# Ep 18: Double Feature **Source:** LoserKid Pinball Podcast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2019-09-21 **Duration:** 117m 15s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://zencastr.com/z/ODxmZQbq --- ## Analysis Loser Kid Pinball Podcast episode featuring Chris Hutchins of High End Pins discussing pinball restoration as a profession. Hutchins details his 18-year journey from auto painter to specialized pinball restorer, addressing playfield clear coat failures, restoration timelines (4-6 months typical), parts scarcity for rare games like Krull, and his preferred eras (WPC and early Valley Solid State games). The episode also previews a second guest segment with Brad Albright of the Led Zeppelin Project. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Chris Hutchins transitioned to full-time pinball restoration in 2004 after customers requested he restore machines they already owned — _Direct quote from Hutchins about 2004 being the turning point when customer demand became sufficient_ - [HIGH] Stern produced only 1-2 games per year in the early 2000s before the 2014 pinball renaissance — _Hutchins states: 'Stern would make maybe one or two games a year maybe, and that was pretty much it'_ - [HIGH] Building pinball machines from scratch is not economically viable; restoration of existing machines is the better business model — _Hutchins: 'it's not a good business model because almost every time I would wind up spending in parts as much as it would cost and much more than that in aggravation'_ - [MEDIUM] Clear coat issues stem from EPA regulations reducing toxic compounds, which paradoxically reduces coating effectiveness — _Hutchins explains: 'the less toxic the paints, the less they work' and 'toxicity is what creates the chemical reactions and hardens paint'_ - [MEDIUM] Pinball manufacturers likely do not use automotive clear coat and instead use wood-type clear coats — _Hutchins speculates manufacturers probably aren't using automotive clear due to production differences, though CPR aftermarket does use automotive clear_ - [HIGH] A properly cured clear coat should not be indentable with a fingernail after one week of curing — _Hutchins: 'within a week, you shouldn't be able to bare your fingernail and make an impression in the clear coat'_ - [HIGH] Hutchins typically has 3-4 active projects simultaneously but manages 8 total projects with staggered progress — _Direct statement: 'I do bounce. I have like three or four active projects at a time. I'm probably really like eight'_ - [MEDIUM] Only 4-5 prototype Krull pinball machines were built, and at least one may have been lost in a fire — _Hutchins mentions 'four or five' prototypes with uncertainty about one being destroyed by fire_ ### Notable Quotes > "I have OCD, so I started looking at these things. I'm like, you know, I think I could probably take this apart and paint this and do that and, you know, make it look better." > — **Chris Hutchins**, Early in interview > _Explains personal motivation for starting the restoration business_ > "You would never survive doing this locally. It's just there's not enough people in Charlotte, North Carolina of all places, that would want a pinball machine restored." > — **Chris Hutchins**, Mid-interview > _Explains why he transitioned from local to national restoration business model_ > "The biggest issue that we're seeing is they're clearly not testing this stuff or putting it through a real-world type test because it doesn't take anything just to screw down. Let's just say you screw a post down very tight. You come in the next day, if it's bubbled, then there's a problem." > — **Chris Hutchins**, Clear coat discussion > _Critical commentary on manufacturer quality control failures_ > "the less toxic the paints, the less they work, which is probably not the most eloquent way to say it, but they just don't, the more toxicity they take out of the paints, the more troublesome they become" > — **Chris Hutchins**, Clear coat analysis > _Core insight on EPA regulation impact on paint chemistry_ > "If I go out there and clear a play field, you know, I'm going to clear a play field. It'll be done within 15 or 20 minutes after I mix the clear and whatever's left over. If I go out there and a couple hours, it's hard" > — **Chris Hutchins**, Manufacturing comparison > _Illustrates difference between artisanal hand-application vs. mass production clear coating_ > "I definitely like the WPC games the best just because they're... I've done so many of those in particular that I just – I know everything about them." > — **Chris Hutchins**, Closing discussion > _Reveals restoration preferences based on familiarity and ease_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Chris Hutchins | person | Owner of High End Pins restoration company; auto painter turned pinball restoration specialist with 18+ years experience; based in Charlotte, North Carolina | | High End Pins | company | Pinball machine restoration company owned by Chris Hutchins; offers high-end restoration services; maintains portfolio on Pinside and website highendpins.com | | Jim McCune | person | Former pinball restorer based in St. George, Utah; known for similar restoration work to Hutchins; currently retired from business but still respected in community | | Loser Kid Pinball Podcast | organization | Podcast hosted by Josh and Scott Larson (co-captains); Episode 18 features double-header interviews | | Josh | person | Co-host of Loser Kid Pinball Podcast; dealing with back issues in episode; has friend with Williams/Bally collection | | Scott | person | Co-host/co-captain of Loser Kid Pinball Podcast; mentioned as regular collaborator | | Brad Albright | person | Guest in second segment of episode; associated with Led Zeppelin Project (second interview subject) | | Krull | game | Rare prototype pinball machine (4-5 units built); features lower playfield with special window glass; extremely difficult to restore due to parts scarcity | | CPR (Classics Pinball Restoration) | company | Aftermarket pinball restoration company known for using automotive-grade clear coat in their work | | Pinside | organization | Online pinball community forum/platform where Chris Hutchins maintains restoration portfolio and daily/weekly update posts | | Stern | company | Pinball manufacturer referenced in historical context; produced 1-2 games per year during early 2000s dark ages | | Williams/Bally | company | Classic pinball manufacturer; referenced through games being restored (Addams Family Gold, Scared Stiff, Twilight Zone) | | Valley | company | Pinball manufacturer of solid-state games; Hutchins mentions early Valley Solid State games as restoration favorites | ### Topics - **Primary:** Pinball restoration as profession and business model, Clear coat quality issues and manufacturing failures, EPA regulations impact on paint chemistry and performance - **Secondary:** Rare and difficult-to-restore games (Krull prototype), Pinball manufacturer quality control and testing, Restoration timeline and project management - **Mentioned:** WPC and early Valley Solid State era preferences, Pinball industry dark ages (early 2000s) vs. renaissance (2014+) ### Sentiment **Mixed** (0.55) — Hutchins is professional and informative but expresses frustration with manufacturer quality control and clear coat failures. Acknowledgment of industry challenges balanced by enthusiasm for restoration work and preferred game eras. Generally positive about business and community relationships. ### Signals - **[business_signal]** Building machines from scratch not economically viable; restoration of existing machines is sustainable business model due to parts availability and cost efficiency (confidence: high) — Hutchins: 'almost every time I would wind up spending in parts as much as it would cost and much more than that in aggravation'; recommends buying rough games and restoring over building from scratch - **[competitive_signal]** High End Pins operates as artisanal, hand-crafted restoration