# Triple Drain Pinball Podcast Episode 30 - Neil McRae in the USA **Source:** The Pinball Network **Type:** video **Published:** 2023-02-01 **Duration:** 111m 52s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mz4sTCp95w --- ## Analysis Triple Drain Pinball Podcast Episode 30 features Neil McRae from the UK discussing European pinball market dynamics, the UK Open tournament he organized (which attracted 150 players), the Indy Disc world championship experience, and competitive pinball practice methodology. The episode explores differences between US and European pinball scenes, streaming challenges, tournament organization, and player skill development. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] European pinball market is significantly smaller than US, with only one distributor in the UK vs two-three per US state — _Neil McRae describing European market structure and infrastructure challenges_ - [HIGH] UK Open 2024 attracted 150 players, up from typical European tournament sizes of 60-70 — _Neil McRae describing the UK Open he organized in September/October_ - [HIGH] Carl D'Angelo's streaming PC failed completely at Indy Disc (would not boot) but the stream continued to look high quality despite hardware issues — _Neil McRae describing Indy Disc technical challenges witnessed firsthand_ - [HIGH] Travis plunged away his ball at Indy Disc finals on a Gottlieb game due to a multiplayer code issue where hitting three switches deactivated the plunge — _Neil McRae and Travis discussing the zero-score plunge incident at Indy Disc_ - [HIGH] European streaming audience is fragmented across multiple languages and lacks consistent daily pinball streaming coverage — _Neil McRae describing European streaming landscape vs US presence_ - [HIGH] Mark from Backhand Pinball was originally asked to stream UK Open but couldn't attend due to work conflicts — _Neil McRae discussing UK Open streaming arrangements_ - [HIGH] Every single competitive pinball player in the UK except one (who was out of town) attended the UK Open — _Neil McRae expressing pride in UK Open community participation_ - [HIGH] Competitive pinball players readily share information and rules with each other; there is no hoarding of game knowledge — _Travis discussing competitive player culture and information sharing_ ### Notable Quotes > "pinball is probably where it was I don't know five or six maybe even seven years ago where it was in the U.S." > — **Neil McRae**, early > _Describes relative maturity of European vs US pinball markets_ > "I would love for something like that to be in Europe you know where you've got all day local pinball on Twitch yeah everyone going for it and and I find that super exciting" > — **Neil McRae**, early > _Highlights what's missing in European pinball infrastructure_ > "I got a tournaments to my only goal is to well I've got two goals one to enjoy it and two to play as good as I could play and if that means I'm first hooray if it means I'm last that's also hooray" > — **Neil McRae**, mid > _Reveals Neil's philosophy as a competitor focused on enjoyment and effort over results_ > "if you can turn your your games at home into the most difficult games you'll ever see it makes life a lot easier because the what's the number one thing you guys hear a pinball players say when they go out to a new location they're just like this game plays weird this gameplay is different" > — **Travis**, late > _Core competitive preparation strategy for tournament players_ > "the vast majority of any players you know even top tier players it's like we we readily share information with each other" > — **Travis**, mid > _Addresses misconception about competitive players hoarding knowledge_ > "Carl wasn't very well over the end this weekend and also his he had we had he had some really bizarre Hardware problem with his streaming rig um that actually when he got it back it didn't even boot the The Machine's completely dead" > — **Neil McRae**, mid > _Details Indy Disc streaming infrastructure crisis_ > "if you hit three switches and I I repeat this several times you get three switches that was it you were done on a multiplayer game" > — **Neil McRae**, late > _Explains the technical reason for Travis's zero-score plunge at Indy Disc_ > "there's so many things that are happening at one time time you've got so much chaos going on" > — **Joel**, late > _Describes the cognitive load of competitive pinball_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Neil McRae | person | UK-based pinball tournament organizer, Pinball Republic co-op operator, tournament player, and competitive pinball community figure who travels frequently to US events | | Travis Murie | person | Competitive pinball player, co-host of Triple Drain Pinball Podcast, competed at Indy Disc world championship | | Tom | person | Co-host of Triple Drain Pinball Podcast, streams tournaments with Fox Cities | | Joel | person | Co-host of Triple Drain Pinball Podcast, streams for Flipping Out on YouTube, competitive pinball player | | Carl D'Angelo | person | Elite pinball streamer and tournament software operator; experienced hardware failure at Indy Disc | | Jason Leibel | person | Host of Pinball Party Podcast, created intro song for Triple Drain Pinball Podcast | | Mark | person | Backhand Pinball representative, unable to stream UK Open due to work conflicts | | Jim | person | European pinball streamer based in Germany who covers tournament events | | Indy Disc | event | World championship pinball tournament featuring high-level international competition | | UK Open | event | European Championship Series tournament organized by Neil McRae; 2024 edition attracted 150 players with international participation | | Pinball Republic | organization | London-based pinball co-op and community organization run by Neil McRae that organizes tournaments and events | | European Championship Series (ECS) | event | Series of 6-7 tournaments across Europe including UK Open, Belgian Open, and Dutch Open | | Triple Drain Pinball Podcast | content | Pinball podcast hosted by Travis, Tom, and Joel, now producing video content on YouTube and Pinball Network | | Flipping Out | content | YouTube streaming channel where Joel streams pinball content with international viewership | | Fox Cities | venue | Tournament venue where Tom regularly streams pinball tournaments | | Paragon | game | Pinball machine discussed as having an overly tight tilt | | Gottlieb | company | Pinball manufacturer; game at Indy Disc featured multiplayer code issue affecting Travis's plunge | | Stern | company | Pinball manufacturer; mentioned regarding home games used for competitive practice | | Pinball Network | organization | Media platform hosting Triple Drain Pinball Podcast | | JDL | content | European tournament streaming organization featuring consistent tournament coverage | ### Topics - **Primary:** European vs US pinball market dynamics, UK Open tournament organization and growth, Streaming and media presence in pinball, Competitive pinball practice methodology, Indy Disc world championship experience - **Secondary:** Tournament streaming infrastructure and technical challenges, Player culture and information sharing in competitive pinball, Podcast/video production strategy ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.82) — Overwhelmingly positive discussion celebrating European pinball community, UK Open success, Indy Disc experience, and competitive player culture. Some frustration expressed about European market constraints and hardware failures, but framed constructively. Nostalgia and pride dominate. ### Signals - **[event_signal]** UK Open grew from typical 60-70 player European tournaments to 150 players in 2024, achieving full attendance of UK competitive players (confidence: high) — Neil McRae stated 'we got 150 players' and 'every single competitive pinball player in the UK except one guy who's out of town came to the UK open' - **[content_signal]** Triple Drain Pinball Podcast expanding from audio to video format on YouTube and Pinball Network, responding to viewer demand (confidence: high) — Introduction statement: 'we're doing video we're gonna keep doing video as well as audio... we just realized there's a ton of listeners out there that would prefer YouTube' - **[community_signal]** Increasing transatlantic attendance at major tournaments, with European players traveling to US events and vice versa (confidence: high) — Neil McRae: 'we had a massive tournament... we got 150 players... loads of the Europe Europeans came over quite a few U.S guys came over' - **[market_signal]** European pinball market characterized by single distributors per country, limited venues, higher costs, and smaller tournament scene compared to US (confidence: high) — Neil McRae: 'there's a two or three distributors in just about every state in the US there's only one here in the UK... everything that just makes everything a bit more expensive which then you know makes the market smaller' - **[product_concern]** Gottlieb game at Indy Disc finals had multiplayer code issue that resulted in zero-score plunge; issue reproducible in testing (confidence: high) — Neil McRae: 'if you hit three switches... you get three switches that was it you were done on a multiplayer game' and 'Gottlieb... they're not known for great code' - **[venue_signal]** High-profile tournaments dependent on single streaming PC; Indy Disc experienced complete hardware failure during finals but maintained stream quality (confidence: high) — Neil McRae: 'his streaming rig... when he got it back it didn't even boot the The Machine's completely dead... yet... the stream still went out and still looked phenomenal' - **[competitive_signal]** Elite competitive players use extreme home machine difficulty settings (removed rubbers/outlines, no ball save) to prepare for tournament conditions (confidence: high) — Travis: 'I just turned all my Stern games at home to like just murder pins mean outlines were gone rubbers were gone no ball save... if you can turn your your games at home into the most difficult games you'll ever see it makes life a lot easier' - **[community_signal]** Competitive pinball players actively share rule information and strategies; no gatekeeping of game knowledge despite high-level competition (confidence: high) — Travis: 'the vast majority of any players... it's like we we readily share information with each other... the information's all out there anyways and so we have to trust our skill to perform' - **[content_signal]** European pinball lacks consistent daily streaming presence; fragmented across multiple languages and focused on local audiences; no equivalent to US continuous Twitch coverage (confidence: high) — Neil McRae: 'the only consistent pinball streamers... are really probably jdl... I personally am the only regular streamer and I'm not even that regular... I wouldn't say that as a a regular sort of streaming regime out here' - **[event_signal]** UK Open brought in Carl D'Angelo for streaming to ensure quality and tournament software integration; also recruited Mark from Backhand Pinball for US audience reach (confidence: high) — Neil McRae: 'I asked Carl D'Angelo first for two reasons one he's an epic streamer... two he also runs the software that runs the tournament' and 'I got Mark to come over from the US... he's got a massive us audience' - **[historical_signal]** European pinball market estimated to be 5-7 years behind US in terms of development, tournament scale, venue infrastructure, and competitive participation (confidence: medium) — Neil McRae: 'pinball is probably where it was I don't know five or six maybe even seven years ago where it was in the U.S' --- ## Transcript all right sorry um just before this episode starts I just want to let you guys know that we are not going to discuss the pinball Awards reason being we recorded this on the Friday before the pinball Awards so none of the other guys knew the results um so we are not covering that this is obviously coming out after the fact but we'll absolutely cover that on the next episode so in the meantime enjoy the conversation thanks [Music] the pinball network is online launching triple drain pinball podcast [Music] all right Tom are you ready yes and Video Killed the Radio Star oh wonderful Travis are you ready sure sure great all right 1970s reference isn't it or 80s it's a great recipe it's a great intro I was barely even born then Tom I am I'm hitting the button we call ourselves [Music] Jason needs to do more of those yes Jason is Jason leibel thank you very much shout out to the uh the pinball party podcast yes so Jason is the one who made that intro for us what I'm realizing is now that we're doing video um while that song's playing we're just sitting here either dancing to it or looking looking dumb so if somebody wants to like put like build an actual video what do you mean you just realized this this I asked you this too well I'm not gonna make the video intro I asked you if we had an intro you're like I don't know and then I let's see on YouTube it's just us sitting there and then I ask you again and you're like oh don't worry about it it's fine well to all of our listeners I I would not expect you know Travis to like contribute to this podcast and maybe make a video intro but if somebody else wants to make a video intro to this podcast like I'm contributing here you guys have pinball machines I have Ikea furniture okay well it's it is a substantial Improvement on last episode but um but yeah so last episode we did do a 29.5 where we did just a kind of a one-off it was just Travis and I and we talked about indisk um really focusing on what Carl did and and how well Travis did um so if people are enjoying that but otherwise here's we're doing video we're gonna keep doing video as well as audio um we just realized there's a ton of listeners out there that would prefer YouTube so we're just gonna we're gonna keep with that um but yeah uh here's episode 30 kind of a landmark episode really excited about that and when we were talking about what are we going to talk about what are we going to talk about on this episode we realized we needed an extra ball we needed somebody else to contribute to this conversation and we wanted um this person uh well everybody on video can see it it's Neil McRae Neil is here from the UK Neil thank you good morning to you evening yeah we're we're recording this at 10 A.M my time 9 A.M Travis and Tom so what time is it there Neil 3 15. uh almost what we call gin o'clock General clock okay so yes so it's late but I I appreciate it it's not it's not too late um I did one with Marty where it was like two in the morning because because he lives on a she lives on another planet not just another continent well you said 315 got it okay okay 315 so yeah yeah afternoon 3 15 on a Friday you're good for Joel that's super late