# The Nature Episode **Source:** This Flippin' Podcast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2021-06-20 **Duration:** 105m 5s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thisflippinpodcast/episodes/The-Nature-Episode-e13473h --- ## Analysis Tommy Skinner and Taylor Reese discuss their recent pinball experiences, with focus on Tommy's new Mandalorian machine acquisition and location success. They cover Mandalorian's rules depth, casual appeal, and an early ramp durability issue that Stern is addressing under warranty. Extended discussion of Tron's design, layout parallels to Congo, and sound design excellence. Tangential mentions include a Xenon vinyl record store day release and streaming infrastructure developments. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Mandalorian placed third in revenue in first four days at Tommy's location, trailing only Tron — _Tommy Skinner, personal observation from Thursday to Monday revenue count_ - [MEDIUM] Tommy's location was 'probably' the first in the country to have Mandalorian on location — _Tommy Skinner, qualified as 'dumb luck' timing_ - [HIGH] Left ramp entrance cracked on Tommy's Mandalorian where metal protector attaches — _Tommy Skinner, direct observation; Stern responded within 12 hours confirming warranty coverage_ - [MEDIUM] Multiple players have remarked that Mandalorian's ramp plastic seems thin — _Tommy Skinner, reports from other players; Tommy speculates protector mounting design contributes to flex and breakage_ - [HIGH] Dwight (Mandalorian coder) spontaneously joined Tommy's Twitch stream and engaged with viewers — _Tommy Skinner, stream witness; Dwight acknowledged potential score imbalance in encounters upper playfield_ - [HIGH] Stern implemented a streamer mode to disable licensed music on Mandalorian — _Tommy Skinner, personal testing of feature_ - [MEDIUM] Tron's playfield layout is based on Congo (not Funhouse flipped) — _Taylor Reese, discussing playfield architecture; Tommy partially disputes but agrees on similarities_ - [HIGH] A Xenon vinyl album containing sound effects was released for Record Store Day — _Taylor Reese, confirmed by mutual friend Clark purchasing a copy_ ### Notable Quotes > "I have to say I do think Stern has a winner on their hands." > — **Tommy Skinner**, ~15:00 > _Direct endorsement of Mandalorian after hands-on play; Tommy was uncertain after watching streams_ > "That game is so wicked hard, man. This one is set up, honestly, this one is set up pretty easily." > — **Taylor Reese about Tron**, ~18:00 > _Acknowledges Tron's difficulty but notes setup can moderate challenge_ > "I realize these things happen i'm not being like goddamn stern like it happens i know stern's not happy about it either they're fixing it it is what it is" > — **Tommy Skinner**, ~35:00 > _Balanced perspective on manufacturing defects; shows Tommy's operator pragmatism and relationship with Stern support_ > "You notice something, the coder is actually there watching you play, and he saw what you saw." > — **Taylor Reese**, ~75:00 > _Recognition of Dwight's real-time engagement with community feedback during stream_ > "I didn't get a call from anybody. I didn't even get a call from Deep Root. They hired everybody, and nobody wanted me, so I had to come back." > — **Taylor Reese**, ~85:00 > _Self-deprecating reference to taking a podcast break and lack of brand ambassador offers; implies industry networking tensions_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Tommy Skinner | person | Co-host of This Flippin' Podcast; pinball operator and collector; recently acquired Mandalorian; reports location in Virginia | | Taylor Reese | person | Co-host of This Flippin' Podcast; pinball enthusiast; discussions suggest Michigan location | | Dwight Sullivan | person | Coder/designer of Mandalorian for Stern; spontaneously joined Tommy's stream to watch gameplay and engage with community | | John Cosson | person | Owner of first Haggis Pinball game; contacted Tommy Skinner via FaceTime; based in Australia | | Rachel Bess | person | Operator/designer at Electro Arcade; recently interviewed on This Flippin' Podcast; described as 'extremely talented' | | Clark | person | Founding member of Richmond Pinball Collective; vinyl record collector; purchased Xenon album at Record Store Day | | Dan St. John | person | Operator who previously owned Tron at Main Street location; played Tron regularly with Tommy and Dr. Phil Grimaldi | | Dr. Phil Grimaldi | person | Played Tron with Tommy Skinner 3-4 nights per week at Main Street location; helped Tommy learn Tron rules | | Jack Danger | person | Stern brand ambassador; referenced as dominant streamer in pinball; Jack's Ask Jack Anything podcast mentioned | | Stern Pinball | company | Manufacturer of Mandalorian and Tron; provided rapid customer service for ramp defect; implemented streamer mode | | Haggis Pinball | company | Pinball manufacturer with first game owned by John Cosson in Australia | | American Pinball | company | Pinball manufacturer mentioned as hiring podcast/media talent for brand ambassador roles | | Spooky Pinball | company | Pinball manufacturer; jokingly referenced for not offering hand modeling work | | Deep Root | company | Company that hired multiple podcast/media personalities; Taylor Reese notes they did not hire him | | Richmond Pinball Collective | organization | Community venue where Tommy and Taylor have played Tron; Congo acquired recently; located in Virginia | | North End | organization | Location/venue where Tommy works and operates machines including Mandalorian | | Mandalorian | game | Latest Stern release; Tommy's newly acquired machine; demonstrates strong operator revenue, casual appeal, and early ramp durability concerns | | Tron | game | Stern game with simple layout (Congo-based), excellent sound design, high playability at Tommy's location; Tommy recently acquired | | Congo | game | Classic layout referenced as basis for Tron; also recently acquired by Richmond Pinball Collective; comparison point for playfield design | | Funhouse | game | Referenced as potential layout comparison point for Tron (disagreement over whether Tron is Funhouse flipped) | | Ninja Turtles | game | Compared to Mandalorian's code structure; Tommy played to compare rule similarities with Mandalorian | | Aerosmith | game | Referenced for upper playfield design; Tommy notes Mandalorian's upper playfield (encounters) similar to Aerosmith's approach | ### Topics - **Primary:** Mandalorian release and early reception, Ramp durability and manufacturing concerns on Mandalorian, Mandalorian rules depth and casual accessibility, Tron design, layout, and sound excellence, Location operator revenue performance - **Secondary:** Streamer support and licensing accommodations, Stern customer service responsiveness, Pinball community personalities and brand ambassador roles ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.75) — Tommy expresses genuine enthusiasm for Mandalorian despite early ramp issue, which he frames as manageable and well-handled by Stern support. Strong positive sentiment about Tron and its design. Lighthearted, joking tone throughout. Some self-deprecating humor from Taylor about career/brand ambassador opportunities, but not bitter. Overall tone is upbeat and community-focused. ### Signals - **[product_launch]** Mandalorian achieved third-place revenue at Tommy's location within four days, trailing only Tron; suggests strong casual and operator interest in new release (confidence: high) — Tommy: 'mandalorian came ended up coming in like third out of all my games for the two week total' and 'we got a lot of play in just like four days' - **[product_concern]** Mandalorian left ramp entrance cracked at metal protector mounting point within days of operation; multiple players report thin plastic ramps (confidence: high) — Tommy: 'the entrance to my left ramp has cracked already' and 'I have heard from other people that have played it that they've remarked about how thin the plastic of the ramps was' - **[code_update]** Game coder Dwight observed Tommy's stream gameplay and acknowledged potential score imbalance in encounters upper playfield, suggesting willingness to adjust (confidence: high) — Tommy: 'Dwight jumped into the stream' and 'he said, yeah, I might take a look at the scoring on that again' - **[technology_signal]** Stern implemented streamer mode on Mandalorian to disable licensed music for streaming, showing deliberate platform support (confidence: high) — Tommy: 'they put in that setting for streamers to turn off the licensed music' and 'it's just cool for the people that do stream all the time' - **[gameplay_signal]** Mandalorian balances casual entry (easy multiball, ramp-based progression) with competitive depth (3x multiplier modes, wizard modes); appeals to location demographics (confidence: high) — Tommy: 'shoot your ramps and start a mode, which casual players can understand, plus the multi-ball starting fairly easily' and 'a lot of my casuals were appreciating it' - **[design_innovation]** Mandalorian's encounters upper playfield (similar to Aerosmith/Congo lower playfield) provides bonus scoring and engagement without lengthy ball time (confidence: high) — Tommy: 'When it is up there, it's up there so briefly that you don't really notice' but 'you can actually get some pretty big points there' - **[sentiment_shift]** Tommy Skinner's opinion of Tron improved significantly after sustained play with skilled community players; initially dismissive, now considers it a top performer (confidence: high) — Tommy: 'It took me a long time to appreciate Tron' and now 'I fully grasp what I'm doing trying to get there' with top-tier scoring achievement - **[business_signal]** Stern responded to warranty claim within 12 hours of notification (10 PM to 7:30 AM Stern time) with full coverage commitment (confidence: high) — Tommy: 'I reached out to stern that night when i noticed it like 10 p.m and i got a morning email back the next morning at 8 30 which is 7 30 stern time' - **[collector_signal]** Xenon sound effects album released for Record Store Day indicates crossover appeal between pinball and vinyl collector communities (confidence: high) — Taylor: 'for the record store day there was a Xenon release of Xenon album' and Clark 'stood in line and picked one up' - **[industry_signal]** Streaming ecosystem development: Jack Danger as primary Stern brand ambassador; community perception that other manufacturers hire media talent for promotion (confidence: medium) — Tommy: 'Jack's getting, he's some sort of a contracted Stern employee' and Taylor: 'when the pinball network became a thing, like a bunch of people like broke off and started working for companies' - **[gameplay_signal]** Tron and Total Nuclear Annihilation noted as standout examples of sound design that attracts casual players via attract mode audio (confidence: medium) — Taylor: 'what other games do that that you can think of? I mean, those two stand out to me the most' regarding sound-driven engagement - **[community_signal]** Richmond Pinball Collective acquiring Congo reflects community investment in playfield layout comparison and skill development (confidence: medium) — Tommy: 'we just got a Congo at the Richmond Pinball Collective' and context of learning Tron through skilled player community --- ## Transcript The episode you are about to hear contains explicit words. Your opinions within are those of the host and in no way imply that anyone listening to this podcast agrees with anything we say. Please send complaints to thisflippinpodcast at gmail.com. super high. I'm going to turn off my video because I'm actually, I just turned mine off as well, but I am wearing sunglasses. I saw that. You can see the sun, you can see the bright the bright sun you can't see my wife but she's staring at me i i can see her she's working outside it's really beautiful today yeah it's gorgeous up here too we just have the uh the dog out and uh we'll let her play for the neighbor dog for a bit and i'm entering some league scores and ready to talk some pinball nice man all right um i actually know what episode this is I do too I started listening to yours yesterday um all right man let's do it all right so uh you're listening to this flipping podcast I'm Tommy Skinner with my friend and co-host Taylor James Rees this is episode 112 we got all sorts of new pinball to talk about and uh I don't know what else we're going to talk about but it's our show and if you're still listening at this point you realize we never know we just keep doing it so What's up, man? Not much, man. Kids are wrapping up school, so summer's starting. Officially today, Ella will finish. She's got like a half day, so we will officially be in summer, which is great. We have a couple small trips planned this summer, so looking forward to that. And yeah, so I'm good. obviously just released an episode with Rachel Bess of Electro Arcade which was amazing it's just an extremely talented human being so that was very cool to have her on the show uh yeah she she she was amazing so um that that was cool like that was you know that was great to have happen and um yeah so that's where