# Episode 30 – The Supreme Jonathan Joosten

**Source:** Head2Head Pinball  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2018-02-12  
**Duration:** 169m 31s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.head2headpinball.com/2018/02/12/episode-30-the-supreme-jonathan-joosten/

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## Analysis

Head to Head Pinball Podcast Episode 30 covers major industry news including speculation that Stern's next game "Iron Maiden" may use Keith Elwin's Archer layout, the surprising Supreme brand collaboration pinball machine announcement that achieved 1.5 million YouTube views in 24 hours (unprecedented for pinball media), and Deep Root Pinball's webinar on compensation terms for affected Zidware customers with explicit exclusions for litigious parties.

### Key Claims

- [MEDIUM] Iron Maiden is rumored to use Keith Elwin's Archer layout, which has four flippers (two top, two bottom) — _Ryan C and Martin speculate based on layout rumors and assembly line pairing information from unnamed source; Archer videos were pulled from Elwin's website when he was hired by Stern_
- [HIGH] Supreme Pinball video achieved 1.5 million views in less than 24 hours, unprecedented for any pinball video — _Martin verified view count before recording; directly observed data_
- [HIGH] Supreme brand is valued at over $1 billion after a company bought 50% of shares for $500 million USD — _Ryan C cites this figure during discussion of Supreme's market valuation_
- [HIGH] Supreme has sold items including bricks (£30), crowbars, skate decks (£6,000 resale), guitars (£7,000), and a Louis Vuitton trunk (£70,000) — _Ryan C researched and read aloud Supreme's product history_
- [MEDIUM] Supreme Pinball appears to use the same ramps as Spider-Man Home Edition and is priced for around $3,500-$5,000 — _Martin speculates based on visual comparison and comments from community; unconfirmed pricing_
- [HIGH] Deep Root's compensation plan explicitly excludes people who are suing Zidware or who 'badmouth' Deep Root/Zidware on podcasts and websites — _Martin reviewed webinar slides and quoted Deep Root's terms of goodwill compensation_
- [HIGH] Keith Elwin is 'the gold standard' and 'arguably the best competitive pinball player that's ever been' — _Martin and Ryan C consensus statement; widely recognized in pinball community_
- [HIGH] Texas Pinball Festival is approximately 30-34 days away from recording date — _Martin references Texas Pinball Festival timing; mentions Pinside thread with daily countdown_
- [HIGH] Supreme Pinball is the first Stern machine with fully stylized components matching the theme (shooter housing, shooter knob, white instruction cards, colored apron/buttons) — _Martin detailed observation of Supreme's aesthetic consistency across all components_
- [MEDIUM] Deep Root webinar featured a special condition targeting Kaneda specifically to prevent him from receiving compensation — _Martin and Ryan C interpret Deep Root's terms as directed at Kaneda based on podcast/website badmouthing clause_

### Notable Quotes

> "There isn't one. So, okay, you ready? Here's how I knew what the Supreme brand was..."
> — **Martin**, ~13:00
> _Introduces Martin's personal anecdote about discovering Supreme's brand cachet at a Los Angeles store with 300-400 person queue_

> "I think the brand is so fucking terrible that it's making me buy a fucking crowbar. The crowbar is a quick argument. It's like a piece of crap, man. Why does everyone want the crowbar? It's just a fucking crowbar."
> — **Supreme customer (quoted by Ryan C)**, ~18:00
> _Illustrates the irrationality of Supreme's brand loyalty and artificial demand strategy_

> "This is the most exciting pinball machine for me that's going to release this year because I have no interest in Iron Maiden as a theme."
> — **Martin**, ~55:00
> _Demonstrates how marketing (Supreme's professional video) can drive excitement more than theme or gameplay_

> "1.5 million people in less than 24 hours have watched a video on a pinball machine. That's never happened before. And anyone who says that this is shit for pinball, like, it's not. It's amazing for pinball."
> — **Martin**, ~58:00
> _Key assertion about Supreme pinball's cultural impact and benefit to pinball industry visibility_

> "If you are going to be a prick along the way and badmouth our name and badmouth, you know, all this, then we will actually not honor your claim."
> — **Deep Root (paraphrased from webinar by Martin)**, ~68:00
> _Reveals Deep Root's explicit exclusion of vocal critics from compensation, particularly Kaneda_

> "This is the best thing that's going to happen to them all year."
> — **Ryan C**, ~59:00
> _Ryan's assessment that Supreme pinball is the biggest mainstream success story for pinball in 2018_

> "It's not for us. The news here—the news piece—is this is the biggest release of a pinball machine ever in the history of pinball, right?"
> — **Martin**, ~57:00
> _Martin reframes Supreme as a mainstream culture crossover event rather than niche pinball release_

> "Stern, I don't think, have ever stylized their shooter housing—the shooter plunger housing—to match the theme of their pinball. It's always the same color."
> — **Martin**, ~42:00
> _Highlights Supreme's design attention to detail as unprecedented for Stern manufacturing standards_

> "If they release Iron Maiden with a video like that, you've got me hooked. But they never do that. This is why this company is worth a billion dollars: because they marketed their product."
> — **Martin**, ~54:00
> _Criticizes Stern's typical marketing approach compared to Supreme's professional video production_

> "So if this is one of these things where they think, 'You know what, they are just going to sell out of these things,' well then, actually make a full-sized proper Stern rather than one of these home ones."
> — **Ryan C**, ~51:00
> _Questions Stern's product-market positioning decision for Supreme, suggesting Pro model might have been more profitable_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Keith Elwin | person | Legendary competitive pinball player and designer; rumored to have designed Iron Maiden using his Archer layout; described as 'the gold standard' of pinball players |
| Supreme | company | Skatewear/streetwear brand worth $1 billion+ that partnered with Stern for pinball machine; known for limited-edition releases and artificial demand creation |
| Stern Pinball | company | Major pinball manufacturer releasing Iron Maiden and Supreme collaboration machines; criticized for marketing approach compared to competitors |
| Deep Root Pinball | company | Pinball manufacturer acquired Zidware assets; announced compensation terms for affected customers with explicit exclusions for litigious parties |
| Iron Maiden | game | Rumored next Stern pinball release; speculation suggests it uses Keith Elwin's Archer layout with four flippers |
| Supreme Pinball | game | Collaboration between Stern and Supreme brand; achieved 1.5 million YouTube views in 24 hours (unprecedented); appears to use Spider-Man Home Edition ramps; features minimalist red/white/black design |
| Archer | game | Homebrew/prototype pinball by Keith Elwin; four-flipper design that may be adapted as Iron Maiden; videos removed when Elwin was hired by Stern |
| Spider-Man Home Edition | game | Stern pinball game; Supreme machine rumors suggest it reuses same ramps and similar footprint |
| Martin Robbins | person | Co-host of Head to Head Pinball Podcast; attended Arcade Expo and played Archer; passionate about design details and marketing analysis |
| Ryan C | person | Co-host of Head to Head Pinball Podcast; researched Supreme brand history and background; contributed speculation on Deep Root situation |
| John Papaduke | person | Original designer behind Zidware/Deep Root games; Deep Root spending 'hundreds of thousands of dollars' in make-good effort |
| Kaneda | person | Pinball personality; Deep Root's compensation terms specifically exclude him due to his vocal criticism on podcasts/websites |
| Texas Pinball Festival | event | Major pinball event approximately 30-34 days from episode recording; expected venue for Iron Maiden announcement |
| Zidware | company | Failed pinball company; Deep Root acquired assets; customers affected by original failure now eligible for compensation with restrictions |
| Dennis Nordman | person | Legendary pinball designer; interviewed on Eclectic Gamers podcast; mentioned as alternative talent option compared to Zidware/Deep Root investment |
| Eclectic Gamers Podcast | organization | Pinball podcast platform; featured Dennis Nordman interview about Deep Root situation |
| Arcade Expo | event | Pinball/arcade event approximately 2 years before episode recording; Martin played Archer there with Keith Elwin present |
| Pinside | organization | Pinball forum; hosts daily countdown thread to Texas Pinball Festival; community discussion of Supreme/Iron Maiden news |
| Pabst Can Crusher | game | Previous Stern promotional/novelty pinball machine; mentioned as comparable in theme niche to Supreme |
| Tron | game | Pinball machine referenced for minimalist design aesthetic similar to Supreme pinball |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Iron Maiden game speculation and Archer connection, Supreme brand collaboration and viral marketing success, Deep Root Pinball compensation terms and Zidware aftermath
- **Secondary:** Stern Pinball's marketing and design approach, Supreme brand business model and luxury streetwear economics, Keith Elwin's status as legendary designer/player, Community reception and social media response to Supreme
- **Mentioned:** Pinball machine pricing and market positioning

### Sentiment

**Mixed** (0.62) — Largely positive toward Supreme pinball as a cultural phenomenon and marketing success, with enthusiasm about its mainstream reach. However, skepticism about Deep Root's exclusionary compensation terms and questions about Iron Maiden design choices temper overall optimism. Martin is more enthusiastic about Supreme's marketing than gameplay; both hosts acknowledge uncertainty about machine gameplay quality.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Deep Root's compensation terms explicitly exclude customers who are litigious or critical on media, creating potential public relations friction (confidence: high) — Martin reviewed webinar slides showing exclusionary language; specific targeting of Kaneda mentioned; characterization as 'poo-pooing the process' equals compensation disqualification
- **[business_signal]** Stern chose home/compact model over full-size Pro for Supreme collaboration, potentially leaving revenue on table but matching target market (non-pinballers) (confidence: medium) — Speculation that Supreme fans lack interest in complex hardware; home model limits production complexity; Ryan questions whether Pro would have been better business decision
- **[sentiment_shift]** Facebook comments show split reception: appreciation for minimalist design and marketing; skepticism about gameplay depth and Supreme brand appeal to pinballers (confidence: high) — Multiple quoted comments ranging from enthusiasm to indifference; discussion of whether Supreme fans would buy vs. pinball enthusiasts
- **[design_philosophy]** Supreme Pinball demonstrates Stern's willingness to invest in theme-consistent design and professional marketing when working with major brand partners (confidence: high) — Full stylization of components; professional video production; departure from typical Stern cost-reduction approach; specific attention to aesthetic consistency across all elements
- **[leak_detection]** Iron Maiden layout details (four flippers, Archer connection) surfaced through community sources before official announcement (confidence: medium) — Unnamed source provided assembly line pairing information; Pinside thread discussions; host speculation indicates rumor circulation predates official reveal
- **[licensing_signal]** Supreme brand licensing represents major mainstream crossover; partnership structure and terms remain partially opaque to hosts (confidence: medium) — Hosts speculate on whether Stern or Supreme initiated partnership; no official confirmation of licensing terms or production numbers mentioned
- **[market_signal]** Supreme Pinball pricing likely $3,500-$5,000 (home model level) rather than full-size ($8,000+), positioning as non-pinball-enthusiast product (confidence: medium) — Community comments estimate $3,500-$5,000; comparison to Spider-Man Home Edition; speculation about Supreme customer's price sensitivity vs. commitment to hobby
- **[market_signal]** Supreme's professional marketing video execution contrasted favorably with typical Stern approach; recognized as significantly more effective at driving viral engagement (confidence: high) — Martin's critique of Stern's usual approach vs. Supreme's video strategy; 1.5M views attributed directly to quality of marketing execution; Ryan and Martin both praise video production
- **[personnel_signal]** John Papaduke's involvement with Zidware/Deep Root required hundreds of thousands in compensation investment despite availability of other design talent (Dennis Nordman cited) (confidence: medium) — Ryan's question about why Deep Root invested so heavily in acquisition and Papaduke support when other designers available; implication of questionable business decision
- **[announcement]** Supreme Pinball officially announced as Stern collaboration; video released with unprecedented 1.5M views in 24 hours (confidence: high) — Viral video observed with 1.5M+ views before recording; social media saturation; Martin woke to message about news; video link tagged across platforms
- **[product_strategy]** Supreme Pinball features unprecedented theme-consistent component styling for Stern (white shooter housing, styled buttons, matching instruction cards) never before attempted (confidence: high) — Martin's detailed inventory of stylized components; explicit statement that Stern typically leaves shooter housing unthemed; comparison to competitor practices (JJP, Spooky)
- **[rumor_hype]** Iron Maiden confirmed to be next Stern release; rumor that it uses Keith Elwin's Archer layout with four flippers (confidence: medium) — Assembly line pairing rumors from unnamed source; four-flipper detail matches Archer specifications; timing aligns with Texas Pinball Festival announcement window