evidently okay his bedroom's like 5 30 in the afternoon um so the reality is we want to talk about Bond and so um I know Neil well before we dive into all of our topics so first thing Neil you are from the UK and I and I want this is a very broad question but um what can you describe European pinball like what are we missing here in America like I like is you is there how is pinball perceived over in Europe or is there different challenges that you guys face that that most of I mean the majority of our listeners are American so what are we missing out when it comes to pinball outside of America Joel just wants to know if there's tea time over there um I'll be honest with you I I am it's hard to to tell you what you're missing I think um the market for pinball in Europe is so much smaller than in the US and we don't have the venues that you have we don't have the big tournaments that you guys have we don't have the you know there's a two or three distributors in just about every state in the US there's only one here in the UK um so the scale is a lot smaller um The Traveling you know I I'll meet up with you guys all over the place um people who travel in Europe is is much rarer um so it's hard to get a a big event or or do a show but you know maybe you know here we play for fun there's like most of the tournaments on for money except UK open which we'll talk about later but um it's it's uh it's a it's a much more pinball is probably where it was I don't know five or six maybe even seven years ago where it was in in in the U.S don't get me wrong we got some great players um some fantastic players uh we also got some great Distributors and mod makers here and you know there's a there's a there's a great Vibe here but it's on a different scale and the challenge with that is is it just makes everything more expensive because you know all the games get shipped from Chicago most of the parts we need come from the US um everything that just makes everything a bit more expensive which then you know makes the market smaller over and over but you know we've got a good Community here the UK is probably one of the smallest European communities um which which is which is one of the reasons why I come to the US so much because I want to do more and it's it's just easier to do that and work lets me do it so um I wouldn't say you're missing anything um I think the community the the you know there's like a you know welcome to know of each other there's a great Community like that here against some of you guys have met some of those uh players uh in disc uh we had Arvid over as in Andy from the UK as well as me so you'll have met some of them but I'm doing this I wouldn't pinpoint anything and it's missing you know if I was to say what are we missing in Europe I think you know like talking about States shortly I would love for something like that to be in Europe you know where you've got all day local pinball on Twitch yeah everyone going for it and and I find that super exciting uh I would I would kill for someone like that in Europe but it just doesn't exist and and the number of so so if I think about the number of like barcades in the UK there's maybe four war in the whole UK and none of them are near me which is why I have this uh shed full of games really yeah yeah and I'm jealous of that [ __ ] I know you have what is it Domino arcade is I think your YouTube channel and I've seen senior videos they're I mean they're very entertaining very cool uh and Incredibly impressive shed um it's a fantastic background on the video just like Tom's background and mine is is kind of a small version of that and Travis's background is is a table and uh Michelle so I have a diffuser back there too okay that changes colors yeah yeah um it's beautiful thank you Tom I appreciate it I what you you had mentioned twitch so one thing that surprised me I now stream for flipping out on YouTube and what we're seeing is there's a lot of views that are coming in overnight and that's because people are watching it overseas so like from a twitch standpoint or a streaming standpoint how good is the community over in Europe I mean is there consistent streamers is there consistent media during the day when you're when you're awake for that I mean I would say no I mean the the only consistent pinball streamers um are really probably jdl who does tournaments uh in the UK I personally am the only regular streamer and I'm not even that regular and there's another there's a couple other streamers in the UK they just kind of do it at Hockley um because we love pinball which I think is part of tpf um there's no sorry tpn yeah they're in Germany they're in Germany they're good guys um you know they're usually on roundabout now actually in the late evening in in Germany they're good guys you've got [Music] um what's his name uh what flip I forget his name another German um streamer that's on a lot he does cool t-shirts I forget his name but um he's always on but you know I mean that's one of the challenges in Europe we all speak different languages um and and that is definitely a you know it's a battle and talking about the guys in Germany will speak English but you know they're not when they're streaming they're kind of focused on on their own local players mostly so not a huge number of streamers um and and actually that's one of the reasons why I kind of had a slightly weird um approach to how I did streaming at the UK open because I wanted to get an audience so um yeah it's it's it's it's it's you know there's people experimenting but I wouldn't say that as a a regular sort of streaming regime out here which is which again is a shame video game wise is huge I mean sure massive But but pinballless so yeah I just especially since covid I mean I feel like almost any point in the day at least over here in America you can open up Twitch go to pinball and somebody's streaming something like it it's it's awesome um that that that's so readily available but I know as somebody like myself who does stream I it's almost like I've completely forgotten about the European market or the the Australians you know anybody overseas it happens to be asleep I mean they want the content it's so it's as hopefully they watch them after the fact or restreams or videos up you know later on but um yeah I know you had mentioned the UK open and we can go straight into that you you streamed the UK open well here just preface it what what was the UK open who was there yeah so in in Europe we have this Championship called ECS European championship series and and it's made up of I think about six or seven tournaments across Europe one of them is the UK open um and again these these tournaments are typically been run on a kind of smaller scale round about 60 70 players okay um but with covet a lot of them have kind of they're some of them are in a bit of flux because of covert believe it or not still because so I think I think it's the guys in Belgium where the venue they used to use for the Belgian open um has is still uh uh has become like uh um hospice for uh long covet sufferers or something like that so they've lost their venue there's a couple other places I think Dutch open has has got a venue issue um and when I when I kind of announced the UK open last year so I I also help run our pinball Co-op called pinball Republic uh here in London when I announced it I got kind of a lot of the European guys you know we're coming we're coming and I kind of had a heart attack because we don't have a venue that's big or our public place isn't big enough for probably more than 65 people um so I had a chat with the pinball Republic guys that helped run the co-op and I said look guys let's have a go at going big um you know I can get some sponsors I can get some people will find a proper room proper hotel and we'll go big obviously none of them were really convinced about it but I was like don't worry about it we won't lose any money I'll cover it Whatever It Takes we'll get it done um and last uh September October we had a massive tournament it was bigger bigger and better than I could have ever imagined uh we got 150 players um and and the streaming part of it was you know uh Jim who does a lot of the European streaming in in um in Germany you know I did think about asking him to help her I actually asked Carl D'Python Anghelo first for two reasons one he's an epic streamer you know yeah you know the probably the best um two he also runs the software that runs the tournament so having them locally in the UK in case anything went wrong um kind of made sense so um it it was fantastic loads of the Europe Europeans came over quite a few U.S guys came over I got mark from backhand pinball um to do a stream call couldn't make it because he had work and stuff which is the same but Mark does an awesome job too um and and you know it went pretty well um we had a couple of issues a couple of stupid things as you do in events um and um you know it was it was awesome and now you know everyone's even said I'm coming to UK open you know and this I'm kind of no nervous that it could get even bigger so let's get it's a good problem I have I know that I can be honest I know that I can run a scale event awesome and you said you did something unique with streaming because you're trying to get views what did what were you doing in that sense yeah the uniqueness was I got Mark to come over from the US oh okay because because he's got a massive us audience um and you know for you know you know what it's like when you see that thing on your phone so-and-so started streaming yeah that that just pings people up you know when when Tom does streaming from from da2 if I'm here and I see I'm like you know I'm usually on a board of meeting but I've got Tom yeah it's you guys doing something so you know having that that audience um you know I I really wanted so in pinball we've either got us events or we've got European events and and there's one Australian event right what I wanted to try and do is how do I try and bring as many of those many of those people together as kind of one event and actually we've got a few guys from Australia I was stunned by this um a few guys from the US loads of guys from Europe but actually the one thing I was probably most proud of actually every single competitive pinball player in the UK except one guy who's out of town came to the UK open that's awesome so there was no one missing and and for me that was like a a really helpful um bit of support yeah that's awesome um and I know you had made the trip over to indisk I know obviously Travis and I discussed that kind of in detail a lot last episode but I'm very curious you know Tom and Neil what were your thoughts on indis I I know uh obviously Mitch Carl the I mean it's like there's almost in my mind there's like two parts of indist one you have the incredible high-end competitive and like the competitors the the skill level is absurd but then two like the streaming aspect and the entertainment aspect and the commentators aspect sets in disk apart so I don't from uh from I mean both of you guys stream Tom I you obviously stream with Fox Cities constantly all the time tournaments how was that pers you know what was that like working with Carl seeing the way Carl worked yeah well like Neil said curls kind of the the creme de La Creme of yeah pinball streaming so it was awesome uh you know and Neil Neil and I got to announce together which was really cool um but uh yeah indisk is just you know it's just one of those tournaments it's one of the best ones out there and um I had a good time even though I didn't make uh the open but uh I I did good it in a couple of the Classic Events um but it was it was fun I I definitely plan to go back next year that's awesome and and Neil I I'm trying to say this as lovingly as possible but you you are at the majority of these huge tournaments and and I which is incredible that you are traveling over for these now when I see qualifiers some I I don't see your name qualifying that often but yet you still make the Trek in our in our in an avid tournament player which is in which is incredible I think that's so great that you that you love it so much yeah look I mean so I am I'm one of those players that kind of has to concentrate for like three weeks and practice like hell and then I can play well so you know I've come third and fourth in the UK uh tournaments have done better in Europe um actually last year I played in I mean actually this room's it's a bit depressing to say this but last year um with work and a bunch of other stuff going on I didn't play an awful lot of practicing a pinball and and if I don't practice I'm done basically you then add that to jet lag and the fact that I turned 50 last year um and and you can own this downhill downhill cycle um but look I got a tournaments to my only goal is to well I've got two goals one to enjoy it and two to play as good as I could play and if that means I'm first hooray if it means I'm last that's also hooray I tried just try to play the best I can and sometimes actually that I get for you know actually I kind of towards the towards I mean in disc let me just comment on this for a minute index is an outstanding event from my point of view running an event like that the work that's required is an insane level and Jim Carl the whole team there you know I think they knock it apart in fact the UK open I've literally stole every idea that they've got and used in the UK open the format's the same the system's the same you know I tried to do I even tried to get Carl to come over and help stream it because I wanted that to be the same yeah because it's such a high quality event right um and it but but it's it's it's freaking hard I mean it is such a difficult event and and I kind of look at you know I'm I'm not a great player I have my moments I've had a couple of things but you know I play to enjoy it's my way of chilling out and when I'm not working um and and you know I get to meet great people so um from my point of view it's and if I wasn't there I'd be in here kind of flipping by myself so I might as well you know I'm lucky enough I can jump on a plane or usually tie it up with work which is which is how it usually works um but the the the level of of um effort in this guys because then actually one thing I'll point out and I'm not sure a lot of people know this one car wasn't very well over the end this weekend and also his he had we had he had some really bizarre Hardware problem with his streaming rig um that actually when he got it back it didn't even boot the The Machine's completely dead um and yet we met you know he managed I was trying to help him with stuff we were unplugging cars we were you know and all through that the stream still went out and still looked phenomenal yeah but there was a lot of challenges and and um actually you know Carl was