i am i'm out on the uh back deck it's a beautiful day in central virginia and i stayed up too late playing pinball and chatting with people across the globe about pinball so nice what were you doing that on um i got a um i got a message from John Cosson. A nice message. He just said, you know, it's nice to hear me back on the podcast and was he either enjoyed or was enjoying the episode with Rachel. And so he reached out and I asked him about Haggis pinball because I know he has their first game and he shot me like FaceTime. So we started FaceTiming it around 1 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. I was in the middle of playing Avengers and yeah so I yeah so John and I chatted talked about what was happening in Australia talked about Haggis pinball he kind of gave me like a little video tour of his game which was cool yeah and then and prior to that I was trying to talk my friend Dan into coming over around that was around 1245 to see if he wanted to play some dollar games and And he was – I don't think he was in any state to come and play dollar games. But, yeah, so – but, yeah, so it's summer, so it's kind of like my kids don't have to wake up super early, so I generally will stay up a little bit later. But, yeah, maybe I should have tapered into that a little bit more. Maybe you should realize your age is catching up to you, man. You just can't hack it anymore. You know what? Here's the thing. I'm 49 years of age, but I'm a relatively fit human being. I eat well and I take care of myself so that I can stay up and punish myself till the wee hours of the morning. So it's okay. Age is relative, man. 40, 49, 50, it's the new 25. I agree with you. talking about that with some friends recently about how like i remember my mom throwing a 40th birthday party for my dad and how it was like this huge deal and like how it seemed so old when i was seven and now like as i'm creeping up on 40 i'm like i feel like a kid still so well i figure that's a that's a good thing when i there was a certain maybe it was 45 i think 45 was a rough rough year i think i started to feel a lot then and then maybe it's just like a numbness that comes over you at some point. But at 49, yeah, at 49 I don't feel bad. My wife is staring at me going, you look pretty rough. But I let the beard go a little bit so I just get complaints from my kids when I give them a kiss on the forehead. And they're like, ow. So, I look 49. I think I'm going to do You look good. I think I'm going to do Botox. Have you ever considered doing Botox? I have absolutely not remotely considered anything like that. My wife, like, apparently, like, between my eyes, I have a 111. Like, I have vertical lines. I have that, too. And she thinks that I should get Botox. She thinks I'm looking a little, like, maybe that, maybe I look 111. That's interesting. I have the same lines. I thought that, I don't know. I accepted it. I just figured we're angry a lot. So we furrow our brow or something? That might be what it is. All right, man. Well, look, enough about my Botox. Oh, my wife is going inside. She's leaving. She can't handle it. She can't take it anymore. Oh, wait. She's on a business call. She took a business call as I was talking about Botox. So she is rushing inside and gave me the stink eye because I talked to her as she walked by me. You know what? People need to go back. I'm guessing you've got a few stink eyes throughout the marriage. It happens. You know what? Okay, let's talk pinball, Tommy, because I'm not here to talk about my marriage and my failing health. I'm here to talk about, yeah, I'm here to talk pinball. And you've been a busy person. What's up? Yeah, man, I know we recorded maybe only a month ago or so. Yeah, it wasn't too long. Yeah, pretty recent for us because I think Mando had been announced, but we were waiting to see the stream to record again. And since then, I've picked up my Mando. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Yeah, I think – I'm pretty sure we were literally the first location in the country to have it on location just by dumb luck. um but i streamed it that night uh i picked it up one of the employees at north end where i work is a huge star wars fan to where like he has multiple star wars tattoos and he brought down to the stream this like new custom built lightsaber that he got that's like when i like you know like sometimes you're you don't want to tell people what you spend on pinball machines because it's You know in your head it's crazy, even though we understand how they hold their value and stuff. That was like when he told me what he spent on having this lightsaber made. I was like, oh, that seems crazy. That sort of thing. But anyway, we played for five hours. I'm really enjoying it, quite honestly. I wasn't quite sure from just watching the stream. It looked pretty good. I was into it, but wasn't certain. and getting my hands on it and playing it, I have to say I do think Stern has a winner on their hands. It has... I saw somebody comparing it to Ninja Turtles code, which I just played some Ninja Turtles last night as well as some Mandalorian last night to try to see the similarities. And really the only thing I'm seeing that's the same is essentially you shoot the ramps to light your modes. That, to me, is not that unique, but that lines up. But then after that, Ninja Turtles scoring and rules and stuff really make almost no sense to me. Don't understand it. That's what I was worried about with Mandalorian. But with Mandalorian, they actually make sense, and I understand the scoring pretty quickly. And it's got some really good basic stuff like shoot your ramps and start a mode, which casual players can understand, plus the multiball starting fairly easily with an up-the-middle shot. um a lot of my casuals were appreciating it in just the two days i was down there watching people play it so far so that made me happy and excited i think in person the art package is even more impressive like i love the orange cabinet it looks beautiful uh playfields nice uh the multipliers you can get up to a 5x playfield but you like after just i've literally probably played like 25 games on it maybe somewhere in that range total like i fully understand how to get my multipliers and how to start them if that's something i want to do um and obviously that's going to be your path to really big scores is getting a big play field multiplier stacked with a mode stacked with a multiball so it's got some relatively simple stacking um but it's not like it's easy to do it's just easy to understand what you're trying to stack actually so so far i'm i'm really enjoying it uh only bad news is the entrance to my left ramp has cracked already uh it has a metal protector on it the ramp broke where the metal protector attaches actually so i'm gonna i was i just saw it like as i was leaving town i'm actually up in michigan uh summer vacation enjoying myself but i'm heading back tonight because we have league and i'm going to take some mylar and basically mylar down where it cracked and it's not going to be a permanent fix but i reached out to stern that night when i noticed it like 10 p.m and i got a morning email back the next morning at 8 30 which is 7 30 stern time um that you know it's covered by warranty give us your serial number and they're going to take care of it so again it's frustrating but i know stern also doesn't want that stuff to be breaking and they're taking care of it so it is what it is and that is exciting so obviously that's the biggest news with mandalorian being the hot new release on the streets and um what did i do i counted my coins before i left on monday and just from thursday to monday uh mandalorian came ended up coming in like third out of all my games for the two week total so we got a lot of play in just like four days so So your two-week total, it was third only. Third overall. It trailed Tron, which I just added in as well. Everything trailed Tron. Tron eats quarters like it's its job. That game is so wicked hard, man. This one is set up, honestly, this one is set up pretty easily. Yeah, but still. Compared to some others. But, like, I mean, it's just a fact. those lights on the that ramp like that sucks people in because i was just watching like people that don't usually play pinball go over to that one and be like well i gotta try this like and you that was and you have the modded ramps right like you have it's yeah i got the eli ramp kit on it yeah so it's the pro version but it's got the same lamp right the ramp lights as the le version um and that music's just so good on that game so good uh dude that was yeah go ahead it said just tron was basically like the first modern game i learned the rules too because dan st john had an le at his location at main street and that's the game that me and uh dr phil grimaldi literally played probably three or four nights a week together like trying to get better and understand completely and it kind of blows my mind now like we used to occasionally get to see a simulation you're gonna dance was set up really really hard but like now i just i fully grasp what I'm doing trying to get there and I think I got to it in all the three the first games I played on it maybe two out of the three first games I played on it um still haven't got to portal so it does have like this white horse that I'm chasing you know on it as well but Dan sold his Tron this past year and I was just spoiled always having access to one and then I didn't and it made me want to look for one and I found one so it was it's awesome happy to have Tron too Yeah, it's a great game. I think I remember when Tron first came out. I was at the Allentown show in Pennsylvania, and I can't remember who was selling them. Oh, man. It was a long time ago. Probably Pinball Star, I'm guessing, back then. It was Pinball Star. They've both been around a while. Yeah, it might have been Pinball Star, but he had some Trons. and I mean I remember when I first saw that game the play field just seemed so bare like nobody was interested in it I mean like people looked at that game and they were just like dude Stern is you know Stern is dying like look at this garbage they're putting out it's just a theme game and I think that they were like that the prices were you know I mean going back then it was like these they were good prices back then like they were trying to I think the LE was like 5,000 when it came out or something Well, they were, and I think that they had, like, show deals on these games. Oh, man. But it took me a long time to appreciate Tron. I think that it was just, yeah, it didn't seem like a ton of people I knew had them. I don't know that I knew anybody who had one. And then, finally, we had one at the Richmond Pinball Collective, and I got to spend time playing it, but I also got to spend time playing it with people who really understood it and really good players that got deep and could like sit there and like, Hey, this is what you want to do and then actually do it. And it really changed the way I felt about the game. I think it's, it's the rules are nice because it's one of those, it's a simple rule set, but it's difficult to master it. You know, similar to, yeah, absolutely. There's something about those games that, um, I think I, yeah, I think that that is, um, there's like that real sweet spot, right. Where it's just like, You can have a game design that's tough enough to make a skilled player remain engaged with the game. And I think that Tron is like that. I think that Tron's layout is so simple. I mean, it's Funhouse flipped, right? Is that right? Oh, it's Congo. Is it Congo? Tron's layout is just Congo. I always thought the whole thing was like if you took a Funhouse playfield and flipped it over, it was very similar. I think of the – well, maybe you don't even need to flip it over. I mean, if you look at the scoop location, I don't know. I don't have as much experience with Congo, but we just got a Congo at the Richmond Pinball Collective. Ooh, nice. You'll see. Like the gray shot is the exact same as the chorus shot. You have the whole disc in the middle and the back, which changes it from both Funhouse and Congo. But there's just, again, there's only so many things you can do with a layout unless you're Keith Elwin, and then you can just break all the rules and do whatever you want and be awesome at it. But yeah, it's a nice hybrid of some stuff. It just it just that game meshes really well together with the sound package in it. Like sound package. That's a game where I really appreciate the sound. Like it's when I turned up at location. So I'm like, yeah, you guys can hear this and nobody's going to complain, actually. I mean, that in total nuclear annihilation. I'm trying to think of sound tracks where it's like, you know, let the attract turn the attract mode, attract sounds up on that game and it'll just draw you into the pinball. I mean, what other games do that that you can think of? I mean, those two stand out to me the most. Obviously, your music pins have the music and they are what they are. But as far as other games with their sound packages, those two, I have to agree, are at the top of the