of them do is it's like you can go – like, Tom could go in and say, hey, put me down for the next LE. And Travis could go in and say, put me down for the next LE, but only if it's yes. And then Joel, you could say, well, put me down for the next LE anything, but I want to be down for only a pro if it's Rush. And they try to accommodate all this. Why are you guys so mean? It's just that Tom's still here. Tom is here. Welcome back, Tom. You just get this weird blend. You just get this weird blend. And here's the thing that I think makes it extra complicated for Stern, and unlike what we've seen some of the other manufacturers do, is Stern is kind of like, hey, if we haven't built your game and shipped it out yet, you eat every price increase we do until we build your game. So think about all those people that are still waiting. There are people that have been, I've been told by one distributor, that he still has people that were day one Mandalorian orders that he has not been able to fulfill. Yeah, that's 100% true. They've already had to eat the $300 price increase on Connected. They're going to eat the Godzilla match price come January 1, and they aren't going to get their game before January. And it's going to happen every year because Stern's going to raise their price every year minimum. Here's how crazy the backlog is. So, Dennis, since you mentioned this, I got a buddy that has a GNR LE. It just now got delivered two days ago. And he ordered it, I think, last December. To give you an idea. And here's the funny part, Joel. You just sighed. Here's the funny part. It didn't even come with a power cord. Did it have scoop protectors, though? Shit, I don't know. Mine didn't. I know. What did you do? But, no, it's just one of those crazy things that, you know, here's the thing. Here's the harsh reality about what is going on with pinball right now is that, realistically, dealers and distributors do not need to do any list whatsoever. So if you are on the list, consider yourself lucky because the fact is they don't have to do it. And guess what? They would sell out out of everything that they have just because the demand is so high and there's just no way that anybody can meet what the demand actually is. That's just the reality of 2021 pinball. When we were doing our pre-show discussion, Zach and I, on the last pinball show and we were talking about all the backlog stuff ahead of time, he asked for, like, well, what would you do, Dennis? And it's like, well, let me tell you what I'd do. What I would do is if you've got lists and you've got anything that you now have heard, because some of these schedules are announced. You know, Zach often shares those on the air. If you know there are certain games that aren't going to be built for 12 months, I would drop those people off the list immediately and just say, no, I'm not keeping you anymore on this list. It's not fair to you. It's not fair to me to keep track of it. I'm going to have to contact you anyway when there's a new price increase because you'll have to agree to the new price increase. It's just it's gotten kind of silly. And I know it's a big change from what they're used to, but lists make sense if you think you can fill someone in a couple of months. It doesn't make sense over a year. Yeah, but if somebody – There's no point to doing it right now. In this climate, there's zero point because, just like you said, it's funny that you mention that. And, Joel, I'm sorry for cutting you off here. But I talked to a distributor this morning, and they said the exact same thing, that the reason why that they don't do lists is because if they do a list, then if there's a price increase, they have to contact everybody that's on there that's already committed to something and say, hey, here's the price increase coming. Then they also have to keep contacting them and tell them, okay, here's the delay here. Here's when your game might come. And then when that timeframe is missed, they have to contact them again. It's just a whole mess. And I had somebody finally tell me, I just stopped doing lists because there's no point. And I know as soon as I put it up for sale, it's going to be sold out regardless. So there's no point to doing it. Well, that's what I was going to say was what if somebody, so like Elvira, I understand we have a new Elvira that just came out. But Zach on the pinball show has been talking about Elvira. Like Elvira, for whatever reason, has been the thing that keeps getting pushed back and pushed back and pushed back and pushed back. and when somebody reached out to Zach though and says I want to buy an Elvira is Zach taking his own money and giving it to Stern like I want an Elvira is there because if that's the case as a distributor like if you're if you're giving away money and then waiting to get the item for that because I Stern isn't taking an interested list like Stern has taken orders. And if somebody backs out of an order, Zach's not getting his money back, right? Well, and Zach or Stern can write in with a correction. My understanding is Stern collects a deposit on the LEs. So those amounts are sent in, but not for the rest. Instead, the distributors give them an order list of here is what the current products I want to come off of your line. And then Stern will tell them, okay, we will get you these gains at this point, or based off of what the reports I've had are, is now what they're saying is, okay, we're going to be doing a run of Mando premiums in February, let's say. You have an order for 50, I'm sending you six. And the distributor doesn't have to pay for those six until those six are ready to ship. But that lets them know how many they're going to get, and it's not going to be enough to satisfy their wait list. So the reality is if Zach decided today, Zach or any other distributor, if he's saying, all right, I've been waiting on 20 guardians for a year. And if he decides, all right, I'm calling up all my 20 people and he said, I'm sorry, but the timetable is not showing anything good. I know you've hung out with me for a year. I can't. Like, I can't. There would be no reason for Zach to then call Stern and say, like, cancel my 10 orders, my 20 orders for guardians. because even if it's going to be, whatever, six months, a year, two years, if he actually gets those Guardians, he'll take them, right? Because he's going to sell them. Yeah, no, Pinball is so hot. Well, as Travis had noted from the distributor he spoke with, Pinball is so hot right now, he