# Episode 4 - Skeme Richards / 24 Hour Tournaments w/ Chris Ward **Source:** Nudgecast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2025-01-27 **Duration:** 86m 54s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** http://nudgepinball.com --- ## Analysis NudgeCast Episode 4 features two guests discussing different aspects of pinball culture. Chris Ward, a Nudge writer and competitive player, discusses his experience competing in the CP Pinball 24-Hour Challenge in Wood River, Illinois, covering tournament strategy, endurance challenges, and the diverse community that gathers for such events. The episode then shifts to Skeme Richards, a legendary DJ, record collector, and pinball enthusiast who owns three classic machines (Muhammad Ali, Harlem Globetrotters, Incredible Hulk) and discusses his approach to collecting and aesthetic appreciation of pinball cabinet art and design. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] The CP Pinball 24-Hour Challenge in Wood River, Illinois had 50 total players and ran from approximately 10 a.m. to 1-2 p.m. the next day due to finals running long — _Chris Ward discussing the tournament duration and participant count_ - [HIGH] Chris Ward finished third place in the CP Pinball 24-Hour Challenge and earned 41.84 IFPA points — _Chris Ward stating his placement and exact point total_ - [HIGH] The tournament was a memorial for CP Pinball (later renamed Atomic Pinball), which grew from Chuck Sanderson's personal collection across multiple sheds into a public venue — _Chris Ward explaining the origin and evolution of CP Pinball/Atomic Pinball_ - [HIGH] Players performed consistently well throughout the 24-hour event, with skill levels not significantly degrading from hour 2 to hour 23 — _Chris Ward's observation: 'people were just as on their game at hour two as they were at hour 23'_ - [HIGH] Skeme Richards owns approximately 15,000 records collected since 1981 — _Skeme Richards directly stating his record collection size and collection timeline_ - [HIGH] Skeme Richards owns three pinball machines: Muhammad Ali, Harlem Globetrotters, and Incredible Hulk — _Skeme Richards listing his pinball collection_ - [MEDIUM] The CP Pinball 24-Hour Challenge is being planned to occur again at Atomic Pinball, potentially in 2025 — _Chris Ward: 'Yeah, there's talk of doing it again if they can get it together. It'll be an atomic pinball this time.'_ - [HIGH] Chris Ward is sober and does not drink, which he attributes as a factor in his tournament performance — _Chris Ward: 'I don't also don't drink so exactly dude that is my biggest thing'_ ### Notable Quotes > "It reminds me of heart of darkness where it's like the further you go in the more mad sort of people are becoming" > — **Ian Jacoby**, ~01:10:00 > _Characterizes the psychological progression and degradation experienced during extended marathon tournaments_ > "pinball is my church you know i don't have any of that in my life so i go i want to enjoy it i want to have a good time and and get the fuck out" > — **Chris Ward**, ~01:15:00 > _Expresses how pinball serves as a refuge from social division and provides community free from external politics_ > "It's like everything. It's like every tournament. You're really playing yourself. You're playing against yourself. If you're getting mad at the machine, you're a fool because the machine's fine." > — **Chris Ward**, ~01:20:00 > _Core philosophy on competitive tournament mindset and mental approach to pinball_ > "They Shoot Horses, Don't They? You dance until you drop, dance until you die for money." > — **Chris Ward**, ~01:19:00 > _Literary reference capturing the endurance challenge and relentless nature of 24-hour tournament play_ > "doing that pinball article for Nudge was like getting my love for writing back again. Because I'm a magazine writer from back in the day, and I don't do that anymore because I was so soured on it." > — **Chris Ward**, ~01:25:00 > _Personal career reflection showing how pinball writing reignited Ward's passion for journalism_ > "As a kid, I liked sports teams because of the logos and the jerseys... So when it comes to pinball, it's like art. You know, I like the art on it." > — **Skeme Richards**, ~01:45:00 > _Reveals aesthetic-first approach to collecting and appreciation of pinball machines_ > "Everything has to have a theme to it because if it doesn't then like what's the point" > — **Skeme Richards**, ~01:35:00 > _Describes creative curation philosophy applied to mixtape production and collecting_ > "I'm never moving. That's the key. You have to have enough money to hire a serious moving company" > — **Skeme Richards**, ~01:43:00 > _Humorous observation about the logistical burden of maintaining large collections of records and machines_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Chris Ward | person | Pinball player, media personality, and Nudge writer who competed in and wrote about the CP Pinball 24-Hour Challenge, finishing third place | | Skeme Richards | person | Award-winning DJ, record collector (15,000+ records), cultural ambassador, member of Rocksteady Crew, pinball enthusiast who owns three classic machines | | Ian Jacoby | person | Editor-in-chief and publisher of Nudge Magazine, co-host of NudgeCast podcast (Doc Monday) | | Shane Told | person | Co-host of NudgeCast, lead singer of band Silverstein, host of Lead Singer Syndrome podcast | | Chuck Sanderson | person | Founder of CP Pinball (later Atomic Pinball), owns Rush cover band, operates pinball venue in Wood River, Illinois | | Adam Price | person | Deceased pinball community member and friend of Chris Ward who introduced him to Batman 66 and competitive pinball | | CP Pinball 24-Hour Challenge | event | Annual endurance tournament held in Wood River, Illinois (2023 event featured 50 players, 24+ hour duration, raised funds and created community memoriam) | | Atomic Pinball | organization | Public venue in Wood River, Illinois that evolved from Chuck Sanderson's personal pinball collection; successor to CP Pinball | | Nudge Magazine | organization | Pinball-focused publication featuring long-form articles and community content; publishes issues with back issues available for order | | NudgeCast | organization | Official podcast of Nudge Magazine hosted by Ian Jacoby and Shane Told featuring pinball community guests and discussions | | Mad Pinball | organization | Pinball parts and accessories retailer owned by Jeff, offers NudgeCast promo code discounts and free shipping on new Stern machines | | Haruki Murakami | person | Author of 'Pinball 1973', recommended by Chris Ward as literary inspiration for pinball writing | | Ray Day | person | Competitive pinball player; Chris Ward briefly ranked ahead of him in IFPA standings after the 24-hour challenge | | Muhammad Ali | game | Classic pinball machine owned by Skeme Richards; identified as his favorite machine in his collection | | Harlem Globetrotters | game | Classic pinball machine owned by Skeme Richards from the same era as his other machines | | Incredible Hulk | game | Classic pinball machine owned by Skeme Richards from the same vintage era as Muhammad Ali and Harlem Globetrotters | | IFPA | organization | International Flipper Pinball Association that tracks competitive rankings (WPPR points); Chris Ward earned 41.84 points from the 24-hour challenge | | Rocksteady Crew | organization | Influential hip-hop cultural organization; Skeme Richards is a member | | Silverstein | organization | Rock band of which Shane Told is the lead singer | | Pinball Hall of Fame | venue | Las Vegas-based pinball museum and venue; Ian Jacoby planning to visit for potential interview content | ### Topics - **Primary:** 24-hour pinball tournaments, Tournament strategy and endurance, Competitive pinball community and culture, Pinball collecting and aesthetics - **Secondary:** Classic pinball machines from the 70s-80s era, Mental approach to tournament play, Music collecting and curation philosophy, Pinball as community and refuge from external divisions ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.82) — Episode reflects genuine enthusiasm and respect for pinball community. Chris Ward's discussion of the 24-hour event is reflective but ultimately celebratory despite physical hardship. Skeme Richards brings warmth and joy discussing his collections. Both guests and hosts express deep affection for pinball culture and community. Minor negative sentiment around personal struggle (Chris's initial panic about the event, his sobriety contrasting with others' substance use) but framed as overcome and ultimately redemptive. ### Signals - **[event_signal]** CP Pinball 24-Hour Challenge established as recurring annual endurance tournament format; evolved from memorial concept into sustained community event (confidence: high) — Chris Ward: '24-hour tournament. That was back in 2023 now... Yeah, there's talk of doing it again if they can get it together. It'll be an atomic pinball this time.' - **[community_signal]** 24-hour tournament brings together diverse political/cultural groups (Q Anon supporter, liberal, dentist, etc.) united by shared pinball passion; demonstrates pinball's power as political neutral ground (confidence: high) — Chris Ward describing the smoking hovel group: 'me like a hippie queer pinko liberal... with some manga folks... a q anon guy and like a dentist... in the real world we might not all vibe' - **[competitive_signal]** Player skill levels in 24-hour tournament remained consistent throughout event duration (hour 2 equivalent to hour 23); endurance test did not significantly degrade play quality (confidence: high) — Chris Ward: 'people were just as on their game at hour two as they were at hour 23. That's amazing.' - **[competitive_signal]** Heavy substance use (cannabis, alcohol, caffeine) observed during 24-hour event; alcohol consumption heaviest at tournament start and diminished over time; cannabis and caffeine used for sustained focus (confidence: high) — Chris Ward discussing drug/alcohol use, mega joint ('Roman candle'), and how 'people were shotgunning beers and people were drinking but... that really died off like the longer we went' - **[gameplay_signal]** Tournament performance correlates more with psychological approach (self-actualization, lack of external pressure awareness) than physical endurance or substance use (confidence: medium) — Chris Ward: 'the secret for me was just playing and not caring... It's like every tournament. You're really playing yourself. You're playing against yourself.' - **[venue_signal]** CP Pinball evolved from single shed to multi-shed collector space to public venue (Atomic Pinball); representing grassroots commercial expansion of pinball infrastructure (confidence: high) — Chris Ward: 'it was this guy Chuck Sanderson's collection... expanded... It's in one shed outside his house and then he has three sheds... It's now called Atomic Pinball' - **[community_signal]** Pinball community serves intentional function as depoliticized social space; players deliberately maintain friendships separate from social media exposure to preserve relationships (confidence: high) — Chris Ward: 'pinball is my church... Let's talk about whirlwind. Let's talk about whitewater. Let's not talk about... the inauguration... pinball