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## Transcript

 Welcome Welcome everybody to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. This is episode 30. Can you believe it? It's episode 30 and I'm Martin and with me for episode 30, it's Ryan Seed. Big 3-0 baby. We made it. That's it. We can finish now. It's time for our mid-podcast crisis. It's like when you're 30 years old. Is that when you have the mid-life crisis or is that 40? Is this when we jump the shark or? I want to dive under the shark like Bruce. Or get beaten by a shark by Ron. Yeah, that happened. Massive episode. A lot of news came in today. We got some news on Iron Maiden, some speculation. Supreme Pinball Machine, what is it? We got some news on Deep Roots. Oktoberfest, we're going to talk about Oktoberfest again. Stern hiring new people. Color DMD. More talk about TNA. Has someone blown it up? We got some news on Dialed In. and we're going to talk about our massive week in, well, Marty's massive week in pinball and me sitting at home just playing pinball alone in the dark. We might venture into the top 100 again and we've got a new segment just to prove that we can do the original segment. We've got another new segment totally not copied off anyone else. Yeah, we're calling it Pin Slide. Go for it, Marty. Start us off. All right, well, so, rumours are, the rumour that we've heard is that Iron Maiden, which supposedly is the next machine coming from Stern, is in fact Archer. So, it's not Iron Maiden, it's Archer, or are you saying that the layout is the same as Archer? So the layout apparently is whatever Keith Elvin was working on with Archer, which, you know, again, it's all speculation, but it kind of makes sense because, you know, all the videos and all the work done on Archer was pulled from his website, so it kind of makes sense that he would be using that for Iron Maiden. And as, you know, I've mentioned before, I got to have a flip of Archer and it plays really well. I mean, it was pretty basic code at the time, but just... So where did you do this? Where did you get to play? I played this at Indies. So this was two years ago at Arcade Expo, I want to say 2.0. I think it might have been the second one. And he was there with his brother Randy, and they showed it off. There was a room that they had, and unfortunately I was playing in a tournament, so I didn't actually get to be in the room when they did a presentation. I was standing outside looking through the glass. I think that presentation is on YouTube. because when Keith was hired, kind of everything was removed. He had like a blog that he was working on and it was removed and there was a whole pin slide through it of people complaining about how that bit of pinball history was lost and I don't know, just typical stuff that you can complain about. But videos that other people took kind of survived on YouTube and places like that. So during the week after someone told me that, that's the current rumor because Archer has four flippers, I believe, two at the bottom and two at the top. And the rumour is that they're kind of pairing the samples and the assembly line, and someone has told me that it has four flippers, which kind of ties in to it possibly being Archer. Marnie, we talked during the week, and I looked at this video and I said, wow, it's a cool pinball machine, but you've got the world's best player demoing it out. Yeah. It kind of makes it look easy, kind of like Carl D'Python Anghelo and Bowen have been making TNA look easy, but it's not. So there's a ramp shot through the pop bumpers, a shot underneath the flipper. Do you think that if it was that layout, it would be too hard for the general average person out there? Well, no. I would say no based on my own experience because I am not a fantastic pinball player like, you know, Elwynn. And I had a really good bit of it. I mean, I got to have quite a long ball time with it. So, no, I don't think it is as complex or as difficult as you may think it is just because it's Keith Elwin. A lot of people played it and a lot of people had fun. And it was just one of these ones where, now I know this might be a big call to say, but you know when we played Darling for the first time and all the shots just felt exactly where they needed to be. It just felt really sort of comfortable. That's kind of what Archer felt like when I was flipping it. Nothing felt unusual. It just felt really... It is. And it flowed really well. Sorry. It is a pretty unique design, though. So, like people always say, CFBC games feel, you know, the rounds are where they should be, but it's because they actually are in the exact same position as they were in the previous three games. but it's an interesting point to say that, I guess. Well, and that's, look, let's take the fact that he is arguably the best competitive pinball player that's ever been. The gold standard? He is the gold standard, right? The one. But also, not just that, think about how much pinball he's played in his life. It would just be staggering to think how much he's actually played. So if he's put that many hours into playing games and knows what shoots well, then hopefully he'll be able to replicate that. Yeah. We could be totally wrong. As we said, it is just a rumor, but it kind of makes sense. You know, John Trudeau, is that right? Trudeau? Oh, my God. I second guess myself all the time. I'm like, this is the right one. No, okay. John Trudeau and Zombie Yeti worked together on Iron Maiden, and since John is no longer there, it kind of makes sense that Keith's first game would be something that he is, you know, would already be 80% through. And if it is true, I think there'd be tweaks here and there. It still was a whitewood, I guess, but I guess we'll see in a couple of weeks, possibly. I mean, if it's going to be at Texas Pinball Festival, which is in 30 days, 33 or 34 days. Someone seems to be counting that down. There's a thread on Pinsire that like every single day he bumps a thread with like 31 days. Anyway, it's around a month. So they're not going to announce it one day before. They're going to announce it maybe two weeks before. So I think we've got an announcement coming pretty soon. Yeah, well, like you said, if they've used his layout which he's had, as I said, like when was it? Beginning of 2016. then it was flippable. I mean, that had probably been a while since it got to that stage as well. So the layout's pretty much all been done. It's like, okay, well, let's just bang some Iron Maiden art on it, which, again, it will just work. You can put Iron Maiden art on anything and it would look great. But then you've also got to do the video and you've got to do the rules. Now, that may have already been in development and all the assets are ready to just be ported over to this. Possibly. I think they kind of do that last, as is evident with Guardians of the Galaxy. But as I said, we'll see. I hope we're right so we have a prediction there that comes true. But talking about Stern releasing a new pinball machine, did you catch the new news today, Marty? The Supreme Pinball. Well, it was going to be hard for me to miss it just with my Facebook feed. But fortunately, as is the case on most days, I woke up to a message from you saying Supreme Pinball. I'm like, oh, yeah, okay. Well, I just looked up Supreme Pinball and there it was everywhere. So Stern have teamed up with the, I guess, the skating clothing and accessory brand Supreme to come up with a, and you can't see my inverted commas, new pinball. I'm going to be honest here and admit that I had absolutely no idea what the brand Supreme was when I saw the video someone tagged me in a video on Facebook no jokes I thought it was a toothpaste company I'm serious because it looks like Colgate you know how Colgate do those commercials where they're all kind of like minimalist and stuff That's what it looked like to me. Yep. I'm like, what the shit is Supreme? And then I kind of looked it up, and I was like, oh, it's like a Spider-Man-y theme, like boring, boo, this, that. It's going to be overpriced and expensive. And then I kind of looked into it more, and now I'm actually excited for CERN. I'm not excited to play the pinball or anything, but the video where I posted it to you, I think this morning, had like close to a million views, right? Right. and before recording today, I checked it again. It's up to 1.5 and that's in less than 24 hours. Now, tell me any video, any pinball video on any social media platform that has ever got that many views in less than 24 hours and the answer is it hasn't. There isn't one. So, okay, you ready? Here's how I knew what the Supreme brand was, right? So, I did. I saw it and I went, oh, okay, I know Supreme and I know, I mean, I've never bought a product, but I know the brand very well and I know that it has this massive following. So April last year when I went to Papa, not sure whether I mentioned that this episode, we were in LA, Los Angeles, and we had gone to a shopping mall or whatever they call them there, and it was The Grove. and my oldest son wanted us to go and find some shoes for him, some like, you know, sneakers or whatever they were. And we found that there was this place that was about a 20-minute walk from the Grove shopping mall. So we started to walk there. And it would look like a regular road or street that was near the Grove. But for some reason we saw this line of people lining up to a shop. Now, I didn't pay attention to the shop because it was just like a small clothing shop. There was probably about 50 of these clothing shops all in a row. And the line kept going and going and going. And I'm telling you now, the line would have gone for three blocks. So I'm probably talking a queue of maybe 300 to 400 people. and people were sitting down. They had bought chairs and I just thought, oh, that's really weird. They must be lining up for concert tickets or something, right? So went up, bought the shoes, walked back and the line had increased even further. And I thought, okay, I'm now curious as to know what all these people could be queuing up for. And it was the Supreme store. And I didn't really see that much. I sort of looked in and just saw all this stuff and I went, oh, I'd never buy any of that stuff and didn't realise why it was a big deal. But they were having a sale. A sale, okay. They were having a sale and it commanded a queue of 400 people. And actually, we had asked somebody how long they'd been waiting in the queue and they said they'd been there two and a half hours and that was about halfway down the queue. Yeah, this company is insane because they started about 20 or so years ago and everything they do is limited. You think of Stern kind of alleys, think like that only. And they have their collections, kind of think of a collection like a Versace or a Gucci collection of fall 2018. And they have something called The Drop of when these things come out. And everything's kind of hyped and they tease things through social media now and people just go insane and buy their clothes. And their clothes are just so simple. It's like a hoodie with just a simplistic logo. Like, their logo just says Supreme on it, and people eat it up. It's like a, you know, I guess people, no different than people buying a Nike T-shirt with a swoosh on there. I mean, it's kind of just walking advertisements. A bit more exclusive simply because, yeah, they limit things and they pump up the price. They don't want everyone, I guess, having access to this. And they've sold some weird shit in the past, Marty. Yeah, I looked it up. They've sold, they're mainly a clothing label, but they've sold helmets. They've sold metallic stress balls. They've sold bricks. You could buy, I'm serious, you could buy a brick for, I think it was 30 pounds in the UK. I'm not sure how much that translates to, but, well, okay. Like, bricks cost like 50 cents normally, so, you know, it's more than that. Just put the logo on there. And it's almost like just to prove how dumb people are that they would buy a brick because they can. And it's just ridiculous. And I looked up a YouTube video, and they also sold a crowbar. And this person walked up to the person and said, why are you lining up to buy a crowbar? And this is what the person said. I think the brand is so fucking terrible that it's making me buy a fucking crowbar. The crowbar is a quick argument. It's like a piece of crap, man. Why does everyone want the crowbar? It's just a fucking crowbar. Are you fucking serious? What are you going to do with it? It's fucking nothing, but I'm going to own a fucking crowbar now. So, what are you going to do with it? It's nothing, but I'm going to own a fucking crowbar. Exactly. Right? So, this is the company who's teamed up with Stern, and I don't know, it's, it's, it's, you watch the video, I mean, the pinball machine kind of looks like a re-theme of, well, not a re-theme, I think they're using possibly the same ramps as the Spider-Man Home Edition, So this is kind of like their cheapest, you know, it's the most exclusive pin that might ever be made and sold and marketed. You know, who knows how many they're going to make. But it's using the cheapest footprint, I guess. It's not a pro model. And it's got like a tiny one. It's not even like a, it's a dot matrix at the back, isn't it? And it's like a, it's a small one. Yeah. They sold bricks, Marty. They sold bricks. Okay. Let that sink in. So you can see these people are commanding an LCD screen. They're buying bricks. No, well, I've got to say, I went to, I read a lot of the comments on the actual video, not the comments when we posted it up on our head-to-head Facebook page, but the comments, and people were going nuts over this. Like, nuts. You talking about Pinsider? No, I'm talking about on... Ah, yes, yeah. Like people saying... I want one, I want one. Oh, God, man, I've got to get one. so based on what we talked about you know that massive brand cachet um arguably done people with money what do you reckon this thing's gonna sell for and and what should it sell for based on what we know it is ah okay so it should sell for i guess the same price as the spider-man home edition I think it's like, what, $3,500 or so. But I guess, what, three times that? Maybe $10,000? Or do you think more? I mean, I saw some comments saying, you know, or rumors that it's going to be $40,000 or something like that. I guess it depends how limited it is. But, I mean, it's one thing to buy a brick for $30 and overpriced clothes, you know, a T-shirt that just has a simple logo for $50. But a pinball machine, I guess, is a whole other level. Can these people that are buying these clothes afford a pinball machine? That's the real test, right? Well, so then let's read out some comments that people have said on our Facebook page about this, right? Okay. So someone said, from a design perspective, it actually looks well made and the video makes you want to rip it. At a ball target, maybe a simple but satisfying machine to play, aimed at the success of other neo-retro machines from Scott Danesi, I could say. could be a win for CERN. Hopefully not a Jetsons. Well, the people that are... It's funny, like, when Jetsons was released, you know, they'd be dying for a reaction like this. I'm still in awe of how many people have watched this video. That was Nicholas Novan. So, Jerry Mendoza said, I think it's the skateboard community from what I've read. Good luck to them. I wouldn't have thought the pinball community seeing this as a seller. Yep, the pinball... This is not for the pinball community, unless there's a crossover, unless you like skatewear and you're into the brand, you love it for some reason. I mean, they made a Pabst Cancrusher machine, so is there anything wrong with this compared to that? Well, they are quite a parallel, but I think the difference is that the buying public of the customers of Supreme are known to spend a lot of money on something that wouldn't normally have that value. You know what I mean. So... Okay. Keep on reading the comments. I'm going to try and find what the most expensive item they've asked for is. Okay. So, Mike Harkinson, never heard of the brand. Very ugly design for the simple artwork. The single word sideways on the playfield up to the back glass is gross. I'm sure it's fun to play, though. I've got to tell you, the single word sideways on the playfield up to the back, that's not the worst part of this machine. The worst part of this machine Is the side art On the actual cabinet itself Where it's just nothing And then it's point So, okay Okay, I don't know with you This is what it reminded me of, okay It reminded me of Somebody's gotten a can of coke They've finished the can of coke They've emptied it And then they've sort of ripped it open so it sort of becomes this long sort of thing. Do you know what? It's like something that you would buy when I was in Vietnam where very poor people would make these items out of used Coke cans when they'd rip them up and make them into something. That's what it looked like. Yeah. They've never sold anything that... I mean, they said they sell weird stuff. They just put their logo on it like other brands, kind of T-shirts, a mini bike for £3,000, but nothing is really sold for over... Okay, here we go. A skate deck for £6,000. That's the resale value. Hmm. Come on. $6,000 is the highest price I could find. Oh, here we go. A guitar for £7,000. Yeah. Oh, okay, I found it. Supreme Louis Vuitton trunk. So you know, like, the trunks that people have with the Louis Vuitton logo on it? Sure. They made a Supreme version, so it's, like, it's red. It looks ridiculous. 70,000 pounds. Yeah, ridiculous. So, okay, so pinball machine will slide in at probably number two somewhere. So Alex Thompson says, looks like a re-theme of Spider-Man Home, so probably will be around that 5K price tag, which would make sense if your market is non-pip-ballers. So upon reading the pin slide, but it seems that their business model is to create artificial demand for random items that drive the demand and price up, like, as you said here, a $1,000 brick. That might be the resale price. As I said, I think a lot of people are buying these things because they sell out and then they chuck them up on eBay and people have missed out. That's their whole business model. And they're valued over a billion dollars because some company bought 50% of their shares for $500 million US. So, yes, they are worth a billion dollars. with nine stores. Isn't that crazy? It's insane. And so Jeff messaged and said, explain to me what Supreme is, because based off Facebook, it's some kind of urban hipster skater brand. I don't get it. Why not do a Drake pinball machine? Tim Peters, one play for 25 cents. I like the old style apron, and the cabinet looks larger, different than any other games. Looks like a Spider-Man racing. Yeah, it does. you know someone said i like the clean design almost looks like a whitewood version thank you tebow um john pancini it's great they're actually trying something slightly different looks very cool could be a good time to bank on the vintage trend is it vintage oh it kind of does it does look a bit retro like it kind of looks like yeah a 50s it sounded it sounded cool i'm not sure if Those are the real... Okay, here's a weird thing. Halfway through the video, you hear a lightning strike, right? Like, a sound effect of that. And I'm like, that sounds really familiar. What is that from? And I thought about it for an hour. Like, it was in the back of my head, and I just couldn't... And then I realized it's almost the exact same sound effect as when you get a troll bomb. You know when you got in Medieval Madness, when you hit a troll and it rebounds into the scoop? and it goes, it does the lighting strike and it says one trouble and that is. Someone has to like put those sound effects side by side. I reckon it's the exact same sound effects. Anyway, Brian Shleeves, you want to read that one? That's good old mate, Boxxy. He says, I love the single red and white colour simplicity of the playfield slash cabinet and especially the white only lighting. Refreshing to me as I think there's too many colour changes in the light shows of new pins these days. Looks and sounds old school so it has some real pin sex appeal for me. I'll say it, simple machine for a simple man I just hope it has some simple rules for me as well You know what? I actually like that minimalistic design to it I mean, if you said take this or perhaps Cancrusher I'm taking this because you know, I like busy art but sometimes the minimalistic nature of something like this is more aesthetically pleasing to me which is why I kind of like the Tron universe where it's like, you know, minimalism. And you can say all you want about the pinball machine, but I wrote down a couple of things that it has over, like a limited edition certain pinball machine, right? So it has white instruction cards which match the pinball, right? Which everyone knows, that knows me, knows that I absolutely detest the yellow instruction cards on certain pinball machines. Because I understand that it's for its use on site, but when you're starting a pinball machine, Every other company is doing