gets anything in from CERN. He'll be able to sell it without a list. I mean, if I were him, I wouldn't worry about being able to unload product. Here's the other question. The whole issue is there's no value in pre-ordering it anymore. It doesn't make you any more money. If you don't have a list, if you're just going to get a machine, I mean, why does he even have to sell it at MSRP? You don't. I mean, the fact is, I know listeners will hate hearing this, but the fact is dealers and distributors currently in 2021 that are selling pins, especially LEs at MSRP, are losing money. That's just a fact because everything has shifted so quickly over the past year and a half. Money has shifted so quickly. The new people in the hobby has shifted so quickly that I don't think the MSRP has kept up with actual demand. And it's just simple economics. That's what's happening right now. So, I mean, those are the facts. And, you know, I hate it because I wish I could get an LE for $8,500. I mean, that would be nice because I have a few LEs in my collection in the past. But there's just no way once it got up to 10.5, there's just no way I can keep up with that. But that being said, I still think that they have not found a ceiling on it either because of the demand that's out there. It's just the way the economics are working out currently. Yeah. Yeah. The catch I would note is it could depend as well, though, on what their distribution agreements mandate. So, for example, they might have the allowance, because I've seen it a number of times, to go over MSRP on the LEs, but they might not have that allowance on pro and premium. and it may depend by company what the requirements are to maintain the distributorship. I've avoided doing it, but I'll pull in for my other hobby, which is watches. So, case in point, Rolex distributors cannot sell above MSRP or they will lose the right to sell Rolex, which is devastating to any jeweler that does it because it's the biggest watch brand. Yeah, to my knowledge, I don't think any single pinball manufacturer has a price ceiling on anything currently as of today. I don't think that there is. And I haven't heard that there is either. And it would be an interesting experiment because the difference is I know that happened like in the 80s and 90s. I mean, that was part of the, you know, Tom's disdain for Gottlieb Street Level aside. One of the biggest problems with Gottlieb Street Level when Premier did it was the distributors didn't sell at the MSRP. They sold them at the same price as the Williams gains or just $100 or $200 less. And that was not what Premier wanted. They were designed to be sold much cheaper. and it just didn't happen. But now with the internet, we all know what the MSRPs are. And I don't know, even with the demand, how many people that normally buy direct that won't pay the secondhand prices would, I don't know, throw a hissy fit about, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's with this whole distributor network? Plus, we've already seen Stern starting to do experiments, gateways where they're selling direct. Stern's going to sell at MSRP. So what happens if your distributors – I mean, that's the other choking factor is if that's going to be – Stern's going to say anything you want, they keep playing with this more and more, not just with the home pins. They've been doing it with the main lines, letting you go to them to buy. You know, that's going to be an artificial throttle again because, amazingly, Stern's always going to fill its wait list and be able to satisfy it too. It's miraculous how that works. Well, we talked before we started filming that Tom, apparently, he's one pin away from being out of the hobby. And the only pin that's going to keep him in this hobby is Rush. But if Rush is true, Tom, you're for sure going in on an LE. But if you're LEs in the past, you probably had relationships with distributors that like, yep, I got you. I got you taken care of. They maybe even gave you some bit of a discount or whatnot. if things are going the way they're going if you hear from you know your multiple distributors like alright I got one for you but I'm sorry I gotta go whatever a thousand over MSRP because that's literally what everybody else is doing there are other people that are doing more but if you say no I don't know like you're stuck right? I become a pro buyer ooooh no Oh. Your dream team. Yeah. Tom Craft. Don't kill your dreams, Tom. Yeah. Don't be like me. Don't let the dreams die. Tom. If somebody said $12,000, Rush LE, you really turn that down? What are the songs? Who designed it? Oh, my gosh. Okay. Who designed it? Borg designed it. Let's say it's Borg. Let's say, theoretically, it's John Borg designing it. And let's say they have plenty of those Ironmonger Magic Zeppelin spinners left over, so there's going to be a drum set that rises up from the play field as your bash toy. Let's say that. Theoretically speaking. And let's say it has blue ramps also. There's a lot of air quotes, by the way, going on right now. Who's coding it, Travis? I'm not saying anything. I know you're trying to trap me. I appreciate you're trying to. I'm not giving anything away. But let's just say $10,000, Rush LE. Ten? That would be MSRP. That would be. Shit. $12,000, Rush LE. Wait, Tom, I decided, do not self-incriminate. Zach Minney, you better charge this man MSRP. Do not. But here's the thing. What we're getting at is that just goes to show you it's awfully hard when you do have a dream theme, right? Because I'm guilty of it. I got Avengers right behind me. You know, when you have a dream team and you're into pinball, you're willing to pay a little bit more because it's easy to convince yourself. And I hate to say this because it's total first world problems, but it's easy to convince yourself, well, it's just another $2,000 or $3,000. And it's easy to say that if you're paying it with a credit card or, you know what I mean, or if you're saving up money for it. Let me play the devil's advocate. Okay. What's your dream theme? Was it Star Wars? Who are you talking to? Travis. There's three of us. Travis Murie. My dream theme, truthfully, was Avengers. Okay. Yeah. So you got your L.E. Yeah, like I hit the freaking lottery that L.E. created Avengers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm a nerd. Yeah, that's just how it is. But if your dream theme, your second dream theme was Star Wars. And it was. And it was. Were you disappointed in that pin? No. Well, so here's what