is a place... I want to enjoy it... get the fuck out' - **[collector_signal]** Skeme Richards' pinball collecting driven primarily by visual/artistic appeal of cabinet art and backglass design rather than gameplay mechanics; curated cohesively by era and aesthetic (confidence: high) — Skeme Richards: 'So when it comes to pinball, it's like art. You know, I like the art on it... It's not necessarily the gameplay, even though that plays a factor.' - **[content_signal]** Nudge Magazine's publishing of Chris Ward's 24-hour tournament feature article reinvigorated his passion for magazine writing after years of disengagement from journalism (confidence: high) — Chris Ward: 'doing that pinball article for Nudge was like getting my love for writing back again... I was so soured on it. And Nudge is so fucking great' - **[content_signal]** Skeme Richards creates themed monthly mixtapes as physical products (sold ~50 copies monthly) to maintain community connection during pandemic isolation; deliberate alternative to streaming/Twitch (confidence: high) — Skeme Richards: 'That actually started during the pandemic because I couldn't dj out... everybody else went on twitch i gave people physical product dude' - **[licensing_signal]** Classic themed machines (Muhammad Ali, Harlem Globetrotters, Incredible Hulk) remain desirable and functional in collector market; no licensing issues mentioned for vintage sports/IP machines (confidence: medium) — Skeme Richards owns and actively displays three classic machines from 1970s-80s era; condition and aesthetic quality allows for detailed visual appreciation - **[design_philosophy]** Aesthetic design of pinball cabinet art (side art, backglass, playfield graphics) is primary driver of appreciation for some collectors; screen-printed cabinet art identified as desirable visual technique (confidence: high) — Ian Jacoby discussing Ali machine: 'i just love the screen printed like side like cabinet art is so good... I would love to see a company like a niche company do a screen printed run like on a cabinet' --- ## Transcript Need a pinball machine? Another pinball machine? Maybe some fat accessories like a topper or a shooter rod? Yes, you do. Hit up Jeff over at Mad Pinball for the best products and service, and use our promo code NudgeCast, and get a free exclusive t-shirt when you buy any game. And you also get free shipping on any new in-box stern. So many great games are out right now. Go pick one up. Hit up Jeff at MadPinball.com, and don't forget to tell them we sent you. Hey, everybody. You're listening to NudgeCast, the official podcast of Nudge Magazine. That intro music you just heard was the song Feel by the band Heavy Heavy. I'm Ian Jacoby, aka Doc Monday, the editor-in-chief and publisher of Nudge Magazine. With me, as always, is my co-host, Shane Told, of the band Silverstein and the Lead Singer Syndrome podcast. How's it going, Shane? Very good, Ian. I am feeling amazing. I'm in the middle of a tour right now. Hell yeah. I'm calling you from Atlanta, where it's like record cold. How cold? It's like 23 degrees right now. That is cold, actually, like snow Carl Weathers. Apparently the snow is coming, yeah. So it might be crazy down here. That could be because you and Elizabeth Weinberg were so anti-snow in the last podcast that God is just getting you back. The only time I feel manly is when I talk to people who live in desert climates or arid climates, and I can still be like, nah, bro, I shovel. It does have a way of following me, dude, for sure. They're even talking about we're going down to St. Pete, Florida, and even apparently there it's going to be close to the negatives. Like, what the hell? My God. I've done something terribly wrong for my karma and this life. Well, I think this week is actually going to be a good week for you because we're generating our own heat this week, I think. Between the two of us, we have dubbed this the quote-unquote horny episode. Thanks to our amazing guest, Scheme Richards, who is an amazing DJ, has been part of hip-hop culture since the 80s and 90s, is still doing really cool stuff, and is a big pinball fan. Also, one of the horniest people I've ever interviewed. I don't know about you. we didn't know that going into it but it turned out uh to be and i thoroughly enjoyed it oh i loved it and uh it was the energy that we needed i think for this podcast we we never want y'all to know uh you know what what way we're going too far in advance so for me it was absolutely i mean he called us horny nerds to our faces like i love that uh i was like guilty as charged bro uh but Yeah, so we have scheme, but first we're going to talk to a Nudge writer that I love a lot, Chris Ward. He wrote an article called 24-Hour Pinball People in Issue 4 that you guys can pick up now on NudgePinball.com. Back in stock. It's back in stock. I think as of this recording, we will have all of the back issues up to order. So one through four, you will be able to buy on NudgePinball.com. So, yep, Chris had the feature in Issue 4. It's really great. It's about him competing in a 24-hour pinball tournament. So we had him on to talk about it. And yeah, I just think top to bottom, I'm really excited about this episode. Yeah, Chris is a good time too, man. For sure. Yeah, it is like two wildly different people that are both passionate about pinball, both with great personalities. So yeah, this is going to be a really, really great episode. And I think like, obviously we're still new. We're still a new podcast and we're still finding our sea legs a little bit with like what we're trying to do. But so far, I'm, I'm actually really proud of this. And so, uh, thanks for letting me go on this journey with you here. No, thanks to you for me. I don't, thank you as well. I mean, this has been great. Thank me. Thank me also. Let's just throw thanks around to everybody. Thanks to anyone listening right now. We're really excited. Next person up is Chris Ward. Let's just get to it. Let's get to it. Here's our first guest. All right, Shane. for our first guest we are going to have on chris ward who is a pinball player a media personality and a nudge writer whose most recent story 24-hour pinball people was the feature in nudge 4 we thought we'd have him on today to talk about 24-hour tournaments strategies and just how to get through it so uh please welcome to the show chris chris ward thanks for being here hey chris Hello, everybody. Hey, now. 24 hours of pinball. Sounds like a nightmare. It absolutely was a waking nightmare. But I would do it again, I think. Yeah. Well, it's like if enough time passes, you forget all the terrible things. You're just like, yeah, I don't know. I played a lot of pinball. I got third place. Cool. I got 44 IFPA points or whatever. Like that's the thing you remember, not the absolute grind it must have been. Yeah, I said as much in the article, but I had a major panic right before the tournament because it's – when I was young, I did a lot of stupid shit. When I was on the radio, I ate like a record number of pizza rolls to raise money. How many? video station um i think it ended up being like 50 something it was enough to not want to ever eat pizza rolls again but i'm 43 now so it was like this sounded fun and then the closer it got the more i was like i don't remember the last time i put my body through something like this i don't think i'm prepared um the added the added threat of melting down our metals if we don't complete the challenge was like another level of just panic and i just didn't know you know i'm a lot of people were you know there was a lot of drugs and alcohol involved i don't want to say i don't want it to sound like it was a hell's angels uh whatever i mean just a normal amount of drugs and alcohol i guess sure um to get through something like this but i you know i'm sober so i It was just like, what do I do? How do I do this? And I think I was running on fumes, I think, like a lot of people. But I'm glad I did it. What time of day did the tournament start? It started at like 10 a.m. and was supposed to go to 10 a.m. the next day. But as anyone who's ever done any pinball tournament in their life knows, it's not going to end on time. that's going to go beyond that time. So we ended up going to like one or two in the afternoon the next day. What? Just because of finals. And I had a total body breakdown after it was over. I think I just like collapsed. I know I like cried. It was rough. It messed up my sleep schedule for a few days. But the fact that we all did it together and nobody dropped out and nobody got their metal melted down was enough to feel really accomplished. It was really cool. I did like at the end of the article where you're talking to the person who founded this specific tournament. And we'll take a step back in a second here and talk about this one because this is actually a little bit different. Most people know it's called the 24-hour final battle at the Sanctum, which has happened every year since 2014. This one is actually the CP Pinball 24-Hour Challenge is what you participated in, and that is in – is that in St. Louis? It's in Wood River, Illinois, so we're playing for Illinois points. I play for Missouri points, really. St. Louis and Illinois are right on the border, right across the river from each other. So I love going to Illinois to play these tournaments because I'm not thinking about IFPA points. I'm just having fun. I'm just growing down and like having a great time with everyone. And there's that, you know, you don't have to think about the stress of I have PA points or all that. Yeah. All that kind of baloney. Except you got a good number of them and then you're like, damn it. Yeah, it was hilarious. I got like a hilarious number of points for completing this. I ended up getting third and it was like 40, 50. I don't know. It might have been like a thousand points. That's crazy. Wow. To where I was ahead of like Ray Day for like a few weeks because this was right at the beginning of the year. And then I just slippy slide down to the bottom. 