list of melding the worlds of music and pinball in unique ways that really succeed. Hey, speaking of melding the world of music and pinball, did you see that there was a for the record store day there was a Xenon release of Xenon album? No. Yeah. So record store day just passed. Maybe it was Friday or Saturday. And there was a Xenon album that dropped like it's I believe it's the sound effects from Xenon. that dropped for record store day which just seems crazy but there you go that's crazy i had no idea mutual friend of ours clark picked one up oh i say i'm looking right now i found it and i had no idea and i'm guessing it's sold out at this point it's probably sold out clark clark is one of the uh founding members of the richmond pinball collective and a friend of mine and tommy's you guys chat um yeah so yeah he he was able he stood in line and picked one up so i guess next time i go over to his house i'll be able to listen to uh some xenon sound effects which is kind of like you could actually you could play it it's pretty funny you could play it and it's just i don't know why you'd want it on an album but i guess if you're a record collector and you're into pinball it's like okay go for it yeah i started collecting vinyl over the last year too not like not extensively or by any means but yeah like that would have been a sweet find for sure um so back to Mandalorian because I I so as far as the ramp goes because I know you know obviously I knew that it had broken um because you yeah yeah and have you heard of other people having that issue or does it look like you're kind of the one-off for the ramps because I I will I haven't seen anyone else but I've also been up here at the lake for three days and basically off the internet um I'm I I want to make sure everyone understands like i realize these things happen i'm not being like goddamn stern like it happens i know stern's not happy about it either they're fixing it it is what it is um i just i popped into the thread right here and it doesn't look like anyone else is having issues um for the mando owner's thread on pin side at least now the one so that's good to see i've seen i played another one on location last night theirs was not broken um other players i I didn't tell them mine had broken. But two other players commented while we were playing. They were like, man, that left ramp really seems like it's going to break when you hit it. I didn't say anything, but I was like, yeah, I think it probably is. I have heard from other people that have played it that they've remarked about how thin the plastic of the ramps was. Yeah. So I think that that's interesting. I know that when they first showed the game, I think that there were some comments made about how the ramps that were in it were prototypes. But, you know, somebody mentioned that maybe the thinness of them at the time, because I think people even mentioned it then, that they thought it was due to the prototype status. But it sounds like they ship like that, which, I mean, I think that's a little troubling. But I don't know. We'll see. I mean, that's a game. I mean, if it's a game that gets played a lot, the ramps are going to get busted. That's just going to happen. It's definitely a possibility. There's a protector there. It just seems like the protector doesn't fit perfectly snug on the ramp. So every time it gets hit, I think it had a little flex to it. And that flex, I think, led to breaking at the mounting point. That's what I suspect. The game's been great. I haven't had any ball sticks. I didn't have to take the glass off except to remove the protective stuff on the Razor Crest ship when I opened the game. But is the protector for the ramp, is it attached to a post in front of the ramp entrance? No, it's just attached to the – well, yes. So the front one is attached to a post. The back one is not. It's just got a tab on the ramp that it screws through. Is that the one that broke? That's what broke, yes. Yeah, okay. So what is it protecting? What is the actual – The side of the ramp. Okay. I'll have to take a look at it. Yeah, I mean, it's protecting the entrance. It's essentially like a cliffy on the ramp entrance. It seems okay. I just think the way it's mounted, it's obviously not the best. But again, haven't seen it happen elsewhere, and Stern is taking care of it. And the game is still playable. You just have to hit that left ramp a little cleaner, because right now the left side flexes a lot if you hit that side, and your ball's not going up the ramp if you do that. Well, yeah, that's cool, man. And other than that, did you think that the rules – I think I saw you comment about the fact that it sounded like you had gotten pretty deep into the game rules-wise. I got the stream. I actually literally right before we started recording just exported the stream to YouTube because I hadn't done that yet. So it is still on Twitch right now since our Twitch – my Twitch keeps everything up there for like two weeks. But I got to two out of the three mini wizard modes. I got to the multiball mini wizard mode because there's three different multi-balls. you put qualify all three of those then you have to qualify the fourth one which is that mini wizard mode i can't remember what it's called off the top of my head and i also got to the missions uh mini wizard mode so play all five missions and then shoot your ramps again and you'll qualify that one i did not get to the encounters which is the upper play field um the upper play field i know that was something that a lot of people kind of had questions about but i've really enjoyed it so far um it reminds me a lot of congo's lower play field in that it's it's not it's not like it's difficult like you're not a couple will walk up and they'll be able to see you have a flipper there and flip and bash some targets so that part's like fairly easy um but you can actually get some pretty big points there by hitting the targets you need to to complete the counter and then it gives you like a bonus level which starts roving uh the lit insert and if you're shooting the lit inserts your points are pretty big it's like two purple lights that rotate over uh if you hit the other ones you're not getting anything but those little bonus levels can give you some pretty big points really quick and you're not up there for a really long time uh it's a little bit i guess it would be similar to aerosmith's upper play field which i know is in the game that a ton of people have played the premium and le on that didn't seem to sell as great but i thought that was a a well-integrated upper play field when i played that game too so that does that's the one mini wizard mode i didn't get to that night and i don't think it says it's well it's not that it's that hard it's just you have to really focus on doing those encounters uh which if you're not applying the focus to that it's a lot easier to start missions or to start multi-balls than it is the encounters, I guess. Because each encounter has three levels, and you have to do three of them. So basically you're going through like nine little mini-modes on that upper play field. Wow. Yeah, it's not – the ball isn't up there all the time. When it is up there, it's up there so briefly that you don't really notice. How playable is it? I mean, is it a playable – like you're talking about making the roving shots. Like can you trap up and actually aim and stuff like that? You can trap up. The thing is, the targets you're shooting are like, what, two to three inches in front of your flipper. So you can trap up and aim. You're going to hit the target you want to hit, but then the ball comes back down so fast that it's very hard to react to. And how does the ball, the way that the ball feeds that upper play field, is it one of those things where that flipper is always energized, right? So there's something that diverts the ball to basically feed that play field. Yeah, the ramp has a diverter that actually drops down. Okay, I think I saw a picture of that. It's like a little U metal thing. I saw the ball bounce out of that from hitting that diverter so hard. It bounced out and came back down the ramp on somebody's game. That hasn't happened to me at all on my machine yet, so I don't think it's a huge concern. But I know that was something people had mentioned. Honestly, I mean, the game seems to shoot really well. We had no ball sticks. the left orbit can be dialed in a little bit better for sure there's a if you look at it there's a flasher that's mounted to some plastics that hangs over the orbit and as the ball is coming in or out of that orbit right now it occasionally hits that like it's not the best place for it to be mounted for sure but you know the rest of the shots feel pretty good other than the ramps do you seem kind of thin yeah man i don know if you can hear it but i like um oh we putting people to sleep with this thing it like the mother nature podcast it is it's like bob ross look a dragonfly just flew by i don't it's yeah it's just uh it's very relaxing so i apologize for all the background sounds no this is we're setting a whole mood with this one man uh we'll have to do like a bob ross cover or something like that I like it. Yeah. He gave me painting our logo. Hey, I like it. There we go. Yeah. So, yeah. So I think I think I'll have an opportunity to play a Mandalorian this upcoming week. So I'm super excited about that. Yeah. So it looks I watch I watch some of your stream. It looked it looks really fun. I yeah. And while I was streaming, Dwight jumped into the stream. Dwight is the coder of the game. And, you know, it's it was interesting because, again, I've openly talked about how I don't like some of Dwight's game and some of his rules he comes up with. But in there, you know, Dwight was he's like, you're always nervous when your game is about to hit the streets. And like you could tell he's genuinely excited. He was asking questions. He was telling people some of the stuff. And that was like I didn't reach out to Stern or anything. Somebody just told Dwight someone was streaming the game and he jumped in. That's awesome. I did mention on the stream that I thought, because I got like, I don't know, $35 or $50 million in a bonus level on the encounters. And I mentioned I thought that was kind of unbalanced scoring-wise. And he said, yeah, I might take a look at the scoring on that again. Cool. So it was cool to see. You notice something, the coder is actually there watching you play, and he saw what you saw. Yeah. So that was cool. But for the most part, the mode scoring seems really well balanced. Um, and again, you can activate those multipliers. So there's two standup targets on the right. You shoot those that activates one of the multipliers. Um, the other one on the left side, there's the three hunter standup targets. If you shoot those, then you have to roll in through the right in lane. I believe it is that activates the hunter mode and that's a hurry up on the orbits. and then the left side you activate the scope and that in lane and then it lights the three targets three shots on the right side uh that little u-turn shot the right ramp and one of the right stand-ups and it gives you like three seconds to shoot one of those for the scope award and all those that's what lights your play field multiplier as well as gives you like some best car to buy other stuff too uh honestly i just i think i had a lot of fun playing it i'm in i'm enjoying how was and it was really cool that they put in that setting for streamers to turn off the licensed music i did that just to test it out but like that was uh the alternate sound all soundtrack is really good as well i barely noticed that it wasn't their original music but it's just cool for the people that do stream all the time that would have trouble with a game like this knowing they'll be able to actually stream it. That's pretty sweet. That is pretty cool. That is, I mean, obviously their relationship with streaming has been huge for them and yeah, I absolutely, I mean, realistically, it's just for the most part, I know Jack's getting, he's some sort of a contracted Stern employee for certain things. Brand ambassador, I believe he's brand ambassador, you know, but for the most part, the rest of us are just like free advertising for them. Well, see, what's interesting is when I took my break from the podcast, as some people, they, people have called me a failed quitter. I, I really thought that a brand like some pinball company was going to reach out to try to make me a brand ambassador because you've seen that a lot with like when the pinball network became a thing, like a bunch of people like broke off and started working for companies like American Pinball picked up somebody, a podcaster. It seems like all these people get jobs with companies, and I didn't get a call from anybody. I didn't even get a call from Deep Root. They hired everybody, and nobody wanted me, so I had to come back. I see now. That makes sense. Now I get what you were up to. I didn't mean to say that out loud. I was trying to headhunt my I was headhunting myself around and nobody wanted my head nobody was interested so I had to