happened. I purposely skipped over the LE for Star Wars because the Sith version was the premium. And that's the version I wanted. So Travis is a bad boy. Yes. My wife only says that, but I appreciate you saying that, too. Thank you. He's sitting here dressed up, drinking Jack Daniels and Diet Dew. Hey, you know, you live large in Oklahoma, so, you know, it is. But, no, so what's the question exactly? Like, are you talking about from a design standpoint? Am I, like, upset about Star Wars? I mean, you didn't have to buy the LE. Just the overall package of it. You didn't have to buy the LE. you made the decision to pass it up it didn't have any toys in it, that's what he means it didn't have any toys in it if you played the game long enough you discover the toy because you destroyed the Death Star and you destroyed the egg that poor little scrambled egg every time I destroyed the egg I was happy about it were you disappointed it didn't show every movie clip in its entirety from episode 4 to episode 6 God, you know. Are you disappointed they went with a Clone Wars narrator callout instead of having like a knockoff Emperor voice? Execute order. Why can't you destroy the Scrambler's egg? Here's what I'll say about Star Wars. Here's what I'll say about Star Wars. So from a code standpoint, I think, and I've talked to Joel and Tom about this. I think I think Dwight had his hands tied because of the way that everything was set up I mean it was awfully hard to make it to where anything in that pen was going to be coherent at all because you're dealing with a trilogy right so how the hell are you going to make it to where all the movie clips can play in a row of course second part if I want to watch the damn movie I will set my happy ass on my couch and I will watch the movie. Thank you. If I want to play pinball, I will hit start, and I'll hit some flippers. And guess what? I can't look at the LCD because I'm looking at the damn pinball moving around. That's just the way I feel. I'm sorry, Joel. I'm yelling right now. And we all know, or Travis has let us in behind the curtain, that when he plays pinball, he really is only looking at the art between the swings. He doesn't even look in the upper half of the playroom. I have no chance to look at the LCD. I mean, I will say it right here. I think the LCD is the most unnecessary advancement in pinball. That's a Joe Maslow. Is it really? When they finally switched over to Spike, too, he was kind of like, you know, the game's on the play field. I still don't think this is what people want, but I don't think we need it. I agree. That's my read on him. The only time I look up is just to see what is my score, what else do I need to do to advance to the next section of the game? So what if Spike 3 is sticking a monitor in the apron? Would you be happy? No. What if it's a pin bar? No. I don't want that either. But with the non-sharp corners, stellar wars edition. I will only accept the pin bar if I get the money that Robert Mueller was getting. Oh, wow. What do you mean? Oh, wow, Joel, that was a great joke. It's a good joke. I'm reacting to your joke. It's a lot of money. That would be, yes. Yeah, I would be a millionaire is what I'm saying. I'd be arrested, but I'd also be a millionaire, so it's okay. It's like I heard a thousand Magic Girl owners crying and crying out and suddenly were silenced by a pin bar. Here's all I want with pinball. I just bought a 40X. Exactly. That's a little sketchy. I agree. But that's the other thing. Have you really experienced Star Wars until you hit a 40-inch multiplier? Like a 40-inch multiplier. Okay, I will agree. The multipliers are a little bit of trouble. Okay. I see where you're going with this. I agree, but damn it, that Death Star egg, that just gets you going, let me tell you. With the Hyperloop. Yeah, yeah. With the Hyperloop, yes. Especially when the Hyperloop sells and that ball just kind of went right through the plate. It is what it is. So we got down this Star Wars path. World under glass, Joel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we were talking about LEs, and we gave Tom a hypothetical of what if distributors could set their price. And the reality is we have a situation where distributors can set their price. and we're going to round out the show here with Elvira 40th edition, right? So Elvira's 40th edition, distributors have the ability to set their price. And it seems like there's still a few out there, right? And it's – I guess we kind of have a sense of the upper limit. Up and up and up and up and up. But it's also – it's not a new game. That's the thing. It's not – this is not a new game. There's already been the premium owners. There's already been the – whatever, the super limited edition owners. We already had those people that thought they had the highest version of the game, and now all of a sudden we have a new higher version of the game. I don't know. Anybody saw it? I mean, I saw it. It was beautiful. It was very pretty. I saw someone had messaged me, messaged Zach as well, messaged both of us, and they had suggested – it was an interesting theory. I haven't heard it confirmed anywhere. And their theory was, hey, sales orders going out of the factory, You know, things are so far behind versus the wait list and stuff that maybe this was Stern's attempt to throw a bone to their distributor network and say, here, charge what you want and pocket the profit because you all ain't getting paid until we ship games. And we know some of you are kind of hurting because you're just not. Everyone thinks you're making money hand over fist, but we're not actually shipping anything out. Or maybe they are, but it's just not as much as what their list, you know, everyone's thinking they're going to be getting rich here and they're not. I don't know. It was an interesting theory. I've heard Stern's take on this is around the price of the SLE to the end user. So if you're – but, I mean, given that, if it's moving at $25,000, that would mean about $10K of profit. True. Yeah. And I – apparently on the Pinball Show, Zach has two of them. He's got number 40, but he's saying it's going to include the topper. So it's an Elvira 40th edition plus, right? Because it's got that topper thrown in there. If it was a spooky edition it would have included an additional scoop Oh at least one right Yeah At least one yes I don know Any other thoughts on Elvira It hard to get excited about it You'd have to be like an – well, as you noted, Joel, you'd have to – basically, you'd have to be an ultra-Elvira fan and not have already gotten in on the SLE version. That somehow missed out on the SLE version, right? And it's possible. It is possible. I mean, they'll probably be able to move them out eventually. It's just I just don't see the value in it. But that being said, I have heard the reason why Elvira keeps getting pushed back on the build of premiums is that Stern Factory hates building that game. Like, it's a challenge for them to build. It's the hardest game they have to build. I don't know why, but something about it mechanically is difficult. But, yeah, they just sold the 40 of them. Sure, but this may be the thought was some of the people that have been waiting, and now we'll have to wait even longer because they've pushed back yet again, was my understanding, the premium run. I mean, it's been pushed like three times now. That, okay, well, if you're sick of waiting, drop your 25K and solve your problem. Tom, are you on that list? Are you one of the premium guys? Maybe. He's like, not anymore. Tom wants an Elvira. Tom wants an Elvira. But not the 40K. I knew it. Yeah. Okay. I really like Elvira. I wish I had one, but. What in your collection, Tom, would you be willing to give up for an Elvira? 40th anniversary edition. Maybe my Medieval Madness. Royal? I mean, it's not going to hit whatever they're asking for. I was about to say, is your Medieval Madness worth $30,000? No. He's going to replace the castle? with a haunted house. Maybe for a premium. But yeah. The 40th is out of my price range. Well, if somebody wants to trade their Elvira, the House of Horrors, for a Medieval Madness, email us at tripledrain at gmail.com. I don't know. I feel like that's pretty good for the list. We're approaching... We're at hour 45. I know everybody's waited with dated breath. Yeah. Oh, I didn't even see that, Joel. Our notes are really good. Joel, you suck. I suck. I'm driving the bus. I'm driving the bus. I'm trying to pull us into the parking lot, take us home. I knew I should have accepted my trade to Loser Kid. I don't know why I didn't. Your trade? We're not getting anything out of that trade. Travis is saying he's going to go to Loser Kid and be their third wheel, but we'll see. It'll happen. I'm trying. changes. Spooky, once again, Tom, you made this list. What do you want to talk about with the spooky changes? Well, first of all, we know that Bowen is not a part of spooky anymore. He made a poster about it. He made that very clear that he, yeah, he's just, he is in really in no part associated with spooky. He's had no part in Halloween or Ultraman. He's thrown out some ideas. They've not used them. And that's that. That's that. Dennis is shaking his head. So he's comparing. What can you say? It's very confusing why they wouldn't use Bowen. For me, it's confusing. Now, obviously, I don't think it's a it's a situation in which they just said, hey, we don't like your rule set or your suggestions that you're making. I think that they already had it in their minds that they weren't going to go that direction, which, you know, to be honest with you, after playing Halloween for, I think, about six or seven hours at this point, I think it could use a little bowing direction. Are you sure? Maybe you need to put some more time on it. No, Dennis, I will not do that. Have you taken the glass off and found all the switches yet? I will let you know right now. But it's a dream theme of yours. No. Here's my review of Halloween, Dennis, that I can give. I would rather be stuck in a room with David Dennis and I'd have to have a conversation with him for one hour straight. I would rather do that than play Halloween again right now. Travis, that the Halloween, there are three Michael Myers hiding behind three hedgerows just like he did in the movie. Yeah, it's perfect. I mean, it's really immersive in person, especially when when the little Michael Myers, this little mini-me, just kind of just playing peek-a-boo. He just popped his head. He's a serial killer, but one-eighth the normal size. And it's only half of him. It's only the upper half of the serial killer. You know, so here's what's funny, Joel. I played in, yeah, I know you guys are going to totally judge me for this, but you know what? Screw all you guys listening to this and judging me right now. We're only here for support. I played Halloween today. What? As a matter of fact. Again? Do you have one? No. For somebody who doesn't like this game, you should play it on. Yeah, you're on vacation going out playing Halloween. This is getting neat. So here's why I did it, guys. We're not judging. Because there's a new code out. Oh. New code. I'm going to try it. I want to see what happens. This game survived it, right? It didn't break out the game. So I was like, surely they fixed all the exploits and everything. So maybe it's a new game. I started playing it. I shot a couple of shots. And I just said, holy shit, the exploits are still there. Yeah, and I just gave up after one ball. Did you see anything new? I mean, was there anything changed that you saw? I mean, there was more video clips on the LCD screen. But, again, just like we talked about. That's been a big demand item from the pre-order folks. Which, again, I don't – well, I guess technically Halloween would kind of buck the trend because it takes so damn long for the ball to get back to the flipper. You could watch the whole LCD screen, I guess, now that I think about it. But, I mean, I don't know. I felt like it didn't really add anything to it, and the exploits that are in there scoring-wise are still blatantly in there. Is it still center ramp all day? Oh, yeah. At one point I was hitting combos on the center ramp without it showing combos, but I saw the score going up as if it was happening. So, yeah, it's so weird. It's like almost that the way that they're coding Halloween, it's like they looked at what Mandalorian is, and they said, yeah, we're going to do that. And they just took that idea of just going up the middle all day long, and the Foundry, which is, I don't know what they call it on Halloween. Is that where you turn in your blood? Yeah, you turn in your blood, and you've got the choice between $2 million, $3 million, or $4 million. the film was when Michael Myers went around filling buckets with blood. Went shopping with it. Going into the pawn shop. I want to trade this in for an axe. Do you want two axes or three axes? Exactly. Can I have flamethrowers? I definitely had some big time decisions whether or not to cash in $2 million, $3 million, or $4 million. That's a big... That was like the pick. So I know it was shocking, guys. Which one did you take? I went with the four million. I went with the plus EV strategy. And then I just kept going up the middle. But, yeah, it's still there. So once you open up the second upper play field, all you got to do is just trap up. And you just butt pretzel all day. In my pinball notes I have on it, it literally just says butt pretzel all day. So, yeah, it's just like a million points each time you do that. And my hand got tired after about $30 million, and I was just like, I'm good. Did we just go through the tournament strat? Is this a second triple combo that we're in right now? I don't want Dennis to leave. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Well, what's frustrating about that game, so I'm sure they can code their way out of the design. I'm sure that they – Maybe. I don't know. I'm trying to be positive. Maybe they can. I still haven't played it because it was up in some special hotel room where you needed a secret knock at Expo to get to it, so I didn't get to play it. Isn't that a donkey kick? Isn't that what Zach does to get in the room? I don't know what Zach does. He calls me at 2 a.m. because he wants to recount some debate he had, and I'm like, I answered the phone. I just hear, hello, and I just hung up. That wasn't Zach who was yelling. It was someone in the background. It could have been like him drowning in that fountain. Well, I answered because I thought maybe it was an emergency. And then I looked at the clock and I'm like, oh, he better be dying. And then it was clear that he was not. And so I was like, I'm not even going to talk. I'm just going to click the hang up and I hope he gets the message. And he did, thankfully. He did not call me back. Yeah, we're not trying to be those guys. We're not trying to be those guys that's just tearing apart. Yeah, we don't try and let people drown in fountains. I would normally intervene. That's just mean. True. True. But the truth is I have heard, I know some of Travis's gameplay comments have actually swayed a few other people that we know from No Longer Buying the Game. I've heard somebody on stream. I said, hey, are you getting your Ultraman? He said, no, you actually talked me out of it. And I was like, that was not our intention. Our intention was not that. The reality is, Joel, we had one of the best players in the entire world on our last podcast. and they played it for what 30 plus times and then they went ahead and sent it to auction so I mean I won't because I don't know if they've been real public about it but I know one of the TPN streamers got it got Ultraman I think it was, unboxed it, streamed it it's already planning to sell it it is what it is that's one of the things about doing commentary in the hobby is sometimes you say things that aren't going to run and hey there are going to be some people that will still love it, and that's the great thing about pinball is you don't have to like what everyone else likes. You can go your own way. Some of us own street-level games, and we just have to look past the haters like Tom. Absolutely. You can go your own way. Our world with no wizard modes and all hurry-ups, and we just have to make do with that and not have paragons where you can't even play the left side of the game. That's what we do. The important thing is the important thing is, Dennis, is hoops is not a good game, and you You should sell it to me for $1,000. Oh, we're down to $1,000. We're moving down. Let's do some hoops. Oh, shit. You guys all remember my $2,000 app. Yeah, yeah. They figured it out. To wrap up with Spooky, once again, we're still rooting for him. If they could save this with code or if this is going to improve, I mean, they've cleared. Hey, if Travis hears there's a code update, he's going to put a quarter in the machine and he's going to play it. I'll keep giving it a try, but the reality is it's going to be awfully hard to code your way around. that lay out. How much money have you put in a Halloween to this point? Me? Yeah. Seven hours worth. Too much. He's such a good player that each one of his games is at least 30 minutes. Maybe it's like that alien star at the Expo tournament where he just kept getting extra balls. So it's really just one really long game that he played. Here's the thing I'll say about Halloween. That I do, I'm not attracted to the theme at all, but I respect that there is a there is a bunch of people out there that want horror themes because it's different than what's out there currently. But I will say, I think it's going to be awfully hard to code around how the layout is because you can only do so much when there's so much stop and go. There's so much fricking because of the targets. There's so much there's just not much going on in terms of actual flow. You're very limited into what you can do, and you're very limited because of the upper playfields. So that being said, because I did enjoy Rick and Morty, I still look forward to what they come out with next. But for me, I've played Halloween enough that I have no desire to play Ultraman. But the reality is that, hey, just like Dennis said, it's pinball. If you're into this game and you're into the theme, give it a shot. You have nothing really to lose at this point. I mean, well, besides like $2,000. But besides that, I mean, you might as well just try it. Just try it because you might like it. I've talked to some people that do still enjoy it, that still do like the theme, that do like how it shoots. So, I mean, definitely do not base your decision-making off what we're saying. Base it off your own experience, off what you enjoy with what you're playing. Absolutely. Regarding Bowen, obviously, I don't know why he's not working with Spooky anymore. When I heard it, and I had already known he wasn't involved in Halloween. I thought everyone had known that. Yeah, there was no way. But my assumption, quite bluntly, was that they probably – I just assumed they decided to save the money. Because they don't – I mean, let's – taking our own opinions about – Well, you know, other than what I've seen from the layout, which had me concerned when I saw the layout, because I do love this theme. Halloween is one of my favorite horror movies. They sell out instantly. So from a business perspective, not to be, obviously, we're enthusiasts, and setting all that aside, though, they don't need