41.84 points. Was it? Yeah, that's right. Did you have any people from Chicago come down for it? Yeah, a lot. People from all over. I can't remember who the farthest was, but I think people came from like – I think there was someone maybe there from Michigan or Wisconsin. And like it was there was like a surrounding like people were driving in for this from many distances and in some cases sleeping in the parking lot. And it was 50, 50 total players, right? I think so. Yeah. Yeah. The way they get away with these tournaments, right, is that they say it's for a good cause where they're like putting you all through these like terrible things. And this one, this one is no exception to that, right? This was like put on as a sort of like memoriam for for a player there. Well, not necessarily. Yes and no. I mean, it was a memorial for CP Pinball more than anything, because CP Pinball was kind of born out of just this, you know, like a lot of these places, like it was this guy Chuck Sanderson's collection. and it expanded. It's in one shed outside his house and then he has three sheds outside his house and then he's opening it up to the public. And before you know it, it's sustaining a whole new scene. So it's now called Atomic Pinball and I believe it's still in Wood River. I can't remember the exact... The finer points of Illinois townships are not important to our listeners. But it's moved. So it was a memorial for that. But it was also – as I was writing, I was thinking about my friend Adam Price who – we've all lost people in pinball. And Adam was one of the first guys to show me the ropes on Batman 66 and really instill my love for pinball that has nothing to do with, again, IFPA points or standing or any of that stuff. that you know i try to tell people when kids start out they're just like i want to be better and they can't wait to be like the best fucking player in the world and i'm like hey that's never gonna happen so get comfortable just telling that to a kid is amazing yeah get happy with the level you're playing at play for play for different reasons you know play for your own zen your own personal like enjoyment because like at the end of this rainbow is a weird guy who who has been doing this for a long time who looks insane and acts insane and you know like just enjoy it because the better you get the more you stand around i hate standing around i want to play i i hate playing a ball and then waiting 45 minutes but that's that's the situation when you're in a league and the thing about this 24 hours of tournament was whenever we were sitting is when we were getting tired so like a shark I'm just like I just gotta keep moving I just gotta keep playing because I never felt tired when I was playing that was the wild thing anytime I was at the machine I was like locked in and I thought you know as this goes people will get worse like ball drains will get lazy and it wasn't the case people were just as on their game at hour two as they were at hour 23. That's amazing. Yeah, so you had a couple of breaks, like two half an hour breaks, I think I read. Yes. And nobody took a round off. Nobody had to take a massive shit or they found a way to do it. I'm sure someone found a way to take a massive shit. I'm sure they always do. Nature finds a way. But nobody took, no, I think somebody might have taken a 10-minute nap or something. And you didn't have to drain anyone's ball because they weren't there or anything like that? That didn't happen either? No, nothing like that. Sorry I was distracted. I heard the garage door go up, and it's Amazon. I didn't even know I opted into this. What, they just come into your house and hand it to you? That's weird. Somebody just came in. That's amazing. So, Chris, is this more about pinball or is it more about endurance? Like, are you seeing the best pinball players get to the end of this, or is it really the people who can just, like, last for 24 hours? It was interesting that it was sort of both. I mean, the people who got to the finals were typically those folks who typically get to the finals. It was just a longer version of a normal tournament in some ways. But there were a lot of people who, you know, rose to the occasion and did way better than they normally would have. There were some people who maybe cracked under pressure a little bit, but it all comes down to the wash. You know, whether it's 24 hours or like a match play tournament that's like four or five hours, you know, people kind of play at their level. And it all kind of balanced out even even at 24 hours of play. It sort of balanced out in the end. And you're seeing a lot of like performance enhancing drugs to sort of stay stay awake, like be it coffee, be it weed. Like we have – there are some great pictures you have in this story and like there's like the biggest joint I've ever seen in my life. Yeah, my buddy Mike worked at a dispensary at the time and he had like a foot-long joint and he brought that big out and he called it a Roman candle. It was awesome to sit in a big smoking hovel and have everyone pass this mega joint around. and then these tiny joints which was making me laugh so hard like we were just slap happy you know at a certain point everything was making us laugh and like when these tiny tiny joints like micro machine size joints like not a dog walker like right like even smaller like galoob made these uh it was it was fucking great i think that that makes more sense to me than where are people drinking there too because that seems like that would that would immediately like put me out like a drink i think would be so tough but there are people like it's like a b-y-o-b kind of situation yeah people were shotgunning beers and people were drinking but you know it's st louis st louis is a a proud drinking city and you know there was a lot of like pretty pretty you know people drinking right out of the gate but then that really died off like the longer we went uh yeah it's just the reality of the situation is like you know you're no you're no superstar you're no king of beer right there's no shane gillis is there just like powering through 13 beers and then like acting like a normal human being right um what was the what is what is the weirdest thing that you saw while you were there because i feel like as as the story goes right um there's sort of this progression i when people ask me about it i say it's it reminds me of heart of darkness where it's like the further you go in the more mad sort of people are becoming did you see anything or did you experience anything that was sort of almost otherworldly or bizarre oh yeah i mean i kind of talk about it in the article but there was like kind of a beautiful moment when we're all sitting in this smoking hovel and it's very cold and we have this little propane heater and the people in the group it's like me like a hippie queer pinko liberal like with a face that looks like it's ready to get punched and some manga folks are like a q anon guy and like a dentist and like it was just like it's like aa and that there's just like every kind of person but we're all there for the same reason yeah and we just kind of keep it the pinball because in the real world we might not all vibe we might not all gel there's people i don't accept friends requests on facebook and i'm not even on facebook anymore because it's like look man i've known you for 10 years we have this great buddy we have this great friendship going you're not going to want to see what I post and I'm not going to want to see what you post. Let's keep this thing cool. Let's talk about whirlwind. Let's talk about whitewater. Let's not talk about, you know, the inauguration or whatever the fuck. And I like to keep that barrier because it's not that I don't want to know more about them or their life. I love talking to everyone and I truly love them. But, you know, the poison of social media and stuff has just ruined so many of my good friendships. and you know pinball is a place pinball is my church you know i don't have any of that in my life so i go i want to enjoy it i want to have a good time and and get the fuck out you know it's like bowling league it's like any of these things see you gave me like a deep real answer i was just hoping you were going to say like someone peed in a gatorade bottle or something okay here's the real answer okay weird things i saw uh i think the choice to have barbecue at the lunch was was maybe short yo yeah what um the guy who brought uh my friend cory who's so funny because cory and i like tight now like it like a pinball um but i didn't really know him at the time and he was you know smoking weed out of this giant red fish okay yeah no that that that's what i was looking for um you know the funniest thing that happened to me the thing i couldn't stop laughing about was it was like 20 something hours in and somebody had a choice of game and they picked high speed getaway and the guy in our group had a high speed getaway fully printed like jack flashes style shirt it was so out of control ridiculous to begin with that of course like he knew this game inside and out and like why did he keep the game of the shirt that he's wearing that's so true i actually have a venom t-shirt that i bought for that exact reason not because i like venom at all in fact i hate playing that game but i've decided i'm gonna wear it to tournaments yeah that no one will pick venom against me then i don't have to play it that's so smart that's a really good idea in that case i gotta get a willy wonka t-shirt yep i'm buying all Toy Story 4 merch. I'm going to get some Toy Story 4 pants. I'm going to get a hat with a propeller on top. When do you see my Berrios barbecue pants? So, Chris, I just have one more question for you. You mentioned this at the beginning. You took third, which I think you were surprised by. That was like, what was your secret to doing well? because these 24-hour pinball, I think it's getting more popular, not less. Like we mentioned the sanctum. We mentioned this one. There are more happening. There's one that just happened in Reno, Nevada up in my state too just like two months ago. So, yeah, they're happening. So what do people need to do? Like if they're prepping for this thing, what is – like if they want to take third, what are they going to do? Are you familiar with the film They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Do you know this about the dance competitions in the 60s or the 50s? Yeah, like you dance until you drop. Dance until you drop, dance until you die for money. That's kind of how it felt. I don't know. Anyway the secret for me was just playing and not caring just realizing I just want to get to the end forgetting trying to beat somebody else or just playing my best game It's like everything. It's like every tournament. You're really playing yourself. You're playing against yourself. If you're getting mad at the machine, you're a fool because the machine's fine. You do as well as what you bring to it that day, your attitude or your outlook or your perspective or whatever. um so i just kept rocking and rolling and i got some you know i'm sure i got lucky that's that's pinball baby like that's right you get a few you get a few bones thrown your way and you're back in it and i think i play well i don't also don't drink so exactly dude that is my biggest thing with like local tournaments even like short ones like what i have to do is slow down my diet coke intake because i'll be so jittery by like the end of everything like the last three rounds that I feel like I'm wired almost, but I definitely see the difference. I think I want to write a nudge story about kind of the science of when you drink. Do you actually get better after one drink? Because people say that all the time. I really want to challenge that idea. I used to when I did drink. I would hit a moment usually for about a half hour when I was in a flow, but then it just quickly drops off, and I'm seeing multi-balls when there aren't any. and you know it's just it's it's too it's too unsustainable for me um i don't know some people have their own method but it calms people's nerves for sure and that's the thing that's the difference when you're in a tournament versus if you're just like at your local watering hole playing by yourself it feels different everybody knows that that plays tournaments and it goes away you know it goes away a little bit as you play more and stuff but like yeah you kind of hit a place where you're like oh yeah i'm