service with extended timelines (4-6 months typical) managing 3-4 active projects simultaneously (confidence: high) — Hutchins describes mood-dependent work quality, preference for certain game types, and deliberate project pacing to maintain quality standards - **[industry_signal]** Early 2000s described as 'dark ages' for pinball with minimal new game production (1-2 per year) driving restoration demand and creating collector base (confidence: high) — Hutchins discusses higher restoration volume in 2004 than current era, with demand driven by lack of new game availability - **[manufacturing_signal]** Manufacturers likely using non-automotive clear coats (wood-based) and robotic application requiring extended pot life, unlike hand application or automotive standards (confidence: medium) — Hutchins speculates on robotic equipment requiring slow-hardening mixes to prevent clogging; automotive clears have 30-min to 2-hour pot life vs. extended requirement for batching - **[product_concern]** Clear coat failures on recent pinball playfields discussed extensively; Hutchins confirms manufacturers not adequately testing products before shipping (confidence: high) — Hutchins: 'they're clearly not testing this stuff or putting it through a real-world type test' and describes simple testing methodology they should use - **[technology_signal]** EPA regulations reducing toxic compounds in clear coats paradoxically reducing coating effectiveness and causing widespread playfield failures (confidence: high) — Hutchins explains 28+ years of painting experience showing correlation between reduced toxicity and reduced paint performance; direct attribution to regulatory changes --- ## Transcript Thanks for tuning in to Loser Kid Pinball Podcast. This is episode number 18. With me, as always, is my co-captain. How are you doing, Scott? I'm doing great. How are you doing, Josh? Apparently, your back really sucks. Yeah, you know it, man. Yeah, I've had a little bit of back issues today and yesterday. Honestly, a whole lot of just laying on the ground is helping a lot. Yeah, you need to stop moving those pinball machines by yourself. Hey, don't tell my wife that. Yeah. She'll believe you. Oh, I know. That's why you need to come out and help me move Genie on Saturday. You know it. Dude, I want to be there Saturday so bad for the tournament going on. But that's something entirely different. We'll get to that later. Okay, well, here's what you do. You get permission, come up to the tournament. We take Genie down to my house. We unload it. and then you crash here, then you go back to Saturday morning. Job done. Dude, I can't even sit in a car to go across town. I doubt I can make the 180-mile trip. Have I introduced you to my friend ibuprofen? Dude, it's taken the edge off. That's about it. I see. But we got a doubleheader tonight. We've got Chris Hutchins of High End Pins, and we've also got Brad Brad Albright of the Led Zeppelin Project. So shall we get into this? Go ahead. All right. Let's have you introduce Chris for us. So this is Christopher Hutchins. If you are unfamiliar with him, he has a thread on Pinside, which details his high-end restorations. Go ahead and check out his website, too. It's highendpins.com. Chris, how are you doing tonight? I'm doing great. So I want to talk a little bit about restoring. People get into restoring cars a lot. However, not too many people decide to specialize into restoring pinball machines to their former glory. So take me down this path. How did you end up doing what you do? Yeah, so most people are probably smart enough not to try to make this a profession. But I started out as an auto painter, a high-end auto painter. I was actually born and raised in the auto body business. And, you know, I would just, you know, wanted to get a pinball machine for my game room, that kind of thing. And, you know, I got a couple bad games. You know, they were pretty rough. And I just really wasn't satisfied with them. And I have OCD, so I started looking at these things. I'm like, you know, I think I could probably take this apart and paint this and do that and, you know, make it look better. So that's how it kind of started. I was trying to satisfy myself with my own games. And that's what kind of bred the whole idea of, you know, hey, I could probably do this for a living also. Okay, when was that? When did you start doing that? How many years ago? That was probably, I guess, maybe 18 or 19 years ago. Okay. And so you've been restoring these ever since. When did you transition to say, you know what, I can do this for a living? so I guess that was probably around 2004 that I finally decided to do it full-time and the reason I did that was at first I would buy the games that I wanted and I would fix them up and then I would sell them when I got tired of them and after I sold them to a couple people they were like, well, you know, you did a great job on this thing. Could I send you a game and have you do the same thing to a game I already have? And I hadn't even – that had never even dawned on me at that time. And so after that happened, then I started to see that, you know, I'm able to – because you would never survive doing this locally. It's just there's not enough people in Charlotte, North Carolina of all places, that would want a pinball machine restored. So then I kind of figured out, well, I'm able to draw from the whole country, so I could probably generate enough business to make a similar living that I'm already making doing cars. So that's around 2004 is when that demand got big enough to where I felt comfortable enough to take that kind of leap. So you speak of 2004. Lately we've been talking a lot about the renaissance of pinball and the real big resurgence which started really coming into effect in 2014. Has your business picked up since then? I mean, 2004, a lot of people talked about it was dead back then. Were you getting tons of pinball machines back then? That just seems, I don't know, weird to me. Yeah, I did actually. I think I had more games back then than I have now. But that was probably poor management on my part. You know, I just didn't know. I didn't know how long it would take to do them or what, you know, I just, I wasn't probably, nobody had a blueprint for, hey, if you restore pinball machines, this is how you do it and this is how you handle it. You know, if you own a restaurant, there's kind of a blueprint there or car dealership. There's a lot of different things that people have done and it's pretty well versed. But with what I was doing, nobody else was really doing it or not at that level, so I had to figure it out. So in 2004, I had, you know, plenty of games because you really didn't have the ability to get a new game. Stern would make maybe one or two games a year maybe, and that was pretty much it. So we were just, if somebody wanted a really nice game, the only way they were going to do that is to get, you know, a beater and restore it. So back then it was definitely the dark ages as far as parts and things, but, you know, there was a demand. Yeah, it seems like you're right. Right before that, and I know you mentioned this before, Lord of the Rings and Simpsons Pinball Party came out. but you really didn't have any great games that people say, I want to buy that and put it on my house. There's a few that have come out, maybe Stern's Pirates, maybe Spider-Man, but it seems pretty much dead that entire decade until you got to the likes of ACDC, Tron, those type of games. Yeah, definitely a much bigger influx these days. There's so much new pinball. It's a different kind of collector, though, than we had back then. Back then, you know, it was people that there was a lot more nostalgia based and that kind of thing. And these days it's much more, you know, wow, look at this new, this looks cool, this is new. I haven't seen that before. And so it's definitely a different, it's a different vibe for sure. Did you ever in those times get hit up to pretty much build a machine from scratch? Like