it now, JGP, Scott and EC, they all come with stylized instruction cards to blend in with the apron. So they're doing that here. It has a white apron, right? It has a white start button, white slipper buttons. What else did I notice? It has, you know, white trim. It has a red glass panel where the glass slides into. Red speaker grill. The red back panel. White coin door. White shooter housing. and white shooter knob. In almost everything that I mentioned there, Stern usually don't touch. Stern, I don't think, have ever stylized their shooter housing, the shooter plunger housing, to match the theme of their pinball. It's always the same color. The shooter knob is the optional accessory. I have no idea what this is going to cost. What I'm saying is that this is the first pinball machine that Stern's ever made that is kind of like perfectly stylized for the theme. They haven't gone as far as coloring and powder coating the screws and nuts on there. But there's only three colors on this pinball machine, red, white, and black. And I'm lucky those are the colors of Supreme because who knows if it was like green or something, instead of red, would they have changed the dots of the D&D? They're very lucky that it was white. Well, here's a couple of questions for you. First one, who do you reckon the designer is? that's not a serious question that but I don't know um I wonder my question is I wonder if they if you think that they would have had as difficult a time with the the I guess the license with others like okay that's a question do you do you think Stern approached them or they approached them I do not know I I don't I don't know. I think it's really interesting because if this is one of these things where they think, you know what, they are just going to sell out of these things, well, then actually make a full-sized proper stern rather than one of these home ones. So no way. What for? Well, it's going to be simple for them to make. Obviously, they're not going to make 1,000 of them. So why would they make a pro model with all these more complicated hardware that is not being used with an LCD and all this kind of stuff? It's the home model. It's not for us. It's not for us. Well, I want to play it. I want... There's something about the marketing of that video. I just really like it. That's how they should introduce the pinball machine, because it kind of leaves you wanting more. And there's, like, a multiball start. I'm not sure if... Like, the ball kind of just, like, stays there as a captive ball, and you have to hit it out, and there's a switch where the ball rests on. I think that's the start of multiball. I don't know. It could get boring after five minutes, but I'm guessing I'm never going to get to play it. And I don't know. It's cool. This is the most exciting pinball machine for me that's going to release this year because I have no interest in Iron Maiden as a theme. I mean, I'm not a skater thing, but it's a video, okay? If they release Iron Maiden with a video like that, you've got me hooked. But they never do that. This is why this company is worth a billion dollars because they marketed their product. they didn't just show some shitty picture and say, yeah, we'll have a stream in a couple of weeks. You know, that's the marketing. Boom. You're teach. Now you want the machine. Do I, though? Well, I mean the people that... No, I understand. I just want to be able to see more of it so I can see how unique the layout is or whether it really is borrowed from one of those... It doesn't matter, though. As I said, it's not for us. The news here, the news piece is this is the biggest release of a pinball machine ever in the history of pinball, right? 1.5 million people in less than 24 hours have watched a video on a pinball machine. That's never happened before. And anyone who says that this is shit for pinball, like, it's not. It's amazing for pinball. 1.5 million people in less than 24 hours. Yeah, okay. We get like 100 views on our videos. I mean, Sterling Lees' brand new video, you know, you've got a couple thousand, maybe 10,000 people watch it. 1.5 million. Yeah, okay. I understand that. I just, and again, we are, we're in our little pinball bubble, so there's things that we expect from the machine. If this isn't for us, that's fine. This will go to supreme fans, and they probably don't want anything more complex than this. Yeah. It's perfect. I love it. I said this is the best thing that's going to happen to them all year. Okay. Help us all. What else we got, Marnie? Okay. So, Deep Root. So, there's been a couple of interesting things about Deep Root this week. They did their webinar. And it was interesting. I did watch and listen to the whole thing. and really what they were talking about was, probably the main thing for me was the make good with the whole Zidware thing. Yeah, I mean, when you watch it, you kind of got to ask yourself at the end, man, it's a lot of stuff to inherit and, you know, now that you have all these designers, as we kind of touched on, I think it was our last episode, our episode before, you know, why would you bother doing all this? why would you bother bailing out John Papadiuk and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars when you've got all these up, you know, Dennis Nordman and everyone else very elsewhere. So those questions are lingering for me after the Deep Root Terms and Conditions webinar. Yep. But today we got a podcast from the Eclectic Gamers podcast, and it's one of my favourite podcasts, Marty. Yeah, same. You listen to it as well? I do. Dennis did an absolutely amazing interview. I think he's, you know, I want to put it out there, he's probably the best interviewer. He's kind of admitted that he doesn't do many interviews and doesn't like doing them as much as kind of just chatting. But his questions were kind of on point and respectful and we'll link it in the show notes. Go and have a listen. It's not too long. I think it's about 40 minutes or so. And, yeah, what have you learned from that? Well, just going back to the, first of all, to the webinar and then to the interview. So really, just a couple of things here was, you know, I'll just read some of the slides that I managed to take a screenshot of. He says, you know, the goodwill terms are a plan as a sign of goodwill, wherein we will honour qualifying proofs of claims from individuals under certain terms as found on the DeepRoot and Zidware page. And the summary of what they've really said here is, if you are suing Zidware, then fuck off. We are not going to help you. And it was actually very clear in a lot of this saying, if you are going to be trouble throughout this, then go and do your own thing. This is for people that are looking for some form of goodwill or compensation or at least a way forward. If those people just either want their money back or they want to be litigious and, you know, stick it to the man, that's fine. You can do that. this is all really set out for those people that are going to follow this process. It was very clearly set out what your options are. But also what he said was, if you are going to be a prick along the way and badmouth our name and badmouth, you know, all this, then we will actually not honour your claim. I think the correct term to use there is poo-poo the process. Poo-poo the process. Poo-poo the process. And he was talking about podcasts and websites and all that kind of stuff. Basically, this guy does not like Canada. That's what he was saying. Okay, and Kanade is getting shit. He pretty much added a special term to the condition to ensure that Chris is not getting a free magic pill. Yeah, the interesting thing, I guess, is, I mean, I wasn't involved in the whole thing. I have no money down, so it's very easy for me to say this and not know the full story, but lawyers cost a lot of money, right? And, you know, people assuming each other or getting divorced or something. I mean, the lawyer always wins. so if this is an opportunity to you know, and it pretty much said and who knows if it's true that John doesn't have any pretty much any cash assets you know, if you're going to sue him you're going to get nothing which you know may be true, may not be true consult your lawyer if you're a part of it but I guess this just seems easier, an easier process than dragging the whole thing on and I guess you're giving up your rights, so as I said I'm not here giving legal advice but it seems better to get something rather than nothing, right? Yeah, and really what they're doing is, the goodwill that's coming from this really is investment in future machines. So they'd want to be good, and we'll get to the interview which sort of talks about that, but, you know, effectively what they're saying is that if you've received or paid for Magic Girl Machine and you haven't sold it, So if you've sold it to somebody else, then there's no deal. If you bought it from somebody else that bought it directly, no pin for you. So basically one of them is if I paid for, and he gave some scenarios. It was actually, if I'm going to be really honest, I kind of liked the way it was dumbed down. There was all these lawyers, all the terms and conditions and the disclosures and all that kind of stuff. But when it actually came to what's on the table here, it was really clear. We're not going to read them all out. No. Because this affects like 30, 40, 50 people. I'm not sure. And I'm sure they know about it. It does, but it does. And I know that we talked about this during the week going, really, we shouldn't talk about this a lot because it doesn't affect that many people. But in a way, what it really does underpin for me is the confidence that they have that they're going to be able to deliver great machines in the future. so it in for me it was almost like a show of hands of the man behind deep roots saying well this is who we're going to be as as a business and so i was i was you know i i'm not in on it so i don't give a crap right but i was just kind of interested that this is how they were laid out and effectively you know what they're saying is if i paid for a magic girl and receive the machine and not sold or sign up to anyone else, you will receive a 50% discount off the retail price on up to two additional DeepRoot machines if elected no later than 180 days after the delivery date. So that's 50% off future machines. Now, again, we don't know what these machines are like, but from what we've heard, they are going to just blow our freaking minds. Yes. Well, one thing that I got from the interview today is one of the famous quotes that Robert Mueller pulled was, pinball isn't hard. And then in the next interview he said, well, pinball isn't hard, but manufacturing is another thing. And today on the interview, I think the first three things he talked about was how hard and difficult certain things are, like licensing. So the whole pinball thing, that's like saying, you know, a fun in the woman of your dreams isn't hard. You know, but yes, it is. That's an absolutely horrible analogy. But I'm just saying like, pinball is all the stuff involved. You know, what is pinball if you say that? Oh, yeah, manufacturing and licensing. I mean, that is a part of pinball, right? Okay, I'm going to dumb this right down. You ready? So this is in my business world. It's when someone comes to me with a business proposal and what they've done is a financial model. And they say, right, this is what we're going to do over the next 12 months and if you have a look at my Excel spreadsheet, all these numbers all add up and that's what we're going to do. And I go, great, that's an Excel spreadsheet. Well done. I'm glad that you've got all your formulas to calculate. But that's the theory. You've actually now got 12 months of putting this thing into plan. so what we've got here and with the interview as well is it's a lot of theory at this stage and i think um as as you're coming through it i i don't know i mean i don't know the guy so i don't really know what he's capable of but it's kind of good and in a way humbling to hear him talk about these things in a real way that says yeah you know what it is difficult but we're going to find a way through we're going to do it different but at least acknowledging that there are some challenges along the way. Otherwise, as the pinball community reacted, they thought it was a bit arrogant when he said, well, making pinball is easy. Well, not all of it is. It kind of reminds me, like he's trying to be, what's his name? The guy who just sent the car to the moon. Yeah, Elon Musk. Elon Musk, the Elon Musk of the pinball industry. Because I remember when Elon Musk started Tesla and they were making cars, he said he doesn't want to hire kind of like anyone in the industry because he wanted kind of new and fresh ideas. And then he kind of later said that that was a mistake because you still do need some of that knowledge that's been passed down for generations on what works and what doesn't work, but he still wanted to hire a lot of tech heads to revolutionize it. So it sounds like he wants to kind of make everything very different and not, you know, start building everything from the ground up, is his words. The software questions, when Dennis pressed him about how he's been describing the software. Basically, he kind of, he alluded to, you know, that it wouldn't be open source, but, you know, the next best thing, with licensing, you can't just have everything available to manipulate. So what I'm guessing is that there's going to be kind of like a software API. Do you know what API stands for, Marty? Oh, no. Application something interface. Application something interface. It's right in front of you, Marty, from the show notes. It's application programming. Oh, there you go. So basically that's a set of functions and procedures that allow the creation of applications with access to features or data of an operating system. So like when you're on Facebook and you see like posts from people that do those stupid quizzes, like, you know, the current one at the moment is what do I look like if I was a girl or a boy? Yeah. You know, popping genders. I block all those apps. Basically, like those people are using an API to use kind of Facebook's, you know, friend system and that kind of stuff. So in a pinball sense, I guess that would mean that, you know, if you don't like the rules, you can go in and you can change certain things. Now, you probably have limited access. You can't add sounds and add animations, but you can say this spinner now equals this. And that would be the only kind of thing that would make sense with the, you know, he's being very vague with, you know, I can't tell you this, because if I tell you then it's very obvious, and people will say, like, oh, how come we didn't do that, and then we'll copy it. But that's what it seems like he's alluding to, that there'll be a certain set of simple instructions, and then people, like tournament players can have their tournament codes, home players can have their home codes, you can make special modes. I'll tell you what I want. I'll tell you what I want right now, because he has teased me with it. I want an interface straight out of Minority Report. He's all but promised it. So, but do you mean while you're playing Pimble or do you mean when you're designing code? When you're doing the code. So, yeah. So, obviously, what he's talking about is... That's what he said. That's what he said. I can move things around. No, so really what he's saying is, and fair call, you can't go to the resource of this code because, you know, we've seen... Well, we've seen... I shouldn't say this, but we've also heard rumours where, you know, there's been some beta code that's actually managed to damage the machines, right? If you're... Let's say you change a bit of code and it makes a coil go on and stay on, you're going to blow the coil, right? So that's actually going to damage your machine. So they're not going to let people sort of mess around with stuff that's going to damage or break the machine. They're really going to do rules and maybe some tweaking of yourselves. And you know what? Maybe they will give you a bit of an interface so you can actually do a simple rule builder. They'll give you a shell of a game and you can actually sort of, you know, tick this box, do that, and then maybe build a tree of, you know, rules. And there you go, there's your game. And you have a unique experience and you can share it with others and they can load it up onto their machine. Well, that works as long as there's a community behind it to do it. And I think we touched on this last time. If no one's buying the machines, then it's just whatever code you release is the code you get, right? Yeah. who knows, but they said they've reached out to tournament players to kind of invite them to work with them. So, I mean, they're kind of trying to access all areas here. Dimples, Marty, do you like dimples? On people, I love dimples. I think dimples are very cute. What do you think? No. Back dimples, back dimples are hot. Right, okay. So Robert Mueller doesn't like pimple dimples on the play field, and he wants it to be a thing in the past. And it's been the talking point in the last couple of years, especially with, I think George Gomez said once in an interview, that the reason why you can see more dimples now is because we're using a thicker layer of clear coat. Wood is never going to survive against a steel ball. It just you know and there a million pin threads about it I couldn give two shits about dimples but Robert Mueller does So he said that the QC right and this is a bit of a statement He wanted to kind of make a statement that people are going to talk about, and here we are talking about it. A pinball machine will not leave their factory if he takes a sledgehammer to it and it makes a mark. So when I said that, I'm like, okay, that's a bit stupid. because what can survive a sledgehammer hit, right, Matty? Well, I don't know. Is there anything that can survive a sledgehammer that you would be able to use for a pinball? I had half an hour free today and I just ended up looking up people smashing things with sledgehammers and first I thought glass maybe. No, certain types of security glass, like when you go to a high-end jewellery store, can not smash open but still shatter. So glass is not happening. And then I started looking at weird kind of chemical stuff, and there's something called polyurea, which sounds like a vaginal disease. Polyuresa? And it's this spray. You can pretty much spray it on anything, and it just makes the thing, like, impenetrable, right? And you can hit it with a sledgehammer. And it's quite expensive. So what is even cheaper than that is something called polycarbonate. and basically it looks like plastic, like clear plastic. I guess you can get it in any colour. And there's videos online of people just sitting there smashing it with axes, sledgehammers, anything you want, like siege, like door slams that the cops use and they're doing drug busts. And it doesn't break. It has like little surface scarring, they call it, but it doesn't break. This is like the insane material. So that might be it. I have no idea why we're talking about this, but hey, you said we're going to hit with a sledgehammer, so it'd be something like that. And I guess they would then still screen it and maybe just put some clear coat on it as well. I guess the clear coat would still crack if you hit with a sledgehammer, but that statement would still ring true. Well, and so obviously you knew that polyurea was used in the manufacture of spandex in the 1950s. I did not know that. No, well, these are the kinds of things. It was actually invented in 1959, spandex was. Well, I just have it at the top of my head. Okay, my needs people skills off the chart. So there's some other good stuff in there. It is still pretty vague, but head on down to the Eclectus Gamers podcast and have a read. I'll listen to that interview. And do you know what? Subscribe to them as well. The Eclectic Pinball... What is it? Eclectic Gamers Podcast? Yeah. Just listen to them, subscribe to them. They are great guys, and it's pretty much... Yeah, they're pretty much like 80% pinball, and the last 20% they talk about video games. And I used to kind of switch off when it got to the video games bit, but now I listen just to... I listen just to be grateful of how the pinball industry kind of is at the moment, compared to loot boxes and the crazy stuff that video gamers have to... At a fraction of a cost, but still. It's good, and they've got great taste in video games as well. They seem to be playing the games that I like, so go and have a listen to them. They're great. Are you a closet video gamer, Matty? I'm a closet. I've played video games all my life. Do you play it now, though? Yeah, I do. What do you play? I play my PSVR. What do you play on there? What games are you playing, Matty? You're just watching 3D porn, aren't you? Oh my god. Oh, funny. Shall we head on down to Oktoberfest? Let's talk about Oktoberfest. This really is the hit pinball thing of the year. You can tell by all the pin slide threads that have just come out of nowhere. All the pin slide thread? I