feeling good now and either you keep drinking and then you're fucked or you stop and then it eventually like you get too tired tired and it wears you out and you know shane you know this from like being in a band and like playing progressively bigger venues is like those nerves exist for everything that you do and they're not going to hurt you or kill you and the the second third fourth time you do it you you realize oh i don't have those nerves anymore like i just had my third state appearance and it was like i was so laid back it was weird i was like right i'm and i had fun and you know like the more you do it the less it's the more you're going to realize like no one's watching me no one cares like okay we're streaming on twitch for what 20 people like you know in the scheme of everything it doesn't matter To me, it's like about how you can get in tune with yourself and then go from there and all those outside whatever. You know, headphones help me too. I play with headphones now. I'm one of those guys. Same. I mean, headphone gang. It's the best. And I love that your advice was just become a totally self-actualized person that doesn't need to drink and also wear headphones. Yeah. It's a two-parter. Well, Chris, Chris, thanks so much for popping on. You are a regular contributor for Nudge. We can't wait to have you back. I know you're I know you're working on some fun stories now, including perhaps Shane. You don't know this, but he might be in your neck of the woods to interview an interesting couple that that I believe you're familiar with in the area. So all fame, pinball Hall of Fame is on the dockets. This is what we're really hoping for. I've got a wild idea for it. I hope I can pull it off. But I want to say thank you for doing this because doing that pinball article for Nudge was like getting my love for writing back again. Because I'm a magazine writer from back in the day, and I don't do that anymore because I was so soured on it. And Nudge is so fucking great, and I was so honored to do it. So I can't wait to do some more, and hopefully people dig it. We'll see. No, I was impressed with your writing, Chris. It's a really well-written article. Thank you. Appreciate it. If you come to Vegas to do the Pinball Hall of Fame thing, hit me up, okay? Can I recommend a book for people? Okay, yeah. Please recommend a book for us, Chris. You should read Pinball 1973 by Haruki Murakami. Yeah, it's one of my favorites as well. Love his pinball writing for sure. Absolutely inspired me to do this. So check it out, won't you? That's right. Thanks for the rec. We will check it out. Chris, so you did the 24-hour tournament. That was back in 2023 now. Yes. Didn't do it in 2024. Is it going to happen again in 2025? Yeah, there's talk of doing it again if they can get it together. It'll be an atomic pinball this time. I'm trying to convince Chuck Sanderson, who has a Rush cover band, to really kick it off at like three or four in the morning when we're really low. Amazing. And I hope it does come together again. And that conversation was already swirling, like, would we do it again? Could you do it again? like would i you know it's like do you ever go to a festival like lollapalooza and then a mere two years later it seems inconceivable that you could ever go to a music festival again it's like how the fuck did i do that my body right i'm wondering if that's going to be the case for this like if i just but then again there were guys there who were in their in their 70s exactly suck suck it up no No days off, bitch. Exactly. Come on, let's go. Yeah, you're right. I got to fucking get it together. You're right. Yeah, get it together. If it happens, me and Ian are coming. Absolutely. Please. Oh, my God. It would be great. Well, thanks so much, Chris. We will talk to you soon, absolutely. And, you know, no days off. Keep playing pinball. Thanks, nerds. All right, Shane, our next guest is an award-winning break DJ, historian, cultural ambassador, and a musician who has really too many accomplishments to mention. So I'll just give the super highlights. He's a member of the super influential Rocksteady crew. He's one of the most in-demand internationally touring live DJs. djs and he owns supposedly 15 000 records that i know at least one pinball machine so please welcome scheme richards uh hi scheme thanks for what's up what's up thanks for being here i need to add i am also known as the nostalgia king so i have to add that one there where is the nostalgia king that's right yeah absolutely and if you guys haven't checked that out you so you do like you do mixtapes like every month is that is that right yeah so i do mixtapes and that actually started during the pandemic because i couldn't dj out you know no one was going anywhere so i was like how can i stay connected to people i was like mixtapes if i make an hour mixtape a month sell 50 copies i'm being connected to the people so everybody else went on twitch i gave people physical product dude and they're they're super cool and vibey and you do them like themed out right like don't they kind of have different themes yeah everything has to have a theme that I do like so whether it's like Japanese records or whether it's from Seoul or whether it's you know I did a Tarantino inspired one which is had like soundtracks and some Tarantino clips and stuff like that so everything has to have a theme to it because if it doesn't then like what's the point you know we have genres of music genres of movies right well also though when you're making that much music and I'm a musician myself you almost have to have a theme to like inspire you otherwise there's just too much out there to pull from right you need to kind of like narrow your vision a little bit right exactly and it all depends on what you know what my mood is on the day you know so it's like i might wake up and really just be like i want to watch kung fu flicks today yeah so i did one called heroes 2 and heroes 2 which like was like the rayquan and ghostface collaboration and all wu-tang so it was like you know different themes and it depends on what side of the bed i wake up on in the morning you know how many records do you own 15 000 i'd say 15 000 give or take um but that's collecting records since 1981 you know that's it's like it's like comic books how many comic books do i have those are kind of toned down a little bit because i got rid of some and try to keep only the grails um but you know how many toys do i have i mean i I've got every G.I. Joe with the Kung Fu grip. There's just so much. So it's hard to really count and keep up. 15,000, though. That's so many records. And I always think about, I don't have nearly that many records. Not even close. I might have 1,000. And moving just 1,000 records sucks. I can't imagine how, I hope you don't move too often, because damn. That's a lot of records to move. I'm never moving. That's the key. that's the key like that was one of the the things it was like you know what i can never i can never move and if i do i have to have enough money to hire a serious moving company to just come in and pack things correctly and move but i you know i'm not moving i'm comfortable the the man cave is the man cave the studio is the studio everything's set in place not moving and and that's something that that's something that pinball people can relate to because i think anyone who owns more than two pinball machines they also are like i'm hiring professional movers if i ever get out upstairs yes luckily you know it's funny so luckily mine came in the back door so there was like one step to go up through the garage and that was it you know so if i had to move my pinball and arcade machines that would be the easy part how many pins do you have just three you have three no three yes i have um muhammad ali which is my favorite yeah that's that's my favorite um the harlem glow trotters oh nice and the incredible hulk oh all kind of of that era like that's like a very curated era then it's nostalgia yeah word it the you know the art on those machines is just next level i was just admiring because i was looking at ali because i knew for sure you had that one and i have some great pictures of the incredible hulk one too but um with ali i just love the screen printed like side like cabinet art is so good like i would yeah i would love to see a company like a niche company do a screen printed run like on a cabinet i just think it's such a vibey cool look and it's something it's like you really appreciate graphic design obviously like i see your comic collection i mean you and i both really fuck with ed piscor like r.i.p like like very curated aesthetics so i just wonder like Like, do you, is that kind of part of the appeal for you with pinball? Is that like in players? Everything. Everything. As a kid, I liked sports teams because of the logos and the jerseys. Yeah. Right. It wasn't necessarily, oh, the team was good. It was, oh man, I really liked that logo or that jersey. So when it comes to pinball, it's like art. You know, I like the art on it. I like the subject matter, the graphics, the back glass, you know, the play field. So yeah, it's more so what it looks like. It's not necessarily the gameplay, even though that plays a factor. Totally, yeah. But the attraction is always what it looks like, the artwork and what it looks like. And the Ali machine is just a beautiful machine, you know. It's just a beautiful machine versus a lot of machines today. They're great-looking machines. They're not necessarily artistic machines. Right, yeah. You know, like I want to see somebody with a paintbrush and a stroke and, you know, painting. So, with your history of pinball, I mean, Ali, I think it's 1980 or 81. It's early 80s for sure. 81. Is that, I don't know how old you are, is that kind of your time? Like, do you remember playing that game or other pinball machines when you were a kid in arcades at all? Is there nostalgia like that for you? Yes, very much so. I mean, I'm 50, oh, 54 now. Okay, that makes perfect sense then. 53, 54, 53, 54, I always forget. But yeah, you know, so I was playing pinball before there was arcades like, you know, right. Space Invaders. I was actually playing because any any drugstore had a pinball machine when I was coming up. The corner store had a pinball machine. So they were always around, you know, so I always played that. I had older cousins that would always go. My uncle was like a big pinball machine player. So it kind of it was the timeline. You ride your bike, you go get a Slurpee and you play a pinball machine. For sure. I love that, too. And that is like that's still like a brand of pinball that is alive and well, too, is like I used to go locally here. There was a bar. They just had a Black Knight Sword of Rage. That was it. And that was literally the reason that I would go there. I get Diet Cokes and I go in as like a bunch of kind of like people who maybe didn't fuck with me, maybe kind of did whatever. but like we exist in the same space and eventually it was like hey we're all cool together and i think that's like the cool third space part about pinball and like in general like you like record stores like those kind of places is like you become a regular and it builds community you know yeah it's that's