good rules on it. It's sold out. You don't need to try. You don't. I mean, they, I, I don't, we don't know. We don't know how many orders have been canceled. I know people were trying to sell their spots. We don't know if, I mean, are they going to get to a point where they're like, well, looks like we don't have to make the last. The deposits are non-refundable. So, but they can still not. Nobody's going to cancel their. And people are so hungry for pinball right now. Let's just say, for example, that you can get, you get the Halloween at retail because people backed out. or you end up having to wait and pay over retail for Stern, some people are going to be like, well, this is what I can afford. Same discussions I saw with some people with Jurassic Park, the home pin version. I've seen some people that are like, the layout's fun. It's not normally what I would go for, but it's $2,000 less than a pro. I'll get it. Or I'll get the Star Wars one because it's cheaper. And that's what it's going to take now to stay in the hobby in a new inbox level for some people. I get it where it's available. It's very similar to the discussion we had on Legends of Valhalla when I think it was Joel asking about, you know, was Steve going to work on the rules there? They don't need the rules changed from what Riot had. It doesn't matter if the rules are good or bad. It doesn't matter. They're going to sell their over 300, obviously. Maybe they don't hit the 500, but they're doing more than they thought they would need to do. So, again, it's like you don't need to make it great. You just need it to sell from a business perspective. And right now, pinball is so hot. I'm not sure you can burn. There are people that play Thunderbirds that are still willing to give Spinal Tap a chance. There ain't no standards anymore, guys. People wouldn't buy anything right now. It's like crazy pill style stuff. So in that regard, why not, if you're a manufacturer, why not just lean into that and be like, let's just go for the ride. And if the mood changes and rules become important again, we can worry about rules. And for those of you who only buy off of rules, well, you can go with another manufacturer. that it's still doing what you want out of it. Well said. That's all I can say. Well said. Finally, somebody that knows what they're talking about on this podcast. Dennis, thank you so much for covering for Joel, Tom, and myself. So what you're saying is to wait until the code is done to buy the game. On Halloween? Yeah. Will the code ever actually be done, Tom? Probably not. Yeah. It sounds like, yeah. But the problem is nowadays, unless you buy the game right away, you're not going to get it. Right. And that's the thing that the manufacturers can rely on is, especially with Spooky, which completely is built around limited model runs. The manufacturers have us by the balls. By the pretzels. It is a crazy thing, though, because we talked about this a few episodes ago, that it is insane that we are, and I'm guilty of this, that we're all willing to pay. Well, Dennis is like the only one not guilty of this. I'm about to do a box. Exactly, exactly. So, Tom, you and I are guilty of this, that we're willing to pay X amount of cash for something that is not fully fleshed out yet. and where the prices are going, I'm quickly beginning to have an issue with that. Are you only quickly beginning, Travis? You're not buying another game again, well, except Rush, because it is your new dream theme now that you've had all your other dreams satisfied. Well, that's Tom. Tom. Yes, I know, but could it be you as well? Well, no, because I was born in 1984, and I'm not a 70s baby like Tom Graff. Yeah. I thought Tom was like 22. Well, Tom might be 26. Tom, are you Raymond's age? How old are you, Tom? No, don't answer that. I don't want to know. You'll ruin the mystique. Don't say it. But no, so, I mean, it's one of those things, though, that I find myself quickly wanting to know where is the code at for the game that I'm getting. because I want to be able to play a complete game because one of the things that for me absolutely sucks is when I get a new in-box game and then I get to a certain portion of the game that I feel like it's not coded in properly or there's nothing even there. I mean, like Ghostbusters, I ran into that to where there was no wizard mode at the time. And so I think that finally, I don't know, when did Dwight finally put that in? Like two or three years after the game was released with whatever wizard mode he had put in there. So I don't know. That's where I find myself. If I'm going to pay out $7,000 to $10,000 for a game, I want it to be a fully fleshed out experience. But the problem is the way that 2021 prices and everything's working in demand, I don't think that's even possible anymore. That you can do that from an LE standpoint or even from a premium standpoint. I think the only way you can do that is for like a pro that might be a year to two years down the line once it's fully fleshed out. Yeah, I mean, depending on the manufacturer, it does to me feel like, for example, Stern has gotten better about doing code. I don't know necessarily about getting to final, but coming out in a more complete state than it used to be, or in cases where maybe you could say Godzilla isn't, cities aren't really in yet sort of stuff, but still, the layout's enough it wins people over. Actually, that does remind me. The only thing that really surprised me about Halloween was how not far along the code was. Given Bowen had been working on Rick and Morty, he wasn't working on this game. They had this whole time period to, I thought, work on the rules. And I was just really surprised at how not far along it was when they finally launched. Because it's a new crew, right? It's a different group that was working on this. So they had 18 months to get going with it. I don't know when they finished the layout, though. So obviously there are a lot of blanks that I'm just sort of my brain fills in without knowing anything. So those are guesses. And they've admitted they're all this is new. Like this is the guys that made Halloween are all new. They're all new to this. And that explains a lot too. It does. I think it's a direct reflection upon who's behind creating it. I think that's just the bottom line. And anything that's put out, it's always a reflection upon who's putting their blood, sweat, and tears into whatever it is that they're doing. Yeah. Good point. And I know we can discuss