don't even think there is one. I don't know. I don't think anyone cares. I care. You know I care. We got a fucking email from a German We got an email from a German And we got an email from somebody that lived in Germany So Who else is German? No, Lucas lived in Germany He's been to Germany Okay, sorry Yeah, okay So We've had now a week to think about this Let's just say over a week Are you still kind of cool on the theme Or do you think it's alright? the more people don't like it and think it's a horrible thing, the more I think it's going to be a good thing. Right. Just to be a positional. Positional, yeah, right. Yes. Well, it's fun. Like, it's a fun thing. How can you stuff it up? Okay, we've got three emails about it, so instead of reading them during the mailbag segment, do you want to read them now? Yeah, okay. So let's start with our first one from Gregor. He said, I love your show, guys, and the next trip is yours for sure. You know it. I promise you by my kangaroo nutsack. He says, in addition, I'm German, so let me enlighten you. Even though Oktoberfest has a lot of drinking involved in beer zelten or beer tents, it is also a ginormous fair with lots of rides on which you can then drink all of your beer backwards again. So I would think it could actually work quite well as a football machine. and the thing with the outfits, you unfortunately didn't get quite right. So lederhosen means leather pants. That's why the guys wear them. The women wear dirndl. I'm pretty sure some of them wear boysenhosen. Thanks to you, Gregor. I was excited when I got this email because as me and Marty had mentioned before, we get a lot of listeners from the US and Australia. That's our two kind of main viewership base listenership base. It's not from Canada. Jeff Giovas mainly just listening to our thing about 10 times a week. Yeah. But yeah, this is our first email from someone not from like the main four countries so I was pretty excited when I got it and he said he's going to try and email a couple more times as well when he has something to chime in on. He can be our European correspondent. We also got an email from Jeff. I'll read that one quickly. Go. Hey fellas, love the podcast. I enjoy Aussies talking shit and it's very educational to an American like me. I like hearing your heated discussions on dry drummers. I love the idea of October 1st as a pin as long as it has that mid-90s humour like Attack from Mars or Medieval Madness. Pinball should be fun and weird and not be taking itself too seriously. I'm right with you there, Jeff. I think a lot of pins are completely soulless and that's something that really I enjoyed about the 90s pins. At the very least, it will have some good music and artwork and artwork would be good controversy to podcast about like Lucy. Yep, I'm waiting for this big breasted German girl's just... I want it. That's all I want this pin. I want the drama. I want people to say, I'm boycotting American Pinball. also I've been thinking about multiplayer forced games I was a hater of Star Wars until I hit a 40x Hyperloop shot worth something like $800 million yeah I need to get some going on about how we like Star Wars, I'm going to stop there and also Game of Thrones, talking about the tutorial vids that made the game his favourite, now he understands how the multipliers work together, so that's probably the summary of multipliers is you're either the have or the have nots. You either understand how multipliers work or you don't. And if you don't, you will get left behind by those people that do. Unless everything goes back to TNA. Well, TNA does have multipliers, but a more simplistic thing. People, you know, do we have a paradigm shift here that people are going to now reject complex games and embrace simple rulesets? Anyway. Anyway, thank you, Jeff, from Seattle. And Lucas? So again, another correction He said, so just a few things in relation to the episode regarding Oktoberfest He said, don't point, we'll make it easier Firstly, Oktoberfest could make a great pinball theme It could also be a colossal fuck-up Fair enough He said, Oktoberfest is the celebration of the marriage of King Ludwig I Wow Boring So much exciting history and two Oktoberfest is so much fun more chicken is consumed than sausage with over one million chickens being consumed over the festival so he put in brackets chicken chow down multiball that's what's funny is like eating sausages though because a sausage can also be a penis a chicken can't be anything but a chicken well a chicken can be a cock Ah, jeez. Jump the shark. Like a duck, like a duck. The Disney P-Holes could be goals to collect. Lederhosen literally translates to leather pants, outfits to men wear. And yes, the girls are called Dundle. Bavarian folk music would be awesome for a pinball. Would it? Would it, Lucas? Bavarian folk music would be awesome for a pinball. We need to talk. He said Stern should make it because beer plus pinball equals dollars. There you go. It would really test the theory. Well, that's the joke, right? I like American Pinball Guys were in the front row of the Stern talk, and Gary Stern said beer plus pinball equals dollar signs about 20 times per minute. And they were probably just like, shit. Someone handed them a note and said, oh, my God, Oktoberfest. Dollar signs, dollar signs. well we also got an email from Jonathan Houston and he said he had some interesting stories to tell about the origins of Oktoberfest and how people wanted to kind of do this theme a long time ago so you were busy at work so I had a quick chat to him quick meaning about 30 minutes we did discuss some interesting things so should we cut to the interview Marty? Let's do it now joining us all the way from Amsterdam. I believe it's close to 1am over there. It's Jonathan Houston. How are you going, Jonathan? I'm doing very well. Thank you very much. How are you? I'm great. You emailed us during the week and we decided to have you on the show for a little segment. But before we get started on that, for all of our listeners out there that might not know who you are, let us know what your involvement is in the hobby. I'm the editor of Pinball Magazine, which is a printed publication and I try to do two a year, which is very ambitious because so far I only did one top a year. Well, I guess the issue might be that you call it a magazine, but I've got one in front of me here and it's 242 pages, so it's more of a book than a magazine, right? You keep telling me that, yes, I know. But I wanted to make something in-depth. The idea is to do a cover story on a certain topic and explore that as in-depth as possible. So the issue that you have in front of you is issue four, which has the entire career of pinball designer Mark Ritchie in it. And then I really want to discuss every aspect of his career and things that came along while he was working at various companies and all that, you know. so the magazine should be your one stop if you want to know anything about Mark Ritchie so how does that work with all the follow up questions do you conduct phone interviews or is this an email thing? no, no, I hate doing the email thing you can always, at least I can always tell when reading an interview if it was done by email or whether there was actual interaction like you and I are having right now over a Skype line in this case. So I prefer to actually talk to the people that I interview because it will give a more spontaneous feel to the interview. It's not as... Well, I think the best example is an interview that I did with another pinball designer who insisted on doing it by email. and basically you ask a question and you get an answer of two sentences and that's it. Yeah. When, if you're talking, then you get a story. Sure, and that's where all the juicy details are and what makes it a bit more personal and where people, I guess, can connect to the story versus just kind of giving you the PR facts to sell a product or something, right? Right, exactly. So, and, well, some people are not very comfortable with that, but usually I let them read whatever I intend to print, and they can edit that if they want to, or tell me to take stuff out or not. So as a, you know, just looking back a little bit, as a pinball fan, I mean, obviously you're a journalist, you have a great passion for pinball, but are you also a pinball collector or a player? Like, you know, how do you interact with pinball machines yourself? I have a couple of games here at home, and I have a storage with another 30 games that I really need to start with. Just the casual storage of 30 games. Oh, wow. So what are the games that you have in your house? What are the ones that make the cut? Let me see. Well, centerpiece, well, I wouldn't call it a centerpiece, but the crown of the collection. I should mention that at the end, of course. So I got a Capcom Airborne, which I rarely play. I got a Medieval Madness, original one, Skeptif, Theater of Magic, Safecracker, and the game that I just skipped at the beginning, a Big Bang Bar. Oh, wow. Okay. So you're into the, you know, you haven't got any, I guess, none of those pinball machines are from, you know, 2000 onwards. You're into the 90s era of pinball machines. That's, I guess, the one that you're attracted to the most? the room in my living room is sort of limited and I live basically I have to carry these games three stairs up which isn't really a hobby so at some point I lost all the friends that were willing to help me carry them up the stairs and so it has been this collection basically here in my living room but I have quite a few EM games in my storage and I really like the early solid-state games from Bally, like the Fessum and the Centaur. Those type of games I really like. And I also have two games on order, which haven't been delivered yet. I'm guessing, being from the Netherlands, one of them is the Diglimowski. You are correct. Yes. And the other? Total Nuclear Annihilation. Oh, wow. Nice one. Yeah, and I have very high expectations of that game. I played it before. Everybody knows the music is absolutely amazing. I think that game is going to be the game that might interest operators again who quit pinball a long time ago to start operating pinball again because that's a game that's really going to earn on location. Yeah, it's an interesting topic that I don't think me and Martin have touched on yet, but it kind of comes down to theme versus what a pinball machine originally was, a money-making device that's fun. Pay your money, and two, three minutes later, the game is done, where a lot of the other games, most of the new games are a bit longer, and there's depth to it, but that kind of leads to longer ball times and complicated mechanisms where total newfound annihilation is over fairly quickly, but I think it leads people wanting more. The flip side of that argument, as I touched on, is probably how do you get that person to put that first dollar into a machine that they don't have any attachment to versus something like Alien or Star Wars. But from all reports, a lot of them are going out on site and they are making a decent amount of money compared to the other machines that are around them. Well, there's an interesting way to counter what you're just saying, in the sense that, sure, you can get the first quarter on Star Wars, but how do you get people to put in the second? Because once they played it and they didn't like it, then what have you got to do? It's like what came first, the chicken or the egg? If you don't get people to put in the first quarter, then you don't have an opportunity to gain the next quarter, right? Right. So I think with total nuclear annihilation, and what will attract people to that game is other people playing that game. Yes. As soon as you see someone playing that game and you see them having fun, you want to have fun too. Exactly. So you're going to play that game. Yeah. Do you have plans to put yours on site, or is this for your... No, this one is definitely going on site. Okay. I actually have a location where they actually tested the Big Lebowski, which is basically two blocks from where I live. They had that for over a year over there, and when that game went out, I talked to the owner. I was like, I'm getting this other new pinball game, and I want to put it there. So that's going to happen hopefully within a couple of months. Just on that, how are you getting the machine? Because in Australia, everyone kind of organises a bulk shipment together via Seafreight. I'm guessing there probably isn't a huge amount of people in the Netherlands getting it so do you just air freight it direct with Spooky? Is that how it works? Yeah, well actually I have good contacts with Pinball Universe in Germany and they have already imported quite a few games from Spooky and they offer to basically assist and help me with getting the game into Europe and then I can pick it up from them So I guess that's the upside of living in Europe, where you can just drive to another country, right? Oh, yeah, but I think Europe fits like three times in Australia. So technically it's called a different country, but for you it's going next door. Yeah, sure. I mean, Australia is so incredibly big. Well, yeah, our population is only 25 million, though, So it's hard because everything, all the major cities are very far apart. You know, you can't just drive two hours and be at another central hub. So let's talk about the reason why you contacted me and Martin to add a little interesting point to a topic that we discussed last week, Octoberfest. Well, congratulations on that scoop, by the way. That was very clever. Yeah. It was all Martin. I'll give him the props for that. Actually, I found it quite interesting to see that it took quite a while before it was even mentioned on Pinside, and even now that it is mentioned, nobody seems to care about it. It's an interesting thing, isn't it? How many new titles can people get interested about every year? I mean, Star Wars is like every year now, but if they said there's 13 new Star Wars movies every year, people would be like, ah, okay, another one. Like, it's almost getting like that with Tim Hortons machines, don't you think? Like, a couple of years ago, you've been in the industry for a long time. Whenever there was a new machine, people were clamoring for information about it. But, you know, now it really has to hit it out of the park, theme-wise, or, I guess, a marketing launch for people to really get excited. What do you think? Right. Well, what I think, I really got active in the hobby in 2001. I was into pinball prior to that. I even had a game in the early, no, late 80s. But I really started to become active again in 2001. And for the next decade, basically all we had was one company putting out a game, three games a year, something like that. I don't want to sound harsh, but nine times out of ten, basically once you get to play the new game, you walked away disappointed. for me having that sort of history I'm actually happy with what's happening right now I mean we had one company dictate the market and they basically lost it and they almost went bankrupt and then someone else stepped in everybody knows the story of Stern Pinball and when Jack stepped up I mean it was interesting actually Jack mentioned it to me he said if I wouldn't have started Jersey Jack pinball in 2011, I would not be having these huge monthly updates which was happening in the pinball industry. Yeah. I guess it was the game changer, right? With what he set out. I think eventually more people would have gotten into it because basically there were too many ideas floating around and Stern wasn't going to do it if they were going to do anything. So Jack stepped in and then other companies stepped in. Some sadly failed, but you can't be all winners, I guess. But I think it's interesting, especially now that we not well take total nuclear annihilation. I'm very happy that Scott made that game. Yeah, I mean, rewind it back a couple of years ago. I mean, that would have just possibly just stayed as a whitewood, but because of the nature of the industry at the moment, people saw it and there was a demand for it. and Pinsight exists, and people can sit there and talk over and over about it. Jack Danger streams games, which makes it more accessible for people to see what the gameplay is like. And there's your kind of market research right there. All this is great, but the biggest step we still have to take, and that's getting the operators back. Because there were so many operators. I don't want to sound like a stern hater because I'm very happy with them being around and producing pinball machines, although not all their games are that great. But okay, people like them, people play them. But for operators, they weren't the best title to operate. Sure, they had the license, they got the first quarter, but then we get back to, did they get the second quarter? And that was a lot of the times not the case. So then you have a big investment. At some point, operators drop out because they say, like, hey, this is an expensive machine, and it's taking too long to make my money back, so I'm getting out of this. Now we have to see, can we get those operators back in? And hopefully, a game like Total Nuclear Annihilation or The Big Lebowski is going to do that. Or Guardians of the Galaxy, for that matter as well. I mean, that's a great game, even though the soundtrack has been discussed a lot. But, you know, it is what it is. And I have to admit, I played it in London at the EAG Expo two or three weeks ago. I had a blast. I thought it was a great game. So, Oktoberfest, back on that. Right. What do you know about Oktoberfest as a thing? Well, I live next to Germany. Oktoberfest is obviously a big thing, I think, for the second half of September onwards to October. There is even Oktoberfest organized here in the Netherlands. Basically, local people putting something together and trying to jump in on the hype, although I wouldn't call it really a hype, but it is something that is quite... It's an opportunity to sell beer. I mean, people in Australia, we're so far removed from it here, but every pub will try and have an October 1st event. Right. You know, and I mean, look at, well, excuse the guys who wear these lederhosen, but I don't mind how the girls dress. You saying you don't dress up in the leather pants? In the shorts? I never have so far, no. But I'm not a theater anchor either, so... Okay. I have to admit that I did go to a German carnival. I'm not sure whether that was during Oktoberfest, but those places are fun. And there's beer, bratwurst, and all that kind of stuff everywhere. So, sure, what's not to enjoy? I mean, beer and bratwurst. Yeah. So, you were telling us that you heard about the Oktoberfest theme a long time ago, but it was before American Timber had ever been thought about. It was with a previous designer and previous company. Right. I have interviewed Python Anghelo while he was still alive, and I still have to publish that interview, and I know a lot of people are waiting for that. Actually, I have the whole thing already transcribed, but Python was a very frustrated man, although he would deny he was, but if you read it back, then you understand what I'm saying. And at some point he was so negative, especially since his career in pinball, and sort of not in a great way. I mean, Capcom isn't a happy ending story. The last pinball company that he worked for was Capcom. But he also worked at Williams, as many people may know. And I know that Python suggested in the late 80s, if I'm not mistaken, to do an Oktoberfest-themed pinball. and it wasn't his game to be working on. Actually, it was a Mark Ritchie game and Python suggested the theme to Mark and Mark was like, well, I appreciate that, but thank you, no. Mark had his own ideas for that game and he continued to make the game the way he wanted to, but Python couldn't stand that because Python had ideas how to sell that game in Europe and he thought Oktoberfest is going to be big in Europe, of course, and especially you have to take into consideration that at that time, Germany was one of the biggest markets for Williams. Now, Python always thought further along than just taking a theme. I have a sketch that he made for the back class for the game that originated as Oktoberfest. And the first thing that happened was Williams management told him, like, Oktoberfest, we're not going to do Oktoberfest because that refers to one period of the year it's like doing a Christmas game not going to do a game on Christmas you know so we're not going to do a game on Oktoberfest so we have to come up with something more international so Python changed the title from Oktoberfest to International Cafe now the clever thing that Python wanted to do at least I think it's clever in Germany the importer was Nova and there was one guy who was very important and that was Hans Rosenzweig if I'm not mistaken and Pryson was all about okay, we take this this back glass and we put in various different nationalities of people in a bar and one of them would be a German guy in a lederhosen with a beer and a bath. And he says, it has to be Hans Rosen's week. Because he said, the ego of Hans