definitely i mean i equate that to the hip-hop and the punk scene in new york in the 80s two separate worlds that connected in the downtown scene you know so pinball is like that you can be a skater, you could be a hip hop kid, you could be a punk kid, you could be, you could be whatever. But pinball is that one space where it's like, Oh, you play pinball. Okay. I play like, you know, so that's, that's the, that's the good space. And that's what, you know, being that from that era of that seventies, eighties era and just, it just, it's comfortable. It fits. Yeah. Can you speak, you have such a, like, you really have a cultivated aesthetic that I think is interesting. Can you kind of talk about though, like, cause you said, like you're drawn to that nostalgia element but talk about like the aesthetics and pinball art because you were getting to that even before is like you're like right now there's a function of it that's sort of a graphical design element that is like this is going to teach you to do this but you know what you respond to about old school pinball art and the art of it you know right well it's it's it's once again it's what attracts your eyes like as a kid and a comic book collector my uncle would buy um conan he would buy um doctor strange he would buy red sonja i couldn't see that as a kid yeah you know that was like off limits so as a kid a lot of those pinball machines that you would see was kind of off limits even though no one was saying you can't play it but it was kind of off limits to the eyes in a sense yeah so it's that attraction to like oh man look at this look at this caveman with this carrying this beautiful woman you know like those type of things it's like salacious a little bit it's like a little totally yeah for sure you know so like i see that and that's why like i think that's why i have that fine that that fine appreciation for like conan comments and red sonja comics and you know uh what is it uh the pinball gorgar oh gorgar yeah absolutely yeah so so as a kid those would make the be the machines that make your eyes go wide as an adult i'm still like oh man that's a beautiful back glass you know you Look at her boobs. It's a beautiful back crash. Absolutely. Dude, you and I are so – I think that was why we recognized each other's aesthetics right away because I'm the exact same way and love the kind of idea of having sexiness in pinball and having it be kind of gritty and fun. And it doesn't have to be like a Disney-fied, hermetically sealed kind of shit. It can have some fun, right? There's no – like machines now don't have edge. They don't have really any grit. I love the subject matters. I love the James Bond one. I love the Godzilla one. But I want to see if it's Godzilla. I want to see Godzilla stomping on a naked woman. Yeah. Right? No one's going to argue with you. No, absolutely. If it's Bond, I want to see Bond on a beach in his Speedos looking at it like a nude woman. Totally. If it's the Playboy, I want to see Hugh Hefner. Yeah. Yeah, it's like I saw the Nosferatu movie, the new one that came out. And they actually did a pretty good job of keeping that alive. That sort of, you can't do this anymore. It felt like that at times. And a little uncomfortable. Which, I'm sorry, horror genre should feel a little uncomfortable. Yeah, for sure. And I think that we have definitely lost that in pinball up to a point. and most recently i think the no guns in john wick is probably the you know the most obvious one but it is great though that i i live in vegas i can go in the pinball hall of fame and walk down a whole row of machines that go oh you can't you probably can't do that anymore on a machine so at least we still have them but i mean that's i hate i hate that that we've gotten to that point where we can't do that anymore like in america porn has it's taboo right it's taboo right yet you scroll instagram there's porn every day on instagram yes yeah right but like i can't get a pinball machine with a little nipple slip like come on maybe i'm saying there's an opportunity for a boutique manufacturer right now i mean spooky the adult line the 18 plus line you're already right there i think i think actually they were the first i think there is nudity in is it halloween i'm pretty sure in the the video assets that they were like the first people to have to have nudity in a pinball machine so there is opportunity there i agree with you i think that like we're maybe a little bit i get i get why stern is the way they are because right they want to appeal to everybody and all things but that means that there is opportunity for other companies it's like if you're going to be in this space it's like take some chances do some themes with yeah with spooky the texas chainsaw massacre you do play as the killers right like you are hunting down the the kids like in the van and i own the game so so i'm familiar with this and that's actually part of why i wanted to own the game because i'm like that is true to what the movie is about because that in that movie and that's like early 70s you are you are rooting for the killers right like you're not right you don't really want them to get away and for them to make the machine have that subject matter is very not 2024 and i appreciate that i appreciate that they're going for something that is dark in that sense so maybe it's maybe it's not more we need You need more scheme for sure. I mean, just think about it. There's no diversity. Everything is a Marvel property. Everything is a big budget property. I want an independent comic artist to do something. It's like my first Comic-Con I went to was probably like 1979, 1980, when they used to have them at the Holiday Inn hotels. There was no Hollywood involved. right it was comic artists comic creators and you felt like you felt the energy it's the same in japan when you go to tokyo comic-con it's no hollywood involved it's all comic artists and creators and you know what pinball is a small enough industry that it can be that you know it is that really essentially right now so actually i have a question for you so if you were the music director of a pinball game like how would you think about integrating music into pinball like obviously it's like okay you can play along to music and stuff like that but i just think as someone who you you present music like literally on a daily basis to people and really curate those things i think pinballs have the opportunity to sort of do that like what i'm just interested in maybe what that kind of sparks sparks in you what what you would do honestly if if i could come up with a machine yeah right it would be roy airs for the coffee the movie coffee with pam greer okay and it would have you know you hit certain certain things and you might hear like some jive talk right but you hear the soundtrack in the background playing right like just little things like that like i feel like properties like that should be touched now you know i you you hit something and somebody like hey sucker you know just like just you know like i i think i'm too young and too white to know what that is but i just googled it pam career coffee and now i see i don't know i don't know this movie um but i love where you're heads at now just just looking at the aesthetic of it that's what i'm saying and like you know quentin tarantino did have a part in um in the making of the pulp fiction pinball machine and we know that he loves pam greer like he loves so like quentin if you uh if you're out there somewhere if someone can pass this along to quentin like he needs to get on producing that pinball machine exactly i mean and that royale soundtrack was amazing so it fits that that 1974 for a blaxploitation feel. So come in, have the artists do the excellent back glass and the play field, the soundtrack. That would be a great machine. Well, there we go. Because Pam is beautiful. Who wouldn't look at Pam? I'm telling you right now, Christopher Franchi would relish the chance to do that back glass right now. I already know when he hears this, he'll be like, it's me. I want to do it. And he would absolutely kill it. So, okay, I did want to get to some of the Rocksteady stuff. And for pinball people who might not be experienced in this, you were part of a crazy crew and still are associated with them, I believe, right? Correct. Yep. So it's just such an influential part of a lot of culture today, like music, but also just graphic design and all these things. Can you kind of just I know it's like lame to be like explain what it is. But honestly, I think it's it would be you're a historian. You like talking about that. So could you talk about your time with with that crew? Yes. So, I mean, for those that don't know Rocksteady Crew, Rocksteady Crew is one of the original breakdance crews, which breakdance is like the commercial term. But B-Boy, B-Girl crew. um so new york city 1977 um and present until now and they were like one of the original crews that made breaking famous you know you would stay broke at um like i mean breaking in general you had new york city breakers that was at the ronald reagan inauguration when he became president you know you had the olympics like you had all these different things but rocksteady is kind of is actually the most legendary breakdance crew of all time worldwide they were the first to leave new york city and travel to japan france the uk you know when no one else was traveling when hip-hop was still not a worldwide or respected art form um you know and then fast forward to the present you know i got enlisted into the group i've been one of the official djs i've traveled the globe with them i've done events worldwide with them um and it's just a legend and and the crazy thing is the amount of people that are in rocksteady that people would never know like most stuff is a member of rocksteady people would never know that you know um there's just so there's so many people like that people would not know that they were rocksteady because rocksteady isn't just a breakdance crew it's like a hip-hop crew so There's legendary graffiti writers, legendary DJs, legendary MCs. Like, it's worldwide. So, yeah, I mean, it's like, I don't even like the Yankees, but it's the Yankees of baseball. It's amazing. I mean, the pretentious people call those things art collectives, right? I mean, truly, it's like it hits every facet of society and truly has been really since the 80s. like one of the primary generators of what's interesting in music what's interesting in graphic design like all that stuff and so it must have just been like very exciting to and still is but i'm just saying it's like what an exciting kind of uh like thing to be generating right and curious because i mean you're like i'm part of lineage right right i'm part of a lineage of something great and amazing that will go down legendary i mean when rocksteady first went to the uk crazy lakes has pictures with him and the queen yeah awesome she was she was at the events yeah you know so like that's so that's so crazy like and that's like that's 82 83 like that's wild to think like you're with the queen yeah wearing a tux you know it's it's so bizarre i guess like something that i saw similarities because i'm not like super familiar with breaking Antonio Cruz or