saying you know we kind of dodged a bullet in many respects um and that you know that that's the thing if if your PC goes down you're dead um so you know um overall I love coming to these events they're great they're a lot of fun the community is phenomenal you know there's so many great people out there that um it's fun to meet them and and you know if there's anything that frustrates me it's cut off you don't get a long enough time to see everybody and yeah but you know that's a nice problem I have I think but yeah I I mean I I am you know doing three or four again this year um I'm gonna try and get my myself organized so that I play a bit better in a few of them um and um and you know get a bit earlier get used to the time zone do a bit more practicing but um yeah I have to I have to really make an effort otherwise I'm I'm just not good enough but I I think that's I think that says a lot though that that even if you're not practicing or even if you know you're you know you're showing up to indisk where 60 of the top 100 players are going to be there but you're there you're there for the community you're there for the people and the fact that um I I just think that says a lot about tournament Players and the community of pinball that like they're good people they're good people it's a good time even if you don't think you can be a top competitor what you're well that's all I was going to ask you about Joel because I was watching the uh the flipping out stream that you guys did your live show sure I think yeah I think it was even Craig Bobby he was alluding to I guess some people like to keep I guess keep rules to themselves and stuff like that and yeah you know I just want to make sure that people realize that very much vast majority of any players you know even top tier players it's like we we readily share information with each other and I think it the important thing to establish too at Indus this is a world championship right yep but everybody is still approachable I mean for the most most part I I will admit that there's probably like a couple of people that you don't necessarily want to approach when they're in the middle of a game or something like that just out of respect but the vast majority of people are very cool very approachable you come up you ask a question about a game somebody will tell you I mean it's like the information's all out there anyways and so we have to trust our skill to perform so it's like we're not hiding any one thing it's like if Tom comes up to me and asks me how to play a game and I don't want to tell them guess what he'll just go to like Neil or somebody yeah yeah and then like somebody will know and vice versa it's like everybody will spill the beans on everything yeah everybody goes to kneel it but look I think it's it's also one thing knowing what to do and then executing on it exactly yeah and then in the in that moment um you know the other thing I suffer from insane nerves when I'm playing Pinball it's just nuts and I and in my work I speak at conferences with 15 000 people in front of me that I don't know and I can rattle off no problem you put me in front of a pinball machine before people standing behind me jelly it's just it's so infuriating it's tough well that goes back to uh you alluded to practice earlier and that's something that we don't often talk about even on this podcast although one of us probably needs it a little bit more than others I'm not going to name names Joel though about that but that being said it's like when it comes to pinball I think everybody can can speak to this it's just there's so many things that are happening at one time time you've got so much chaos going on that like like my camera going out for instance yes but you know shout out to silverball swag there is Elgato no signal t-shirts check them out yes but to continue my thought it's like you're playing so you have to know one the shot geometry the game and two you have to know how the flippers are flipping how the rubbers are bouncing you have to understand you have weak flippers do you have strong flippers do you have are they flopped down are they sitting High those are all things you have to know then you have to account for flipper hop or for if a rubber's off and then on top of that you're accounting for the rule set itself like where are you at in the game and then like Neil just talked about a second ago the nerves too I mean if you're on stream it's different if you're in a situation to where you know you have to do one more thing that one more thing might feel like it's a mile away even though it's one easy shot so there's just so much that goes into it together that it is it's hard to put that all together it's like one chaotic chaotic Symphony that all has to somehow go together to make things go right yeah no and um yeah you talked about what so it's an option but one day I'll just build on what shows in when it does go right holy moly is that an epic feeling yeah I mean it's just it really is amazing when you go like yes yeah um and and you know that that is the buzz of pinball for me and I've I've believe it or not I've had moments like that and but it's not in a tournament strategy it's all it's it's on stream and and yeah there's um there it can be an incredibly satisfying feeling for sure Joel you had that moment at Cleveland all right you took what like 89th that was that was more impressive than what we thought yeah exactly she set the bar high and you dominate it so indisk uh I'm very curious um there was there was a moment at indisk that was unlike anything I've ever seen I don't know if we'll ever see anything like that again I'm extremely curious to know Tom and Neil what were your thoughts um in this moment and of course I'm talking about when Travis managed to plunge away his ball and get get zero points so zero zero what when you guys were sitting there in the audience and you saw this happen what were you what were your thoughts I literally went to dinner and came back and it happened so maybe I jinxed it for Travis I I it's possible yeah but my funny thing is partner leaves me well I'm playing a world championship he's like he was hungry I'm hungry yeah Travis you're on your own say goodbye but uh the funny thing is we just had our state competition and Neil Graff was playing me on Paragon and he did it that tilt on that game is super tight it's actually a little too tight and he did a tap he was practicing a tap pass and he actually got a zero because he tilted the game practicing a tap pass so before he even plunged yes he tilted the game with the ball in the shooter in the actual game or is that during practice during the actual game it's on stream so I'm like yeah no just kidding that's the sun everybody yeah so so I was actually um in the streaming area um and everyone I kind of thought well what's the ruling on this and and actually a couple other folks asked me in fact Carl asked me you know what how would you rule on this music right now by the way it's Avengers it's okay let it go that was his story pinball moments Joel you just sorry I pooped all over it yeah so let me let me start again so I was actually in the streaming area and I was watching um oh you know on the big screen and you know I was trying to think cranky what's the ruling on this because it was clear that for me it was clear that Travis was doing the you know um don't activate the Playfield thing right yeah that was obvious and yeah and also it was clear to me that Travis knows what he's doing he's not going to do something that you know isn't going to work so I I kind of thought well there's been something that's happened to that machine that has caused this but you know we're kind of kicking around and I think Josh Sharpe was was on the other side of me I think I can't or one of the shops where and Carl asked me I said well the ball end of the Playfield from my point of view is you know the game was on unfortunately um but actually I don't know I don't know if you know but I actually went back and tested what happened because because weird puzzles like that infuriate me and and what what I found was is in single player you could ping all day I mean you could do it over and over and over and over again no problem in the finals you got you know other players and and also Gottlieb or gottlia I never know how to pronounce that um weird American thing um it they're not known for great code right and um and you know the the probably not known for tournament play either actually so um you know what happened was is if you hit three switches and I I repeat this several times you get three switches that was it you were done on a multiplayer game so a little bit unfortunate and a hard way to learn and especially on the world championship on stream I I was like oh my god um but you know Luke that's pinball right that's why we love it for these kind of wacky idiosyncrasies we just hope that they don't happen to us and or they when they happen you kind of learn from it and move on yeah Travis was going for the low score Strat he told me I was lulling everybody without false sense of security I actually checked if there was like a no score or final thing that you know because in this we're giving away these coins is he going for that um [Music] Travis I mean I said this to you at the time to get that far in an event like that with a competition was so high I mean it's just a major achievement in pinball and and it was great to watch really good to watch yeah I appreciate it it definitely it took a lot of work in just going back a lot of deliberate practice and endless hours that people really don't realize because there's there is still people out there that think that there's an element pinball that's just or that pinball is just lucky I mean of course you have to have some sort of element of luck but you have to put yourself in position to experience that luck too you almost have to make your own so yeah it's just I think anybody that watches that that is just now getting into competitive pinball or they they are dominating their local area they haven't ventured out yet to play against National level competition it's just just know that it does take a lot of practice but you can do it you just gotta study up on rule sets you have to really work on flipper skills and the best thing you can do the best thing by far that I did was I just turned all my Stern games at home to like just murder pins I mean outlines were gone rubbers were gone no ball save there was no parachute and no restarting games it's like you have to achieve this and then you have to do that and that that helps I mean if you can turn your your games at home into the most difficult games you'll ever see it makes life a lot easier because the what's the number one thing you guys hear a pinball players say when they go out to a new location where they're playing at a tournament they're just like this game plays weird this gameplay is different like if you can adjust you're done so why not just make your game like one game at home play Ultra hard so guess what it makes it easy for you to adjust once you're in that situation then you make the adjustments guess what if there's 10 other people not making that adjustment you have have the advantage right off the bat that's what Joel does yeah yeah I like to have fun with pinball rubber bands on the outlines we know what Joel does I mean the other thing I mean I do the same thing Travis the other thing I've done is it's got the glass off and just practice shots just being accurate that's what I struggle is I'm just not accurate on shots and you miss something and then you're in recovery mode um and yeah you can you can make you can practice recovery modes which you need to practice of course but the best way of not getting into that is is to be sure you know be shot accurate and and that is for me that's what I when that's where the practice pays off for me yeah for sure and that's one thing just watching the stream and seeing these these high-end competitors I mean it's clear that they're flipper skills and their accuracy is insane but it's the recovery it's the being able to get the ball back in control back and back cradled up you know and and get the ball where they want that's just absurd well that's to me that's beautiful to watch too I know that of course going back to what you guys talked about Joel with your group that I know that there's a lot of people that if they're just now watching pinball or there's a group of people that may not like watching competitive pinball because they see the same shot happening over and over and over again but should be in the left orbit yeah well to me there's a beauty in that it's it's like figuring out a puzzle it's it's chess you see a spot and you exploit it and you keep going for it and you have to skillfully do it and a large part of people that watch like pinball tutorials and stuff like that they see how to approach a game but that doesn't necessarily mean that's how you approach it from a tournament standpoint yeah and I think that's what's exciting about pinball right now is you see things rapidly evolving to where you even have top tier players are like huh I never thought of approaching a game from that way using this different pathway or just picking out this shot and that's that's the biggest thing it's it's not necessarily about continuously going for the highest scoring shot sometimes it's about going for the safest shot and repeating that process if you can hit the safe shot five times in a row and you can get to the same spot that you would be if you took an unnecessary risk to take one or two shots at something you might be better off taking the five shots and that's just I mean to be honest with you it's not easy doing the same shot over and over and over again it looks like it is for some people but it takes a lot of brain power to stay calm stay under control tell yourself you're going to hit that shot and then keep going yeah it might be boring for some people to watch but if you're watching like again high level chess and you watch somebody sitting there for 10 minutes to make one decision because they're playing the whole game out in their head I mean if you have an appreciation for competitive for tournament that's what you want to see you know for me I'm more excited about that personally than I am watching somebody go for a wizard mode or watching somebody blow up a game that's just set to Baby settings like that does nothing to excite me at all it just doesn't now I get it um no I I totally what you're saying get what you're saying and I know that's that is quite a conversation when I did the flipping out with friends stream and Zach was on that I know Zach Minnie has some very differing opinions when it comes to what he feels um pinball entertainment should be and you got these two sides of it like the