Rosen's week is so big, he will buy 10,000 games. Wow. Not sure whether that actually would have been true, but Germany did buy a lot of games. And we're not talking 200, 300, but really into thousands of games. So that's the way Python thought. and obviously he wanted the company to succeed, so he was really pushing this theme to Mark Ritchie. But Mark wanted to do his own game. Any clues what game that eventually became? I'm looking at... Is it Dino? That wasn't Mark Ritchie. Ah, yes, okay. I'm looking at the back glass now, so there's possibly an Indian guy there. So is it all the way on the right? Is that the one that is McViever's German? No. You don't have to... Is it on the back glass or on the play field, the guy with the leather pants for the leader? If I'm not mistaken, you have Pimmo Magazine No. 4 in front of you, right? Yes, I do. What page are you looking at? Oh, no, I just Googled. When you started talking about International Cafe, I just thought Diner, so I just Googled it. So what page am I going to? Because I've got it in front of me here. page 92 page 92 and for everybody who doesn't have a copy of pinball magazine go to pinball-magazine.com and order your copy now sorry for the plug but while you were looking that up I figured that would be a good moment to plug away page 90 what 92 is like a sketch ah here we go Papa Python Anghelo's sketch of the backlash which was his alternative suggestions for Dinah ah okay Italian And on the right There is this guy This German looking guy Hans, the Deutscher But there's also I'll try to describe the back glass Or the sketch For the people who don't have it Obviously there's the title International Café at the top And then sort of in the front There's a female cashier And the cash register The display in the cash register Should have been a jackpot display like it was with the meter on taxi, the way things were integrated back then. Then you have a row of people basically at the counter or bar, if you want to call it. So there's a Mexican guy, there's a cowboy, there's a French belle, there's an Italian person, which is not very detailed, and on the counter you see basically what they order. So you have a hamburger and a Coke with the cowboy. The Mexican guy, Taco Contrales, is eating tacos, of course. He has a coffee and there probably should have been a croissant with the French bell. The Italian has pizza in front of him and there's a little kid eating ice cream, Italian ice cream. I mean, all the clichés are in that back glass. But that's actually what sort of makes it funny. So I think actually it could have worked, and it would even... Williams obviously didn't do this at the time, but if they would have re-themed Diner to International Café, they probably would have sold more games in Europe. So you're saying that his idea, Python Enzo's idea, was Oktoberfest, which then morphed into International Diner, which then morphed... International Café, which then morphed into Diner. No, Mark Ritchie wanted to do Diner from day one, and then Python started interfering and suggesting you should do this, you should do this. And as Mark explained in Kimmel Magazine No. 4, he really wanted to do a diner-themed game because he wanted to do something for the collectors of Americana and that kind of stuff. So Mark Ritchie didn't give in to Python's idea. But if Williams would have sort of offered for Europe the same game, but with an international cafe package, so Mark would still have Diner for America but they would have offered International Cafe in Europe. Yeah. I think if they would have done that then maybe they would have sold more units. I don't know. Yeah. But Williams didn't do that of course at the time because they were like we make one type we make one game this is it you take this and nobody ever thought about receiving a game for another territory. They were making so many machines back then that I guess it was Possibly I saw it as a waste of time, whereas now pinball markets, they're always trying to save money with re-theming and vault additions and how can we kind of like maximize, you know, how can we reuse these parts on different machines and reuse these mechs, whereas Williams were kind of just pumping machines out at that point. And maybe they were all, obviously you have to think like, okay, if we're going to re-steam this, then how much is it going to cost? And how many extra games are we going to sell? And if you're only going to sell 500 extra games, then maybe it's not worth the effort of re-steaming it. It's very interesting. I'm going to admit, I'm really sorry to say this, I've had your pinball magazine pinball for here for about a year. and I haven't really opened it yet because I'm so used to listening to podcasts and just quickly reading websites. I'm afraid to dive into this, but I'm just flipping through it now and it just looks like there is so many important bits of information. Like, you know, there's the dialed-in section where you're talking to John Paul DeWin and he's talking about constructing, you know, there's each little section of creating that dialed-in universe and his work on The Hobbit. Me and Martin joke that we're not journalists, we don't want to be, but this is pinball journalism, I guess, at its purest form, right? Because you're diving as deep as you can into what these artists that create these beautiful pinball machines, how they work, and you can see pinball machines at different stages. So when is, you know, you talked about number five, Magazine number 5 When can we start that? It should be this year But we still have a long year ahead of us I was hoping to have Issue 5 ready prior to The Texas Pinball Festival And I'm not going to make that Hopefully we'll be close Be a little safe, let's say May It will probably be earlier But just to be safe on my end May should be It should definitely be out so what's holding you back what's the delay since I'm sure it's already at 300 pages or something so I'll explain to you what the delay currently is I'm doing a cover story on Wayne Nions that may be a name that doesn't ring any bell with you no it doesn't, I'm just going to be honest it doesn't ok, Wayne Nions was a godly pinball designer and he's about to turn 100 this June or July. I keep mixing up the dates, but the 29th of June or 29th of July, either one of those two. He hopes to turn 100. He started in the business in 1936 and he stayed in the business until 1980. and he designed over 150 pinball machines for Godly within a period of like 15 years and after that he was chief engineer and he was involved with the whole converting from electromechanical to solid state transfer and that kind of stuff he has great stories to tell I visited him twice I spent a few days at his place and we talked and ambitious as I am and I would like to cover his career as in depth as possible my goal was to have him talk about each and every game that he designed and we attempted that so that's a lot of games It is a lot of games, and I've been on the search trying to find all his games, because I wanted to include a photo of every game in a certain angle, so that they all sort of look alike, so you can easily flip through them. But you can also easily see all the differences on the playthrough, because this guy was so creative. I mean, you have to imagine, these were the electromechanical days, and basically all he had to work with was a few flippers, a few rubbers, a few targets, a few pop bumpers, and that's it. But if you see how creative he was with his designs, and Gottlieb was absolutely killing it when he was designing. They were absolutely number one manufacturer of pinball machines, with Williams being a very, very... Well, the gap between Williams and Gottlieb was huge. I mean, Gottlieb would sell like maybe 5,000 titles of a game, and Williams would sell only 1,000. So they really were dominating the market at that time, during that time. And so I wanted to include every game. And I transcribed all my conversations with Wayne. And we talked over the phone. And we added information. And I looked up all the interviews that he did. And I transcribed those. And I put it all together. And then you have a document of like 160 pages of plain text where certain stories are told three or four times. So then I had to start filtering all of that out in the sense that I wanted to take all the best elements from each story, combine that into one story so that you have all the details and understand the story as it should be told. So I've been doing that. So we managed to shrink down from 160-something pages to now 124 still plain text. And I'm actually now running the text through a program to... I used to work with a copy editor, but I found this great program to improve your writing. I'm running it through that, and it actually helps to improve my writing, which is absolutely necessary because I'm not a native English-speaking journalist. But before I sent it to a copy editor, I figured I'd let that program do the first round of corrections. So I'm going over that right now. I was actually working on that tonight. And then there's another daunting task for me. If you are familiar with the concept of Pinball Magazine, if there is a special on a certain person, I always ask people who worked with that person or are close to that person to also write something or do a little interview or something like that. So what I did was I contacted several people amongst who was Gordon Hesse, who is a very well-known pinball historian and a pinball collector. he donated his collection to the Pacific Pimble Museum quite a few years ago so they have a huge collection thanks to Gordon Hesse collecting over the years so I contacted Gordon Hesse and I was like he knows Wayne he likes his games and whether he wanted to write a little piece about how Wayne Nyhan's games affected his life or what he likes about them something like that and I was expecting Gordon to come back with me with maybe, I don't know, one, two, three, four pages of copy at the most. And Gordon needed a little more time, and eventually he came back with me with a story of like 62 pages. Oh, my gosh. So I went over that. Now you have to see Gordon Hathaway is an award copywriter So what he wrote was actually very very good I mean he knows his details But with what he wrote, there were also a lot of duplicate stories of which I had Wayne Neyens telling me from the horse's mouth, no disrespect intended, a story that Gordon would tell the same story, shorter, but it would be second hand info you could have somehow combined the two to find the truth in the middle or you know I discussed it with Gordon and I said what I really would like to do is use his story as sort of the framework for the cover story so he will do the introduction and he will be sort of like the narrator in the story but wherever I can quote Wayne Ions to tell a story I'd rather quote Wayne than tell the story second-hand, which he understood. So after this whole transcript of Wayne is being corrected and copy-edited, then I have to merge it into Gordon Hesse's 62 pages. Yeah, a lot of work. That's why it's taking me so long to come out with Pimple Magazine, but it should be absolutely, it should be like a book. Yeah. And I think there's a small worry that, okay, this is, we're talking about electromechanical games, and the question is, is that interesting enough for people who like modern games? Because some people never played them. But I think Wayne's story is really like, I don't know, an adventure book for boys. I mean, the guy was around when Chicago was run by the mafia, and they had police raids and all that kind of thing. That's also in there. So there's a lot of interesting history that you might be interested in, too. Well, definitely. I mean, I'm looking at page 122 here on Pinball Magazine, number 4, and it's about Kingpin, and that it was originally meant to be a casino game. and there's another sketch here from Python Anghelo, his idea of the slot machine, and it's a big breasted woman next to a slot, and then that eventually added to Kingpin. I'm guessing you know a lot of information that you cannot divulge because people tell you in confidence, but if you're able to talk about it, do you know what Circus Maximus' plans are for Kingpin that they will reveal at Texas Pinball Festival? I mean, do they plan to sell this, or are they seeking out a contract manufacturer? Well, that's an interesting question, because I've been wondering the same thing myself. I do have an idea. I mean, as far as I know, Circus Maximus does not have a production facility. Well, they tried to build one for the Pinball Circus game, but as far as I know, they have nothing that basically where you say, like, okay, now we hire a couple of people and everybody gets on the line and we start working. No, it's nothing like that. I have asked to another manufacturer whether they would be interested in manufacturing that game, and they said that they were too busy with the games that they are currently working on and are planning for the rest of the year. But it could also be that that game that they are planning on for the rest of the year might as well be Kingpin, but nobody sees it coming. Okay. That's just pure speculation. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. Do you think, I mean, this, you know, since they fetch such a high price, you know, that people talk about the Big Bang Bar remake and Big Bang Bar prices is fairly high, but it's not out of the stratosphere. From what we hear, Kingpins go for, you know, 30,000 to 40,000 to 50,000 US dollars because there is only a couple of them around. Eight, actually, yes. Yeah, eight. Okay, sorry. So how do you price Kingpin and how many do you make? Do you make an unlimited amount or do you say, oh, we're making 200 and there'll be $15,000 each? If you were a marketer, how would you go about doing it, do you think? Well, I think we know a little bit already about what they are planning for Kingpin because they had Dave Christensen draw up some new artwork, which is basically in the old style of the belly games that Dave Christensen used to do for belly in the 70s and early 80s. Why? Yeah, why did they... Because I'm looking at the Translight here. Why are they changing the original Translight? Well, I think that's a good question for them. maybe they think they might be able to sell more games that way because they might not be that content with the artwork that Stan Fukuoka did for Kingpin, although I have to say I'm pretty pleased with it. I think it looks great. It could be that they are trying to appeal to a certain type of collector that likes the artwork on these old belly games and I'm sure there are people who like that type of artwork. Okay. I'm just not sure how it would look on a game like Kingpin, which has ramps, because all the games that have Dave Christensen artwork are basically single-level playfields and just a backglass. Well, the Translight that I'm looking at on page 121 and then the playfield on 123, it's cohesive. It's done by, I'm using the same person and it looks the same, whereas if they use that Translight artwork, unless it was a bonus or something, like here's an extra Translight, it would just kind of ruin the entire look of the... I don't say ruin, but it's not cohesive. It doesn't fit the same art style, does it? Well, just because we haven't seen any Playfield artwork doesn't mean that there isn't any Playfield artwork. Sure, yeah. We don't know much. We don't know if they redid the software or what they've done. it could be a whitewood we don't know, right? Well it would be disappointing if there are I mean it's great if they would be building Kingpin Prototype and I understand that they are having fun but it would be a pity if they would only be building one Yeah, just a big tease And so everybody is hoping for some form of production facility or whatever production line to get that game out but if you follow Pinball over the past couple of years, building a game is one thing. Setting up a production line, well, ask Andrew Highway. How did that go? We've been trying to contact Andrew Highway, but he's off-selling the C, so we can't get in contact with him, unfortunately. Well, okay, obviously, setting up a production facility for Pinball is a beast on its own, and there's a lot of things that you have to keep in mind and a lot of things that people often oversee. I mean, a pinball machine is a complex device. If you're missing one part, you can't build the game, you know, especially if it's a part that is supposed to be one of the first that goes on the playfield. And if you can't put it in, then basically your whole production halted. That's why Spooky's this man. I said, just, like, let's just use everything that's available and, you know, 3D print the rest and we'll figure it out from there. But, Jonathan, it was great having you on. ran out of time so I told my wife I'd be 15 minutes and she messaged me telling me to hurry up. I still haven't told you the other Oktoberfest story. Oh, okay. Well, okay. Go for it. Quick. Okay, now, it's sort of an interesting story. I was talking to Joe Bolzer who is currently at American Pinball. Yep. I talked to him a couple of years ago when Andrew Highway actually brought him over to the UK for the UK pinball party. It was a sort of annual event every summer that he used to organize. And the last time he did it, it was actually at the Highway Pinball Facility, which wasn't a place that I was very confident in that they would be building pinball machines, but that's another story. Joe Bolzer was there, and I was talking to Joe, and Joe is... if you ever get the chance to talk to Joe, he has so many great stories to tell about him working at Tega and at Stern. So he's a very interesting guy. And he told me this story, and I'm pretty sure I can tell it because I know he told it to other people as well, and I think it's one of the anecdotes that he likes or likes to tell people. Joe Bolzer suggested to Gary Stern somewhere around the early days of Stern Pinball He suggested to do an Oktoberfest game. And Gary's response was that he was only interested in teams that people could play all year. Same as the Williams argument. Thank you. So Gary turned that down and basically Joe kept the idea in his mind. And I think since they trademarked it, it looks like he hasn't let go of that idea yet. Yeah, I guess it doesn't necessarily mean that it is going to be their next game, but I think the excuse they use when people contact them, you know, you can look at this week in Pimble, the email exchange was, you know, we had someone working here, you know, we told them the same, and then they no longer work here, and that information was kind of spreading around. So, you know, just in case we want to use it, here's a trademark, so you can't use it. Right. So I heard about apparently someone is recording a leak to them. Not sure whether that's the case. I mean, that story, I wasn't the first to hear that story, and other people knew it too. To be honest, I completely forgot about it until you guys revealed this scoop that you had last week. So I completely forgot about it. And honestly, I wasn't even concerned with American Pinball's second game. I'd first like to see how they are going to do with Houdini. Of course, in his very, very early days with American Pinball and production, I guess they've only shipped a handful of games, so very premature to be talking about their second game, but, you know... But on the other hand, I understand that you have, as a factory, you have to be working on a second game, because if the first one takes off at some point, you want to move on to the next one, and... 100%. 