those kind of machines like Medieval Madness and Attack from Mars that were highly sought after at that time. I guess they still are nowadays, but we have remakes. But did anyone ever hit you up and say, hey, this is the game I want. I can't find it. Will you build it for me? Yeah, I built one or two games from scratch. And after I did that, I really learned that it's not – it can be done. You know, obviously, but it's not a good business model because almost every time I would wind up spending in parts as much as it would cost and much more than that in aggravation trying to get everything that you would need. Because when people talk about building a game from scratch, I think a lot of times they don't realize how many intangible parts there are. It's the little things that really come back to haunt you. It's not the playfields or the cabinets or the can art. It's the little stuff. It's the ball guides. It's the wire forms. It's these kind of things that can be really impossible to recreate, and especially recreate at a high level. I mean, you could make a ball guide that works, but it looks like it's been, you know, pulled down the road by a tractor trailer or something by the time you beat it with a hammer a hundred times to bend it and all that kind of stuff. So it's really not that practical way to do it. A lot of guys do that for fun. I think they just enjoy the challenge of it. But it's really not that practical. You're better off just to buy a really rough game and go from there. So how rough of a game? I've seen your restores go from something that looks like it was left in a dungeon and recovered after 20 years of being slept on by rats. And I've also seen ones that I thought, actually, this is a pretty decent game. where is the sweet spot for finding a game that you want to restore? Yeah, I think the best way to handle it is to either buy something that's very cheap and know that it's very rough and it's going to take a lot of work and you're going to spend a lot of money on parts, or to buy something that's not too nice but, you know, decent, you know, maybe low-routed, that kind of thing. those are the best ways to handle it. Occasionally people will send a home use only game and there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, they certainly can benefit from being taken apart and gone through and things like that. But that's a little bit overkill, but usually you just want to get what you're paying for. So if you, you know, get a piece of junk and you paid a piece of junk price, that's fine. or if you've got a decent game and you paid a little bit more for it, that's fine. But more often than not, what's happening is people are paying for a game they think is nice and it's really a piece of junk. So that's the biggest issue that you run into with this sometimes, that somebody's overpaid for a game and they're going to need the same type of restoration as somebody that could have got the biggest piece of junk out there because at the end of the day, whatever makes it just a little bit nicer, it isn't that much nicer. So you were talking about kind of some smaller intangible parts. Have you ever received a machine that was kind of more on the rare end of the spectrum and it's been kind of hard to restore because of the fact that there's no parts available for it? Yeah, I've done a few games like that. The worst one I remember doing was Krull, and it wasn't because the game was incomplete. It was because the condition of the game was so poor that it may as well have been incomplete. So you look at a game and you're like, well, I need a plastic set. But you're not going to find a plastic set for Krull, so the only way you're going to do that is to make one. And that's not an easy thing. You know, you've got to involve an artist. You have to talk to the people that have the license. And, you know, there's just a lot of things to it. And then you get to painting the cabinet. Well, you need stencils for it. Well, you know, obviously they don't – that's not a big demand, so you have to network with people. So when you get those kind of things, then you have to – you really have to lean on your, you know, the people and your resources to try to get somewhere that you can work from. You know, there's a lot more networking that goes into those kind of things in the background. there's probably not that many people who are aware of one uh crawl as the the b action movie it was in the 80s and two that there was actually a prototype pinball machine how many were there about four four or five yeah i think it was like maybe five or six i think maybe and i i'd heard that maybe one of them i think one of them might have been king kong i've done a couple of those too, but it was either Krull or King Kong, but I think one of them got lost in a fire, which, you know, as rare a game as those are, you know, you can only imagine that happening. Yeah, and the Krull, it has basically a near full-size lower playfield with a special glass that you can see it. Am I seeing it right? I've never seen one in person, but I've seen a lot of pictures. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. It's basically like Haunted House or Black Hole, but the window that they used is this really strange – I don't know what the proper term is for it, but I think it makes things look maybe smaller. I don't know. It's a really weird – when you look through it, it's not like a kaleidoscope, but it's – I don't know what the proper term is for it, but it's a very strange window. And again, another thing that, you know, when you have a game like that and you're working on it, it's very stressful. I mean, you just take the back glass out and you carry it across the shop. You know, like, don't, please don't break or, you know, be careful with that. And, you know, every little piece of it's like that. So those games, you know, those kind of games are stressful to deal with. And it's a, you know, that's a really rare one. I could imagine just for you the anxiety level of that. You're thinking, it's not like I can just order it from Pinball Life or something like that. Can you give me a replacement Kroll Playfield? Yeah, it's terrible. So one of the big things that's really been coming up is playfield issues. And it seems that during the time of pinball, these issues seem to ebb and flow. Sometimes they're good, sometimes they're bad. And from your expertise, one, why do you see that as happening so much? Because obviously there are playfields in the past that had a certain type of clear coat that have lasted and others that haven't lasted. So do you have any sort of insight or take on that? more than likely what's happening is the materials well what i what i see is the materials they're not hardening they're so they're staying soft they're staying in a state of not being cured you know why that's happening can be there's a lot of reasons for that could cause that to happen They could be mixed poorly. It could be a bad batch product. It could just be whatever the environmental regulations are at the time for the people that are making it. It could have some impact on their product. so there's a lot of different reasons why it would be that way but as a painter over the years we would constantly see a change of product lines you know you would get used to something and it would work for you great and next thing you know the paint rep would come and say you know what they're reformulating and we're going with this now and the reasons they would do that would be you know there would be a lot of different reasons behind it the the mentality why they were doing. Sometimes it would be profit margins. Sometimes it would be EPA regulations. Sometimes it would be because they honestly thought it was better. And I think that's why we see the same kind of issues with playfields and changes. They probably won't know that something's wrong until it's too late and they're out on the streets and they're seeing these issues and then they'll they'll work to resolve it. But