storyline aspect of it the wizard mode pursue how do we show people that pinball is more than just repeating a shot or you know there's challenges there with uh you know when you look at the stream you look at the some of the final games that are being played when there's 10 000 plus people watching it's some of these older games you have bad girls being streamed it's like why are we not streaming these newer pins that can be sold and I just I think I I understand what Zach wants but I also understand what what tournament pinball is and I and I know that you know it was to me seeing something like how are the how how is Keith and Escher and Travis going to handle a bad girls I have no idea I know what they're going to do to a Godzilla they're gonna blow it up they're gonna blow they're gonna like blow it up and we're gonna see a ton of the game and the game's gonna be an hour and a half long um but what are they gonna do on Bad Girls or a fast game like what was it Flash Gordon or something it's like let's see let's see what happens here and um well I don't know I thought that was great well to me too and you guys can correct me if I'm wrong or chime in here but to me that's what makes it exciting as well it's like I can see both trains of thought and I think both trains of thought can be correct under the right circumstances I think that there is a time and place to watch somebody chase a wizard mode and this and that I just don't think something like that will ever be more popular than tournament pinball and the reason being is is if you're a casual there's a lot of casuals that can't even find the start button you know what I mean so they're not gonna know what they're seeing that you've gotten past this multiball in this mode and all of a sudden you've activated this it's too much input you know this is stuff that we all have to study on to understand how it goes forward so how is somebody going to readily understand that just reading it real quick and seeing it whereas if you do have a little bit older game it's easy to understand what's going on you watch bad girls for instance you know oh they're hitting down the drop Target they're hitting it back in the saucer up top they're going to get into multiball and then they're going to start welding on shots and then you see the hurry up and you know that they're going to aim for the targets you know so stuff like that I think that that's easier for people to digest but I do agree that there is a time and place to maybe add in the stern games or the newer games which we do have tournaments like Expo and the stern pro circuit finals that has that and I know we talked about this too Joel I just want to correct the record that I kind of I misspoke a little bit last time when we were talking about Keith elwin's picks he did still have his Stern picks but I knew that there he was not going to pick those because why why Fight Fire with Fire against esher and zoller and just my dumb ass over in the corner trying to keep up but you know why do that go to your strengths and he is just I mean he's spectacular on pins like Firepower and bad girls and all that so I think that there's a time and place for it I I can see it from both points of views it's just the problem is if you want to use new Stern pins or a situation like that it has to be highly produced in order to convey to the viewer what is going on you need an active telestrator you need commentators that know exactly what they're talking about and they know exactly what to say when to say it because the action unfolds immediately so you have no time to breathe so it's like if one thing's happening over here and you're trying to convey that to the viewer if they're brand new two or three other things have already happened now and now they're constantly playing catch-up and it's just it's too much like imagine again I keep using this analogy but this is Perfect Analogy imagine watching speed chest or bullet chess that last one minute how are we going to describe all the moves that are happening to somebody that's never watched chess before yeah it's interesting so in my job we run a TV channel called BT Sport we do Barclays Premier League and everything else and I went to talk to them about hey guys can we do like pinball even if you even if you put out at two in the morning and and they took a look at it and their big issue was the complexity of it and what he said was is he now Luke if you were to run a tournament where every game was the same game you could be on to something but trying to match trying to figure out how you explain some people who who don't know pinball all these different details just impossible and and you know they were up for us look we're up for it you get 10 to the same games and we'll do it and if you think about the stern challenge that they do the uh I was just going to say that that worked that worked really well so um you know that's one of the great things about pinball but it's also you know in maybe from a wider media point of view it's one of the things that limits pinball but I don't think I would much rather have you know thousands of different games than be stuck playing the same game all the time for sure right well for sure the answer is actually right in front of us and I haven't heard anybody else say this but I truly believe that this is the answer you you bring the best to both worlds together you have a single level game which happens to be Bond 60 you have a theme that is relevant right you have a theme that's current and you have the lights you have something that's modern if you bring something that's modern into single level to where the rule set is at near as complex can readily be explained can be easy to understand I think that's how you bridge the gap together so for instance if we took Deadpool behind you Joel and that was a single level game The Casual would be able to understand what is happening so much easier I I promise you a casual seeing ramps and seeing all this and that that doesn't really clue in with them what clues in is the lights and the theme that's what clues in and you look that's why TNA is popular even with us that's why you've talked about your friends and family that show up what game do they go to yeah you go to TNA and they want to do one thing over and over again so I think that that's really if there was somebody that produced games to where they were relevant themes and they were basically a single level game that's easy to understand I think that's how you bridge that Gap now that being said I don't know if that makes money from selling it to people or anything like that maybe it does maybe it doesn't but I truly do believe that's how you bridge the gap when it comes to getting people to understand pinball on that level and get the interest there no that's that's actually a really good point and um so Classics tournaments Classics well yeah Classics with a modern theme yeah and that's the thing I mean imagine if you charge 20 grand for it well yeah say let's say for instance cheetah isn't cheetah what if cheetah was Jurassic Park well you're talking about like beetles beetles obviously like it's a single level I get it I see what you're saying the Simplicity of the layout the Simplicity of I I and I do think Fox Cities you guys do incredibly well and so does Carl within this but like having commentators that that truly describe what are we trying to accomplish here right now what is the player thinking the telestrator is huge and I know I was I was trying to figure that out I was like why why are they not you know we got to the finals why are they not using the telestrator turns out the telestrator broke that's why they weren't using it because um Steven Bowden's like yeah he wants you know hitting that right orbit I'm like just draw the path like show us what they're trying to do and um I I think I mean it's very clear competitive wise in streaming wise we are only improving on on the entertainment factor of that not to mention the skill levels continuing to grow but I do I do see what you're saying Travis about the Simplicity of a single level game or even a classic game being able to communicate what is the goal here that's a whole lot easier to communicate than Godzilla where they're like well they could be pursuing one of I don't know six small balls and are they going to go this route or that route or rush you know some of these codes that are just I mean as a player we love but yes communicating that from a tournament standpoint would be a challenge I do know for all the listeners this this has been very tournament heavy we have just a little bit more tournament talk to do and then we're gonna take a big shift so tough luck yeah yeah um so shift here um Travis behind you you have two Oklahoma State uh tournaments uh trophies two Oklahoma State You've Won State Oklahoma yes you're the one that's spelled wrong thank you Josh it's spelled right but you actually have a third one in your house but it's not yours oh yeah yeah thank you for reminding me I did not forget Monica yeah uh my wife where's Monica's Truck Yeah no I think she took it to her office I think but yeah she uh she won the women's state in Oklahoma so congratulations to her because she actually worked hard and wanted to practice and actually asked me for help and she was whatever I know does she listen to any of it hell no she didn't listen like I told her on Spider-Man I was like stop using the upper flipper just let it come down go to a catch and she's like she looks at me and she says okay I'll do that it goes right up there what does she do yeah upper flipper just go into town ball going all over the place but no so congrats to her and congrats actually to all the women yeah that competed at one I I was excited to watch that and see it I've gotten to see I believe it was I watched some in California and I think Massachusetts had a stream up so I try to watch as much as I could because I mean it's exciting to see people be in a position to where they get to compete for something that's of that level and what I hope happens with that hopefully next year they'll have a women's Nationals hop out of it I'm not sure if they're take I think they are taking a dollar now for women's tournaments and all that so hopefully still doing a Women's National so well it's but it's not based on this oh it's the world I think it's worlds it's being held at dead flip right I think that's like women's world or something like that but yeah there's no Nationals that it feeds into so hopefully there was a lot of interest at least from the Oklahoma point of view of women seeing that and they they wanted to go somewhere and some of them thought they were going and even I thought there was going to be a Women's National so it's like finding out that there wasn't yet a little disappointing but hey I think it's coming though because I love the push that's coming with women's tournaments and you know seeing the the ability too it's just everybody's getting so much better just over the past couple of years you could tell that even the young old whoever it is just the the overall flipper skills and the ability to know what to do and when to do it you could tell it's getting better and better so I look for big things coming out of women's tournaments for uh 2023 for sure oh yeah and I'm I'm starting to see even more women's names in like the open tournaments like for everybody so they're they're competing right up there with the men uh in some areas I mean um Tom you have a girl at District 82 that just is dominating um what's her name cassidyowski yeah and she's what like 17. yep yeah very good I'm not kidding oh she's outstanding and then you got Carrie Carrie Wing yep I believe and I'm trying to think Leslie from California yeah I know that there's another one too that I've seen play that I'm impressed with but I've never met her in person her name's Elizabeth I say I can't remember the last name she's like from Indiana Ohio Kentucky somewhere I don't know I can't pronounce it but she was at the Cincinnati tournament I think she actually I think she made top four in that if I'm remembering right but yeah there's there's a lot of women players out there that are that are fantastic and it's only going to get better and I know Rachel with um well she does stuff with I don't know her last name Rachel with Rachel Aristo yeah Rachel she has a podcast on Poor Man's network but she also put out a podcast that we released on tpn where she was talking about you know women's uh competitive play and trying to get more women out there in the community that comes with that so um yeah we're I mean I know it's awesome to see Travis that that uh that Monica is really taking it on and and enjoys doing it and and she's doing very well at it which is exceptional so she's out for blood Joel I heard her in our game room draining and cussing like just dropping an F-bomb I was like oh it's serious now um what there's a game in the final there's a game of Stargazer we're all I think all four women players score more than a million um watch that game because for me that's probably one of the standout games for me that said actually women's pinball is here and it and the women players are as great if not better in terms of skill and quality and capability and that game I watched that and I'm a massive Stargazer fan um as a game and to see the way they were playing uh it was like just amazing I was I was inspired by just watching them play that's awesome that's awesome and um the other side of States I mean Travis I know you did not compete in States Tom you did compete in States um and there was you did very well so much drama very well in the state of Wisconsin uh there was a point where you were battling so this is head to head so instead of doing like a four player game in the top two go on or top two you know point system this is one on one this is what is a heads up is that what it's called but it's no I just uh head to head to head single single elimination uh bus to seven so you gotta won four games yeah and there was a point where it was you versus your son you versus Neil yeah so how did that go and how did that feel on the car ride home I was fine uh Neil Neil Neil took it fine I mean it honestly I don't think either of us were playing great but Neil Neil just really had some bad luck go his way he he picked Deadpool against me and he actually won that game but I mean it he there were a lot of outlane drains you know unfortunately and uh uh you know that's that's pinballs you know so spoiler alert you got second you made it all the way to the end from Colorado yeah so that's what I wanted to bring up so I mean the king of Wisconsin yeah right right I gotta get I gotta get Asher like like a Wisconsin shirt or a Packer shirt right foreign we talked about this Tom like I can no longer claim I'm District 