this. We could continue to discuss it, but I see we're at two hours. And I do know there's one segment that we do put our blood, sweat, and tears into. There's your transition. And it's really the only thing that keeps people listening this long. Don't worry, Dennis. Turn off the podcast. Yes. We have an intro song for this as well. But we're going to roll right into a – I love the look on Dennis' face. It's classic. We're going to roll right into Tom Talks. And so, Dennis, you have this time to think of your prompt. This is where – yeah. So here we go. Last intro of the night. Here we go. Here we go. I got nothing. All right. So it's all you, Dennis. Travis and I will be quiet. Okay. Actually, a few months ago, I believe it was, I heard Tom talking about one of the tournaments at District 82 that they were hosting. And he mentioned, I believe it was on the show, he mentioned that there were some people, like a family or whatever, that had come up when the tournament was going on, and he had to get them out of there because a tournament was going on. It's like you described it in a fairly, in a way I'm familiar with, with tournament directors of, you know, I had to take them and say, you know, you can't play. You guys got to get out of here. This is a tournament. This is for real players right now. Do you not think that that sort of behavior damages the hobby of pinball when tournaments are going on and people see people having a really fun time and then they try and go up to a game that no one's on and then the tournament director comes up and is like, Guess what? Not for you. Get the fuck out. And it happens here in Kansas City. We do it, too. And I always wonder, like, we just lost one. That's my thought. But I would like you to talk about that, Tom. Talk about you destroying the dreams of the children. It's not a good thing. It's not nice. You should give them a chance and let them play in the tournament next to Travis. But the tournament's probably already going on. See, if you had a Thunderbirds, you would have a game you could have put them on. That's true. I just sort of wondered because, I mean, we have that crop up all the time with people. We have an event, and we say we're using all the pins. There's one open. Family will come in, and the TD always comes up like, oh, I'm so sorry, but we're having fun. You got to go away. Go eat your pizza. You know, you can come back another day, maybe a Tuesday. You know, you probably don't have a job So you can come back on Tuesday Actually reminds me of Expo Actually Feel free to elaborate on that Tom There must have been Three or four people that just Walked into the tournament area And started playing the game It's like Excuse me You can't be in here do you do like a Dr. Evil? how about no? no I say get the fuck out of here there we go that's what it sounded like that's what it sounded like the kid was eight Tom I'm dying here because there's multiple times in a tournament in which you're really focused in and there's actually a lot on the line and there's somebody that just walks up to the pen and they're like they're gonna plunge it in the middle of it they've not I've been aware any of this is happening. Everybody has to rush all at once, and everybody's like, no. It's like slow motion all the time. This happened at – it's funny. It happened right in front of Dennis, too. At the Kansas City Pinball Championship in 2019, we were in an intense game. I forgot what it was because it was so damn intense. But there was a little 7-year-old that just walked right up into the tournament pinball area, and he just walks right up to the single game out of the 20 that's there. Like, he owned it, and he was ready to plunge away. And what happened? The TD ran up, and they protected the integrity of the tournament, and we saved pinball as we knew it right then and there in November of 2019. You know what happens all the time. But fun fact, I have never seen that kid again at a pinball event. Oh, yeah. He's done with it. He learned his lesson. He learned his lesson. That was an important lesson to learn at that age. You don't mess with tournament pinball players. That's what it is. Well, I think we've all learned a lesson. So, here, are you ready for this, Dennis? This has been the best Tom Talk ever. I'm dying for that question. Get ready for this. Here we go. Tom Talk. Here comes the day. Tom Talk. Here comes the day. Tom Talk. Tom Talk. I got nothing. So, that was the same sound clip as the start. No. No, not the same, because it's past tense. Instead of Tom Talks, it's Tom Talked. Oh. Yeah, he recorded two for us. Oh, okay. Yeah. Boom. But I'll tell you right now, we're done. That's it for sound clips. We are done with sound clips. Unless there's one you want to hear again, I can hit the button. So just let me know. You don't have outro music? No, we don't. We should get on that. Shit. I knew we forgot something the whole time, guys. All right. If you want to send your outro music. Yeah. Send it first to Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Dennis, screen it for us. Yeah, I need something. I got a follow-up on the sex toy thing. Oh, boy. Oh, did you really? For those of you who listen to the pinball show, I mentioned that at Eclectic Gamers we got an email telling us about a new sex toy integrated video game and wanted to know if they would like to send us samples of the sex toys to play with the games to do a review. And I got a follow-up yesterday saying, hey, we haven't heard back from you, Dennis. Would you? And I think you need to clarify where in the line of reviewers you're going to be. If you're number one, that's fine. But if you have to pack them up and send them to the next one. Surely they were going to send us brand new toys, not the review model. So, wait, is this the game? Yes. Can you say yes and send it to Zach? Zach was sad that he didn't get it. You didn't get it? You can get an email like that. Yeah, no, in terms of what it's called, because I have it right here because I only just deleted it. Well, we're rolling right into plugs, so plug this company. Go for it. Yeah, so this plug is a new – this is what the email says. This plug. I like where this is going. I did it. Thought you might want to mention this in an episode. There is a new RPG game – that stands for role-playing game, so I don't know why they said G twice – With integrated and interactive Bluetooth-controlled sex toys. The game demo was just released on the largest adult gaming platform, nuttaku.net. Not