100%. When I asked Scott Danesi, you know, if he's thinking about a second game, and he said, oh, you know, I just want to work on this game. That's the correct answer to give, but, you know, I for one second believe that, you know, he's not up late at night at least thinking or, you know, just trying to design out his second sketch for a pinball machine because you can't sit there and concentrate so much on number one and then finish that and then be doing nothing. You have to kind of overlap your designs, I guess. Well, it depends. I applaud Scott for putting so much time and effort into finishing Total Nuclear Annihilation. Technically, or basically, there are two scenarios that could be happening. Either he has already ideas tinkling in the back of his head and he sort of has an idea of what he would like to do next. But what would also happen is that what you often see with certain designers, that they use all their ideas on one particular design. And when they're done with that, they can't think of anything else than just redo that design. So it could also be that he might just need some time off just to charge up again. And at some point, game number two will come, hopefully. For sure. Could either be one way or the other. Either way, I'm very interested to see what he's going to be coming up with. Yeah. Yeah, it's a very exciting time in pinball, as you mentioned before. I mean, even with Keith Elwin, you know, we saw when he got hired, he removed a lot of his designs for Archer. And, you know, with the rumour of John Trudeau being involved with Iron Maiden and then that being redesigned, I mean, it would make sense that his first machine might be a variation of the Archie Pinball machine that he made, possibly the same layout and just maybe some little tweaks here and there because, one, that would be fairly quick. Two, that's, you know, as you said, that's the idea in his head of what he thinks a good pinball machine is, so what better way to introduce himself into the pinball world as, you know, what he thinks his best design is. Right. So, well, the interesting thing with that is, actually in the conversation I had earlier this week with someone, because I've seen the Archer layout, and I'm not sure whether you have. Yeah, I have. But what's interesting, someone said, like, well, the Archer layout has four flippers. and Stern has never put four flippers on the Pro model. So how would that affect if they would do the Archer layout but you get the Archer layout as Keith envisioned it as the Premium LE and what would be left of that on the Pro model? And that's all speculation. Well, I mean, I guess it has, you know, I could say Game of Thrones, there's four flippers on there, on the LE and the Premium, but those two extra flippers are on the upper playfield and, you know, same with Aerosmith, three on the upper, you know, all together, one on the upper playfield. So, yeah, I don't think Stern has ever... On the pro? Yeah, so I don't think Stern has ever, I guess, reduced the amount of flippers but not introduced an upper playfield to kind of put those extra flippers on the premium and the LA. So it'd be interesting to see, you know, I guess we're speculating because we don't know if that's true and even if Keith Elwin is a designer of Iron Maiden, of course, if Iron Maiden isn't coming out, but rumours are rumours, and the more people that tell you them, it's usually when there's smoke, there's fire, right? I wouldn't be surprised at all. I mean, everybody has seen what has been speculated. We know that the art will be by Zombie Yeti, so that could be a very fitting combination for the Iron Maiden licence. Well, the most interesting thing to me, I think, will be the rules, because he did mention, I'm not sure if you remember, in an interview with Jeff Teolis from Pinball Profile that he will not only be designing the pinball machine but also the framework of the rules. So what does that mean when one of the best pinball players of all time is designing the rule set and who's going to be executing those rules and will that then have a different flavour to the rules that they normally do? So say if it's Dwight Sullivan or Lonnie DeRupp, will it be a different... Because you can kind of tell when you're playing these machines who's coding them when you play a lot of pinball, because there's certain things that they repeat and do over again. Will this feel like a Keith Elwin rule set, even though he's not sitting there coding the rules? There's two things that come to mind. It will depend on how much a programmer will allow Keith and his rules to be implemented in that game, and how much of that programmer, his own ideas is going to be in that game. But the good thing about this whole thing, and I'm going to refer back to Wayne Neyens here, which might sound odd, but I'll explain it. In the EM days of pinball, the designer of the game designed the playfields, the circuitry, the rules, everything. And those were the games that were a lot of fun. Not all of them, but a lot of them were a lot of fun. When Solid State came in, we started working with programmers, and at some point we had pinball designers delivering a playfield, and programmers took over, and they just took a playfield where they had no idea what the concept was, and they just applied whatever they thought was logical to them. With Cut and Easy, we now have a designer who is also programming, and in his case even producing music for that game. And we've all seen what a great game it has become. So if Keith Elwin is able to do that at Stern for his game, then I'm very interested in seeing how that will develop because it could be a very refreshing approach and a very interesting game. Yeah, it's definitely an interesting point. And I've heard interviews with Keith P. Johnson as well and how he works a lot in the design, the Playfield layout and the design of a pinball machine and his machines as well are super well integrated and everything software-wise integrates with the layout of a pinball machine. You don't feel disjointed in any way. So as I said, it's all speculation, but very exciting times at pinball. And thanks again, Jonathan, for coming on short notice to talk about everything. I think we said before we started recording that, yeah, We'll just do a quick 15 minutes intro. Yeah, it took so long. Yeah, we've gone for an hour. So thanks very much. You've been really refreshing with all the information that you have. I guess, you know, someone who writes a magazine that's over 250 pages, you know, it makes sense that you just have, you're just a hive of information. So I'd love to have you on this show again. You know, maybe after, you know, Pinball Magazine number five comes out and we can talk about some of the stories in there because it's definitely something I'm going to buy and I will read it this time. I'm going to read, I'm going to start tonight, I'm going to start reading through Pimble Magazine number four because I just got absolutely buried through all my paperwork here in my little office here and when I started talking to you, I saw it and I dragged it out and yeah, I can't believe all the information that's in here and just all the prototype stuff that you don't see, you don't see anywhere else. You don't see this on websites. You don't see it on Pinsight. It's just in this book only. So where can people contact you and buy your magazine? I think you really plugged it, but let's do it one more time. Sure. I have a website, www.pinball-magazine.com. I also have a monthly newsletter that goes out the first week of the month, which has a basically pinball industry roundup of what was happening last month. and some people I mean other people are doing that also now on a more frequent basis that's fine you know I mean news is news but if people want to subscribe to that you can subscribe to that also on that same website so yeah I subscribe to it and I enjoy looking at it every month thank you and like I said hopefully maybe the next issue should be out and in the meantime I'm still shipping a Pimol magazine number 1, 3 and 4 and since you have a broad listener base in Australia allow me to say hello to all my Australian readers because there's a lot of Australian readers and I appreciate that they are reading the magazine and buying copies and if there's any pinball commercial party reseller that might be interested in like stocking the magazine for Australia and so that people could buy it cheaper because the shipping costs are so expensive that might pull them back. If there's an Australian party that would say like, hey, we would like to do that and ship over a box and we'll sell them over here, please contact me. No worries. Alright, Jonathan. Thanks again and we'll chat to you soon. Okay. Thank you very much. Bye. Yeah, it was great to have a little chat to him and he's like an encyclopedia because he's writing all of these books. They're called books because they're They're magazines, but they're huge, and they interview people, and yeah, he's almost like a historian now, right? Yeah. He's got a lot of information, and I've bought, I think, all the magazines so far, and they're fantastic. Oh, cool. I didn't know. Yeah. Love them. Cool. So, moving on to another bit of news about Stern, Tim Sexton, Tim Bowles. Yeah. He's no longer just a normal guy that appears on the Slantfield podcast. He's now one of the newest employees at Stern Pimble, and they hired three people, including him, to work in their software department. And I don't know. What do you think about this, mate? Is this good news? I think it's good news because he's a very good player. He's not short of an opinion, I guess, and I tend to agree with what he says, and he doesn't, I mean, obviously he has his Tim Rance. We know all about the Rance, but he makes a lot of sense and it's based on good logic. So if he can take that approach, then I think that's really good for Stern for him to be able to add what he sees as a player to them as well. Yeah, Tim is like a top, you know, I think top 50 player. And if you kind of think about it, Keith Elwin, Zach Sharp, and Tim Sexton, you know, three players in the top 100, and they're all working in three different sections of the company. One, you know, design, one rules, and the other one in, you know, PR and marketing. So it's interesting. It's interesting, and it can't lead to anything of the good things. For CERN, I think, to have more players, you know, that have a good working background to join their horses. One thing I also noticed was how very quickly he was replaced on Slantilt by Greg Waparelli. Just really quickly. I think they might have known about it, so they seeked out a replacement and Greg Balls was born. That's awesome. and what else so ColorDMD have made a bit of an announcement as well yeah well I'm not sure if it was an announcement more than just a picture and like figure it out guys I love how their marketing is not like a press release statement it's just a picture and like you know here you go guys like talk about it and it was basically the like a color LED DMD that is larger in size for the Sega games that have the larger dot matrix display Yes. So I think Baywatch and some other games that I've never played. Well, the funny thing is, one of the games, and we'll come up to the Australian Championship Series in a second, but there was a Baywatch there. And I actually quite like the game Baywatch. I think for that era, it's actually a really fun game. But I just couldn't help but just keep looking at the D&D. It's a larger than normal D&D, and the dots are really quite small. So it's actually really high res. There's a lot of, you know, animation and video on it. And it doesn't have that same sort of, you know, loss of clarity of what you're watching, even because it's just the one color. It actually looks really good. Yeah, so I guess that'll be coming out soon. I feel guilty every time I go on Facebook and I see a sponsored post from something that I like already. Like, it's like they're wasting money on me because I already talk about it and I already know about it. And I just, every time I open up Facebook, it's like there as a top post. I'm like, ah, stop wasting your money, Randy. It's still good publicity. Well, do you know what it is, though, is that you might not want that, but you may know somebody that does, and then you'll tag them in it. What I'm saying is that it keeps on appearing on my feed. So it's almost like when he's choosing the whole Facebook advertising thing, he says, you know, pinball players that are between this age and this location, and they just run out of people. So he just keeps on getting counts and charging him money for me 20 times instead of just once. Anyway. Maybe they'll wear you down on your buying extra one. For my non-existent Sega pinball machine. Spooky. TNA pinball. We've talked about TNA a lot, and we probably will continue to talk about it because the NIMA's total nuclear annihilation is on a truck and will be delivered tomorrow morning at 7.30am. So by the time you're listening to this, I would have unboxed it with him and be playing away. So can I just clarify something? So this is a good friend of the show, NIMA. Yes. He's bought a total nuclear annihilation. Yes. But it's not going to his house. that's going to your house. Yeah, people just give me free pinball machines. Oh, man, I love that. Why is it going to your house? His moving house. Yep. So he just sold his house, and he thought there's no reason for... Well, there's two reasons. There's no reason for the pinball machine to kind of get loaded up at his house and then just be part of the move in a couple of weeks. I thought he was in about a month that he's going to be moving into his new place. And two, it's his first new inbox machine, and it's quite overwhelming. I mean, you're afraid now to lift up the playfields on your machines now. So it's a different language to him, and he just wants to make sure the machine is all kind of dialed in and set up and ready to go. So he's happy to kind of leave it here until he moves and make sure that it plays right. So a win-win for everybody. Well, and a win for me as well, because we get to stream it this week. Yeah. Me, you, Nima, and I messaged Jordan Treadway. We need someone to be able to possibly, you know. Well, I was thinking, this is the weird thing about TNA streams. Actually, let's talk about that first. So we had the reactor race bet last week. You chose Carl, I chose Bowen. And who won, Marty? Who won? I'm gloating, I'm gloating. Who won? Do you mean who won actually taking down reactor nine? or who won out of the bet between you and me as to who we would side with? Both, because it's the same thing, right? But Bowen did it on site, and Jeff Parsons from the Pinball Players podcast just happened to be there, and he Facebook live-streamed the end of it, and it was great. Spoiler alert, we're about to talk about what happens when you blow up the knife reactor, so this is your opportunity to fast-forward a couple of minutes. the game ends. So you lose your ball, it kind of gives you an amount which corresponds to your reactor values all adding up together. I think all your reactor values get added together and it gives you like a three million bonus or whatever it was. And then if you have any spare balls, it doesn't let you play them, the game doesn't reset. So it'll give you the reactor bonus again. so he did that and then he managed to do it again on the same night so that kind of fits in with my topic last week about psychological barriers of feeding his nose and then your mate Carl did you watch that stream Marty? Yeah he did a couple days later Yeah a couple days later Carl streaming in 1080p like an absolutely beautiful stream and God it was hilarious because his kid kept on, I think his kid's name is Brendan, possibly, kept on, you know, trying to distract him while he was playing TNA. And I've got to say, Carl, amazing pinball player, even more impressive how patient his parenting is because his kid was like, after he said, you know, please stop doing that, he was like blocking his view and he drained on like Reactor 5 or something because he stuck a piece of paper in front of his view. If that was me, like, regardless of how fucked up I am, my kids, I was just blown up. Get out of the room! No, he just calmly, come on, you know, I said, wow, if you want to learn how to parent, watch that video. If you want to learn how to play TNA, watch that video as well. It's a two-in-one video. So we will link that in the show notes, so watch it. And again, you talked about the quality. The quality of the vision of Carl's streams are just phenomenal. Just the clarity is so crisp. yeah one other thing is that when Carl did it, Carl was on different software he's on the beta software that he just updated and when you finish the game the message is you failed the message this time when he did it was Bowen Kierens is that you which is cool and I messaged Scott and I was like was that you trying to predict who did it and he said no I put that in I was going to always put that in to the first person that proved that they got there. So that could have been Carl if it was a couple days earlier, and I thought, isn't that cool that everyone, if you manage to blow up Reactor 9, that's kind of like a piece of history, like Bowen Kieran's the first person to do it, and, you know, the Reactor race, I mean, there's other people doing it, possibly not the same skill level as Bowen and Carl. Wouldn't it be cool if there was a race for every pinball machine, who can get to the end? And, you know, I guess it would encourage the community to kind of, you know, watch more streams and also people to stream, to kind of have their name forever immortalized on a pill machine. Don't you think that would be a cool thing moving forward for companies to do? Like, hey, this is the first person to get to Belenol, and he's just in there forever. Well, okay. Here we go. You ready? Yes, matey. World of Warcraft. Yes. Because I know you give me shit about the fact that I play World of Warcraft, and I'm sure there's a lot of people out there going, yeah, Marty, you're awesome for playing World of Warcraft. I don't think anyone's saying that. But it's a similar sort of thing that they put in World of Warcraft that if you did an achievement for the very first time, you were immortalised as being that person that did it the first time and I remember back in vanilla days when they opened up this new section, the first group that unlocked this new area, the person that hit the switch got this mount, like something they could actually ride on, and it was black, and it was the only one on the entire server. So every time you walked around and there was hundreds of people, you could walk through this one mount, and everybody would know just by looking at you that you were that person. So I get that that kind of prestige is fantastic in the gaming industry. But? Is there a but? There's no but. I would freaking love that. What I'm saying is I totally get it, because I would always see this person that had this black mount, and I would go, oh, that's that guy. I wish I'd been in that group that did it. What's a black mount? I thought you were saying mount like mountain. No, they call it mount. So if you had a horse, it was your mount. It could have been a raptor, like a dinosaur, that was your mount. Yeah, I'm sorry. I don't want to know that. It's gaming. Anyway, all I'm saying is those kinds of things in gaming, and, you know, like even PlayStation, Xbox, people sort of strive to be the first person to get a certain achievement. And the weird thing is, though, like, you know, is that it? Like, what happens now? What's the motivation to kind of keep on playing since it is, you know, it's not an easy game or anything, right? It's fairly extremely hard to react to none. So Scott posted a video midweek of some beta code that he's testing out, some new beta codes, where the reactor kind of cools down so you can't kind of sit there and trap up and get into multiple. If you wait too long, it might start cooling down. And he might add that as a menu option for people that kind of want to do that at home, or it might be default. We don't know yet. But I guess he wants to kind of keep on tweaking this until he's perfectly happy with how it is. Yeah, so I guess what's next after you complete it? Maybe there's time zones. People can actually do it in the quickest amount of time. Okay, like a speed run? Yep. Yeah, sure. Well, this is what I was thinking for the stream, right? Because, you know, we're playing it, I'm playing it for the first time, Nim is pretty new to pinball, and you and Jordan are great players, but, you know, if it took Carl, you know, like five streams to get there, the chances of us finishing React at the rest of the night is probably not that high. So I was thinking we'd play it normally for a while, okay, and then maybe the second half of the stream we'll set the Reactor to a lower value, because you can do that in the settings. something that might be achievable for all and then it becomes a different type of game because then we have to, you know, you have to kind of figure out how many multiple jackpots do you want to go for, you know, because when you get the reactant, it blows up. That's it. You don't get to add to your score so it becomes more, you know, a different strategy on how to pump up the high score. Yes? Okay. That'll probably make more sense when I'm with you on Wednesday night and we are streaming this. So it is Wednesday night, I believe, that we're streaming, and that will be on the Melbourne Silver Bowl League Twitch page. Last bit of news. A lot of news this week, Marty. That's like an hour and a half. There is. And 45 minutes of news. So we talked in detail and expressed our frustration at the dialed-in scoop protectors. Yep. The hole was stuck. Yeah, and they made the hole too tight. the hole was too tight. You couldn't load your balls into the hole. This just made you frustrated. Turned your balls blue. Blue balls. It was horrible because it wasn't designed with the scoop in mind and they used thick metal and everyone kind of said, why don't you just use clippies? And everyone started taking them out and putting clippies in there. Well, someone on Pinside posted yesterday that they are now starting to ship, as of about a week and a half ago, with real Cliffies on there, so not their own versions. So that's interesting because I think it's possibly the first pinball machine with Cliffies. I know there's Scoot Protectors from CERN and this and that, but Cliffies has been doing it for a long time. And because of