the reason that we're seeing it now is really an unknown, but there's definitely something wrong. Do you think that, sorry, I'm thinking from a, I'm from heating and air conditioning background and the EPA messes with our jobs, I swear, every two years on something like this. Because a lot of the issues that have been coming up, people just go, why don't we go back to the diamond plate years of the 90s? But then it comes up to the EPA part, is the product that's being used nowadays not as good as it was back in the 90s? Is it not as easy to use? Is there a reason? Because it seems like clear coats, in my opinion, should be something consistent. Like, regardless, you should know your product. Do you know what I'm saying? Yep, definitely. And so I personally think there shouldn't be an issue because if you know your product, If you've learned to use your product, then you won't see these issues. So I guess the question I'm coming up with, does the EPA really play a huge factor into Clearco, or is it more of the manufacturers? And I don't want to put you in a position where you're calling anyone out. We're not asking for that. But what you've seen, because you've obviously been doing this for 15 years now, has it affected you differently? Yeah, well, the issue with the EPA as far as that goes, in general, over the years, I've been actually painting for, I don't know, 25 or longer, maybe 28 years, something like that. So, you know, and I used the same paints and chemicals that I used back then. So I've had a constant, you know, a constant hands-on experience with these chemicals way outside of pinball for a long time. and the thing that we've always seen as far as that goes is it's unfortunate, but the best way I can put it or the simplest way I can put it is the less toxic the paints, the less they work, which is probably not the most eloquent way to say it, but they just don't, the more toxicity they take out of the paints, the more troublesome they become, And I understand why they do that because of health concerns and environmental concerns and things like that. But that speaks a lot to why the paint or the clears that we use today are not as good as the ones they used in the 90s. And the ones that we were using in the 90s probably weren't as good as the ones in the 80s and those kind of things. because that toxicity is what creates the chemical reactions and hardens pain or makes it really stick well or makes it really bite into something. And as they double them down, we lose those properties. So that's the issue there, in my opinion, or in experience. And as far as the manufacturers go, no matter what their product lines are, I think what we can definitely say is they're clearly not testing it or putting it through any kind of real-world test because if they did, it wouldn't be out here doing the things that we're seeing. They would have caught that. And if they knew that and they still put it out, then that's even worse. But they're hurting themselves more than they're hurting even the people that are getting these flawed playfields because, you know, it's hurting their business by doing that. But, yeah, I think the biggest issue that we're seeing is they're clearly not testing this stuff or putting it through a real-world type test because it doesn't take anything just to screw down. Let's just say you screw a post down very tight. You come in the next day, if it's bubbled, then there's a problem. So that's a test I could run here tonight. So if I'm making a play field, I would probably be running that test definitely before I started shipping playfields out. I think it's one of those challenges where you have the latent defect. That's the construction term where they say, hey, we thought it was good, but down the line it really, you know, something happened. So, sure, there's certainly the early issues you can see and the issues with playing over time that you can't see. But, yeah, I wish I knew more about the process to figure out what's going on. Because, again, it seems that they quiet down for a while, and then they come back in. And I don't know where that sweet spot is or if there's a flaw in the manufacturing process. They're trying to cut a corner or they're doing something. It just seems so bizarre. Yeah, it is strange. And the biggest thing about that is I don't know what kind of clear coat they use. I mean, people assume they're using an automotive clear coat, but they probably aren't. I mean, it's a wood product, and they're probably using some wood-type favorable clear coat. Only automotive places use automotive clear. You know, it's doubtful that they're actually using automotive clear on them. I mean, we use that, but, you know, this is a one-at-a-time, you know, type operation, and that is a whole different ballgame. but I seriously doubt they're actually using an automotive clear. I think a lot of people assume they do. I know that some of the aftermarket guys like CPR, they do actually use an automotive clear, but, you know, the manufacturers, I seriously doubt they're using that. Now, is that a cost issue? Because, I mean, automotive, that is a mass production product. I mean, you're pumping out all those cars all the time, And so they have to have some sort of process that is quick and reproducible. But, like, why couldn't – is there a reason why that couldn't translate to what we're doing? Or is it because it's a big enough process in making pinball machines but not that big versus what you do, which is a tailored, handcrafted Rolex-type approach? Like, you know, there seems to be some gap in how they're doing it. Automotive clear coat is It hardens within It's got a pot you know they call it a pot life It's got a pot life of Some of it can be 30 minutes Some of it can go maybe even As long as two hours but In a mass Production environment Two hours I mean they couldn't Possibly Accomplish you know Or get everything done And cleared I wouldn't think in two hours. And this might be, and this is just in theory, but this might be why they have the hardening issue because if they're using robotic equipment, there's a possibility that the mixes that are sprayed through a robotic, through a robot, are made to purposely not harden too quickly because it would harden within the plumbing of the robot and ruin the robot or make a mess for somebody to clean up or try to get the hardened material out of the robot. So, you know, whatever material they're using, it has to stay solvent for a much longer period of time than most automotive clear coats would if they're doing things in large batches. You know, if I go out there and clear a play field, you know, I'm going to clear a play field. It'll be done within 15 or 20 minutes after I mix the clear and whatever's left over. If I go out there and a couple hours, it's hard, you know, and that's fine. But you can't really do that. If I was going to do 50, I couldn't do 50 in one. I would have to mix clear repeatedly over and over and over to make sure I had something that wasn't in a hardened state by the time I got to the end of it. So that brings up a question in my mind because a lot of what I've heard over the couple of – what is this? It's been a month now we've been having these issues, a month and a half, of clear coat gate or whatever they're calling it nowadays, whatever the kids are calling it. But so my question is a lot of the conception is, well, sometimes it takes clear coat 20-plus days to harden or it does this and that. Is that true? I mean, it sounds like you're saying it takes anywhere about 30 minutes to two hours. Should that be pretty much the case all the way around? Yeah, well, you have two different states. So you have hardened. So the initial drying of it is it's hardened. So it's kind of like if you had some in the bottom of the cup, it turns into, let's just say it turns into like a little clear hockey puck. But it's still spongy, but it's hardened. You couldn't spray it. You could, you know, it's not liquefied anymore. So the initial 30 