anything but i did see similarities between like skaters and breaking crews and that kind of stuff and i was just wondering like how do we build that kind of culture in pinball like i think part of the answer right is probably arcades and tournaments and stuff but like what was that like or how do you kind of see that those parallels in building because like to me these are just like spaces where it's like people with like some time on their hands and like they kind of like a lot of times it's youth or people who are kind of like feeling like on the outskirts to society uh right yeah what your thoughts on that i guess so i had this idea probably 15 years ago i wanted to do a pinball tour right because there's a lot of the funk soul and punk djs that play 45s that play pinball yeah so i had this crazy idea of like i want to do a tour and go to each of these cities and have crew battles from these DJ crews battling on pinball. I love it. Logistically, I was like, how do I pull that off? That could be the problem, but I love the idea. We'll get it done, dude. That'll be a nudge collab for sure. Well, because we actually had on Juana Summers recently, and she helps run Pin Baltimore. And one of the coolest things about pinball tomorrow is they do live music along with a pinball tournament. And so I think it would be so cool to integrate. Like, obviously there are people in pinball, like it's like anything else. People, some people take it very serious. They want it to be quite quiet so they can concentrate. This wouldn't be that like we would tell people right off the bat, right? Like this is going to be rowdy. It's going to be fun. I mean, that just sparks in me is like how do we like start because i watch your videos in japan and stuff like that and you're creating just this very cultivated experience for those people and i think that would just go hand in hand with pinball so well well i mean because like when we went to the arcades in the 80s the arcades weren't quiet they were loud they had music in the background people the the sound of coin dispensers like it wasn't quiet so i can't i don't equate pinball and quiet No. It's a busy space. There's so many games that I've played a lot that I still don't really know what the soundtrack is to it or what all the callouts. You'll hear certain callouts that are loud. I think I was just telling you the other day, like Black Knight Sword of Rage, I'd never heard the music or the callouts until I played it in a furniture store in Vegas. Yeah. Because every time I ever played it, it was just beside a loud-ass Godzilla machine or something else that was overpowering it. and that's that's true so like yeah you know i mean people wear headphones when they play too i don't know if you play wear headphones when you play pinball no no no headphone guy i like i like noise i like ambience that's really interesting it's so funny because i am shane are you a headphones guy or no i'm not so i'm the only headphone see this is where i am a little bit i hate to be like oh be like this spectrumy guy but that is i do think that probably plays into it because i am 100 like i love podcasts over podcasts he's a headboat guy i mean i it's for me it truly is like so like pimp i i get that i i can do it either way and i do like if i'm with my friends like of course like that so that's a weird vibe like if you are just gonna pop that on but like when i go out sometimes like pinball is something for me like pinball music and pot for me are like the ways that I get through life. Like those are the things that bring me this like true joy. And so sometimes for me, it's like, I want to go down there. I'm kind of just like locked in like three puffs of whatever. And I'm going to like, just have my headphones on, like with my playlist that I curate. Cause you know, I care about that too. And like, just really lock into a game. So I think for me, that's like, it's sort of a, it's like meditation. Right. But I see the argument for both but that is my argument for headphones no but that makes sense like if i'm by myself and i'm just zoning out i could see putting headphones on yeah i mean i'm not going to do it i mean you might do it i'm not going to do it but like i could see if you're if you're someplace by yourself and you're just zoning out yeah have your headphones on when you're with your friends and stuff of course not you know but for people that like silence you want silence go to the convention center and play like don't go to the arcade or bar a hundred percent and want silence through that 100 yeah absolutely i though i did want to ask you how often do you go to japan uh every year at least twice sometimes three sometimes four that's wild wow what do you like so much about like what is it with you in japan that like vibes so well i love japan as well so it's the greatest place in the world period hands down no contests no disputes it's the greatest place in the world why i mean like i tell people i've been going to japan since before i had a passport and people like what do you mean by that well i grew up on japanese culture as a kid right i watched speed racer i watched star blazers i watched ultra man i watched godzilla i watched seven samurai i watched all these japanese shows in the 70s as a kid so my connection was like this is it you know and culturally they just get it they preserve everybody else's culture better than they do right like we we have culture here but they do our culture so much better yes so for me as just i've always been interested in storytelling my whole life you know i'm a writer all that stuff and for me what's really interesting about a lot of anime and what i try to tell people with manga and anime is like what you get with it is there isn't a moral like a lot of times there's good guys and bad guys in like western art in a way it's like no in really interesting manga like blade of the immortal is like it's a lot of people who just have a desire and their desire puts them at cross purposes and like sometimes sometimes they're on the same side sometimes they're not on the same side like but it's all sort of like fate is like throwing these people into the wind and like it's just sort of these tragic you know and sometimes really funny sometimes whatever and it's just like there is no other way to experience like there isn't that kind of stuff in in western cultures i mean so godzilla is he good or is he bad yeah yeah that is like a great question we know joker's bad we know joker's bad we like we know batman is good you know he might go route things the wrong way at times but so it's like it's god and that's what i love about the japanese there is no definitive this person is evil this person's bad there's the crossroads so we have the godzilla pin that we have that one what anime pin would you love to see like we said you have the pam greer pin that would be awesome but like if there was like an anime that you feel like maybe has just been missed that could be adapted what um definitely I would love to see like an Astro Boy Word I would love to see an Astro Boy pin I'm surprised they don't have one in Japan Me too Why is pinball not big in Japan? That's exactly my question It is big There are pinball spots there The thing about Japan is If we didn't have social media Most people would never know what's going on there Right? Everything that's going on here is going on in Japan It's just you have to be in the know to know that's going on they have pinball conventions there they have like pinball spots there because people love american culture right it's still not as big as i think it could be though um you know it's not uh i've been to japan a lot of times myself and i know like there's that massive place in osaka that's got like 100 i forget what it's called but other than that and like in tokyo there's not that many places i know yeah it's probably a little bit like new york where real estate is at a premium you know it's expensive um those can be issues with with everywhere really in pinball but especially new york city we talked about that in the first episode of the nudge cast i also wonder if it's just getting the games there also could be a could be part of the problem too if they're just well there are if they're not there already how do you get a game there it's a lot of work yeah see the the thing is now i think the machines that are there now were definitely there when the when the yen was amazing because all through the 80s all through the 90s the yen like their money stretched long word right they would they i mean that's why there's so many low riders in in japan because the money was great at one time yeah you know and culturally do you think the japanese have been coming over here since the 70s and soaking up our culture and taking it back and doing our culture yeah right so like now it's probably just hard to get those machines over there you know i mean to get from chicago to japan like do you know how many i mean it's not it's not even like profitable to fly two machines over like to what it's going to cost you to get it over there are you really going to make your money back oh for sure no i think that is a huge limiter absolutely but i do think like you're like you were saying like they it's part of american culture and it's something that is like we just got what i'm hearing right now is like we need to do the nudge tour of japan all together i think that's i mean that's because when you think about it like they've always had that fascination with american culture but still the arcade games dominate for sure their culture yeah right you know even i mean arcade games don't even dominate our culture anymore pinball dominates arcades more than you know than anything like before it was like okay pinballs that was the 60s and 70s and then arcade came and it was like okay now you don't see pinball you see arcade machines now we don't have arcade machines and we have more pinball and when we do have arcade machines it's classics yeah are there any new arcade machines even being made i don't even know that answer to that question here no um japan definitely oh yeah right but like here no there's no new machines they're all either imported Japanese machines. Yeah. Yeah. Or like it's like an Angry Birds game or something like for kids, you know, like Dave and Buster's style. Exactly. Exactly. The Japanese are really inventive with like rhythm games and stuff like that. I have some friends who run those games. It's very funny because there's a slight bootleg quality even to doing that because I think for them to technically work on U.S. soil, they kind of are getting around some weird like software issues, software licensing issues right but but those games are all really cool and really interesting and a lot of them just integrate like light or something really simple and and music and music and so yeah i just i i find that stuff to be so interesting i love it like that's been the fun part about pinball conventions here is that um they've really integrated like arcade games and specifically like japanese rhythm games into a lot of those conventions and i think it's like such a fun break a lot of times from well we needed that we needed we needed something refreshing you know i mean america gets stale