82. like Escher is more District 82 than any of us from outside west well even even Josh was saying you know like if you look at if you look at some people's ifba cards there's a lot of District 82. so and you know it was it was brought up to me by a lot of people there was a post on Raymond's um Illinois uh uh Championship on YouTube somebody somebody said hey what do you think about Usher and the sharps coming to District 82 for Wisconsin state and and honestly I mean those guys came and played in our state they earned points they have the right to pick which state they go to so to to the to the listeners just to clarify what's going on here so this is States so you would think this is this is who whoever scored the most points in last year can compete for States well you assume you have to be a state resident that that's not the case it is the 24 top um Whopper earners in that state have the ability to play for States so when you have somebody like an esher that's traveling all over the US and playing on all these different tournaments especially when he's winning in them Asher was one of the top four winners in the state of Wisconsin even though he lives he was the number he was the number one seed yes so he had the most points which if you look at it was over a thousand points which is insane but there's people like um Carlos I know laserlos like he's in Ohio he had multiple states he could pick in he couldn't he could have came to Wisconsin yeah he thought that became a thing where why why would you want and so you have two two trains of thoughts you could either based on yeah you could either do it based on the competition like well I don't want to go compete in this state because uh you know Ray days there while the other side of that is well where am I going to win the most money and the money's based off of every single Tournament game that has been played in that state there's a dollar that's set aside for that and so being that District 82s had so many huge large tournaments all year long the prize pool for district 84 the state of Wisconsin was over ten thousand dollars yes so I mean you can't really blame anybody to see all that money just sitting there going well if I go there and I do yeah actually descend I'm gonna be taking home a paycheck so I knew I knew going into my first match like if I lose her I'm still winning 200 bucks wow just for showing up just for showing up yeah you know um if I make it to the next round it's 400 if I make it to the next round it's like 800 or 600 or whatever it was I mean it was a lot of money yeah to give an idea how much that actually is I think the Oklahoma state champion made about the equivalent as somebody in the second round at Wisconsin yeah yeah which is crazy it's crazy it is weird because yes you're right that Asher is flying from Colorado but sure if Escher is going to play in Colorado potentially win Colorado why like he's incredibly I mean he won in desk well there's still good players in Colorado too I mean sure that field is really difficult too you got Jordan deshane I think is his last name um he's really good he won he beat Adam levkoff who's Usher's dad uh and then you have Walt wood and Zach so great yeah and Zach McCarthy is phenomenal and you still have Donovan's step too and Donovan stop yeah it's like and Donovan's been playing for years and like in Papa finals and Elgato no signals there's this camera again it's every 30 minutes it's almost like I would have played in Wisconsin and won I could probably afford keep my camera on I think it's been very clear that this is not a mechanical problem this is a yes so the thing is too mistake I used to I well I still am I very much wish state would be set up to where whatever state you're in that's where you play at because I wish it would be more Community Based but I do understand that these are the rules these are what we play Within right so I don't blame people for wanting to go play Elsewhere for wanting to go see because I know like we had a couple of people come into Oklahoma back in 2020 and for me I'm just kind of like okay I saw that as a challenge I'm like I'm going to defend my turf you know so it's a unique so without if a rule was in place I wouldn't have had that type of challenge either so so I mean there's pros and cons to it but I think at the same time too if you tried to do state line rules that would just be way too hard to police to implement that rule from both sides so you know you might have a situation where somebody lives on the border of two states and over the border is where all the pinball is at so do you want to really tell that person like hey you can't come to our state because you don't you don't you know you're not in the boundary of Wisconsin right the sharps are in Chicago that's a few hour drive north to go yeah but the funny thing is I don't even know if Josh qualified for any other state but I don't I don't think he did yeah right well the same thing goes for here around the St Louis area you have CP pinball which is about 45 minutes from my house but it's on the Illinois side of things so it's Illinois points so I think that's why we had like five or six or seven people that went from this area or at least that play in that spot and they went all the way to Chicago for the state and the same thing happens with Kansas City where you have people in the Kansas side Missouri side you have people qualifying for both so yeah there is cities that borderline States and that would make it awfully difficult to tell somebody okay you don't play here that might be like an hour away you have to travel five hours this Direction play in your state so yeah I see I see it both sides but I but yeah but I also you know take somebody else aside I see somebody who you know plays in that state doesn't go anywhere else and then you know they see somebody else from another state where they're like well you bumped me out because I could have taken that spot you know so but then what are we going to tell that person to do play better well playing more events we're approaching about an hour of tournament talk which I'm I know come on Joel Joel It's Where It's At where's enough where are the numbers at on Twitch I try to give I try to make sure that this this podcast is is balanced I know we have a lot of tournament Players that enjoy this podcast but I also know there's a lot of players that don't um with that said though I mean our conversation Travis and I that we had last episode we did get some really good feedback on that from people that don't play in tournaments that just enjoyed this we had one person tell us to not waste server space that was good feedback here's the thing we've already talked more tournament talk than the final round podcast yeah yeah and we haven't mentioned one dick so we got something well is there anything anything to wrap up the tournament to talk no we just need to go straight to number one now number one on our production list this is so why did we why did we ask for Neil one we're trying to obviously you know we're going for a global podcast here so first off that's why we that's why we like deal two weeks awesome so yes we clearly we knew he he's been at almost every one of these tournaments that we've talked about so far which is incredible um but two Bond when I think of James Bond I think of you know English Englishman right and it's like so you know this is there are some Bond Fanatics here in the states um I know like David Dennis up in Canada he's a huge Bond guy but James Bond over in the UK is a whole nother I mean that's a whole nother level right so Neil I know you get in on most of these Le's but when Bond was announced how was that like what was your I know how Tom reacted to rush do you think you were in a similar boat well kind of but actually I'll tell you a very short but funny story um so um the the guys who own the bond ipe on the broccoli people um they got a lot of stick for missing the 50th anniversary of bond I don't know if you're aware of that but they didn't do anything for the 50th so 10 years ago yeah so so they decided Well we better make sure we do something for the 60th right and you know I think if you if you flip back to 10 years ago Bond was probably in a bit of a weird place with you know no one quite sure about the current Bond anyway so um they're coming out work for we got we got invited to a meeting with um you know uh Hey the Eon guys want to have a chat with us this was a few years ago and I'm like bun yeah I'm going um so I was we're at the session I I can't go into what we talked about unfortunately but one of the things that I think it was my boss or one of my colleagues happened to mention that I was a big pinball nut and and one of the Eon folks happened to mention that they might have done a deal with a pinball manufacturer so this was years ago this was yeah and actually if you go on pin side I posted bond is coming like four years ago nice um so I kind of knew this was coming despite many Stern employees telling me Neil you're nuts it's not coming I was like yeah okay so um which kind of made me laugh so when it I mean when it came first of all it was great that it's coming it's a it's a dream theme for me I'm like excellent two oh my God who's designing it who's writing the code who's doing the r all the kind of panic moments that you have but but you know Luke you look back at Stern over the last few years it's hard to say that they've got a lot of things wrong they've got a lot of things right that's doing me wrong the room for improvement and but I kind of felt actually and also knowing Gomez he's kind of in the same hero of me I thought I bet he's a big Bond fan turns out he is um so I was super excited but you know will they get the right music what era will it be you know it's it's kind of like in some respects It's like Star Wars where and and actually the other the other IP that that fits this is Harry Potter because of those IPS everybody's got a different mindset about what makes that IP special for them and and now you know whoever does get the Harry Potter IP good luck to you because you're gonna make loads of people happy and you're gonna pass equally as many people off right yep um so from so from that perspective as it look it's a pinball machine based on bond you know I'm in basically um and you know I've been so I've been waiting for it waiting for it because we have to wait for the games to get shipped over uh actually arrived last week bondelli unfortunately it's got a bit of damage yeah which kind of is unfortunate but again on the flip side I've maybe bought 30 new inbox games this is the first one I've ever had any damage with so I kind of part of me is like well it's not great all apartment is like well you know that's life and also you know I've had a few issues with Stern I've always kind of looked after me so I'm I'm pretty confident that starter gonna send me either a new machine or a new cabinet very excited about that we're gonna talk about that but so let's let's step one step back there was the reveal of this game was supposed to happen at a trade show in the UK right that's right there were you involved yeah you were there oh yeah so um electric coin is the um who's the distributor here a guy called John runs a really nice really nice guy um they I helped them out they've got a location in London where I help them set up the stone Insider connect like I know them well I'm also obviously I'm a good customer so you know they they were like oh hey we're gonna have this and they invite they gave me a I was invited down there VIP it was it was awesome um and you know eag is actually so there's two there's two events in the UK one is eag which happens actually happened last week when we were in Indus got a week before there's another event that was big in the U.S called iapa it's usually in Florida it's an insane event if you haven't been there go it's just it'll blow your mind usually it happens just before free play Florida um and then I I up I've decided to do an International Event they did it in the same venue as eag and it was huge I mean I was like wow it it would compare to eag it was mind-blowingly big everyone who's in coin op was there bouncy castles and popcorn makers and pinball machine you name it it was there I mean they had this event and and unfortunately um and and you know I I don't think whatever decision you make is is is is gonna um is going to be the right one or the wrong one you know our our head of state the queen died the week before this event um and and I think both starring together with the the license or I think I don't know for sure um you know they decided actually we probably want to hold this off and and and actually I kind of applaudster for that because you know they're they're an international company coming to the UK they could have said ah what's who cares about all these British guys we're launching our game right um but I don't know if you saw the Olympics with with you know the queen with Bond um in 2012 where where they made a loot like she jumped out of a plane um and actually some head of state asked the mayor if she really did jump out of the plane it was that they did it that real um you know I think I think it was a great move by Stern it was classy a lot of people were saying ah you know they're just trying to do this although the game's not ready and the game was there I I saw them and there's unfortunately some really bad photos of it leaked which you know is infuriate and I wish if there was one thing I think stand on and I'm not just there another other people manufacturers as soon as you see leaked photos get the real photos out quick yeah wait get the real ones out because everyone looks at it I remember um stranger things right that got such a beating because some fall leaked out from CES now it's the game that everybody wants and they're paying 20 000 bucks for a you know for an Le and here in the UK there's about eight of them in total and the the they sell like a hot cakes so um you know not a great launch there's a few stumbles they then relaunched it at the 60th anniversary of bond there's a an event at the British Film Institute uh I went down there it was actually the same weekend as the UK open so I kind of I kind of popped over there just to say hello and I couldn't stay for very long um but all the bond people were loving um the game and um you know it was great to see it and a whole dollar 60th anniversary stuff yeah no that's awesome I so did you did you have a chance to play the game or see it before it was released and no I so I played it um well I played it I'm trying to think where it was released or Not by then it was because well they had put it out on the floor and then they took it off so so that so I don't believe anyone got to play it at the show at all it was on the floor for one evening