this, he's now backlogged. If you want Cliffies from him, you have to wait possibly, I think, around two months to get it. So, yeah, big workload that JGP has given him to kind of provide all their scoop protectors. Wow, OK. Well, that's cool. I mean, yeah, we did talk about it at length. It was something quite often. It ruins the game. It did ruin the game because, really, everything is relying on that scoop, and it was just so hard to get, so... Yeah, you hit the shot perfectly, and it bounces out, and you can't get mode started, and it's frustrating. So JGP also released some news that they're going... They're the first company, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, to have a Twitch channel directly, because everyone's been relying on other people, like Jack Danger and Brody Evenpenble. But Jersey Jack are going to be directly streaming Pirates of the Caribbean with Eric Meunier, Joe Katz, and Keith P. Johnson. They're going to be playing the game and explaining the rules on Wednesday, possibly, I think. We'll link it in the show notes to their channel and the time. Yeah, awesome. Looking forward to that. What do you have to say, Marty? This week in Elm. Oh, yes. What did you get up to? I'm going to go first because Marty's is going to be a bit longer than mine. So I managed to sell Circus Voltaire. I got the price that I wanted, and that will be picked up really soon. One interesting thing that I had a chat to our mate about, MJ, with the P3 system. He said, I talked about how, you know, I kind of got a bit bored of Circus Voltaire and that's why I'm selling it, because I've been to the Wizard mode and there really isn't anything after that. And he said, oh, no, there is. And I'm like, what do you mean? Like, I've played through a couple of modes after that, you know, Ringmaster, Shrouds, and everything's the same. Acrobat, Juggler, multiball, you just have to complete everything. He said, oh, no, because when you get to the, you know, proving yourself as a Circus member, it's different the second time around. I said, surely not. So as a kind of a last game, I went through and I got to the wizard mode the second time around. I put the inlays all the way in so I could actually do it. And there is. There's like step one, step two, step three, step four. And step four is partly multiple. When you go through it again, it starts at step five. And I didn't get to it again the third time after that, so I'm not sure how deep it goes. But I finally got bored of playing the same wizard mode every single time. You know, spell circus and then do this, do that. Second time around, there's some other stuff like a hundred spins on the spinner. and I don't know, it was fun not enough for me to decline the sell and not sell the machine but I don't think that many people are aware that there is a different wizard mode, I mean it still has a party multiple I think the first one still is Spell Circus but the two ones in the middle are different so Circus Voltaire full surprises and I just want to thank you again I missed it last week, the Pinball Party Bus guys Dion and Nick, they helped me carry that machine down the stairs from Argonauts, which was a great help. And they asked me, they offered to do it, which was very nice. I've been playing a lot of Citizen Spinball Party this week. I've gone to any basement a couple of times again, and I haven't been able to complete it. So it still is a hard thing. But I've been going for Super Jackpots. And we got an email this week from Colin MacAlpine. who is the latest Teen Berg winner, so he's no slouch, he's a top-ranked player. And we'll read his email now instead of at the mailbag. And he said, I agree with Ryan, it's a fantastic game, one of my favourites. It's definitely psychological in not being able to finish Alien Invasion because if you have the skill to start all TV modes and you have the skill to keep a very forgiving multiple alive where every successful shot removes the ball from the chaos of multiple and each new level provides a new ball save period. But I'd argue that someone that doesn't have a good plan or strategy on how to approach an invasion makes it much more difficult. So he goes through and lets me know how he defeats it, and basically his strategy is to always have your couch shot dialed in and kind of get them out of the way early. And I replied and I said, well, you don't really need to do the couch shot until you're at level four and five. and he said, well, why leave it up to there and then kind of fail? Just use the couch shot all the time because then you're dulled into that shot. So I've been playing differently lately, and we talked about stage flipping, and, hey, you really have to be kind of a pro with stage flipping to get through the super jackpots. I think I've found a little tiny bug on, you know, since this is meant to be kind of like the greatest kind of, you know, watertight software out there, I use his strategy. His strategy for the super jackpot was to cradle, because there's only stage flipping on the right flipper, you cannot stage flip the left. So when you get up to the couch area, the upper playfields, he said cradle the balls on the right flipper and not the left. So I cradled two balls on the right flipper, I shot up to the couch, I made my TV shot, and then the ball just got stuck there. And it got stuck there because I was holding the ball for so long that it went into the instant info, and then I hit the couch for, and it started a mode as well, and the ball wouldn't release, and it wasn't until, and I kept on face flipping to see if I, you know, and it didn't release, and it wasn't until I totally let go of the slipper, ruining my kind of cradle balls, that it bounced out. I'm not sure if it was a once-off kind of bug, or if I've discovered a tiny little bug in the code. So, yeah, I'm still plugging away at the five-time Super Jackpots, and hopefully I have some good news next week that I've been able to do it. Hmm. It's just super interesting. I just hope you've been able to make that game enjoyable at all. Just saying. Okay, I agree that, because I've been playing it a lot now, I agree that it's a bit of a grind, and it takes a lot to get the machine started. You jump on Walking Dead, you hit three, drop target down the side, boom, things are happening, right? Yep. Yes. I agree that it takes a while to get started on Simpsons, and a lot of people might not like that. But when you do get started, I think it's better than a lot of other machines that kind of have instant action. So it's a slow tease. But if you keep on playing it over and over again it is hard to push that start button sometimes after you gone through a half an hour game just to kind of build it all up again But I haven played Simpsons a lot last year So, yeah. I'm still in the honeymoon boots again. Fair enough. What else did we get up to? That's it, man. What have you been up to? Tell us about... Well, before we get into my tournament, didn't you have a tournament this week? Oh, gosh. How did you go in this tournament? Okay, yes, I invited my mate Nima over, who I keep on saying is new to pinball, and, you know, he just demolished me. We kept on playing games, and I kept on saying, okay, best of eight, best of ten, best of twenty, and I just couldn't catch up. He just had me because I let him choose all the games, and whenever I got dialed into a game, he said, all right, we're going to this game, we're going to that game. So Nima is the current king of my arcade, and I have to defend myself next time. So, if that was me, can I just say, I would be really pleased that somebody that's relatively new to pinball is playing that well and enjoying it that much. Yeah, I mean, I haven't really been to a tournament in a while and there's some tournaments that are shutting down in Melbourne and I am really enjoying... Like, every time someone's come over lately, we just play head-to-head matches and we kind of avoid the long-playing games and, you know, best of however long we go for. And it's just fun to kind of keep score and have a few beers and play pinball. And I don't know. I enjoy it as much as playing real tournaments. Oh, fantastic. No, I love that stuff too. So my week, well, I might have had a bit of a big week. So, and it was really funny because we, this weekend that's just gone, in Australia, arguably would be the most important pinball comp of the year. Surely we talked about it last week. No, it's all right. We didn't even mention it. Oh, my gosh. And the next morning I sent you a note saying, we forgot to mention this. It's like a big, you know, slap on the forehead. Like, how could we have forgotten this? Anyway, and we had talked about it a couple of months ago because, so this was the Australian Championship Series. And effectively, it's an invite only to the top 32 players according to the 2017 results. So every year, every country pretty much has its own championship series, but that's what we had. And we talked about it a couple of months ago because I really hadn't played a lot of tournaments in 2017. So I finished up the series at rank 40. I was the 40th ranked person in 2017. So what were you doing there, Marty? Well, turns out there was quite a few people. Some people couldn't make the tournament, so they had to go down the list. And I think within probably about a week, I was already confirmed that I was going. So someone had a motorbike accident like a day before. Yes, poor Richard. Hi, RGR. Unfortunately, Richard had a car door open whilst I think he was on his motorbike and has had a bit of an injury, so he couldn't actually travel. Jordan Treadway, was he there? No, Jordan wasn't there. Jordan, I think, you know, he's got other commitments as well. But still very, very high-ranked players were there. And so this was in Adelaide. So for those people around other sides of the world, so you've got the capital of Australia. Here's a bit of a geography lesson for you. Capital of Australia is Canberra. Canberra. Sydney is probably our most popular and well-known city, then Melbourne, then Brisbane and Adelaide. And Adelaide is where this tournament was. It's about an hour flight from Melbourne. So I went to compete in this tournament. And there was a lot of other side tournaments as well. There was some split-flipper comps and there was some novelty comps like, you know, you had to do reverse hands on some games. And so 32 players convened at a place called The Jade. in Adelaide and the format was Saturday was qualifying so we had five rounds of match play three games per round and right out of the gates I had a fantastic first round, in fact I got 19 out of the 21 possible points and then my second round was terrible my third round was terrible, my fourth round was okay and then I had a great fifth round so I ended up qualifying third place. I was happy with that. But what that meant was the next day it was the top 16. So top 16 players and this was a head-to-head elimination over five games per round I guess. The top 16 got to play five games head-to-head and I got paired up against Matt Venables who's a great player and I have come up against Matt many, many times before and I have never won. Never won against him. He has always beaten me. So I was very aware of that. But fortunately this time wasn't a beat and I did beat him. So I got through to the round of eight. So quarterfinals, call it. And in the quarterfinals, I got paired up against the current number one player in Australia. Ooh, Brett Goodwin. Brett Goodwin. And also, just letting you know, in these particular rounds, because I was the higher seed, I got to pick three of the five machines and the opponent got to pick two of them. And the way it went was you played one of my machines, one of their machines, one of mine, one of theirs, one of mine. And you could pick the same game in multiple rounds? Yeah, but only a maximum of three times. So there was four rounds, so you could only pick a particular machine three times maximum. So, my go-to machine, which I picked, Star Trek. Every round. I mean, and everybody knew. As soon as I'd say Star Trek, people were like, oh, I knew you were going to say that. Well, of course. I own the machine. Everybody knows I own the machine. And I pretty much dominated, oh, I will say, of two of the three rounds. Anyway. So, what I did, my three games that I pretty much picked to try and get through to the finals were So Star Trek, Monster Bash, and Mouse It Around. And I'll tell you why. Star Trek because I know the machine backwards. I've played it that many times. I'm really comfortable. I know the rules. I know exactly how to set up really good scoring in a short period of time. So that was all fine. Monster Bash because for some reason, I've mentioned this before, I have this love affair with Monster Bash, and it has a love affair with me. I always have fantastic games on that Except when I got to the finals But anyway And mousing around Because I love System 11 games And that for me It was playing really well It was very sharp And for me that's my wheelhouse System 11 games are where I play my absolute best So that was my third game So if we ever got to the You'd be going to the Road to Dave's System 11 World Championship then Marty Yeah I know and don't bring that in because he mentions it to me all the time. I will get there, Dave. I'll do my best. So I think I won on the fourth game, on round one against Matt. So Matt was out. Sorry, Matt. I then got to top eight. I was then up against Brett Goodwin. And I, again, Star Trek won. Monster Bash killed me two rounds in a row. I just absolutely lost all my mojo with that game. But then I won the next two games. So Brett Goodwin was out. Ooh. Big scale. Big scale. I know. All right. So then I was up against Jason Lambert. Lambo. Now, I think he might be number seven in Australia. But it also, in the 2017 championship, had qualified very high. So up against him, again, I picked the same machine. No, I didn't. I changed my machines this time. I picked Star Trek again, but then I picked, I think I might have picked Flintstones and Mounting Around, and you know what? I beat Jason Lambert. Into the finals, Marty. Into the finals. The top two of the Australian Championship Series. The ACS, the underdog, the giant killer. Am I hyping this up enough for you? I honestly I wasn't I wasn't even expecting To get into the finals Right That's all I was hoping was If I get into the finals I think I'll get into the finals Against Of all people Paul Jones Paul Jones PJ PJ The thick bloke The guy with triceps That might even be as big as Eric Mignone No they're bigger They're bigger I saw them in person They're bigger Did you know that he called me Yes I was saying You were there. He called you as we were standing outside, knowing that we were both going to the finals. He rang you to find out some intel. Yes. I said, don't pick Star Trek. He's really good at Star Trek. And he's like, well, I own a Star Trek. I'm pretty fucking good at it. I said, you don't understand. He only has a couple of machines, and he only plays Star Trek. Don't choose Star Trek. But yeah, he has a lot of games at his house, So he is good and knows rules inside and out of a lot of games. So what games do you play, buddy? So I couldn't pick Star Trek. Oh, wow. It was done. So I picked Mountain Around as my first game. And? And it was really interesting. I had the first two balls were terrible, and he was at about five mil or something on third ball. And then I just had this fantastic third ball and just absolutely came from behind and beat him on that game. So that was awesome. Two wins away from victory. What happened next, Marty? Oh, what happened next? We then went to his pick. And what did you pick, Marty? I can't remember. Kiss. He picked kiss. That's right. I know this because I was watching it live. Oh, that's right. I'm pretending I don't know what happened. Now, also to note, these machines were set up pretty tough. So there was no ball saves. There was all the outlaying posts and rubbers and all that were taken out. And, you know, everything was really, really tough. So I managed a fairly decent score on Kiss, but he managed to nudge me out. He had a good game, and I was on my last ball and just didn't quite manage to get my table started. So it was a relatively close game, but he beat me, and it was then 1-1. And that was your choice, Marty. And my choice was Slimstones. Why did you choose Slimstones? Because I just wanted it to be an unusual choice that I was comfortable with. I could play it. I was comfortable with the game, and I was just hoping it would be a bit of an odd selection so someone would go, what's that all about, and put them off. Okay. Well, but also because I was really playing to my strengths. It was a game that I played really well on, so I figured I'd pick it again. And the thing with Flintstones really is get into multiball, and then you've got a jackpot up the centre, and then a super jackpot that you need to get with the upper right flipper into this very small sort of... Hard, man. It's hard, the hard shot. So I got into multiball on the last ball. I got the one jackpot, couldn't hit the super jackpot, and then drained, and he got me. So it was 2-1 to him. And then we went to one of my least favourite tournament games, which he knew because I saw someone tell him to pick this game because they knew I hated it. So, thank you, Matt. Well, he also loves this game. I think it's one of his favourite games. I remember he was messaging me when it got released saying, Ryan, you've got to buy this game. It's fucking awesome. You don't understand. It goes off. And he hasn't sold it since. So, it was The Walking Dead. Yes, and I think it was a premium as well. So, walker bombs and all that kind of stuff. And do you know what? I had what could only be described as a fucking terrible game. It was miserable to watch you play that last game. Remember, there's no ball safe. So, you know, a lot of games these days, that feed out of the pops has pretty much been adjusted so it doesn't go straight down the middle. Not this one. First ball, pops down the middle. Second ball, I set some stuff up. I had probably about three shots to start the prison multiball, plunged, went into the pops, and then down the middle. I didn't react quick enough to be able to save, and it was game over. He plunged out, and he won. It's a bit of a weird game to have no ball save on, because some games you can kind of, like, you know, loop the ball all the way around, or there's a safe feed, but, you know, you can't even really short plunge. I guess you can sit there for, you know, 10 minutes trying to short plunge, and just dribbles out and hope it doesn't hit a pop bumper or something and not validate the play field. But if you're full blinds, you're at the mercy, you know, to get that one million point skill shot. That's right. You're at the mercy of the pop bumpers if there's no ball saver, right? Yep, absolutely. So, look, so Paul Jones won and I've got to say, look, I was really, really happy with my result. I wasn't expecting to get into the finals. I certainly wasn't expecting to get into the top two. I certainly wasn't expecting to beat Matt Venables or Brett Goodwin or Jason Lambert, not even expecting it at all. But I did, and I got to the finals, and again, couldn't have lost to a better bloke. PJ is just such a nice guy. But what was really interesting was so many people kept coming up to me saying, God, your game has improved. And people were saying, has your game improved because you've been streaming so often drunk? So now that you're sober, you've actually got better skills because you're playing better sober? And my answer to them was, I'm fucking drunk I was playing the way I've been playing I think what it is is the fact that I've been forcing myself to play you know, three hours twice a week of like pinball at home where I'm swimming and I'm showing people flipper skills and I'm practicing things that I wouldn't normally do in a competition I think it all just became a bit second nature when I was playing so I've got to say it's not trying to sound conceited, it's actually quite surprised I actually played really well. Okay, so... Congratulations, Vani. Yeah, I was watching Naomi was Facebook streaming. Yeah, you can back Facebook as much as you want, but it's twice this week that no one had streaming equipment set up when Bowen was destroying the reactors and when you were battling PJ in the finals and, you know, friends of someone on Facebook click, you know, get a little notification, this person's online, and it was great to kind of have that vision of you trying to take the MPG. Yeah, and so the other thing to note about the Australian Championship Series as well, it was actually on the news. So hopefully we'll find the article and be able to link it. But if you go to the, I think it was on the Head to Head Pinball page, you'll actually see this little segment at the end of the ABC News in Adelaide, which was great. Yeah. And also I just want to give a big shout out to Applewood Distillery for providing me with the gin I drank all weekend. And it's my new favourite gym, so Applewood Distilleries. We