minutes to two hours is when it is no longer liquefied. And then you have cure time. So that's what really people are talking about when they're talking about the second phase of it, which is the cure time. And, you know, clear, it can vary. Some of them can, you know, fully cure in 30 days. Some of them 60, some six months. but that doesn't have a whole lot of impact on the overall hardness of it. So, you know, after a week, let's just say a week max, you should not be able to bare your fingernail and make an impression in the clear coat. It may still be in a state of cure where it's still not fully shrunken, and that's kind of what curing is. It's shrinking. It's drawing in. It's evaporating more and more. And as it does that, it tightens. The surface, it tightens. But within a week, you shouldn't be able to put a fingernail in it. If you can, if I had something that I had clear-coated a week later that I could still put a fingernail in, I would be concerned. I would probably start thinking about needing to redo it. And, you know, from an automotive standpoint, I mean, you couldn't send somebody's car out the door, you know, in that state. Because as soon as a rocket, you know, going down the road, it's going to chip or it's going to indent. So, but anyway, to answer the question more directly, it's two different phases. You have the hardening of the product. That's the initial hardening that happens within 30 minutes to two hours. And then you have the curing state, which is the total evaporation of any solvents in it. And that can take anywhere from weeks to months. Well, hopefully they'll figure it out very soon. If not, I plead with them to call Chris and bring him up for a consultant. No, man, I can't help them. I don't know what they're doing over there. Okay, well, let's move on to some more fun stuff. So my friend here, he has basically the best of Bally Williams out there. And he's actually really good friends with Jim McCune, who used to do very similar stuff to you. Lives in St. George, Utah. He has an amazing scared stiff that Jim has restored. and he has a Adams family gold that he keeps trying to talk Jim into getting back into business. And so I said, no, just let Jim be. Let's send this to HEP and let him, you know, let Chris take care of it. I said, you know Jim will tell him the same thing. Yeah. No, no, I know. I know. And he's really good friends with Jim. Jim's a great guy. Jim's a great guy. Yeah. But so he actually – he was texting me. I work with him. And I said, hey, I'm talking to Chris right now. And he's like, okay, so ask him how – he can do my Adams family golds for me. So what is the – so let's drive some business to you. What is the lag time when people contact you and say, hey, I have a game. I want to restore it to when it actually gets on your table to what the average restore time And I know that a loaded question because every restore is completely different depending on parts availability But say I were a client calling you for advice What would you tell me? Yeah, I usually tell most people four to six months. And that's fairly true, you know, but it really depends, honestly. Sometimes, you know, a game will come in and a month after it came in, you know, everything's kind of lined up and it can go right in. And then there's other games that are really difficult and they might sit here for, you know, 10 months before, because it's a certain type of project. So it's really hard to, it's really hard to put into words what makes one, one project flow so quickly and another one takes so long. But the, the biggest issue with them is typically that I will take in almost anything and sometimes that is, sometimes that leads to some really challenging projects and you have to be, as conceited as it sounds, I guess, you have to feel like working or you have to be in the mood because if you aren't, that work's going to suffer because, you know, you have to feel like, I think right now I've been painting, or this week I've been painting a radical cabinet. You know, you've got to feel like painting a radical cabinet. You know, it's not a fun thing to do because, you know, so anyway, it depends on the job and the thing. But, you know, cookie-cutter games, Addams Families, and, you know, these really straightforward games, Twilight Zone, you know, four to six months is not a problem to turn those around. Some of them get turned around in two or three months. But the more complex stuff, you know, these spirits and this radical and a lot of these other things I'm working on, sometimes it takes a year or longer. Well, because I know that you adjusted your posting on Pinside because you used to do it a game at a time and talk about the restoration process. But then you have since transitioned, which I really love how you're doing daily and weekly updates to say, hey, this is what I'm working on right now. And it's amazing to me. It certainly makes sense. But you're working on about three or four games simultaneously, depending on what is available and what the parts are going in. And so that seems to be a big juggling project. It can be. I used to maintain this photo gallery. It's still up there. It's a great photo gallery. But things got so instant these days with your phone, and you can text people, and you can take a picture of something and just put it right on a pen side or something like that. and I have this photo gallery and I used to take, I have a digital camera and I would have to take 50 digital pictures because if I took 50, I would walk away with about 20 that weren't blurry. And then I'd have to, you know, upload them to the photo gallery and put the captions up there and do all that. And that's how I used to keep people informed with their projects. But it really didn't help that much because they still wouldn't know what, you know, when their turn would be or what was next or that kind of thing. So that transition that I did on Pennside has really been helpful. It really helps people know what's going on. And, you know, basically whatever you see, that's what I'm doing. I mean, it's just me. So if I'm working on Dracula, then that's what I'm doing. I can't be, you know, but I do bounce. I have like three or four active projects at a time. I'm probably really like eight, you know, but I'm always, you know, I kind of get it going a certain direction, and then I'll zero in on one and get it across the finish line. So is there like a specific game that's just your favorite to restore, or is there like a type of era that you like better than another? I definitely like the WPC games the best just because they're, well, maybe even the WPC 95 games, but they're remaking all of those. So I have to gravitate back towards the WPC games. But they're the easiest for me to work on because I'm just – there's something about those games. I've done so many of those in particular that I just – I know everything about them. I know which way the diodes need to go. I know what color the wiring is for this, that, and the other thing. I just know everything about it. And, you know, I don't need to look at any pictures. I don't need to look at any manuals. I know that. So I like those because they go together really well, although I'm starting to get that same kind of feeling about these early Valley Solid State games. So those are my favorite games to actually restore are the early Valley Solid State games, you know, the Harlem Globetrotters, the Centaurs, the Fathoms. I like the painted cabinet games with the real back glasses. I really like those games a lot. It's just maybe it's my age. I'm 47, or I will be in a couple more days. But it's just what I remember playing when I was a kid, and I like that, the simplicity, how they would take just three colors and do the art for the cabinet, but it was cool looking, and they would have the real back glasses and that kind of thing. So I would say I like restoring those games the best. Yeah, when I was following, and you recently did a Harlem, and every time I saw an update