and then the next day it was gone yeah in fact in fact you couldn't even find where it was because they wielded a whole lot of other games Okay um to fill the Gap so there was no um you know I don't think I don't I'm pretty confident no one played them at that event um and the the other the other launch then obviously people played them yeah so I know so when it comes to the Gomez Bond um Zach and flipping out has let me borrow one for the last few weeks uh I've been playing the heck out of it you know props to stern that they are continuing to put out code updates I'm the I the game is I would say where it's at right now it's 0.84 code I think almost all the major villains are in it all the henchmen are in it um I think all the weapon modes are in it um the bond women still don't do anything and there is still no stacking so you still can't play multiple modes or multiple things at the same time now I know Travis pointed out I think it was like today on Facebook um George Gomez said uh they have full intentions of adding stacking uh in the next code update I don't know initial Impressions Neil I mean if this is this a theme that you love how do you what are your thoughts I mean I played it I I did play bone the Expo so I was at Expo the game was that I was able to play it and and you know my first impression is the core thing there's the game shoots really well right the chords was still very early no question about it and and a lot of work to do but you know there'd be nothing worse as if the game was clunky or or didn't flow well but I I really like the games and and I I I most Gomez games I I tend to like but um when you look at it from a a bond fan point of view the artwork is perfect I know and I know a lot of people said this artwork looks like some guy in Photoshop did it and well Photoshop wasn't around in the 60s guys so it's meant to Luke It's meant to look a little bit kind of non-perfect and if you look at the the bond artwork of that era especially Connery it all looks like that so you know they've they've nailed it and others are they've just stuck to all the movie posters on the side yes that because that artwork is collectible it's it's it's huge in in in in the UK and and actually across the world so you know I'm very I was ecstatic about it the only thing I might I might nitpick don't why why isn't the Le gold finger yeah you know why why Vault Edition you're forgetting about the Vault Edition yeah that's it hasn't come out yet no finger Vault that'll be another sale my wife will get pissed off about it yeah so no I I that's cool I'm glad as a bond fan or fanatic potentially that you're you're except you're excited about that and then the other side of that is and we've talked about this as a group I I think we all love the look or what we're seeing in the bond 60th Edition that that Keith is obviously designed um I know you know at least the three of us we we're not buying one and so we're like well who who are we talking to that is buying one and boom Neil I mean it was just you you fit that bill as well what were your thoughts when that well first did you like what were your thoughts when you heard that there was going to potentially be an another version of the game you know that Keith like you were you weren't prepared for that like double double dipping your your your dream team right no I mean well Luke I mean this is I think um Chavez captured it really well and and when you guys talked about it which is what a great time for pinball where you can do something like that can you imagine trying to do that you know 10 years ago even five years ago maybe not so but you know and then it's the theme you know how many people are Avengers crazies we'd love another Avengers special limit or you know um you know there's there's loads of folks that would love their game to have a special edition I'm like yes my team's got a Hallelujah um and then and then you know then my kind of bank manager filmed me and said danger money you know it's kind of you know you kind of know Luke this is going to be expensive like the Bo's like Batman uh Le uh sorry Batman 66 so you know I knew it was not going to be a a low-cost pinball machine although you know actually I think standard so a gazillion of them if it was yeah um so again you look at what they've done and and actually as a bond fan what sternov done is actually pretty impressive with on 60. it is incredibly rare incredibly rare that you see bond from the multiple bonds from multiple eras from with multiple bad guys and multiple Gadgets in the same thing right it's of you try and find any other a bit of bond thing that's got that you'll struggle just you know fan artwork yes for sure anything official very rare very rare indeed so again you know people that the artwork on the play field could be better I guess but the outside of it the the you know I'm like yeah this is awesome the game look who doesn't want to own a Keith elwin single level game yeah I mean you know that that was the second thing you know right behind me you can see I've got all of Owen's games they're all brilliant games actually you mentioned you know in this code how accessible is this Keith came up to me and said hey Neil I hear you're buying a bond I was like yeah and I was like you're gonna love it and and I was like yeah super excited you know because because you know Keith Keith wouldn't say that if if you know if if it wasn't and frankly we know that his his pedigree in building games right so I'm really excited actually I thought it would be more expensive than it was candidly okay and um I kind of you know lied my yeah 20 grand I'm in 25 I'm out because I genuinely believed it would be 25. that was in my head that's what I thought it would be so and look it's it's crazy money is it is the is the value of what you're getting with the pennies that you're paying absolutely not um and but as a as a bond fan as a pinball fan um you know it's it's not that rare either um but I'm I'm I'm also a big Stone Classics fan um I got a lot of the stone Classics and it's kind of a similar sort of setup so I'm super excited about it it will be in the bank at UK open nice um so I'm gonna make sure that anyone who wants to play it can play it uh we're doing a bond special event here for our members at pinball Republic where we're going to bring all the bond games together for a a mini tournament uh I'll take mine to to the to the club um but you know as a bond fan and a pinball fan you know this is probably my high for the next 20 years until until the you know another thing my love comes along so that's awesome but I think you know I really believe it's awesome for pinball that we've got to a place where you know we can the the things like this that this sort of experimentation is happening um I kind of hope star and look at a um another folks look around it's like well how can we do that but do a bit more volume and a bit more accessible um because we need scale in in this industry well I think you you hit the nail on the head too when you were talking about or you're alluding to your utility or the product I think that's what a lot of people need to understand that you know one size won't fit all for consumers something that somebody sees that they're like okay this is too much money that that doesn't equate to the whole industry as like crashing on itself and they've jumped the shark this and that like it's one product in dozens of products that are available and what cracks me up about this is looking at the reactions to it and again everybody's entitled to their reactions I'm not going to say people are wrong but what cracks me up is is the ones that are complaining about the money it's like okay you have five cars and you're one person it's like okay you're obviously shelling out a ton of money because you're into cars that's fine you know or you might have like 30 pinball machines in your collection like okay you know you like playing pinball or you might be like us that we have like an expensive computer or we have a Funko collection or a Lego collection you know what I mean like everybody has their thing that they do everybody has their Hobby and so I think that that's one of the things that kind of gets lost in the shuffle that when somebody sees something like this they're like okay who who wants this who wants to get this oh it's too much it's this and that you know the price is what the price is and the utility is going to be whatever the utility is for the end user and what somebody sees here I mean that's to me I I very much do believe that this product based off of how many are going out and based off the reaction I've told Joel and Tom this and this first time I'll say this publicly I truly do believe that the value of this will go up and then next five years or so I think that we will have ourselves a pirates from Jersey Jack situation because if not many go out there yeah and the game shoots great and just like Neil said he hit the nail on the head and this is completely 100 True based off research that I've looked through through all the bond 60th stuff from other Industries it's rare that you see all of them together in one product it is rare I can only I don't think I've seen it even one other time besides pinball so that's something that's so unique that at the end of the day with this product all it takes is is for one person to see it and for one person to want it and that's where you see the values start going up and I truly do believe the value will go up on it eventually assuming that it doesn't hit like you know the 500 I don't think that they'll get 500 out which makes it even more valuable and more rare and to me it's like that might get some people you know just say you know what I need to get in on this I mean that's just the way the market works and Travis you had said it before that when people get into pinball every pinball machine is new to them and that's something that there are there are huge Bond Fanatics and if all of a sudden you know a few years down the road some Bond fanatic decides to get into pinball and then realizes you know wait there's a bond game and there's this and this and I can get a game that has every bond in it and yeah I I totally see what you're saying um Neil I do have a question for you do you feel like four optic Spinners is enough as a stone Classics fan you can never have too many Spinners you know I I'd have spinners I love you know as you went in my first kind of pinball you know one of the first games I wanted to buy was meteor um it's just hit the spinner all day um yeah so that's why again that's why I'm excited about it and our club so almost done classic so there I've got about five or six of them and uh it's it's this so I think this is just gonna fit in as if it was another strong classic with a few more bells and whistles and a few modernization that hopefully will attract more people in a pinball at the end of the day but but I mean the one I think is slightly disappointing about the 60th I think there's only like four of them coming to the UK oh um which which is kind of crazy because I I I've been a few Bond events where you know um they're literally like being a real Bond of bond kind of villain place for the kind of people and the money that they've got and and I kind of I kind of think if you're gonna go down that market you probably need to think about your channel to that market more than than through the regular channels and I suspect the 500 games in this space Stone should be like there should be fights over them in the bond land I I just know it right there isn't because they don't know it's there really um and and I think standard gotta find another if Pinball's gonna do things like this they're going to find that route to that channel uh because the current pinball Channel some some folks have got it you know the high-end um Game Room guys yeah a lot of them don't they're just shipping games out so that'd be he might take and and you know I'm glad only four of them in the UK that definitely guarantees it's going to be worth more money you know from my point I was about to say it it sounds like it's time for you to Corner the market that's what I'm hearing but you should be buying more than one that's what it sounds like yeah yeah I have to come and live with one of you guys because my wife changed a lot you're gonna collect Bond 60s like Pokemon cards I just know it well Neil the only other Bond 60 question I had for you is what are what's your thought and this is a little bit of drunk you know this quality high quality pinball drama that's out there what's your thoughts on the fact that the topper is the topper that's coming with the 60th is the same topper that's going to be on the Gomez one and you I know you're a Topper guy and I know you're buying both does that does that bother you it's exclusive I mean yeah I mean it's expensive but look I think I mean there's another thing starting you know look they cocked up on the on the piece of paper there's no doubt about it right um when you look at it it does look like it should be exclusive um and and they kind of you know when you make a mistake like that just put your hands up and say sorry we screwed up this is the reality instead they kind of have this wishy-washy thing that that didn't go down well at all um you know just apologize for it's not the end of the world this is pinball and you know I'll be buying another topper for sure yeah so you'll have so I mean you'll get the official topper you'll get both of them yeah and actually um there's a guy who owns a GoldenEye who wants to get one to stick on his golden eye oh that I know so uh so there's a bigger Mark out there than just just um you know what stone I've sold today there's there's old golden eye that that's still around still and actually not a bad game um or the not the best game but it's not bad either so yeah shout out to uh Mike Castleman with the pinballers he he personally feels that the jump ramp in Goldeneye is the best jump ramp on a pinball machine like he thinks it's better Toy Story he thinks it's better no good girl do you guys I don't know I've never played GoldenEye do you think that's a fear statement Mike's Canadian so yeah we gotta let him slide it's fine all right but the touch base though on the Toppers though this is an important thing to point out there is a contingency of people out there that will specifically buy a Topper just to put on the Shelf yeah and they'll figure out how to light it up and it's literally just a piece of artwork I've seen that done oh yeah I've seen that done in many game rooms I I know people that do that that they just I mean they collect them it's a collectible for them and they don't necessarily put it on their pinball machine it's the same way that you take a translate and you put it on a shadow box or something like that