are not sponsored by them, but if they are listening, please. That night I went on and bought two bottles of it, so that'll be coming to you. Your prize money. Well, yeah. Well, there you go. So I also got a massive trophy and I got some prize money. So all in all, I was really pleased with my result, I've got to say. People were coming up and saying, oh, I'm sorry, commiserations. I'm like, no, it's actually congratulations. and coming second was just phenomenal. Yeah, and a lot of people messaged me about the weekend and said they had a great time. I actually got invited to kind of stay at someone's house. I had free board if I wanted to come, but there's no way I can convince my wife to be away for a weekend when I've got Texas coming up. So maybe next year I'll head up too because there was only one tournament that only the top 32 players could attend and everything else was open to the public. And I think on Friday night, at the first event was like a 64-person flip frenzy. That's huge. That's an unbelievable amount of people. And over 1,000 games played, and that was won by, I think, Tony Woods. And the funny thing was, you know, you got beaten by PJ, and I was looking at the scores when they were coming in, and I think he won one of his first six games, something like that. So he was like somewhere near the end. And then he won every single game to come like, I think, fourth or fifth or something like that. So he won like 15 games in a row after that. So he was off to a slow start. But you only participated in just the one event, right? Yeah, just the main comp for me. I didn't have time to do the others, unfortunately, this time. Cool. What are we hearing from you now, Manny? Well, the only other thing I just wanted to say about this last week as well is that there were a couple of birthdays this week. Yes. And I found out that I have the same birthday as Kevin Manny from Buffet and Ball. Famous. So there you go. So last Friday, that was our birthday. So shout out to Kevin. We are amazing. How old are you, Marty? That no one will ever know. No one will ever know. You know I am, but I am not sharing it. Slam the top 100, baby. Woo, woo. I don't know. I'm tired. Our podcast is so long, but it ends. I'm so I'm so We're coming to the end guys Don't worry We're almost there So So last week We introduced What is Can only be described as The talk of The pinball community Slam The top 100 Not officially sponsored by the Slam Slam Podcast Where it's Ryan and Bruce So what happened? So it was X-Men versus I will just quickly describe it again for those people that are tuning in. It was basically, we generate a random number from 1 to 100. We get assigned a number and we look at the Pinside Top 100 and we argue which pinball machine is better. Last week, it was X-Men, me, versus Pinbot, Marty. Somehow, Marty. Somehow. I don't know how. I don't know. But somebody, Martin, the pinbot managed to pull off the victory. So you get two points for that. We're making a point system. You get two points if you're the underdog because pinbot was ranked like 80-something and XM was ranked 30-something. And you managed to pull off by one single vote, Marty. Where did that one vote come from? Please enlighten us, Marty. How did you get that extra vote, Marty? The public. The public thought of me. They heard my argument and they thought, he makes a valid point. Pinbot is a much better game than X-Men. You had an opportunity to bag X-Men, and you didn't even bag that horrible voice of Storm. But people knew. I think that's what ruins it for that game, is definitely Storm. But there's a hidden story behind this, but I'm not going to publicly shame you, Marty. I'm not going to talk about how you grab someone's phone that doesn't even have a pinball at all, and pose for yourself on someone else's phone, and I would have single voted. That's not true. But, okay. Here's what I will say, right? Even without that vote, it would have been 50-50. Right? Yeah. Pinbot's a fucking shit game. It is terrible. It's fucking awful. It is one of my most hated games. I can't stand Pinbot. Why? I just don't like it. Nothing about it. I don't like the layout. I don't like the rules. I don't like it. Do you like Jackbot? I like it a little bit better, but I'm still... I'm not a big fan of Pinbot or Jackbot. Really, not at all. So, you know, X-Men, far better game. Okay. The lesson to learn here, listening public, is don't trust Marty when he's lying. Okay. So, I found a new way to generate the number, Marty. Okay. Okay. Instead of doing random.org, watch this, right? I can't watch, but sure, I'll say okay. Hey Google, how are you going? Good, thanks. Can you please generate a number for me from 1 to 100? All right. 94. Oh, yeah. Is that mine? 94? Oh, yours. That's yours? You said? That's our phone. TX Sector. Oh, I don't even know what it is. Yeah. That's a power up. I am the 100. All right. What have I got? All right. How cool is it that they have the beep, beep, beep voice? Give me Medieval Madness, Attack of Mars, Twilight Zone, Monster Bash, or Lord of the Rings. Top five. Here we go. Another number from one to 100. Coming right up. 77. Oh, 77. Genies. What's that? That's not great either. Johnny Mnemonic. Oh, okay. One sec, Marty. Hey, so you're the girl from TNA, right? Tips and us? No, I'm stored on the cloud. Yeah, I mean the total nuclear annihilation pinball machine. Pinball? They still make those things? Just joking. Yes, that's me. Okay, how do I know that it's really you? Can you give me some jackpot call-outs maybe from the pinball machine? Jackpot, double jackpot, triple jackpot, super jackpot. All right, that sounds like you. Okay, how about putting a bit more effort into those call-outs and make it sound a bit more hardcore? I mean, Scarlet is trying to destroy the world that you are involved in, regardless of you being in the cloud or not. So how about something from Attack from Mars? Super jackpot, oh baby. Yeah, it's more like, oh, baby. Can you try it again? Super Jackpot. Ooh, baby. Yeah. Okay, how about the 4X Super in Metallica? Jack fucking Pot. Yeah, I guess it's about the same. How about Medieval Madness? I'm Lord Howard Hurts. Who the fuck are you? Oh, shit, that's dirty. How about a newer game like Guardians of the Galaxy? A bobbly bow. A wobbly bobo. A wobbly bobbly bow. Okay, yeah, you're pretty good at that one. Yeah, you don't really have much variety in your voice, so, I don't know, you've got to change up the tone of your voice to kind of put an emphasis on certain things. Shut up, bitch, I have two twippies. How many do you have? Oh, harsh. Well, you know, you've got two twippies. Give me some tips. How do I become as good as Kaneda, me and Marty? What do we do? Just stop playing pinball. Choose an opinion on a machine and just repeat it over and over. Okay, can you give me some examples? Houdini shots are too tight. P3 needs a theme. Big Trouble in Little China is amazing because I watched that movie when I was a kid. World Under Glass. World Under Glass. Tie Fighter on a spring. On a spring. J-Pop is amazing. Magic Girl Shrine. I am the world's best marketer. Why won't anyone take my advice? Batman 66 is a rip-off. Terrible theme integration. The crane wasn't in the show. Oh, shit, I bought one. Now it's amazing. Tie fighter on a spring. Malfunction. Malfunction. Take it easy there, Gil. You sound like you're getting a little bit overloaded. Look, it was nice talking to you, but before I let you go, As a collate of information, I know Google has just arrays of data on everyone. Do you have any dirt on Scott Danesi? Like, I want a free game, I want to try and bribe him. Do you have any pictures maybe that he uploaded onto the cloud that might be a bit taboo? All I have here are lots of pictures of White Woods with no ramps, his dog, and lots of pictures of his balls. His balls? Are you serious? No, not his balls. He has repurposed the sexual organs of your national animal, the humble kangaroo, into a coin purse to ensure his phone doesn't get scratched. The pictures are of kangaroo balls. Oh my gosh, you are truly useless. See ya, and I guess thanks for the random number. See ya. So, that was Google. She is a sassy little woman, isn't she? My slides have actually split. I'm in pain. Oh, my God. The bubbly bobo. Was that what set it off, was it? The bubbly bobo? You can always rely on bubbly bobo. Oh, my God. Now that, that's what's going to play out for our next Twippy nomination. Right there. Just a conversation with Google. And just remember, that wasn't my opinion on anything. That was Google. That was Google. So take it up with Google. Take it up with Googs. Oh, funny. Marty, I really don't know how to speak about TX. Okay, so, you ready? You have to go first, because... Oh, fuck. Wait, I've got to get the timer out. All right. 30 seconds, Marty. Starting now. Okay, so obviously the first thing I need to talk about with Johnny Mnemonic is Keanu Reeves, bitches. He is the man, and they have put his likeness on this game. It's all I've got. Published by the great people at Man Jason McNally. Anyway, that's a Simpsons reference. George Gomez. What I love about this game is it is so fast. It is freaking fast. You have got to have your wits about you. Love the art. love the move, you know the glove that picks up the ball, moves it across and drops it into that, you know, that sort of tic-tac-toe thing for your bonuses. Time's up, bitch. All right, my turn. Go. TX Sector. Beautiful game designed by the legendary John Trudeau. Drop targets galore. And not just the normal good drop targets, those thin, shitty ones from old games. artwork that looks like you're in space or something. You've got three flippers. How many flippers does Johnny Monique have, bitch? Right? Two? I'm hoping it only has two. Okay, my time's up. You've got 30 seconds, buddy. What are you doing? Look at your face. Oh, stop. Okay. Ready? Yes. Right. So, all I'm going to say is, you only need two flippers. Three flippers are a sign that somebody's lost ideas and they need you to throw something in to randomise it. If you can have a really good fan layout just with two flippers, then you've got it made. And the good thing about Johnny Mnemonic is the returns to this are so lightning fast, you have got to be really quick to be able to get the balls back out again. The glove. That's it? You didn't even use your 30 seconds, Marty. The glove might drop. That's all I needed. Okay. My turn? Yep. George Gomez, right, you'd use him as a plies. He said in an interview about Johnny Monek that this pin was a complete failure because when the movie came out, they're like, Shit, this movie fucking sucks. Okay, 13% on Rotten Tomatoes. Even an audience score of 31. No one likes this thing. It is an absolute bomb of a theme. One of the worst movie scenes ever made. TX Sector, on the other hand, original themes, space. Everyone loves it. Everyone loves John Chodoo. He's a stand-up guy, okay? And the artwork on the side, it says TX Sector, okay? So you know what game it is. TX Sector. I'm done. Mic drop. Boom. John Chodoo, bitches. You won last week by saying Python Anghelo, bitches. That was like the main argument. So don't you do You're definitely going to win Because He's very popular Stop guys Oh my gosh This is horrible We are definitely going to pinball hell I don't think I've ever played this game Marcus doesn't have it Does he? No Okay, no I've never played this I have played Yeah Is it okay? Well, I'm not allowed to say because, you know, we'll wait till next week and then I'll tell you what I really think. I'll put that up. I usually put it up a day after the podcast so everyone has time to listen and hear our arguments and they don't vote simply based off who they like more or whether somebody's phone is nearby and it's unlocked. Marty, are you ready for our new segment? We've got another freaking new segment. Yeah, bitches, no one's done this before. Oh, honestly, seriously. It's going to be our worst segment ever because it's not a... There's people listening going, oh, fuck me. This is going way too long. Can you just get over it? But I love a new segment. Let's go. This is Pinslide. Pinslide. So what we're going to do is basically... I love Pinslide ratings. You know, ratings are fairly silly, right? Sometimes you look at what people say about a certain machine and you might like a machine and someone's rated it poorly, you're giving it a 5 out of 10 on Pinkside, and they've mentioned what they don't like about a pinball machine. And I really wasted a lot of the good ones I did during the week when I was saying, should we do this segment? Someone didn't like Attack from Mars and said that it's horrible because when you shoot up the middle, the ball always drains. And I was like, don't shoot up the middle, you can't. So I'm going to read out a review and you have to try, and these are of popular machines, that's the hint there, and you have to try and figure out what machine they're talking about. You ready, Marty? Yep, go. Okay, I've held off on this rating, and this gives me, to give me a few more tries to rate it higher in the polls. Yet, it's not too interesting and appealing to me. I would play this a couple of times on location, and I still wonder, what's missing with this one? The rules are pretty shallow, there's no real intriguing modes. I like the toys and some of the gimmicks and the regular gameplay is okay but not enough last ability to return again and again. An okay pin to play on location. If something changes my mind, I'll update my rating. Wow, that's really vague. What machine are you talking about? The key here is I like the toys and the gimmicks. What machine... I've got to narrow it down for you. What machine in the 90s and 90s has lots of toys on there? Twilight Zone. No. Oh, was I close? No. Ah, what? You were close? Yes, you were close. It's Monster Dash. Ah, my nemesis from the weekend. Okay. So, I've got one for you. You ready? Okay. This, again, I'll give you a bit of a hint. This machine is Solidly in the top ten Of machines ranked on Pinside That's pretty That narrows it down too much Here's what it says My rating may be inaccurate But I hate the fact You can't see half of the field And have no idea what the ball Is doing behind the shelf What? The shelf The shelf in inverted commas. Is there any more? That's it? That's a 4.6 out of 10 rating. Okay. Twilight Zone, you can't see a lot of the ball, but the shelf, that's more like... I'll give you another one. Meaningful Madness. I am not sure why this game is ranked so high. It does not do it for me. I am unable to get drawn in. No, that doesn't... There's like zero clues there at all. I did not find this... This is the worst rating. I did not find this to be a fun pin I thought the action was stop and go And a spongy feel to the flippers The rules are not very intuitive At all The artwork was okay I didn't want to spend time on it It felt lethargic Perhaps it grows on you I'll give you one more One more Oh my gosh I have tried to love this machine I love the movies but do not understand how this pinball machine is such a fan favourite. I really think this game lacks flow and creativity. It has a lot to do, but not interesting enough to keep me around long enough to experience it. Well, it's either Lord of the Rings or Indiana Jones. It's one of those. Okay, the shelf. The shelf is the thing on the side. Oh, gosh. I thought, what's this? Yeah, okay. You ready, Marty? Yep, I'm ready. This is in the top 100. That'll narrow down for you. Okay. This theme does nothing for me. Beyond that, it plays great. It has lots of flow, but I got bored with some really long ball times. Overall, it's just not a game I want to keep flipping. No, keep going. It's probably the game of the year, but I just don't have fun playing it. I don't like the theme or the artwork at all, and I don't enjoy the gameplay style of Pat Lawler other than Adam's Family and Shrek. I greatly respect his work, but prefer the style of Borg and Richie. Okay, so can I narrow it down by saying that it is a Pat Lawler? Yes. No good gophers? No. Okay. I would just say that because that's my most hated game of his. Okay. Man, there really aren't many bad ratings of this game. I'm into the seven range already. Some guy said, great game, fun, well made, but the theme gets old. Seven out of ten. What theme gets old quickly? Oh, well, Twilight Zone. It's a fun game, but it didn't blow me away. It feels like a modern 90s game. Why the plexi on top of the pop bumpers? Seven out of ten. Where is their plexi on top of the pump bumpers? I don't know. Okay, this one will get it for you. This is getting into the good territory. This is an 8 out of 10, but, you know. Superb layout. Smooth. With a nice variety of shots. Great lighting. Not too bright. Just right. The theme is a bit of a myth, really. A guy holding a phone just doesn't look cool, okay? Now it is. Dialed in. Yes And there we go So it's just highlighting that Really, some people just don't like Pimble So it's like we said before about Simpsons Pimble Party I know people love that game I will never love it Never? No, I just don't think Maybe if I had it in my house for a couple of months Ryan? No Nope Apparently it makes a shitload of money on site So if it's going anywhere, it's going on site Not your house Fair enough. So there you go, that was Pinslide. Pinslide. Just for the record, we do like Pinslide. I love Pinslide. It's just funny to make fun of it because it's full of gold nuggets like that. It is. Shall we go to the mailbag, wrap this thing up? Let's do it. Yes. All right, so the first one's from Michael Hyman. Hi, guys. Love the show, and you really helped break the monotony of my daily commute. It's a shame you've got a shit daily commute. Regarding your story last episode about leaving a game on to return later, I thought I'd share my story. I returned home late one evening, thoroughly refreshed from the pub, and started playing Indie 500. One of our favourites. We love that game. After about half an hour, I was getting a bit tired and emotional and then realised how well I'd been going. I was at 3.9 billion and had two victory laps stacked and ready to collect for my 500 million, and my grand champion was 4.3 billion. Impressive for me considering I could hardly focus by the stage I decided not to risk it I was on ball three so I left the machine on overnight Next morning I was still excited So straight out to the shed and I'll summarise Plunge, flip, miss centre Shot, flail, flail Sling, drain I think if you leave a game for more than a couple of minutes The mojo is gone and you're out of the zone He said, Pete let's keep up the good work And I really hope you get a gin sponsorship soon Marty Well, I'm putting it out there Just email them Applewooddestillery.com.au ArchieRoseDestillery.com.au Four pillars Any one of those Just come and sponsor us And are we done? That's it Is that it? Great Yes, that is it The only other thing is We did actually hear a note that Our TNA competition cassette winner Received their cassette And it has a message Yes Yes and I got mine as well and I did play it this week on the cassette and I left it in kind of my work area and my wife promptly said, why the fuck did you bring that out? That thing is ugly. Please put it back in the closet. So can I just give you a bit of a side note? Fun fact. I reckon one of my other secrets for doing really well at the Australian Championship Series, I listened to the Total Nuclear Alloyalation soundtrack The only thing I listened to the whole time I was playing headphones And I'll tell you why it's great music So everybody, it's great music anyway But what's really great about it is that it's a soundscape I know that sounds a bit wanky But there's nothing really, there's no vocal that takes you out Or that you sing along to You've just got this sound and this wave of sound that's appearing So it's really good for blocking everything out but still holding your interest in little blips and sounds that are happening. It is the best tournament music to listen to. I'm just putting it there. Scott Danesi, you're a fucking legend. You and your bloody rude nutsnack. Nutsnack? He's nuts on nuts. He does. On that note, head to our website, headtoheadpinball.com if you want to find all of our podcasts and all the links to our social media accounts, Facebook, Twitter. follow us so subscribe to us so your podcast will automatically download and you'll never miss any more of these three hour podcast riveting pinball news every single week there you go thanks everybody for listening another week we look forward to speaking to you again next week thank you Ryan I'm going to sing you out bitch oh yes do it I want to be the very best like no one ever was To catch them is my real test, to train them is my cause I will travel across the land, searching for a ride To teach Pokemon to understand, the power that's inside Pokemon, gotta catch them all, it's you and me I know it's our destiny. Pokemon. Oh, you're my best friend. In the world we must defend. Pokemon. Okay, we got it. Thanks, everybody. See ya. Bye.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: d83d9776-5a12-4b77-bb72-00f973d090bc*