safe for work. And is the first of its kind. Seriously, gaming history in here. In fact, want me to set you up with a sex toy and game access to try out slash review to talk about on the air? It would be a really fun episode. He underlined that part. The game itself, called Wildlife on NutTaku.net, is integrated with an entire line of sex toys, marking a brand new stage in gaming tech, especially not-safe-for-work games. Yes, the game has been described as unapologetically X-rated and leads players through wild encounters. It is an action game where players guide characters Maya or Max through a lush planet that holds dangers at every turn and, of course, immersive sexual experiences. Trust me, this is like nothing you have ever experienced before. It's a third-person action-adventure game similar to the likes of Uncharted, perhaps the highest quality game on the Nut Taku platform. You'll definitely want to see it. The game supports an entire line of integrated toys. Here is an awesome game trailer. Trailer is linked. At the very least, may I send you more information slash answer any questions you have so you can talk about this news. P.S. It will be interesting to see which characters get played the most since one-third of users on Nut Taku are female. Wow. And you're saying you deleted that email. Because I think Travis has been typing on his iPad the whole time. I think he's trying to find it. Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to sign up for it right now. So if you get an email from Andy, that's who emailed me twice about it. Wait a second. You can be. Oh, boy. He's invested, guys. He's investigating. He's invested. There's, like, email lioness or cougars or something. Whatever. Well, cougars are very common. Yeah. Especially in Oklahoma. Yeah, yeah. Tiger King. What, what? Enjoy that. There we go. What are these? Are these, like, lions? Like, human lions? Like, what do you call those? Like, anthropomorphic lions? I had to check the trailer. Tony checked the trailer, and he's like, no, we're not going to review this. Yeah, yeah. This trailer's legit. I just watched it while you were talking about it. I mean, it has romance. It has combat. It has survival. Oh, wow. What else do you want? This needs to be a pinball theme. I mean, come on. Let's go. Well. $40,000 a unit. Yeah. The distributor, he was gone. No, they're gone. He was telling himself. Just put that sparkle powder coating on there. My point to bring that up is don't send me your sound clips because I'm going to lose it with all the review requests I get. Oh, yeah. It's flooded. Flooded with emails. Yeah. I mean, I'm actually pretty worried for this, though. It only has about $80,000 for their Kickstarter with nine days to go, and their goal is $286,043. Wow. It's a very specific. That's why they need Dennis. They need Dennis to review it, plug it on his podcast, and the orders will come flooding in, clearly. I think that was the hope. Yeah. Well, speaking of your podcast, we'll wrap up here with plugs. Dennis, you go first. Plug away. Oh, sure. whatever you like. People can always listen to me over at Eclectic Gamers Podcast. You go to eclecticgamers.com. We cover pinball and video games, me and my co-host, Tony. And then a lot of people probably already know, but Zach Minney and I host the pinball show on the Pinball Network. He hosts it every week. I do it every other week. And so you can always just go to the Pinball Network to find out about that show. Awesome. Tom, plug away. Oh, wow. I get to go. I'm Fox Cities Pinball. You can find me on Facebook and Twitch and YouTube and Dennis just left and Instagram. Plugs are done. Fox Cities Pinball. All right. Travis, go for it, man. Sorry, I'm still looking through this. I can see you pulled out a credit card. Yeah, he hasn't pulled out a credit card yet. You can dive into and explore over 1,000 sex positions animated in high detail, Joel. That's like 998 more than you know. Exactly. It says 1,000 sex submissions. I'm like, holy shit. I only know two. Let me know. Okay. Anyway, so you guys can find me on YouTube at Marv Loco. You guys can also find me on TPN at Triple Drain, which is what I'm on right now. So, yeah, it's very awkward. I'm plugging my own show that you guys are currently. You're plugging this show. You're doing a great job. Yeah. Yeah. I just realized that. So, yeah, thank you guys so much for getting to this point. I appreciate you guys listening for two hours. Hopefully your two hours have been awesome. You guys are awesome. Love everybody here, except for David Dennis, of course. Yeah, yeah. And I'm Joel Roberts. I do Just Another Pinball podcast, even though it's been a while. I do Just Another Pinball stream. I do that every Wednesday night, and then I stream for Flip N Out Pinball. Bye, bye, bye, every other Thursday. So I thank Zach and Nicole for letting me do that. And then, yeah, part of the TPN network, so feel free to listen to the other TPN podcasts and streams. What's up, Travis? I forgot to say it's on YouTube. I just said my name. I didn't say the platform. You missed it. Dennis, he plugged our podcast, which we're doing right now. It was brilliant. Yeah, I kind of screwed that up. You know, that happens with a lot of podcasts where they're like, you can subscribe on Stitcher, iTunes. If they're already listening, they probably are. Subscribe. That's a great point. Whatever you're listening to right now, click this subscribe button. There you go. Travis is more interested in that porno game. He is. Dude, this has opened up a whole new world. My night is just, it's booked now, guys. We need to end the episode right now. All right. Well, in two, three weeks when we do another one, we'll hear the review. It's above the table. I don't know. He said his hand was hurting over Halloween, so I don't know how this is going to go. I wish you luck. Dennis, thank you. Thank you for being on tonight. Thank you for all the content that you produce for the hobby. And, yeah, really appreciate you being here. And, yeah, our sign-off, next time you triple-drain, feel free to leave a credit on the machine for the next guy. Hopefully it's a seven-year-old in the middle of the tournament, but leave it. And, yeah, Travis, have a great evening. Tom, enjoy your sleep. Thank you, Joel. Thank you. And, yeah, thanks for all the listeners. Tom, you get the last word. Later, everybody.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-06-06 | Item ID: c8b4ce7d-8fed-4512-8062-024862ddf957*