that's backlit right and then you put it up on the wall or a play field on the wall there's a lot of people out there that will buy a Topper specifically just to show off yeah that's interesting actually one other thing I wanted to point out about artwork um on Batman 66 and they have Commissioner Gordon on the Playfield right trying to get Commissioner Gordon on a Batman thing is almost impossible yes star made it happen he's on there just he's the thing the Target that you hit for the eggs um so a lot of people get Stern about you don't get this relationship you do that for license but actually in many cases they've gone above and beyond and got things that actually no one else has got so all the bonds together Commissioner Gordon I'm sure there's other things that that we don't know about like Commissioner Gordon why is that a problem I think it's something to do with who owns that IP it's owned by a trust or something like that I don't know I I was told um and and looking into it I've got uh Batman 66 I'm a Batman nut as well but um seeing that on the play field was like Wow they've got Gordon on it how did they get that um so at least that's what I was told it might be might be hogwash but when you look for Commissioner Gordon staff of that era yeah it's hard to find it so I think there's something in it well the same thing kind of happened for Avengers too because Adam Warlock is on the Playfield and he's nowhere else and when that came out most people had no idea who Adam Warlock was but he played his character played a central part in the infinity Saga at least in the comics and now now you have have Adam Warlock is going to show up in the movies now in the next Guardians of the Galaxy so it's going to be a well-known character well it's going to be a well-known character Joel I'm telling you I'm telling you if you only knew what's coming down the pipe Joel I'm excited for you I'm excited that you're I'm excited fantasies are becoming I'm excited what that means for pinball though think about this we should be getting a doctor strange pin no ANS ifs or buts about it it's magic it's a magic theme it's a comic book theme it's perfect put it together make it happen but you know there's Spiderman there's plenty of people that are like I don't want any more they'll buy it they'll just just put ill when it sells out who you know who cares I would buy a new Spider-Man pin exactly in into the spider verse that is the low hanging fruit that would absolutely dominate pinball cells everybody puts out these themes and everything you want a theme that's relevant with the younger generation you want a theme that's relevant with an older gender duration you want a theme that's current my God and it has hip-hop music to it and it has badass artwork to it and it has plenty to bring out and there goes my camera I'm telling you every 30 it's you're right though into the Twitter that would be huge that would be massive I know I personally if they ever did a Batman the Animated Series pin I'd be all over that but I I get it I know the argument people like I don't want any more dad Rock pens well that's you we're going to continue to get music pins and people like I don't want any more comic book pins yeah I don't I don't want any more comic book pins but the truth is there's it sells there's some huge fans there's some huge fans in that uh well I one of the things I think you know if I was starting I'd be looking at anime right now is insane yeah I think if they made a pin in that space it would it would go crazy big anime and and I know we've said this a long time but it's like video games isn't like they have not done anything video game related of course we know how difficult it is with Nintendo live stream but Mario would be massive South Park would be even more that would be massive as well not more than Mario but that would be big that would be massive South Park would sell out I'm telling you South Park would do great and then into the spider-verse those are the three themes that I think would just absolutely destroy whatever else you put out there I think it would do better than Top Gun I think it would do better than even Matrix under most conditions and I think it would do way better than something like Godfather or something like that well it's not going to do better in Galactic tank force though I think we all agree Galactic Tang force is the epitome of pinball team telling you I I got the next billion years I got a feeling that that pin is going to be more popular we talked about this a couple of months ago it's serious I can't wait well there was even a pull out I mean all internet polls are wrong of course but there was a poll out I think that took like second or third for people that were most excited compared to any of the other like space buddy yeah nobody's gonna be excited about Indiana Jones I'm sorry that's done it's whatever Jaws is okay you know Venom if that's coming up people will be fine Foo Fighter whatever it is sure Galactic tanks oh I'm telling you in The Lunchbox that I'm gonna be able to get with it I can't wait I can't I mean we still need to know are we the are we the tank force are we the commander like like like who are we fighting I don't know I don't know I do want to stick with the uh with the excess the tanks fly Joel We need to know this buddy tanks in space my God I want to keep talking about accessories so first off Neil I know you bought the um I know you bought the Mando topper yes what what are your thoughts on it because Tom over there he keeps his games in competitive play so it just shows scores so he doesn't even get to see all the fun things oh okay I didn't know that was the case so mine's probably just shows scores as well and yeah so but again I I think it's it's it's it's great again I forgot there was a Topper on mine yeah I mean it in terms of value you know you have to question it but look again it's going to put a bit of effort into building something that wasn't just a flat thing with lights pointing at it you know I hope they keep doing that um again I kind of I I wonder if if the reason they're priced so high is because Stern can't make enough and they know that so they've got to extract the maximum how to hopefully when they move to this new Factory um you know they've got bandwidth to to make more and more and we can go back to you know um one of the best Toppers of all time 400 bucks Black Knight right let's get back to that world but again instead of going to be able to make them um in volume and I hope this moved to the next Factory allows them to do that but I I think you know top reside a little bit to the game um and you know there's some I'm not a big mod fan unless it really makes a difference but I did swap out my um by Godzilla um for Atomic Godzilla I don't know if so Focus um actually Atomic Godzilla made by a guy here in the UK it's a great mod for Godzilla lights up and actually looks like Godzilla rather than Godzuki um but but I think um you know it's my sense is a stone would love to sell them lower price if they could make the volume to make it worth making them and Mandalorian um you know I'm I'm again another kind of man do crazy and you know I kind of feel that finally we've got with Mandalorian the Star Wars that we should have always had um you know the Star Wars game is okay but it doesn't feel like you're in a Star Wars Episode versus Mandalorian it kind of does the music's awesome and I really like it so yeah the man the top was great um I I think I I mean I pretty much like all the Toppers it's not one that I think um is terrible but um I just hope they're imaginative and and and do um do imaginative things with them I totally agree and that's what scares me about the Godzilla topper it hasn't been announced we don't know what it's going to be but to me I hope they go big I hope they go big I mean everything about this game is incredible and I don't want the topper to be lame I hope the Toppers you know moves are exciting or something but the other thing that scares me is so many people own Godzilla and so many people are like this game's a keeper it's bolted people are including myself like are are modding it putting the bells and whistles on it so if all of a sudden this this Godzilla topper comes out and they're sold out everywhere and they can't make enough for them I don't know I or you know we'll just have to cross that bridge when we get there but I know I mean all four of us from Godzilla and probably all four of us have full intentions of buying the topper I mean it's it's uh I don't know we'll see um let's talk about everybody's favorite mod especially Tom I know Tom loves this mod which is um Stern Insider connect yeah start Insider connect and Neil I'm excited to talk to you about this for two reasons but number one certain Insider connect recently uh they just did a big update which was really cool actually I thought this was genuinely cool if you go on your Insider connect account you will see that at the top they do a year in review so you can see everything that you did last year you can see like what games you played the most what days of the week you played so many games well they they had to update the server to then like allow that that was when the server went down earlier this week I need to prepare the listeners you're about to see salty Tom invoked and I cannot wait yes buckle up go ahead Joel yeah buckle up everybody biggest waste of money in the industry hey you're you're we're there's your foreshadowing yes um what I will say is I actually thought that was really cool I thought it was cool to see like when do you score the most points and compared each ball so you're starting to realize how much um Stern is actually like how much data they're capturing from these games when you log in with Stern Insider connected um I I will say personally I enjoy the achievements I think they're cool um but the biggest thing that I love about it is just the fact that like when my brother comes over we made my dad a Stern Insider account so that when he plays I mean all home team is huge being able to hold the button in immediately log in you don't have to type in your name all that I love it I love it so much that I'm currently borrowing a Jurassic Park that doesn't have Stern Insider connected on it and so I realized like I need this I need certain entire connect I wasn't going to buy it though so spoiler alert what you can do is just buy the Wi-Fi dongle in a card plug them in run a long Ethernet cable from the game you want it to have to one of the QR code readers on one of your other games and log in one time that's all you have to do to get it on the network that thanks Joel I I do not endorse what was just said for the record I love my job yeah as a distributor yeah you're not encouraging it I'm just saying what I did at the risk of me breaking my friend's game which I'm borrowing [ __ ] it just just because I want home team so I personally am a fan of stern Insider connected I think Travis as a distributor is a fan of The Insider connected I'm not going to put words in your mouth I mean it depends I I think I I want to see more stuff fleshed out for the home user that's what I really want to see they've indicated to us thank you Travis well they they have indicated that this is something that they're looking at they plan I just hope that it I just hope it shows up soon because obviously plans aren't doing anything at this point but I do know from the way locations talk that they love it for the way that the interface is the feedback from it yeah yeah the leaderboards are huge and that's the main thing I want to see more than anything like I I've discovered out of me playing this the achievements are fine unfortunately it's like if you log in for the first time the achievements just rain down like Oprah's giving away cars they just all pop up like crazy so what I really want to see out of it what I'm most interested is a home leaderboard I want to be able to put up a TV screen see all the high scores have my kids see their scores they be able to try to beat each other and just keep going back and forth because there is a certain a certain element to that that gives you more replay sure chances so it makes you want to do it but yeah it's good and that's like the biggest thing I do like the end of the year review though that tells you uh what you tend to score the most like which ball you tend to score I do like that I mean everything else the average XP I you know it doesn't matter I do like though my top titles I played Godzilla 69 times so nice I'm extremely happy about that but yeah I mean it has interesting data I just what I really hope it goes towards I hope just from the tournament perspective that they're able to fully implement it to where like as a tournament director I'm sure Neil would love this I'm sure Tom would love this to where we could say hey we're having a herb event you guys get on there play as many games you can it's going to go on the leaderboard like I hope it does something like that something that kind of like scorebit technically can already show you this is probably the character in the server that's a great transition because I before we let Tom go off um Neil you before it's turned inside or connected there there is there still is a product called scorebit um I I have a scorebit in my TNA it was a way to scorp it is somewhat of a universal board that was made for all pinball machines to connect them to the internet and I know Neil you went in you went in big I think you got a store but game for every single one or a scoreboard for every single one of your games and some of the tools that you can use to um there's a whole what is API out there where you can pull data in real time so you from a tournament standpoint you had set up leaderboards so you can see the scores on all your games I mean talk about that what what did what do you like or did you like about scorebit and then comparing that to Insider connected yeah I mean look I think let's you know instead of connected in school but I kind of they do similar things but I kind of aimed at different people I think Stern really tried to aim this at the more casual player in bars hence why that's where the focus is and I think it achieves something for that Community I think for the hardcore player I'm I think Insider's got much more work to do a lot more work to do for me you know I run to as you said I run tournaments I do streaming um I do events and stuff um I run a I run three events in this room every year um and they're all match played at the end of the game I press a button on Match play it grabs all the scores for the games ranks everybody and I move on to the next level I know that there's no chance there's no mistakes I know yeah this is score but I know there's no mistakes I know that there's no cheating I know that