on that, I was just looking at that saying, man, I really need a Harlem because Chris makes this thing look really good. It's just that classic look, and I love seeing that. That would be a great showcase to have in a basement. Yeah, those things are really cool. You know, like they did so much with so little back then. Yeah. So I have two remakes. I have Medieval Madness and I have An Attack from Mars. And what are your feelings on – the reason why I bought them is because when I bought them, you couldn't buy a Medieval Madness because it was too expensive. In An Attack from Mars, I got the LE, so I like the top or the interaction. From your standpoint, the restoration standpoint, do you see much of a difference between the remakes and the classics, or do you feel that there's a pretty good overlap? Yeah, well, I think they're completely different mechanically – or maybe not mechanically, probably best to say electronically because mechanically they still have poles and stuff. But they're not as easy to work on or I'd say they're not as user-friendly. But at the same time, I mean I can definitely understand the draw of them because you're going to get a brand-new attack from Mars for like what, $6,000 or $7,000. and compare that to, you know, a routed one. Even if you get one for $5,000, it's going to need like a $7,000 or $8,000 restoration, so it's a $14,000 game. And if you put them side by side and you don't know a lot about it, you know, I mean, it's a pretty tough thing to justify. So I think they're great. I think they remade the right ones. And, you know, I don't think there's anything wrong with them, But the biggest issue I see with them is there's just a lot of unknowns about them. We just won't really know, you know, for a few years. Yeah, and I think that's from the restoration standpoint. You know you can keep a 20-year-old Williams game going. Can you keep a 10-year-old Chicago Gaming Company game going? And those are certainly legitimate questions from the right person, which is you. Yeah, I think if they're successful, if Chicago Coin is successful, then yeah, you know, because they'll be there to keep making parts and they'll have a desire to keep their products on the streets and running. But if for some reason, you know, they fizzle out, then it's going to be a problem. So a follow-up question is when you're restoring, I was just flipping through your picture book and I saw that you just finished a Scared Stiff, which is very similar to my friends. and he's added some mods, and he's taken some out of the mod. I don't know if you put that in this game, but there's a really cool mod that had eyes that actually looked back and forth, and he put that in his game. Where is that line that you walk on what mods you're going to put in versus mods when you think that looks kind of cheesy, that's a little too much? because you know sometimes it looks like the entire thrift store has been shoved under glass which just seems way too much and then there's other times when like for my Tron I looked at my Tron I thought I don't know it just seems really missing yeah mods are really tricky because well for me the first criteria is it needs to look at least on par with factory parts So a lot of the mods that you see are just, they look like toys and they're glued together and they're sloppy. And the quality of them does not match up to the quality of the other parts in the play field. So that's a huge red flag. So that's the first thing I look at as far as if I would use a mod or not use a mod. The next thing is, what does it really do? Does it really enhance the game or is it just another toy so somebody can sell something to somebody else? And another issue that a lot of people don't look at but you really have to consider because I've run into this many times is, is it a ball trap? You know, it might look really cool to put, you know, a thing over there on this little plastic next to the scoop. But if you find out that the ball gets stuck behind him every time you hit the targets, it's no good. so um you know so those are a lot of the things that we look at as far as if if i want to put a mod on there or not but for me i generally try to steer away from them if i can and um i'll put whatever somebody asked me to put on there i would definitely do that but i don't prefer any of them specifically because it can be the only reason that you have a lamp shorting or it can be you know again a ball trap or it could fall off you know by the time it bounces from here to california you know so so mods are kind of really individual and most people that are in this hobby are more than capable of putting their own mods on and i certainly put anything anybody asked me to put on there unless i know it's a bad idea but but generally speaking i'm not against them but they need to be really good before I would put one on there. So two more questions. One, if you were restoring a game for yourself, what would it be right now? Oh, man. I think if I was going to restore a game for myself, I have unusual taste. I would probably do a police force. Really? Yeah. And there was crickets. I think I would actually – I think I would probably try to do it like a re-theme. I would either do it like, I don't know, Pojack or something cool. I don't know, or something not cool. I kind of like things that aren't cool. But either way, I always – I like obscure things. I would rather have the only HEP police force in the world than the 50th HEP Medieval Madness, if that makes any sense. Yeah. Yeah, okay, so seriously, I don't even know what Police Force looks like. Right. Yeah, I mean, it's not the most attractive game, that's for sure. It's probably not the most, well, it's pretty fun, but, you know, just, you know, I like the obscure games. I really like System 11 games. But I think, I don't know if it's charity or what it is, but I want to bring justice to things that haven't been given any justice. Okay. Is there really like a cop that's a Jaguar on the back glass? I think so, but we could turn him into Kojak. I'm pretty sure we could. Okay. I will say, of all the pins that you were going to pull out in a million years, I would not have guessed that one. What can I say? I mean, that's something I've really been thinking about doing that one day. One day I'm going to do that. That's great. Well, Chris, anything else that you're thinking about that you want to bring for a last comment? Not really. I mean, I think that we've covered all the bases. All right. Well, let's get some people to your website. How can they contact you, and how can they restore the best – to get the best pinball restored game out there? The best way to do it is just to go to highendpins.com. And, you know, everything's there. My phone number's there. You know, the email thing's there, all that stuff's there. Awesome. Thank you so much, Chris. All right, man. I appreciate it as well. All righty. Our next guest is the infamous Mr. Brad Brad Albright. He has been working currently on the project of Led Zeppelin with Roto Dave. You know Roto Dave from Australia. If you don't know what we're talking about, Pinside has it listed as one of the most recent pins that have been included into their system. They took a Bally Freedom and rethemed it. Brad is the man that did all the artwork. It's beautiful artwork. We've got him on now because we want to talk about this thing. I think it's fantastic. So without further ado, I'm going to shut up now. Brad, how are you doing, Brad? Hey, good. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Dave is in New Zealand. So you guys hang out all the time, right? Never have, but now I have a really good reason to go, yeah. Okay, so how did this – tell me about this project. How did this mashup happen from around the world? yeah so um i guess kind of skipping over some of my backstory which we can we can talk on that later um i was listening to head to head and dave was a guest on it and um towards the end of his interview he started uh mentioning that he was working on um kind of like a homebrew re-theme of this electromechanical freedom game, and he was trying to get into Led Zeppelin. But the caveat was that he didn't have the art stops to do the back glass. I think that was specifically what he called out, and that he was looking for a Led Zeppelin fan, somebody that would be interested in collaborating on that. And it was just kind of the right time in my life for a few different reasons that I immediately emailed him based on just that little description that he gave. And kind of within 30 minutes, he had responded that he liked my work and he thought it was a decent fit. Okay, like you said, though, let's back this up two seconds. Brad, why don't you tell us how you got into pinball and what brought you up to this point? Okay, so pinball for me kind of goes back to childhood, but in kind of like a surface way. I never really learned to properly play. It wasn't really until my mid-30s that I started diving deeper into the hobby and learning about all the techniques that we're all aware of here. But, you know, as a kid of like the late 80s and 90s, like things like the Adams family were sort of ubiquitous. It seemed like every sports bar or restaurant had Adams family. So that was something that, you know, no matter where it went and as we moved a few different places around the States growing up, That was always a game that I recognized and felt like I could play, even though I really didn't know how to play it. And I had a friend growing up that had a couple machines in his basement. He had a Mata Hari and a High Speed. And then going to my dad's college reunion, you know, I'd be over in the corner of the bar playing pinball while he and his buddies were catching up and drinking. so um yeah it was kind of a nostalgia thing and then um now as as an adult i've got to a point with my day job where i've been there for a while i was designing licensed merchandise um mostly apparel but also wallets and things a lot of harry potter wonder woman batman that sort of stuff and reached a point where I was ready to kind of take a leap of faith and cut the security of that and pursue more art festival type things, art gallery shows and freelance work in my online shop. And that was March of last year. And almost, I don't know, it seemed like almost immediately after that, I was suddenly newly interested in pinball. I don't know why. I think I just was thinking nostalgically about playing things like Adam's Family. And, you know, I always got excited when I would see pinball, but it wasn't something that had come around much lately. And I don't know. there's kind of like a snowball effect where I just started running some searches and I realized that there were places around town to play. I'm in the Dallas Fort Worth area, by the way. So there's a lot of barcade, you know, style places to go. And so with kind of the new freedom that I had in my professional and personal life, I started drawing more inspiration from pinball and listening to podcasts and kind of learning, you know, how deep it can go. So this past year has been kind of like an adventure of learning and trying to up my skills. And so while all of that is going on, then I hear this, you know, on head-to-head with Dave that he's looking for a collaborator, and it just was the right time for me to kind of embrace that kind of opportunity. So was this your first ever attempt at doing pinball art and a playfield? Yeah, as far as the machine goes, I was dabbling a little bit with some pinball-inspired art, but never an actual functional playfield and back glass. Dang, that's pretty crazy. I'm not going to lie. Like, looking at this, if you guys haven't checked out the video, we'll put a link in the show notes for you to go check it out. But looking at this, I mean, this thing is insane looking at the artwork. And for it to be your first up-to-bat attempt, it's hit it out of the park for me. Yeah, basically, so while you've been talking, actually this whole interview, I just keep watching this endless loop of that and thinking that is, this doesn't look like a first-time effort. This looks like an experienced pinball artist, which is shocking that he's like, no, I just did this thing. I don't know. No big deal. May delete it later. It's like those big Instagram quotes where it's like, yeah, I don't know if this is any good. And I'm looking at it thinking, this is a really interesting design. I like it has a very distinctive style, but it certainly fits with that retro, like, late 70s, early 80s vibe. Yeah. It fits perfectly. Yeah, thank you. I mean, that's kind of by design. I mean, I appreciate you saying that. A lot of that does come from our effort for it to match the era of the machine, for it to sort of match, you know, what you would expect from Led Zeppelin, but it does certainly deviate from kind of the style of their record covers and everything from the time. But Dave, Rudder Dave, he pointed out Captain Fantastic as sort of a point of reference stylistically. Yeah. So that was what I was keeping in mind with the groovy sort of character style that's happening on the back glass. Mm-hmm. and I did that without any thought towards the play field. It might have just been me putting it out of my mind or not knowing for sure whether that was something that I was going to be working on for him. I just focused strictly on the back glass to start and it's worth mentioning that he gave me the most incredible, exhausted details, measurements, and he has a friend, Jeremy, that is a designer that did an amazing job of creating a template for the play field based on Dave's measurements. And if you go on the pin side and look at the Rotor Dave Led Zeppelin Valley 1976, thread, he did a really amazing job of documenting this entire process from, you know, start to finish, taking the old machine, stripping it down, showing the measurements on the backside of the glass, everything. It's amazing what he's done, tearing it down and, you know, his vision for building it back up into what it is now. My role in the whole thing was relatively easy. I had the benefit of a lot of time. I think that was one of the best things about this project, is that there was really no deadline. But the fact that he gave me such great measurements and his friend Jeremy putting together that Illustrator file for the play field really gave me a foundation that I was able to run with. It took a little while to wrap my brain around it. I had to kind of just stare at it for a long time. I'd say one of the hardest parts of the process was deciding what I could throw away from the original play field. Yeah. Deciding, you know, what was critical to the gameplay, what shapes that had been sort of built into that artwork, which of those were kind of arbitrary or necessary. and I think that for me really was the hardest part and kind of had to just tinker with it for a while until it started to gel into something. David was super easy to please. So looking at the project, you said that he kind of gave you Captain Fantastic as a template along with the measurements and whatnot. Was he pretty much like, this is what I want, now go? And you had kind of free range from there? Totally, yeah. Awesome. And then the other question I have following up to that is, did you end up doing, were you a Led Zeppelin fan? And if not, did you end up doing a lot of research to figure out what you wanted in there? Well, yes to both. I mean, definitely like a hard rock metal guy. And Led Zeppelin is definitely close to my heart. So I was confident kind of jumping at it from that angle. And art for music is a big inspiration for me. So it wasn't a stretch whatsoever to work on it. But, you know, diving into it, I did kind of start from the beginning in the catalog and really try to live in it for a while there. So if you're doing these, basically these homebrew passion projects, I mean, we've seen them before. We've seen there's a Minions thread. They're trying to do their own re-theme of the