after a while because we we kind of regurgitate the same thing over and over put a little spin on it or something but we don't really like what was the last thing we really invented yeah in america that's like you know that's fun right like yeah yeah i don't know it's definitely not facebook you know we haven't really done anything and i feel like the japanese are always like how can we make this better than the last one which is why you can get like 50 versions of street fighter yeah because how can we make this version better than the last one totally you are a music historian you're an art historian but i thought it would be fun shane like you have like are also just like way into music you are like have like you said a thousand records that's that's 998 more than i have uh i have two i have the goat i have the ghostbusters record and then i have music from close encounters of the third kind as performed by the electric uh moog orchestra quality over quantity yeah you know and uh so so those are those are my two but i thought it would be fun for all of us if we just went round robin style and drafted our top music pins. Because I don't know if there would be crossover, but I think it'll be fun to give it that NFL draft kind of feel. I dig it. Yeah, words. So we'll just have you say what you would draft and then what you think would vibe about it with pinball. All right. Let's have round one of this draft. We'll go scheme first, Shane, you, and then me. And then we won't snake it back. We'll just start back up at the top. I'll be third every time. I'll take the bullet on that. All right. I'm double downing on the coffee. I'm double downing, period. All right. Because fill me out on the back glass here, right, in the play field. It would have to be like old 1970s blacklight posters. Nice. I'm into it. Right? It would have to be that. It can't just be painted. It has to have the glow paint. Dude, it would be sick to integrate blacklight lighting into a back glass where it can turn on in some modes and stuff like that. That would be sick because Jersey Jack is already doing – they're doing that weird UV paint stuff now. It's like imagine that on a – dude, that is such a good idea to do that on a back glass actually. So that's – yeah, so for me, that one. That's my first. So who, what company would make it and what style game would it be? Would it be a throwback game? Kind of like, like, yeah, would it be that kind of a thing? Or would it be like a fully all the bells and whistles modern Stern? What's your take scheme? See, the new machines have a lot of problems, right? Like, like old machines, I feel like never broke. You want single level play field for sure for this one. I think he wants it EM style. Yeah, well, I've got to say, like, two spinners, like, some stand-up targets, like, you know, maybe a gobble hole up top. But, I mean, even if, I don't know, even, like, even Pam Critt just rising up nude. Like, you hit a special button. You hit a special button. Amazing. I don't want it to be because sometimes a lot of the machines they're very distracting because there's so much going on there's so many levels and I'm like okay I can't follow what's going on here because it's so much but I want simplicity with a little bit of intricacy but like nothing distracting about your I want to look and see the graphics always I feel you Great first overall pick. Love it. Right. Are we doing music pins or are we doing anything? Music pins, but yeah. I mean, the music is the – that works. That works. It works. Okay, cool. All right. I'm going to really, really go off track to something completely different here. I love it. So you mentioned punk rock a couple times, Scheme, and there's never been a hip-hop pin that I know of. but the one that i think could work in pinball punk rock 2 is the beastie boys i think okay that's got enough nostalgia to work enough heirs of the band to work and i just picture all the new york city aesthetic you could have in that game and i think it's stern and i think it modern um but i think it could be awesome and um i heard a couple people talk about it but again I think with music pins there less things to sign off on I know like they're not all alive you know but it would be incredible and could be so fucking cool if anyone if there's any group that I would want to see on a pinball machine it would be Beasties it would be them like yeah run dmc is iconic but beasties is something different it's also that the personality right that's personality yeah you know they're fun boys was punk they were skaters and i feel like punk skating goes hand in hand with them having a machine totally agreed and they had like they had a sense of humor about themselves which is always that kind of part of like like when you talk about kind of that cheeky like like medieval madness there's like kind of some sexy funny humor is like beastie boys totally had that vibe they were just kind of like scuzzy like funny like stick your dick in the mashed potatoes multiball exactly exactly yes i knew it was going to be that kind of party yes exactly so yeah that's it like beastie boys 100 there's nobody else i would want to see all right but beastie boys i i love that okay shane great great pick for you so The pressure's really on me for my first pick. So I'm going to go... I love Nujabez, the musician, so I want a Samurai Champloo pin featuring the soundtrack to Samurai Champloo. That is my number one theme that I want. I knew I could shoehorn it into this music pin. I'm bending it slightly like Scheme, but I think specifically featuring that music is so vibey, so good, like R.I.P. Gone Too Soon, but that would be my number one pick. And I just think the artwork on that machine would be incredible. Agreed. That would sell dozens of copies, Ian. Okay. Well, you know what? They'd sell it to me and Scheme and all our cool friends. That's all I'll be. All right. Round two here. Scheme, back up to you. All right. So it's funny you mentioned that machine because one machine that I would love to see made afro samurai and have rizzo do the soundtrack word that would be sick because the afro first of all i mean the afro samurai the the the the anime alone was beautiful the way it was designed like it was it was beautiful and then the soundtrack was just perfect with it yeah so can i see that on a pinball like that would be great and riz is already the multi-talented multi having his hands and everything yep you know that that definitely feels like a modern pin as well to me like that one's one that's a modern you want it to be playing fast you're gonna have like some ramps there there might be that weird uh isn't there like a weird like teddy bear or something in that the teddy bear yeah that's gonna be like that's gonna be a mech in there somewhere some weird creepy like bash toy with that thing yeah yeah perfect yeah absolutely hello okay i'm gonna change my second pick um and i'm kind of got a piggyback on you scheme because you mentioned the rizza why couldn't we do a wu-tang clan pin and it doesn't necessarily have to be like okay wu-tang clan like the songs whatever what if it was like a adventure right where they're all like almost a little bit like foo fighters but it's the wu-tang clan and it's done that way right and then of course like all the different solo stuff that everybody's done obviously this is hypothetical because getting all everyone to sign off on everything would be a nightmare but yeah but i would love to see you know like all the all the og wu-tang clan members um even master killer uh and uh and friends you know like that would be an awesome way to get hip-hop involved in in uh in pinball as well one thing i so i agree with you on the wu-tang i would want to see the old dirty bastard pinball machine a little more than there is because with the old dirty bastard you know it would be raunchy oh yeah for sure dude i thought ian i thought ian was going to be the horny horniest guy on the podcast no no never this is why dude this is why we vibe so good absolutely i love it see it would be you know what it would actually be a collaboration it would be a wu-tang like odb meets dolomite oh okay because they were both those type of guys and odb played the dolomite character in his in his videos so it's true it would be a odb Dolomite-ish Wu-Tang theme. That one's going to be definitely made by Jersey Jack. They're the ones shelling out the money for all that licensing. Absolutely. And you've got to go over the top for Wu-Tang, right? You've got to have the big screen, everything sparkling. I like that. Yeah, like a crazy light show. For me, I feel like this is the first pin that integrates a smoke machine into the play field is what I'm going to say. Think about that on a multiball. All coming out of the mist. Smoking blood. Exactly. Exactly. Perfect. All right. I'm going to change gears even more for my second pick. I think that, you know what, we pitched this in issue one when we had the Your Favorite Music Pin Sucks article. We offered some alternatives. I think this holds up. I think James Brown as a just theme for a pinball game would be amazing. You're just playing the James Brown pin, full on, full soundtrack, the whole thing. Everyone loves that music. Old people love it. Young people love it. It's so vibey. It would be so fun. I think that one, you're probably doing like a – I feel like that could be a classic game. That could feel maybe like a Pulp Fiction-y kind of type game again. um but yeah i just think that would be so vibey and fun see i don't know why like there has to be a pinball machine from 1970 whatever where the backlash is someone that looks like james brown isn't james brown it has to be like the disco scene the funk scene like yeah that looks like james brown but not james brown 100 i think that they're they're definitely there may even be like a james brown theme pinball there may be one but i'm just saying like either way the the music's not there and like for me it's not there it's like blast that shit like while you're right i would not be a headphones guy if i had a james brown pinball machine like i wouldn't be i'm not gonna i'm not gonna mess that up so you know i would just i would vibe to that and i think it would be so fun like there's so much like you could do with like fun funny mechs we talked about before remember shane when we had the uh the mighty mighty boss tones pin it would be funny with a pop bumper it's like imagine a little james brown like attached to a pop bumper that's like dancing all around it would be amazing so like that that is mine so okay so we are on final round now uh this is the final your final pick and then and then we'll do a recap so uh all right scheme round three what is what is your pick all right so as a collector we always want the rare we want the one of one we want the like no one else is going to ever have this yep because because this is amazing so there's a drummer legendary drummer named bernard purdy and bernard purdy was responsible for playing on a lot of people's stuff that a lot of people don't know he played on some james brown stuff he played on funkadelic stuff like he played on a lot of people's songs 60s 70s like legendary he was responsible for scoring the first black porn