everything's a hundred percent and honestly it makes the running of tournaments a complete Breeze I even know what games aren't finished so you know if you're commenting and actually [Music] um Colin was over here last year he was like well you know this is insane I can see actually this game's still playing and we can talk about it even though there's no camera on it so and and actually call it indisk integrate scoreboard into all the DTM stuff which was fantastic to see you can see what ball people were on and it just you know we're talking about how do we how do we explain things just add an instrumentation is helpful I'm a network guy that's what I do for a living so the minute a pinball machine was able to be connected to the network I'm in um and Jay actually Jay Adelson who runs uh scurbies the the guy who runs it he's a really big internet kind of guy he's he's data centers he's done a lot of stuff uh he's and he's a a great friend of mine so um yeah I put them in all the games they're in most of the games at the club where where scoreboard is supported it and we have a monthly competition on it as high scores um it's on and the great thing about it is it no it only isn't just like two games so I've got it in my X-Men I've got in my Walking Dead I've got him a Batman I've got a my bond I've got it in my theater magic it's in it I've got it in my stone Classics um and for me having a platform that unites every pinball manufacturer to do scores and analytics I I have to believe that there's value in that suddenly from a tournament point of view that absolutely is um and you know we during covert they added challenges so you could challenge everyone sure it's not the same game and the tilts might be different but you can you know you can have a bit of fun with it and the app that they've got on score but is great starting a side of connect I think in terms of um getting the games online and and you know finding out how um allocate people a user ID Etc I think that I'll be honest I think the scanning thing's a bit clunky and I think there's a simpler way of doing that and and you know the fact that you've the fact you just say what you've done with with the homo home thing you just plug it in activate and have home team actually why you know why you know if you just connected to the network and you'll and you know you you log in or something on on your phone and give the game ID why can I then just automatically populate you without having to buy anything because because if you you know when when you when you talk to stern they're not in it to sell the hardware they're on it to get people connected so hey Stern what more can you do to make that connection much quicker please stand for the love of God integrate with scoreboard for the love of God right I I judge I will buy you the best steak in any part of the planet with scorpion man for God's sake I I I I'll write the code for free right I wonder if there's a problem with that because J jjp has that in all their games so I mean yeah I mean I mean that's I mean you see what they've done with JDP it's awesome I've got on dialed in zilli ggp game I've got they've added achievements valid other stuff um but they're also doing other manufacturers you've got spooky with TNA and and Rick and Morty you know they've got and and you know Stern imagine you know and I I don't know there's obviously business relationships and Commercial situations but staring you know scorp could help you bring your SP Sam two games so your sand games into Insider connected there's a deal to be done there I'm sure of it um so figure it out and and you know as an internet guy that's that's that's you know what I've done for most of my career the way the internet works is because everybody was able to share stuff like that and and if you want to be online you've got to think like that and and you know I love what they've done so far um and and also you know what I think Stern are finding out again this is my own View is actually doing this online things harder than you might think um it's not just here we'll put a few scores on a screen you've got to secure it you've got to do analytics like this you've got to continually add value to it otherwise it becomes that fad that people gave up on a year ago and I think that's the that's where you know we'll see how it we'll see how that pans out but honestly scoreboard is fantastic scoreboard.io go have a look at it um you know it it's made my life a lot easier I've got these big screens on my um in my game room here when people come around they log in and we have little competitions it's it's great fun you put it on your stream you can you can you can make it whether you have a certain score all the lights flash there's all sorts of bizarre stuff you can do with it and um but getting games online in the into the modern world Hallelujah um you know we've got to do that we've got to do more of it yeah no I that's well put I know you are using score bit to its full potential and that's something that I I know when I put one in TNA or even when it came out that was kind of the big question they're like well why do you need it or what's the besides being able to see the the score from your friends like what's the point I I mean actually TNA is a great example where where Scott did a lot of work on it when you're watching TNA on you so if you if someone was playing TNA I'd watch on my phone what mode they're in or bowler in how many balls have they locked and again when we were um commenting we were able to pull down I would I was able to give updates on other games by using the scoreboard app um you know you I it's like when you build these things you build them in a way where you maybe have so many ideas in your head but let me tell you there's a whole Community out there they've got even more ideas than you can dream of give them access to it let them build it okay they might break a few things every now and again but they might come up with four or five things that are amazing thing that really make a difference both to to the the the the platform and to what you're into pinball make it that accessible give people the API let people code and learn and and do cool stuff and who knows where it goes I I just feel that um there's much more there's much more to do um and and being open and being able to integrate and being able to work together and share stuff um I think we'll we'll make it easier for stern to to grow inside a connected and I think it'll be easier for it to become not a fad and that's what worries me about both of these things right now yeah good point and um Tom before you share your bit let me just go ahead and hit this [Music] time [Applause] [Music] uh Tom Insider connected dots I don't know if I want to talk about something that's so terrible you have it you have it in multiple you bought I have it in all my games that I can possibly have it uh-huh what a waste of money once again I would like to let you guys know I do not endorse the views of Joel no I don't work for the pinball company so I can say these things so you know honestly I mean the achievements are cool I I've said this before the achievements are cool but in the home environment it sucks because there's no verification so why do you have it um the only thing you have is the home team where you can like hold the button I mean that's the only feature for for a home user um you don't have leaderboards which you know I I love it I love going to shows and playing it although um I have had one operator come to me and say you know I'm sick of you damn tournament guys coming over here and getting all the the high scores and I was like oh okay I didn't realize that was an issue but uh uh anyways um yeah I I I just think there's just so much more that can be done maybe there's stuff on the way but it just doesn't seem like it yeah I I will be interested if in a year from now or whatever it is where I know home leaderboard's a big thing for you and you've talked about doing like heads up or some sort of being able to play other people if Stern is I would I can't wait if if Stern Insider gets to that point where all of a sudden you're like guys I was wrong certain connected is incredible I just hope this isn't like certain other things Stern does where you know it just gets abandoned okay you know like like certain games that are coded um WWE monsters you know it seems like you know if things don't go well with sales they they get pushed to the side and that's what I'm afraid that's gonna happen Insider connect well it sounds like you've done your part in helping with sales by going ahead and buying a kit for every one of your games so what more besides besides speaking highly of since interconnected you've done everything you can is what it sounds like I I would love to speak highly of it but I can at this point uh that's a great way to end that [Applause] for the record okay salty Tom is my second favorite mom I've moved him up number two I think what was it it was like Mountain Dew Tom or he had some hot chocolate with some whips number one for sure do you have a favorite do you have a favorite Tom Neal that we're unaware of I I just um kind of laughing until when we're like at an event and we're both trying to score something and neither of us kind of we're just left we're laughing at how bad we suck at pinball and why we're at this tournament well I think looking at our list here I think we covered everything is there anything uh anything out Neil is there any anything else you want to share or talk about just one thing UK open registration opens July the first play Pinball dot UK come it's gonna be an epic event and um and and we'll look after you and love you and give you lots of very bad British junk food oh yeah will there be fish and chips and gin lots of gin okay well we'll plug it up then um Travis go for it um yeah you guys can find me right here on the triple drain pinball podcast and I do have some other projects that are coming up but I don't want to announce it just yet so a little teaser right there but uh yeah that's all I got thank you for your uh you find gentlemen today joining me this morning especially Neil and especially Tom thank you yep you're welcome Travis oh Joel you're here too yeah yeah do you have anything else to plug Neil Neil no just to say thanks for uh Amazon and also pinball Republic in London if you're in London come visit us um we got 60 great great games um and we'd love to anyone who comes over we'll look again we'll look after you so it's a co-op we run um but also thanks for having me on the show it's been a blast thank you absolutely and you have a YouTube channel yeah I mean look I've got a YouTube channel I'm on Twitch but it's kind of just me like old man yelling at Cloud so it's perfect if you want to watch feel free if you don't feel free also it's a domino arcade right it's the YouTube Google for Domino arcade or Domino pinball and you'll find it but I'm kind of just a yeah he doesn't need spare time as opposed to a pro like like you guys if if you're gonna I have zero credentials for doing any of what I do so but I people do it um I don't I thank you Neil thank you very much uh for for being on here and uh yeah it's it's cool to hear your perspective from overseas and some of the stuff that you're experiencing and I'm I'm excited for you for both bonds um hopefully get yours fixed I'm excited for you to have two of the same Toppers and loving every second of it it's it's uh I don't know I truly I'm very happy for you I think it's awesome and fantastic use of the extra ball Shirt By the way yeah especially yeah that's awesome Tom plug it up man yeah when I'm not bashing on Insider connect um I I'm streaming at Fox Cities pinball on Twitch and then uh vods on YouTube uh we actually got a lot of stuff coming up uh we got the winner 3x at District 82 which is a Stern pro circuit event um that's uh February 17th to the 19th there'll also be a three strike on that uh Thursday night and then uh in March got a couple things going on we got the uh Nationals or the North American pinball championships uh that's going to be on Thursday March 9th and then after that we have pin Masters which you can still sign up for um and they just announced on the ifpa that you can win a new in box stern oh get get signing up and that's March 10th through the 12th then in April is the Great Lakes pinball open which sign ups are February 11th so and it's limited to 150 people so people always ask me how do how do I sign up like be ready at your computer as soon as registration starts F5 F5 awesome well Dole are you gonna plug the uh the pinball Awards you know that's technically see how this works like Travis plugged and Neil plugged and Tom and now it's mine no no no no you confused all of us you had Neil plug then you went to me and then you boomeranged and you went back the nil so I thought you were going to Boomerang that's ready to plug more stuff yeah so the pinball Awards it's actually we are recording this on a Friday it's obviously this episode's not gonna happen today but um so go watch them they're gonna be on YouTube uh go check out the pinball Network that's where the video will be after the fact um we're excited yes rush I know I know I have already seen the votes uh Tom I think you're going to be happy is what I'm gonna say um but yes go watch it uh that was as unless Zach's the flip it out Factory or whatever the facility burns down or something everything should should have been should be filmed tomorrow to uh and we're gonna live stream it and then so anybody that hears this later go watch it on YouTube um yeah we got a group of Judges there was like 50 something people that were vetted judges uh media creators and whatnot and then we also had a 10 public vote we had like over 150 people vote in the public vote as well so really cool um group of people that voted on that and um yeah it's I I really wish I could go there and um I'm sorry I can't make it but uh I will be watching from home yes I think it's going to be fantastic um and then yeah I stream on uh every Wednesday night from 10 to midnight Eastern Standard Time on um the flipping out Channel on YouTube um just started streaming only on YouTube and I'm actually really impressed with uh YouTube streaming and how well that's going um so really enjoying that but I think that's it I think we'll wrap it up um Travis thanks for being here I really appreciate the the little bit of effort you put forth in your background it's getting better slowly but surely Tom you're always a gym thanks for thanks for being a part of this and Neil really really do appreciate you uh hopping on this thank you um like always Tom you get the last words uh stay safe everybody _(Acquisition: youtube_auto_sub, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: f2039d72-7fab-44c7-9a66-b42608ce264e*