come back to show them the hands man yeah well you know I've tried that I've been trying that on my social media like I don't nobody's I've never really been hired for a hand modeling job which I would think like Carhartt or somebody like hey like Ford trucks you know like go to yeah that would make sense like the the scene of like a hand grabbing a steering wheel on a truck like oh yeah that person's that's a working that's a working person's hand but nothing not a call nothing um you should try some horror film auditions perhaps you know like the hand that reaches out of the grave or something that's the thing like spooky pinball is not even calling me for like you know we want your hand to model for a backbox or something like that backbox art um but speaking of um yeah i think it's cool I think it's cool with the streaming stuff because I was going to try to dive into Pin Slash a little bit, get into some Avengers talk. Man, I kind of forgot about that. Yeah, it's crazy, right? It's been a busy couple weeks. Busy couple weeks. But, yeah, I think it's really cool what they've done as far as listening to the community, especially streaming, because I think it's just – I mean, thinking back to when Jack Danger was pretty much the only person in town, right? And now it's just like a huge network of streamers and like what Stern has done, like with adding like direct HDMI, like link to the video stuff. I mean, it's just like. Oh, they haven't done that. We're all still hacking. Oh, I thought that was something that had happened. I'm sorry. No, they never ended up releasing that board. They did design something and some people got their hands on them, but they didn't officially release it. Oh, yeah. I remember seeing that. I felt like I saw that for sale at some point and I was like, oh, that's so cool. That makes so much sense. And, well, I retract that. Stern, get on it. Yeah, I think it's something they are clearly working towards. The streaming community, though, man, like if you go into some of those threads on the how-tos, like so many people are just sharing their knowledge and making it so that more and more people can stream. And I think the pandemic had a lot to do with that, too, when everyone was stuck at home. And like Rachel said, when you talk to her, like that was their way of staying connected to, you know, their friends in the hobby. And it did open like last night with technology. It's it's so amazing that, you know, you're able to talk to John Cosson at two in the morning and get a video tour of a game that he has. Like, yeah, I guess that wasn't on a stream, but it easily could have been like those. That's what's amazing about it. And obviously, as you mentioned with Pin Slash, which you played in the first one, thanks to my COVID quarantine. I was not playing, by the way. I didn't try to get you. No, it wasn't. That was just really funny. And then this one, this Pin Slash 2.0 or whatever on Avengers Infinity Quest, like there was literally players playing in this one. they talked about it during the stream that just started streaming so they could play in this tournament oh that's so cool like carl carl created this thing and i know there's a huge team of people that helped him work it all out but it's basically carl's brainchild um that led to a rise in streaming because people wanted to be able to participate in this new tournament format and i have to say even though i didn't win spoiler alert uh it was awesome to play in it was a lot of fun i get why you had so much fun on the first one now because like the qualifying thing like i enjoy streaming i don't enjoy setting up streaming i'm the same way so when i put up a good qualifying score after like 20 minutes i was stoked because then i didn't have to qualify for the next like six yeah that's exactly how i felt like yeah some people put in like i and i didn't play avengers much because i've been bringing in so many new things that i've been playing but like some people qualify for like 40 hours yeah like 40 hours of streaming that's like three years worth of streaming for me essentially yeah uh but it's if that's what they enjoy doing that's awesome uh but i definitely enjoyed playing in the tournament even with like the long wait times between games because it was so well produced that i was still watching the actual like streaming of the tournament in between my games where i'm supposed to be playing i had it at the bar and it's neat to see the interviews with the different players get their backstory if they stream often or if it was because of the tournament all that stuff um it was just really high one of my friends who i told was you know i was playing in it you know tune if you can he couldn't believe how like professional it seemed and i was like yeah like they put a ton of work into this thing and it makes me excited to think like i'm curious what the next one might be now like what's the next game they're gonna put into uh a pin Slash like i'm excited i want to make sure i have access to it so i can participate again i think it's going to be interesting as well now that i think the next pin Slash with locations opening back up like one of the things with pin Slash and i assume it's going to continue is that you can only have one person qualify per location. So it's going to be really interesting because you do have a lot of locations that are set up to stream. Like you will have, you know, you're going to see like amazing, amazing qualifying scores, right? Because you're going to have so many people. It's going to be like, who's going to be the top qualifier from this location? Not even like, you know, I mean, if I sit in my basement, I'm the only one that can qualify out of my basement. but if I had five of my really talented friends over, there's no way that I would qualify higher than them. So it's going to be really interesting. It'll be really interesting because the caliber is just going to get intense. And I think it's also going to be interesting because I think there's going to be a lot of, I think that's going to be a moment where you can have a lot of unknown faces show up. And I think that they did it as well. I mean, there were a lot of like known players in this most recent pin Slash, but there are also names that I had never, I had never heard. Yeah, there was new people that I was, I didn't know who they were either. And that's cool too. What was the qualifying? The qualifying was what? I don't quite exactly. You had to play the battle royal mode, which keeps track of – it's one of the many wizard modes. But it keeps track of your time, your score, and most interesting, the number of flips that it takes you to beat it. And that's what they actually used for the qualifying standings this time was the number of flips. so the basic strategy that seemed to get developed was to hold your flippers up at all times so you're not uh using more flips to do live catches and stuff uh you needed to bring in wasp to the mode which means you need to shoot the far right shot so on the premium le it's the scoop on the pro it's a stand-up target and if you plunge just right you could get lucky enough to get a slingshot bounce into there off the plunge which some people started using that strategy so you're eliminating even another flip there uh and then from there you need to essentially shoot the tower and then hit the hawkeye loop up top because it does extra damage uh so that did extra damage and being in the wasp multiball did two attacks damage too so i think somebody again this stuff blows my mind because I can't make my brain compute things this way. But somebody figured out a perfect, absolutely perfect game, getting that slingshot bounce into the ant or into the wasp to start that multiball, would be eight flips. So you'd have to have at least eight flips. I think the top qualifier ended up having 11 flips. What's your objective, though? Your objective is to shoot all the shots? Yeah, so when you start playing this mode, you are one of the Avengers. You have all six of your Avengers, and you're fighting all five members of the Dark Order. And all the shots are basically lit at the start. And as you shoot a shot, it deals damage to the Black Order member. And that is then unlit until you damage them enough to kill them. And when the next Dark Order member comes in, all the shots are relit. But you're not defeating the entire Dark Order. You're not. You are. You're fighting all five of them. yeah so okay so the the the best qualifying score was 11 flips 11 flips so he defeated all of them in 11 flips yep because you basically you start the the the multiball so everything is taking 2x damage so every shot you're hitting is giving that guy to the villain 2x damage and if you were hitting it with a hawkeye combo up top i think it was like four or eight x damage so you're basically killing each one in that that combo shot tower and then hawkeye wow yeah it's it's crazy that's like i got i think mine was 22 flips but i it was literally my fourth game that the three games before that were like 130 120 and maybe 80 flips like wow i just put together like a really quick game all of a sudden and got a little bit lucky um and it's it's interesting when keith creates those modes how it does give you a different way to play that game um in pin Slash round one i was playing against Andrew Rosa, Andy Rosa's son, who I've known for most of my time in pinball now. And it's crazy because he was like a little kid when I met him. And now he's a college graduate, I believe. Wow. Or about to be. And he's a very good player. He's been playing his entire life. And we know each other. So it's kind of fun to be paired up with someone, you know, in the first round. And we basically said to each other, like, yeah, well, whoever wins, the other one will get him back at pinball at the Zoox. We always play each other up there. So that was fun to get in play someone you know we ended up going to overtime because we ended up tied great match the three challenges it was a great yeah it was a great match it was our times were just so close to each other it was it was really interesting to see how it was done they had to do an instant replay to check his time on his last challenge because he was less or right around a half a second over one of the time gaps from where the points would be it was a whole it was the hulk challenge right like you had to get yeah i believe that was it i think he was at like 30.67 seconds or something and if he was at under 30 he would have gotten an extra five points and we'd have been tied to force overtime which when they reviewed it he was which i they had three-time reviewers and i totally trust the whole system and i was like this is gonna make for great content because we're going to overtime which i hadn't seen done yet what we didn't know we thought the overtime was just going to be another challenge and instead it was you had to play through that black order multiple yeah so it was like we're back to the qualifying format but now it wasn't And on flips, it was based on your time. And we still ended up finishing really close to each other. I think I ended up winning by like seven seconds, which is not that big of a time difference when you're talking about that mode. No. The entire match was really competitive because I think the first – so you have three – you basically have three rounds per match. And the first match – and this was the second round. Is that correct? The second round of the – No, it was the first round. It was the first round? Yeah, I did not get a box. Okay, and so the first round was a Tier 1 challenge, right? Yeah, we had to start Hawkeye. I actually have the sheet of paper. I wrote them down. Start Hawkeye. So you had to shoot the three stand-ups. So you were playing on a premium. He was playing on a pro. You had to shoot the three stand-up targets and then shoot the tower, and then that gives you the animation for Hawkeye, right? Yep, correct. And you won that one. I won that one pretty big, I think, by 10 points. Yes, you had a 10-point advantage going into the second objective, second challenge. Uh-huh. And then our second one was collect level one Black Panther, which I think is something like eight or nine shots to the right orbit. I think it's nine shots, but you also have to, after you get past the first, the level one thing is very confusing to me because you get. Yeah, you think initially it should be level one. Right. Like when you first collect them. Yeah. So first you collect them, then there's level one, and then there's level two, even though it's your third time collecting. When you first collect them, you don't have to hit a different switch. You can just hit the right orbit over and over again. But once you get past collecting them and going to earn level one, that's when you have to have another switch hit. See, I didn't even know that. I think that's the way it works. At least I think that's the way it works. Because I know that's how it works with Black Widow. um yes i know black widow you definitely have to because you're better off doing like center ramp and then captain marvel ramp and then back to center ramp