film 1974 right yeah i like right like i would know that yeah absolutely yeah my favorite i know this was gonna turn get sexual i i just knew it was coming hear about let's hear i'm gonna hear about hey i'm just saying this is the podcast for it that's right so legendary drummer like everybody in hip-hop he's he's made classics that's been sampled over and over and over again and i had the pleasure of being with him in russia on tour because he was he was judging a drum battle of russian drummers that were like hip-hop guys but they were just like really funky so cool um he scored the first porn black porn which is called lila right amazing it's rare it's super rare i'm into it one of one you we we make one of these one homebrew we can sell it to anybody for a billion dollars i need because i have the original clamshell vhs which is super duper rare I have the big box version VHS, super rare, the movie poster, and the lobby cards, right? I have to have a full house. I love it. So I need someone to make this pinball. Like, that's me as a collector of 101 who wishes he was wealthy that I can afford to get this one-off one. but that would be the like that would be my end all to be all i thought ali was my end all to be all that was like a 40th birthday present to myself nice this would be the yeah no one has this yeah totally no okay so we don't have a ton of money either but what we do have is connections to the homebrew world so hey guys if you're out there and you're listening this you like to make homebrews you want to make scheme very happy potentially you know what it would be nice to have this man as your friend so if you're looking uh to to curry favor with someone pretty cool i would say make a lila homebrew and uh and bring it to the next whatever expo we got going in in philly or or on the east coast that that's where we're bringing it so yeah that's so his shot because he was an amazing drummer and like all his music was ridiculous i just can't wait till you're at tpf for expo and you have to go behind the black curtain like the like the porn section at the at the video store in the 90s yep you got to open the open the curtain and they let you in to play lila right there because it's got to get full on raunchy why can't we have that at pimple bars now like the 18 and older 21 and over well i will tell you this actually one of the best uh conversations i ever had with tim sexton who is uh famously works at stern he's a rules guy at stern super awesome dude uh we had featured prominently there was a re-theme of a old bally williams game i don't remember what it was but the re-theme of it and it was a kit you could buy a conversion kit the game was called big dick and it was like a erotic pinball machine uh and and it was really funny and and i didn't know much about it i just had the pictures and tim sexton gave me like a full-on he's like you know and most of those people featured on that back glass were either secretaries or the men's wives and girlfriends. I was like, oh, good to know. Thank you. But he knew everything about that. He knows everything about every game. I don't want to be like, oh, he's just an expert on Big Dick. But definitely that was an amazing conversation we had. So I vibe with that for sure. Great pick. Shane, what do you got for your last pick? All right. So since this has gone off the rails quite a bit, I'm going to totally pivot out of music. and my last pick is going to be based on the computer game from the 80s 90s probably into the 2000s i'm going with leisure suit larry oh hell yeah i i would love just the horniest draft i want i want larry laffer leisure suit larry pinball machine let's get weird um I think Spooky's the company that's going to make it for me. Yeah, sure. One of one. Let's keep it rare. I mean, do you remember it? I mean, I know you're a bit older than me, Scheme, but I remember having to break into my friend's older brother's room and get on his computer, and then there'd be the question you'd have to answer to prove you were old enough. it would be like about a president or something it'd be like i don't know yep as a canadian that had to be rough for you yeah it was hard and then you know we we got it wrong like every day until we finally got it right and we were able to play this game you know and so there you go that's my pick and i know there's nostalgia there i mean because imagine like being 1985 or six or whatever and me looking at computer magazines and video game magazines back then and seeing the lisa shoot larry advertisements oh yeah right like those were in video game and computer magazines it wasn't off limits right like these are kids eyes looking at it for sure yeah i see what you're saying it was like there was an acceptable level of like bodiness that like culture had that has definitely dude we definitely are living in a more puritanical time that is something we can say like we we've made jokes like yeah this is the like the horny episode totally it is but also like it is it is but it's true we live in a time that is like very weirdly puritanical like in a way um and so it it's it's worth talking about and you know what shane i love that pick and i would say music by harmar superstar there we go he kind of is like the music version of uh leisure suit larry a little Bernard Purdy is still alive. I just checked. He's still alive. Maybe he'll come back for Leisure Suit Larry. His ears might perk up. Okay. Hell yeah. I love it. All right. So for my third pick, you know what? I'm going to go. I'm not going to – this is not horny of me. At least I hope it's not. But I'm going to say Scott Denisey, the pinball machine. So we know Scott Denisey as a designer of pinball machines. He made famously Total Nuclear Annihilation, like that retro game. He made the Rick and Morty machine. Most recently, he made Final Resistance for the P3. But so in my game, you're playing as Scott Danesi, and you have to – there's one area where you have to design a play field. There's another one where you have to write a bunch of banger music, and then there's another – the upper play field is your home life, and you're running errands and doing stuff like that. But the trick of this game would be that the soundtrack would also be by Scott Danesi, and you're unlocking new tracks. The further you go in the game, you're unlocking more Scott Danesi tracks. So that is my third pick for a music pin. And that would be made, obviously, designed by Scott Danesi, put out by wherever. Maybe it's a P3. That would be fun. I'd play that P3. So, yeah. We've got to get it on the show to talk about it. Yeah, so to recap... Use your guess, Scott Danesi. Well, definitely. I mean, absolutely. 100%. But also, I think he might be into that game. So let's recap here. So for Scheme, we had coffee. And then we had the – was it Lila was the second? Afro Samurai was the second. Yep. Okay. Afro Samurai and then Lila. Okay. Hell of a trio. Like I would go to the house that has those three games. I might not stay overnight there, but I would definitely go. Oh, yes, you would. Shane, give us your recap again. I had Beastie Boys, the Wu-Tang Clan, Goes on an Adventure, featuring the Smoke Mech, the Blunt Multiball, and Leisure Suit Larry was my third pick. Great music, Penn. I love it. Okay. And for me, for my three, they were the Nujabez Samurai Champloo pin, the James Brown pin, which I think would be super fun, and Scott Denisey the pin. So, hey, guys, if you're listening to this, we're going to have a poll up. We'll have a poll up on Instagram, on Facebook. I'll probably sign it out with the newsletter. And you can vote on who you think did best. I think they're all great. I think, honestly, we're all winners in this draft. We all did amazing work. But Scheme, I want to thank you so much for coming on the pod. Where can people find you if they're interested in anything that you're doing? All right. So Instagram, you can catch me at Scheme Richards, S-K-E-M-E Richards, R-I-C-H-A-R-D-S. You can check the website, NostalgiaKing.com. And that's where I do record reviews on new releases. I'll do like travel blogs, whatever, Japan, Europe. um i'll cover just anything cool and just you know just funky you know from movies to pinball to comics to whatever so anything that i'm into you're into hell yeah i love it i love that like thank you thank you so much for for coming on and and talking pinball this is a really fun interview you're fucking awesome no doubt it's really an honor to me thank you yeah i had a great time man Like it's two other horny guys. This is like Revenge of the Nerds. This is like Revenge of the Nerds here. Absolutely. I'm not going to ask what nerd you think I am, but yes, absolutely. Cool. Well, thanks so much. Thanks so much, Steve. No doubt. No doubt. So there it is. with DJ Scheme Richards. What a guy. Just awesome. I don't know if you're going to have to towel off. You're going to have to go get some ice water, something. I don't know. But yeah, guys, I mean, that was truly, he pulled us in, and I hope he pulled you in, too. I hope you went along for this sensual pinball journey. So what a cool guy. What a really fun story. And I think we can use his ideas in pinball, to be frank. I do too, man. I think he's got some good ideas. The best idea... Make pinball sexy again. The best idea was Leisure Suit Larry, though. I want to see a Leisure Suit Larry. That was your idea. That's why I'm saying it's the best idea. I want a Leisure Suit Larry homebrew so bad. Someone make it. Let's get real weird. I'm down. Oh my god, the video modes in that would be absurd. Cancelable. Yeah, absolutely. I think us even talking about it is maybe cancelable. But I'm in for it. A hundred percent. And let's lean into that. Let's keep that energy going because, Shane, I don't know if we want to reveal it, but we have a very special and controversial guest coming next week or two weeks from now probably. Our next episode will be with a guy you know him. You may love him. You may not love him. You can maybe guess at who it might be, but this is a very polarizing figure in pinball. No question. Yes, it's not Joel Engelbert. It is someone else. So you'll just have to stick around. You'll tune in. And yeah, it was a really fun conversation, though. I think I was so happy you were there. It got me a little unhinged. I think we got off the call and Shane says, dude, that was, that was a wild interview. That was off the chain. That's like the first thing he said to me. So I was like, got it. Like this one was, I will say this about the next episode. It didn't really feel like an interview. It more felt like an argument. Yeah. So make sure. So if you like that energy, yeah. Like you are, you are down. And if you don't like that energy, fuck off and listen to the one after that. Just kidding, but kind of maybe. Well, make sure you are subscribed, followed, liked, whatever you got to do on whatever you're listening to this on to keep it coming at you. And tell a friend, tell a loved one, spread the word, whatever you got to do, share this thing. And because we're coming in hot week after week, man, on the Nudgecast. Thanks, guys. We'll see you all next time. Bye. _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: d597addc-bfd7-4109-8e9e-b086785ab21a*