um yeah and then your third one was the hulk challenge which yeah that's a bunch of spinner heads like 190 spinner heads i will say i watched uh andy rose's dad play and oh yeah with his 63 spins yeah like that spinner was so juiced up like i i have i gotta get my brain lube out and um hit my spinner because that's ridiculous i will say i played a led zeppelin i think i played it after i we talked last time i played led zeppelin and the opto spinner on that game is just a freaking beautiful thing i oh yeah like all spinners should be up to spin all like you created it make them that way i wonder i mean all they're gonna do is adjust the rules like any game you needed 30 spins now you need 50 spins or 60 yeah but i still just want to see the spinner spin oh yeah it's crazy i mean like just and so satisfying just to see it like yeah i i don't know i don't i don't know if you could like retroactively if you could go in if somebody can make a mod for avengers and make that into an opto spinner please put me on the list yeah those things are very cool um but yeah so i ended up surviving that first round with the the overtime victory and it was uh i had fun it was very cool i was like legitimately excited when i i had it's kind of funny because i had the stream on in my headphones while i'm playing but it's obviously delayed so i'm getting Steven Bowden and snow galvin's commentary but like a couple seconds late yeah so like i don't realize like how close we are what's going on and i like literally was like woo or whatever or yelled when i i won and there was a i was playing at my location i moved avengers kind of like up onto the stage so i had space and stuff but i also made the mistake of putting it like right where mandalorian and tron and led zeppelin are right behind me all the new stuff so there's people out there playing and they somebody told me the lady like behind me jumped when i yelled because i'm usually a pretty quiet and composed player but i was uh i was genuinely excited to survive yeah it's it i i felt the same way when i was able to get through my first round yeah it was it's it's pretty cool um yeah the delay is the delay is interesting because you don't necessarily know what the other person has done and then oh i think that i had i had a situation as well where they went back and they had to review the tape and so yeah you're just kind of like uh you know what's going to happen but yeah it was um yeah it was really cool so first round was a victory second round i don't know that i saw your second round but i don't second round i played i think it was zach mccarthy who i think ended up winning the whole thing i think that's i think that's right yeah and um our first challenge was to start any super mode and you do that by getting a a tic-tac-toe on the drop targets over on the computer grid. What I didn't know was that you want to create an X, not a plus sign, because the plus signs are not super modes. So that probably sounds confusing, but you got a three-by-three grid. You basically want to get one of the diagonal or the sides or the tops, but not a plus sign. So not right down the middle column in either direction. Oh, really? Vertical or horizontal. Yeah, yeah. See, that would have been good to know, right? Because I did not know that. And I shot a different one. And then about three seconds later in the commentary, I hear Steve and Snow be like, oh, Tommy did not want to do that. And I was like, I didn't want to do that. Uh-oh. And I ended up losing the first challenge by like a significant amount. So I was down 15 points by the time I completed it. What I really did like in the scoring is like I've played in a previous head-to-head tournament where it was just whoever finished the task first won. So it's a little faster, but once the other person won, I have no incentive or reason to keep playing. It's over. I've lost. Here, when you hear on the commentary that the other person has completed it, like suddenly there's even more pressure because now you're like every second matters here that I need to finish this in to keep the score. as close as possible so that was really interesting to have that uh scoring system in place for the the tournament as well um so anyway from that challenge yeah i'm down 15 heading into our second one which ended up being collect h in thor which means i i believe if i understand right i had to start thor multiball get a jackpot shoot the captive ball and then get a double jackpot and then shoot the captain ball i think i don't even know i don't understand i'm not sure yeah i'm not totally sure wrap not right regardless i won i i got five points back on that one so i was slightly faster and then our last challenge which i thought was going to be very easy was uh just a score challenge 50 million points oh and it ended up being not that easy like that's one of those games where i think keith does this well in all his games but your score just sort of um exponentially grows the longer and deeper you play into the game so like it takes a while to get to like 50 or 100 million but once you've gotten that far everything starts scoring more together and your score jumps faster yeah so anyway that first 50 million is kind of tough to get to and i did end up winning and then i'm just kind of like sitting there listening waiting for him to finish and he was really struggling for some reason and he was down to ball five and had he drained he wasn't going to get that score and he was going to have to start over and it was pretty much going to guarantee that i'd win oh yeah okay i did i saw the tail end of his game yeah it was very close and he drained out with like 49 million 300,000 or so and his bonus was just over a million so he ended up passing it on the bonus wow um but like i couldn't believe it and like i don't know if i've ever rooted so hard against someone in my life so sorry zach uh congrats on winning but man and that last ball when he's on ball five i was just like because we had to turn off all ball saves in the settings so i was like oh man if he just gets like a bad plunge somehow or it feeds those pops he goes down the middle like i'm gonna to actually advance wow and uh it did not happen he ended up beating me by five points um i only gained five back in the challenge and then uh he went on to win the whole thing which i uh i didn't i ended up after i was done i'd been at the bar at that point for like eight hours so i takes a little while to pack up all the gear and move the game back to where it usually is and stuff and then i think alissa and i went out and got some dinner and after that uh i did tune in to see the very last match. It was him against Dalton, another young guy from Georgia. And it was pretty close. And then what was really impressive was their last challenge was a score challenge again, but this time it was 200 million. And Zach did Soul Gem on hard mode, which I still haven't beat at all. And he beat it in the finals of a big tournament while streaming. and it got 180 million points just for that mode damn it was that it was really really impressive that's like i was like damn and that's that he already had a pretty big lead but that just sealed the victory wow uh it was cool so and i think that's great because both those guys i know i think zach's only like 15 and i'm i don't think dalton's he might be a young adult like 18 to 20 something like that i don't think he's 21 and he was streaming on location at i think portal actually down in Georgia. Yeah, I think he plays at Portal. I think I saw Brian posted that he was going to be playing representing that location That awesome man Yeah so that very cool That very cool that yeah it yeah that clutch man uh i never uh man soul gem i still i i still don get the gem stuff i still having issues with that but we can we can dip into that for a minute when we're done with pin Slash um yeah i think that i think carl and the entire production is just amazing and And, yeah, I'm really interested to see. I watched some today, I think at least on the Twitch, on his Twitch channel. I don't know if he's got a YouTube one as well. But I think there was like 6,000, 6.3 thousand views or something like that, which is I guess it's kind of impressive. But it seems like for pinball, that's a lot. Yeah, pinball. That's a lot. But I'm not sure like what. What what's going to make it take that next step into I mean, like, you know, there's streams that just have been watched a million times. Like, what is it that's going to make it like make that leap bridge that like big number thing? And I think I just don't think it's possible for pinball because of the barriers to entry and the cost of the machines being so high or if they are on location, you know, getting there. It's just it's it's going to remain a niche hobby. I do think if there is any sort of bigger market for pinball competitively or streaming, it's going to be in a tournament format like that where the matches are much shorter time. I think the time is still an issue. Yeah, we have a very short attention span. I think the total stream was like nine hours. Yeah, I mean, it was an all-day event. Which is just not something that almost anybody I know can sit and watch. Or even participating in an event like that can be, that's a long haul, right? I mean, like, hey. Oh, I was tired. I don't think the final got over until, like, 11 something. Yeah. My time. Carl being on the West Coast, we kind of started with their times to work out everything, which is fine. I'm putting you to sleep with all the nature calls. But, yeah, I was tired that day. But, yeah, congratulations to Zach. We think Zach won. and everybody who worked on Pin Slash because it was obviously a success and we don't know the next one I guess I know after the first one Carl wanted to take some time to recuperate because he does put a ton of time and effort into it but obviously Keith's games have been used so far because Keith has created these masterpieces. So with him rumored to be the fall release, I wouldn't be surprised if this just becomes maybe a I don't know, once a year or twice a year tournament. I could see how you could do it on some other games. I know Ninja Turtles has some sort of a mini wizard mode that you could use for qualifying. I think Mandalorian does, but I'm not sure. I haven't spent that much time on it yet. um but i just the thought process that goes into creating all the challenges let alone actually like making physical marketing materials that advertise to your players what the challenges are and everything like that like it is a a ton of effort and it's not like carl's raking in big bucks from hosting the stream and stuff like it's just not reality yeah it'll be interesting to see with the next one i it would be interesting to see if he ever went back and did like a classic like an attack from mars or something like that or if it's just not it's yeah i mean i could see you doing that with one of the with the remakes making them so much more uh available that would make sense to have one of those in there somehow um does does what's been interesting is they've use such unique ways of qualifying with these mini wizard modes. So it's not just people getting, it's not just people who are always putting up high scores. It really alters the way you play the game to beat those wizard modes. On those two, that's what I think has made them so unique. Yeah, man, the Black Order thing blows my mind. 11 flips. I have to, I am just so inadequate of a player. I can't even like know where it is. Well, and that's kind of the crazy thing too. Not crazy, but it's interesting because when you're playing, there is no flip counter actually on the display. So you don't really, like while you're playing, you're kind of counting and trying to keep track. Yeah. But it's hard, and you're waiting. Once you've beat it, you're waiting for the totals to pop up on the screen to see how many flips it was. So when I put up the 22, I was in second place at that point. And I ended up dropping down. I think I ended up like 12th or 13th. Yeah. I think you were 12th. Yeah. So it was, uh, I mean, I just watched my name keep falling down that list. And when they, when it started, they thought it was going to be like, I think they thought 40 flips would probably be the cutoff. I think it ended up being like 27. That's amazing. Like it was, it was crazy how low the scores got. And it's, it's also neat because you have to do it while you're streaming. So once somebody, does put up a really low score and you see how they did it everybody else can mimic it yeah that's like okay so that's the path yep so and i think that's the same reason pinball has grown so much overall is because kind of like how you're being stubborn and you refuse to watch tutorial videos to learn how to use your gems so you don't understand them like yeah well back in the day you didn't have that option so people had to pump in so many quarters to figure out what was going on with these that's why i play my game now like thousands of times yeah it makes sense uh now you can watch one video for 10 minutes of your life just 10 minutes of your life taylor and understand something and use that knowledge going forward to benefit you and then you can share that knowledge with others and it's it's just that's why i think pinball the skill level has risen so quickly over the last five years for everybody because we all have access to this knowledge now that's being shared via video formats where we can watch and re-watch until we fully understand something no no unless you're playing ninja turtles and then the scoring just makes no sense so i you know i appreciate the digs you took at me and yeah i want yeah i will say that i have in playing through playing i have learned a lot about how the gems work where I want to put them. Yeah, the gems make a lot more sense to me now. And I've won like four gems. I haven't gotten all six yet. But I have seen where like there is a billion point. I think somebody posted something about like getting a billion points for something. Somehow they were using the gems. and you get all six gems and you get to battle thanos it's an automatic billion yeah that's what it is well but there's also there's also a way to get a ton of points by it's like you place a certain gem on the captain marvel ramp you put reality on the captain marvel ramp and you put time on the center ramp okay and so basically because you are your yeah so it ends up giving you a ton of points now yeah so there's the captain marvel hurry up thing and it gets multiplied each time you get right and it can you can basically just put up a massive score um but it's really hard to do it's really hard to do now um so i i've learned about the gems i have my own personal thing i i i really like the gems now that i understand them i don't necessarily know the nuances for playing them like others, but I do understand how they work. Um, I think it's really, I think they're really well done in the fact that when I go to select which one I want to play, I'm like, man, almost everything. I almost want to play everything. You know, it's like, I want to play the power up because it makes sense to power up and have it carry over, right. Which is the red one, which is like the Hawk or the reality gem, which is a shot multiplier. Like That makes sense to have it. Or do I want to be able to – what's another one? What's the mind – the mind gem allows you to collect a shot, or is that the one that allows you to move? I think mind allows you to collect, and space allows you to move. Space allows you to move. So usually – And that's the one that, like, I still don't totally understand. So what happens with the space gem is if you collect the space gem, you place the space gem. When you hit the Space Gem shot, you can hit your action button on the lockdown bar, and it will move all of your gems over to the right one spot. So, like, let's say you have your Power Gem, and let's say you use it on Hulk, and you max out Hulk. So then you hit your Space Gem shot, and you move everything over. So you could basically, you could, by using Space Gem and your power-up, you could basically lock everything in to where everything is completely powered up, and it would carry over to your next ball. Right? Ah, interesting. Yeah, so that's, so those are the type of nuances that I have, I understand the gems enough to where I am now trying to work on those nuances. But what's, you know, so it, yeah, so that's interesting. I a lot of times I'll put reality on the drop targets because it makes your drop targets easier. I believe you just have to knock down two opposed to three to collect whatever the grid is. I don't completely understand the grid as far as how. You because there is a there's a like computer grid or there's a there. I think there's a multiball tied to the grid. Right. So similar there is if you just complete enough to take shows. It's like computer mania. Computer mania. And I do not understand that. And I do not understand. Like, can you actually collect everything? Like, can you collect all the lamps? Like, can you complete the grid, like make it a solid grid? Or does it always it always resets between as soon as you get to take that toe? It clears it. So, yeah, I'm not sure about that. I don't think I've gotten very close to like the computer grid multiball. But in general, as far as the gems go, I feel pretty dialed in to what you're supposed to do. I put up scores of like $300 million to $400 million pretty regularly. I've been getting to Black Order Multiball, which is like the second mini Wizard Mode. That Wizard Mode, I don't understand. I do understand it, but I just... The thing about Avengers for me is that I found – like when I'm in single – like it's really fascinating to me because when you're in single ball play, obviously there's risk involved with when you're playing these modes because you're in single ball play. But as soon as you add a second ball to that play field, it makes all these like very makeable, like great flowing game. It turns it into such a flail fest for me. And so, you know, it's kind of like you get your portal locks and you get your multiplier. Yeah, that's great. But once I start playing like any of those modes with three balls in play, all of a sudden I'm like, well, I earn every three X or whatever I'm getting because this is just ratcheted up the difficulty level of the game, which I think is great. Like, I think it's just really well done. I feel like I don't know. There's some there's some games where it's just like if you've got balls in play, you're going to be getting points. And I just don't feel that. And then every once in a while I feel like I have a connection and I can actually do some flipper skills while in multiball. But yeah, Avengers is pretty impressive. Now, I will say I am having an issue with my game where my portal lock, the disc, so I have the premium. The portal lock disc that raises up out of the playfield, it's not in plane with the playfield. So I've seen some owners have issues where the level of the disc is not in line with the playfield, and there's ways to adjust that underneath the playfield. And there's also a fix that Stern has sent out that replaces these bushings that apparently are used for leveling somehow. I don't quite understand that, but mine is actually like it's almost like one side of the top of the portal disc is lower than the other side, but it actually carries it around. So it's it's yeah, it's out of plane. So I actually have a kit coming from Stern today that's supposed to fix that. So it'll be interesting to see what I get in the mail today. Oh, nice. Well, I hope that does fix that for you. Did you ever fix your subway issue? I have not fixed my subway issue. Yeah, so there have been multiple issues with the subway. The most common one that I've seen is that there's actual – the mechanism down there that, like, traps the balls. It's kind of like these three – I think it's three teeth that come up. I haven't really delved into that too much, but there's like three teeth come up and it traps the ball and it allows the ball to. I don't know what's the I don't know the term, but to basically like get set up to get kicked out of the out of the scoop. And original I think the original lock mechs that they had down there, like they were binding, like I don't know. I don't know why. Like maybe it was riveted too tight. So that was jamming up. So mine had that replaced. My issue is that when the ball goes into the subway, I end up getting multiple balls kicked out. So it's almost like a trough issue, like a classic WPC trough issue. and I'll be playing and I'll get a ball, you know, I'll get a portal lock and then I will plunge a ball and I will, I'll do something and I'll just release that ball. So I don't know, I don't know what is causing that. So I just, I basically like just turn that off. And so the ball, when the ball goes into the subway, it just plays through, which is kind of a bummer. Like it's it's like, well, that seems I've heard people talk about turning that ball trough off because they just they like the speed of the game. But I just want my game to work 100 percent. So it's kind of annoying. But at the same time, like I, I don't want to start digging into it too much because I just I I want to play the game. But now that I'm having this this portal disc issue now, I've got to like I've got to take that apart. So I think I'm going to go in and try to like figure out the trough issue. so hopefully i get that i like the trough quite a bit uh but i like it because it does give you that time to chill while you uh put a ball down there and i also like nice i want the ball to feed out of there i mean that's the other thing is like when you want to when i'm starting a multiball or i'm starting so if i'm starting a mode i want the ball to feed out of there especially like if i have the iron man lock ready to go like that's just like boom hit that you know Yep. So I'll get it figured out. It was interesting to me because we had to turn the subway off for Pen Slash. So that was the first time I'd really played it without one. And how much it alters, like how you're locking the balls for portals and how you're starting modes. It was interesting. It definitely changes the gameplay. So really, once you do get that fixed, I think it will feel like a new game to you as well. So that's kind of nice. Now, have you had any issues with your game? Yours is a premium, right? It is. The only thing I had happen was my wire form that feeds the right inlay. The weld broke on it. Yeah, I've seen that. And Stern sent me a replacement. So, yeah, that was it. Otherwise, my knock on wood, my disc and my subway have actually worked the entire time. um i did do something really stupid and accidentally install pro code on it at one point and turns out if you do that the subway and the portal do not work at that point in case you were oh really yeah weird that's so weird how that works yeah oh man but otherwise no i've been that one's been really solid for me um made and i've basically had no issues on other than like I had the bad play field initially and they replaced that on Jurassic Park. I had an interesting issue happen where the truck somehow. So the way that mechanism works is you shoot the captive ball right in it through. What's the connectivity? I can't remember. Some sort of force. Newton. The ball. The Newton. Jumps from side to side and moves the truck. uh somehow that shaft that the truck is on had gotten twisted or bent what so the little piece of metal that hits the optos under the playfield to tell you where the truck's at well when mine would spin one direction it would actually hit both optos uh-huh it was so misaligned yeah and it was awarding like insane points in some of the modes where you need to be moving the truck back and forth because it thought i was moving it back and forth incredibly like fast and a lot so somebody was hitting like billion point shots i think the highest score on my dress of park right now is like 16 billion oh my god that's crazy yeah that was an interesting one to track down but again otherwise uh really solid um you know i've talked about it i think you know briefly before and again i've got a broken ramp right now you've got a broken portal thing and but stern is taking care of us and it's really hard to beat like the stern pro pricing specifically for for operators especially when it comes to like a reliability stance like my other than like your typical cleaning and changing rubber stuff i mean even going back as far as like my metallica um i've had to replace one switch on you know like it's they're really really easy to put on location and then not have to think about a lot outside of like the cleaning maintenance which is kind of freaking nice i won't lie and has stern i mean does it seem like stern has been able to deal with the play field pulling issues that they've had or i mean i i my avengers My Led Zeppelin and so far my Mandalorian. All look good. All look good. Yeah. And I have inspected them because it's something I want to keep my eye on. Because when I have had issues, Stern has taken care of it. But I want to make sure that if there is an issue, I'm able to notify them as soon as possible about it. So it does seem that I know with Jurassic Park, they started removing the artwork around posts. and that seemed to let the clear get better adhesion to the wood and some stuff like that. So I do think whatever it is that they seem to have discovered is working. I know I've sadly seen lots of photos of problems with the Guns N' Roses playfields out there. The one I had while I had it, it didn't have any problems. But, you know, it's definitely something that exists, And I know those people are, especially those people who bought those collector's editions, are really struggling to get them replaced. And I feel bad for them. It's one of those things. I've seen a lot of those for sale unopened. Yeah, I would be scared to open it if I was somebody. I get it. I would not want to buy one unopened, I'll tell you that much, if I was going to, for some reason, look into buying that game again. which I can promise you I never ever will and and what was it that you just what was it about that game that you just did not like I mean I didn't have fun playing it I mean it was a such a combination of things um that I just I did but the bottom line was like I just did not have fun yeah like yeah it's not not for me um Jersey Jack maybe Jersey Jack games aren't for me I I the only one I've ever had like a a good amount of fun while playing is dialed in and the rest are kind of like I don't know do you not not my thing do you think that they're overly do you think that they're overly complicated I I I mean I own a Wizard of Oz and I love it I mean I think it's an amazing game oh I remember we did a whole segment on your Wizard of Oz tutorials back in the day. You know, I did have playfield issues back then. I mean, so Jersey Jack has had playfield issues for their entire existence. But, you know, it's a really complicated game. And I think that Jersey Jack has, they have, I mean, it's kind of like they are selling the Lexus of pinball machines as far as like bells and whistles. Like when I think of like what would be my, you know, my dream theme, like a Harry Potter or something like that, like I only see Jersey Jack making it because of their willingness to like throw the kitchen sink at it right but at the same time i think going back to you know like the twilight zone like maybe there's a sweet spot that they're just like they're going past where it's just it's too much like there's just too much stuff on the play field or there's just too many opportunities for things to go wrong now i haven't heard of like i haven't heard of any like mechanical stuff going wrong with guns and roses there were some problems on the left ramp diverter were burning up coils and stuff. I mean, and that's, like, every game has its problems. Every game has its problems. We just talked about Stern. We just talked about the problems we were having with Stern pinball. Yeah. You know, to me, it's just, because I really like Avengers, and you're not going to try and tell me that's a simple game. But it's a simple layout. It's not a, it's. Avengers? Okay, okay. It's not necessarily a simple layout, but when you look at Avengers, I mean, it's a fan layout, but most games are. And I don't mean simple. I don't know how to explain it, but it's almost like Jersey Jack games are overly complicated. Like, I am like pirates. Like, there's some amazing stuff going on in that game, but it's just like it's overly complicated for me. Like, I've never really been able to get my head wrapped around the game. I've only played it on location and it shows, so I haven't camped on games that I feel like I really know. But you know what I mean? I just feel like, I don't know, maybe the sweet spot that their games need to be at is just like they just haven't found it yet. You know, I think that maybe. But I mean, at the same time, their games are selling out and they're selling a ton of them. So if anything, I'm the oddball in there. um but i just think people are paying for uh fancy light shows and code that's so deep but they'll never see most of them like ever uh and again like to me the shots just don't feel good oh interesting like on guns and roses the shots like it was not fun to shoot okay for me okay like that i did not enjoy it i didn't think there was anything special on any of the shots on the game other than i kind of liked the little like inner inner orbit spinner shot was okay that one i i'd hit like oh that felt good but there wasn't that there wasn't that like satisfaction shot like like on on avengers like hitting the marvel ramp like especially like the marvel ramp or the tower or the gauntlet ramp from any of the flippers like you know what yeah i backhanded the marvel ramp last night yeah that's all i was it was awesome like i was just like i just i hit it i backhanded it and i it wasn it was on the fly it wasn necessarily intentional i think i was probably like trying to slap save or something like that and i was like i just made the marvel ramp with a backhand yeah i mean it was it was incredible and then when you hit the um you hit the hawk challenge ramp that feeds back like oh yeah it's like in especially like you bring the portal up this is one of my favorite things like you bring the portal up before you want to bring it up so then you're like oh now i got to get a portal lock so i can at least be in a multiball and then the ball feeds up to iron man you get like a lock and then it drops and you're like man if i could hit that ramp to like get a combo like so i can get my portal lock and then you hit it yeah it's super satisfying um and it's nice timing on that ramp too like it gives you some time like there's a there's like a oh it's a little countdown light show thing yeah it's good stuff man um yeah and I don't get that. I think Dialed In and Willy Wonka both shoot really well for Jersey Jack. I don't think Wizard of Oz is a good shooter, personally. It's a packed game. That one's loaded with stuff, but I wouldn't say it's a great shooter. No, it's not a great shooter. It is a – I think theme integration is amazing. Yep, I give it that. I think theme integration is one of the best. It's one of the best. Just in play out, in play field design, the way it's laid out with the good versus evil sides. The upper playfields, I think, are really unique and do cool stuff. I don't know. I just think that game is amazing. But I agree. The shots are pretty limited. But it's still an amazing game. I still think Wizard of Oz is the best Jersey Jack game they've made. and I can't argue against you because I don't have time to experience on them. But again, this like different strokes for different folks. So I know there's people that are fanboys of different companies out there. Uh, it's just how it goes. So, but, uh, yeah, well look, um, we can wrap it up, but I do want to ask you, um, what, what, what title as an operator? Cause one of the, one of the, One of the things that was great about talking to Rachel and I think just with the opening up, you know, post pandemic is the idea that locations I think locations are going to explode. Right. Like it's just going people want to go out. They want to be social. And pinball is just a really great social event because you go, especially you're playing a multiplayer game. You're playing a four player game. You're going to sit around a bunch. And while you're doing that, you're hanging out with your friends, right? So what company, I mean, because not even like, let's not even speculate on what the next titles are. But like, what company for you is the one to watch for making a game that's going to be like the next Addams Family pinball machine? i mean if stern gets harry potter through kapow licensing you think that's gonna be the one yeah i mean that's just that is the most there's literally a theme park you know what i mean yeah like yeah dedicated to that multiple locations yeah and it's something that i mean you're pushing 50 right yeah and you're familiar with and enjoy harry potter yeah it's amazing i'm mid 30s i'm familiar with and enjoy harry potter you're not mid 30s are you really i'll be 36 next month man god bless yeah uh your dad you could be i guess you'd be young one but you're in indiana that's true uh and then i'm trying to think like like kids i see at high school like in my classroom are still reading harry potter yeah and i think the movies were so well done it's not like i was talking to someone recently about how how big game of thrones was and then how quickly it disappeared from our society partially because of how bad that last season was yeah harry potter didn't end that way ended on a pretty high note so it's still looked upon favorably as even as it's come to a conclusion and it's extended into the other movie franchise i can't remember what it's called the creatures one yeah um yeah you know what i'm talking about um so it's just so widespread it's so universally universally beloved that i think and i i genuinely think that if you got that licensing i understand completely what you're talking about how that would fit so well within a jersey jack machine oh yeah and i get that but personally i rather see stern do it because i think it will get delivered on much faster and i i would honestly be okay if stern released it in like multiple parts like they literally made two separate harry potter games over a couple years you know harry potter years one through four kind of like they did with the lego games yeah they made lego video games so they did like i think years one through four and five through seven something like oh man it because there is so much content that you could easily split it up and i think you would still sell you know i think locations would absolutely put both of those machines there because they'd be a couple years apart let's say you know something like that And you could even tell us that, look, we're doing years five through seven, but it'll be another three years and people would just be pumped. Oh, people would be people would buy all three before they were. I mean, like if you could buy the L.E. like if you could go. Oh, absolutely. You would buy everyone. You'd want the same number. And there are absolutely like Harry Potter collectors out there, probably far more Harry Potter collectors than there are pinball collectors, where that would be like the grail piece of their collection. And it would be something you could put in a bar or in a kid-friendly arcade, and either way people are going to play it. A friend of mine was just in Universal this week and was at Harry Potter World, and even, you know, just not even fully post-pandemic, whatever, but he said it was the most crowded place they've seen. It was packed. There's people that have death. He couldn't believe how many Death Eater tattoos he saw. Oh, really? Which made me laugh because I was like, yeah, they're the bad guys. How many Trump-supporting T-shirts have you seen? Like, yeah, there's people on both sides of everything, man. In the Harry Potter world, there's people that want to be the bad guy. So that's just how it goes. Yeah, like I've never understood like how we started celebrating the bad people. Is it Darth Vader? Is it Darth Vader's fault? Darth Vader was cool in wrestling. stone cold steve austin was the bad guy and he became the good guy nobody could drink a beer like that guy right you can't but i mean that's essentially like one point they talked about it was in the 90s like it's uh obviously i'm a big pro wrestling fan but they talked about there was a societal change in the 90s where like previously bad guys were always just bad guys like they were the villains in comic books and movies etc you didn't like them and then at some point in the mid 90s being bad became cool like hulk hogan so like hulk hogan remember when hulk hogan switched oh i remember very well but that was it suddenly you could be you could be the bad guy but you were cool for being the bad guy and that was like stone cold steve austin nwo and hulk hogan in the 96 like it was just this big change in how society viewed the bad guys yeah so the villains became cool villains um that's just how it was so i don't know how we took that little side path but i mean you could do a harry potter you could make limited editions for each house the griffin door the ravenclaw you would make so much money you would yeah you would you would freaking bank i know supposedly they paid a million dollars for the beatles licensing right when they made those machines i think it was the first million dollar pinball license like if you told me that they paid $5 million for Harry Potter, I would think that was cheap and that they were going to make all their money back on day one. It would be whatever. I know they have to look at it from a business risk analyst standpoint, etc. But I'm telling you, if you, whichever company, can somehow secure a Harry Potter license, that, I think, is the most economically sound pinball decision that company could possibly make. and on top of that if it made it a good game i mean look at how well good games have done over time like metallica sold for what five six years seven years they were running that game like they'd do another run here and there uh acdc sold for years tron did at least four different runs um when you make a good game it will continue to sell because people don't want to let it out of their collection and then their friends come and play it and then their friends want to add it to their collection and they need to find a place to buy i just don't want jk rowling to get any money that's i think that's my that's that's the one thing i'm torn with break this to you taylor she's she's already got all the no i know but she's like such a transphobic piece of crap that like i just not i've just i don't know that i guess that's the one thing i mean that's the one thing i think the stories are amazing i think that it's like we've talked about it transcends generations and every podcast talks about how harry potter would be the dream theme money making pinball machine that everybody wants to see you know yes i'm not saying it's like a dream theme for me but i do enjoy harry potter and it would be cool yeah but like money wise i think operating wise it would be a top earner it would be a yeah and i i don't see how whatever company makes those doesn't just sell a ship right so as an operator your dream theme would be harry potter you think right yeah sure i mean no i'd rather have james bond as an operator but as an operator who like wants to like it's all about the coin drop it's all about the card yeah i just i'm still not all about the coin drop like i sold star wars by stern when it was my top earner because i couldn't fucking stand the game but tommy i all sold guns you also wear flip-flops that have like little like coin purses on them yeah fanny pack slides fanny pack slides um All right, look, so... I have not been able to completely separate my brain from the whole collector, restorer, person who just loves pinball, and an operator. Yeah, I know, I hear you. I'm operating a Dolly Parton right now. It's a great game. I love Dolly Parton. Yeah, it is. But if I were to stick a Star Wars pro next to that... You would make more money. ...and a casual person walks in, which one are they playing? and they're going to play Star Wars and they're going to pay a dollar for that versus a quarter for Dolly Parton but I'd rather have Dolly Parton on my location because it's Dolly Parton and I like it. I'm very fortunate to be in a situation where my location, the owners of the bar do not care what I put there as long as I maintain them and I do a good job of that. I'm leaving the lake today to go back early before the league because I've got to fix a sticky flipper on Congo and a coil that's not shooting on Dale Jr. so like you know i got things i gotta go fix but i'm fortunate that i'm operating as purely a hobby uh not saying it doesn't bring in a little bit of money but not nearly as much as i spend on doing it and uh because of that i'm gonna operate things i enjoy that's nice yeah it's awesome it's awesome man oh on that note before we totally call it quits i did uh sign back up for pin quest Oh, yeah, I saw that. So if you haven't done PinQuest, go and download the app. It's out there on the Apple App Store and on the Android Store. It'll let you search for yourself by location, and it'll tell you the nearest locations that are offering PinQuest, which are essentially scoring challenges. And at my location, it's gone really well so far this month since we added it back in. I'm trying to pull up my actual location. There it is. uh i've got four different quests running right now and i've got basically i started doing like a a low level mid-level and a high level quest so i call them rookie pro and all-star and then we didn't even address it but i picked up a machine for our good friend david yop who we met via the podcast and have stayed in close contact with and i talked to you pretty regularly but he's been looking for a medieval madness for like months and one popped up in indie so this was Monday Monday I left my house at roughly 7am to drive to Chicago to pick up a $300 project game that I was just getting for parts and as I'm driving I look at Facebook and I see that there's Medieval Madness in Indianapolis that popped up for a good price so I immediately called David to wake him up and be like hey I think I found what you're looking for I know the guy who was selling it you know he's got an okay reputation him and I don't get along the greatest but if you want the game man like make the deal and i can get it for you so anyway i'm still driving to chicago he calls back and he's like we made a deal i paid for it when can you get it strapped it on the hood of your car no these are complete opposite directions so i was i was going up to like past chicago like almost all the way out by pinball life like hoffman estates area yeah so i drive six hours there well there and back is about six six and a half hour drive yeah maybe seven with a stop for gas whatever but uh get back i unload this project game i got and i immediately get back in the car and i drive to indianapolis and pick up uh medieval madness for him come back i don't have any more room in my storage unit so i'm putting it in the bar for two weeks until he can come get it so anyway because of that we have a hall of fame limited edition quest this one because uh medieval madness is only going to be there for two weeks and that's also on the site and then the cool thing now is like you get wizard points which is like a ranking system within pin quest so they have ranking charts like by state by location and by uh overall like around the world which is kind of cool and then you can also award your players what they call quest bucks which is a virtual currency that they can use to purchase things that is set up on a store and i set up the store literally just as of yesterday. So if you go to silverballswag.com, there's now a North End Pub swag shop where you can actually buy some stuff that has North End Pub's logo on there. And they also threw in the This Flippin' Podcast logo as well. So if anybody, for whatever reason, wants to go and purchase anything with our merchandise, there's like t-shirts, three-quarter sleeve t-shirts, a hat and a sweatshirt that are all for sale on there. or you can just come play pinball at north end pub and earn quest bucks and use those quest bucks to make purchases via the app look at that so basically you can like get merch and stuff so you took over the you took over all the merch you're like merch man now uh no you're definitely still merch man these are uh whatever they are but i just the guy was like i need logos for your stuff and the only logos i have files for are north end pub and and us so I'm going to work on getting some actual designs done by some artists for North End. Oh, cool, man. But I wanted to at least have something on the app so players could see what they could be potentially purchasing with their Quest Plus. That's very cool. But anyway, yeah, people are using it, and it's going well. So any operators who are listening out there, check out PinQuest. I think it's working quite well. I will say the coin drop on all the machines that I had Quests on was up slightly over the previous collection. So I think it's effective for that. And it's been kind of cool getting messages from players being like, God, I was so close on Congo. I needed like another 50 million. And I'm like, well, play it again then, man. So that's been cool. And it also has some cool user-friendly things for operators. Like players can report machine malfunctions via the app, and it actually sends you like a notice. So like I got a notice since I've been at the lake that the left flipper on Congo is sticking sometimes. So that's what I know I got to look at. Is there a cost associated with that if you're an operator? There is a monthly subscription free fee as an operator. But I know that they were running a special right now. So it's really cheap for the first couple of months. So you can kind of test it out. Not quite free, but damn near free for the next couple of months. And then after that, it goes up a little bit. But it's it's not real expensive. So I am downloading it now. And this is. OK, yeah, I'm downloading it now. so I would check it out. Yeah, so I don't know. It basically depends on if any operators are in your area using it. But speaking with the creator of PinQuest, he is just like we're very similar, like same age, same thing. Hobbyist operators, we got into it. He just happens to develop apps as a living, and he thought this would be a good idea. But it is mostly designed. It's not designed for like your pins mechanical chain locations type stuff. This is for it's largely it's based on what he thinks is helping him the most as a hobbyist operator. People that have one or two locations and are regularly around your customer base and your machines. And it kind of gives them a way to do stuff. And the nice thing about it is they set up those the online shops via silver ball swag. So even your players who maybe aren't super into like the pin quest aspect of it, then still have access to purchase your stuff just to buy it. If they want to represent your location or whatever. All right. It's out there. I just wanted to make sure I mentioned that because it's been cool getting the notices. As the operator, I get notices whenever somebody submits their results and things like that. Yeah, that's cool. I enjoy it. Yeah, I don't see any operators near me that have it, but we'll see. Get on Dan's case. I will. Yeah, Center of the Universe Brewery, if you are in the Richmond area and you're looking for a great location, um i we need to get him on and just talk to him sometime i will you know what i would love to have dan on to talk pinball he is a he is a obsessed dedicated pinhead who has gone completely out of his mind he's just like yeah he's he's oh yeah he's got a lot going on um but yeah his his locations center of the universe brewing um they they're i think they're in ashland i think their official addresses but they they just opened up like recently um since the pandemic you know our our restrictions were lifted not too long ago and i think he's looking forward to like hosting um some events and stuff like that so i will plug him when i can um he's a good friend of mine but the guy is like he is dedicated to making sure that his games play great and yeah he is uh yeah that tends to be the whole uh advantage with hobbyist operators i think we take a lot more pride and care and when our games don't work like i love being up here in michigan for the summer don't get me wrong i'm really enjoying myself but at the same time like when i get the notices that something's broken and I'm not there to go fix it immediately, I feel bad. So that's why I'm heading back a few hours early today to make sure everything's ready to go for league tonight. Well, look, I'm not going to keep you any longer so you can enjoy the lake while you were there. And yeah, it was good talking to you and we'll talk soon. And hopefully I will have played Mandalorian and fix my Avengers and have other things to talk about. And maybe we will um yeah maybe we'll reach out to some more friends of ours and we'll do some um more interviews because yeah it would be nice to get more people on the show and to find out what other people are doing especially now that we are coming out of the pandemic at least i do think it's yep i think it's funny because like in your world you're just coming out of the pandemic but in my world like our location has been open a full over a year again and i've been working like two jobs the entire time i know so i know i know i know the world it's just been different for everyone it was interesting listening to that on the episode you did with rachel where i'm just like yeah my world didn't change a whole lot like there was a masks and sanitizer all over the place but yeah i was still working like 80 hours a week well that's the thing like like dan's location like they just opened within the this last month like where they were allowed to turn on machines so i mean and i think that's the thing like if any operators want to reach out to tommy or myself i I mean, because we do know a lot of people. We know a lot of small time operators or anybody. And what I mean, I think that's one thing that's interesting. It's I'm just interested to hear about. What people experience, but also like what people are looking forward to, you know, like because. regardless if it's it's been different for you and i the fact that at least in the united states now that we are opening up like ifpa is coming back like there's actually a new sanctioning body that's i was gonna say and we didn't even get to that but we'll talk about that on the next talk about that on the next one um well tommy it was great talking to you man safe travels if you come across a Walking Dead pro, think about me. I'll talk to you about that. And yeah, man, take care and we'll talk soon. Alright, later, buddy. Later. Bye. Alright, everybody in the car. Get the kids out. We're going to get some outdoors. Beer. We're going to the park. We're going to the reactor. Anytime you want to say. I got some money. Nice steak, a meatball, we got a little hibachi, a little barbecue. Sun was out, the fish were swimming in choke-polluted water. All the fishes Dying from those toxic sea bees Dumping in our store We didn't move on We had our cheap American brews Some nice hot dogs You know Get out the nice little transistor radio Sit back, relax Have a nice little summer barbecue It's beautiful What a beautiful, it's a beautiful, beautiful day For a barbecue Thank you. We're off to, we're off to stay for a barbecue. This time, the hot dogs. Oh, wow, man. That makes me think of Carver. As this burnt bomb starts dropping, we're just looking for where the hell is that transistor radio, you know? I don't know what the newsman had to say. They're talking about one of their rap countries about some fair negotiation. It's a beautiful, it's a beautiful, it's a beautiful, beautiful day It's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful day for a barbecue. _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: dc37c5e8-3fdc-4637-9553-fe4f2dcf778b*