pinball machine. We've seen the Nightmare Before Christmas. We've also seen the Iron Maiden re-theme before Iron Maiden came out. So if someone's thinking of doing this, are there any sort of considerations, licensing, being able to reproduce the art for a passion project? Were there anything like that that limited what you could do? well we didn't really concern ourselves with the licensing to be honest it's completely um unofficial there's no chance of reproducing it as a product well right but i'm wondering as in it is that if you're doing something for yourself with no intent of selling is there any issues with you guys doing this project do you see what i'm saying like if Led Zeppelin said, well, they can't really do that. I don't know enough about licensing to know what is permissible and what is forbidden. Yeah, yeah, I get you. I mean, it's definitely unofficial. It's not endorsed in any way or licensed, but it's not really something that we would worry about because we're not doing anything for profit here. It's strictly a home collector fan treatment. Okay. I think it falls under like a fair use act or something like that, with no intent to sell that doesn't really matter if you can make whatever you want in your backyard. Yeah. As long as you're not going to sell it. Sure. And the question is, is this a backlash or did you print it? Because I know sometimes when you go to a printer, they will say, oh, I can't really print that out because of licensing restrictions. So, you know, is this a back glass? Is that a polycarbonate? Like, that seems to be the biggest issue. Like, for example, I'm a big Rush fan, and I would love to have a set of Rush coasters just of all the albums. but I think that I would run into issues if I just went to a shop and said, hey, I just want to make all these decals so I can stick them on whatever. Yeah, yeah, I see what you're saying there. Yeah, probably the most troublesome element is that we used the Led Zeppelin logo and we used the Bally logo because we wanted it to feel. It feels authentic. It feels like something that they would have made. You're trying to get it to be intrinsically cohesive, as in if you walked into a bar in 1979, could you see this being in the bar? And the answer is yes. This looks like something that they would make, and it could sit next to a Captain Fantastic without missing a beat. And so you're trying to make sure that it fits that, I don't know, that back-to-the-future test where if you went back in time, would this fit in the era? And you would have to have the Led Zeppelin logo, and you'd have to have the ballet logo. Yeah, exactly right. And that was Dave's intention. He wants people to walk into his collection and see it and go. I didn't know that they made a Led Zeppelin. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that was his intention from the very beginning, so we designed it around those parameters. One it kind of a detour from what you asking but I think one thing that really made the project feasible is that with it being an electromechanical, and then you strip the art, you're not having to concern yourself with the sound effects or the music or anything like that. Right. It's just bells and chimes, and I know he's working on rigging it up so that it plays a different song for each player. But as far as having to re-theme the elements of the original game, you can do a whole lot more with an EM than you can with something current. Yeah, it certainly makes it more simple. Because you're right, you don't have the soundtrack element, but it would be cool if you could integrate it. yeah so he'll he'll have it rigged up so that you know fire up a new game it's you know in some ways that that's problematic though because i know that there are people like i again i grew up on iron maiden and so yeah that was actually i've told the story before that's my first concert that i snuck out to when i was 14 and i went to iron maiden so the theme works fine for me and I would love having one in the house. However, I've heard of people saying, hey, this isn't really my style of music and the music eventually detracts from their enjoyment, especially in a home environment because they hear it over and over again as opposed to once or twice a week at the bar. But I guess you could say that about any game that have music in it, right? Yeah. No, absolutely. And that's why I think Jurassic Park made a very smart move in keeping the score, the soundtrack. That was what drove Star Wars as something that I thought, yes, this is something that as soon as you hear that John Williams score, it takes you into that element. And if you don't have it, then, yeah, I guess it's a fine line. You're always trying to find how much is enough and how much is too much. Yeah, yeah, right. I haven't gotten to see a Jurassic Park in person or play it yet, but I think that's great that it fires up the music right away and it gives you the animation of the chopper, like it's dropping you off at the park. It's very immersive in that way. Yeah. So looking at this artwork, what was your favorite part to work on? Well, let's see. uh each character you know i did separately uh i really enjoyed integrating the whole back glass together in sort of vaguely the shape of like a marshall amp yeah um oh that's cool yeah yeah cool yeah it's kind of just like a frame device to uh kind of tie it all together and reinforce course of the game. I'm fond of that detail. And it was, it feels like it was much later that I ended up working on the playfield. So they almost feel like separate projects for me entirely. And then the portrait art that we did for the plastics in the playfield, it's a little bit more realistically rendered, at least within like the spectrum of my work. the back glass is a little more kind of groovy, cartoony and then I think the play field art is a little maybe I don't know, grittier looking but I like all of those things, I feel like they're all fairly true to me and what I try to do from one project to another of course all along the way. You're just trying to imagine like, man, it's going to be cool and this is all pieced together. I hope it looks really cool. Part of it, working across the world from Dave, I had to just kind of imagine what he was planning to do when he put it all back together. There were certain design decisions that he had already settled on or he was kind of running with on his own. He built his own stencils. I'm looking at those, the side art. Yeah, the side art. And then he did the pop bumpers. He did those. So just the decision of the pops being white, whereas in my original mock-up, I did them black. So it was kind of fun in that way to get some little surprises is how it all got pieced back together. So besides this Led Zeppelin project, you've also worked on a couple different pinball art projects that it looks like of your own, one being the Texas Pinball Festival poster of 2019. For the people that haven't seen this, it's like a blue hue, or it's a poster done in blue hues, but it's an alien abducting a pinball machine up into the sky. he tells kind of where some of the inspiration from that came from and and how this even came about that you were you got asked to do it yeah sure well i should clarify they didn't ask me to do it i it was totally a self-initiated project i was working on a series of posters um i had done a treatment for an Addams Family tribute poster that I had at a gallery show out in LA at Gallery 1988. They do their annual Crazy for Cult art show that is really popular. Mostly it's movie themed, but I wanted to sort of take advantage of that because I feel like the Addams Family pin sort of transcends the movie even. Yes, I agree. It's had more life. So anyway, I did that for that show, and then I followed it up with Twilight Zone, and then this was all just leading me towards Texas Pinball Festival, which is really just in my backyard. It's, I don't know, 25 minutes away. And so I was very excited to be a vendor for the first time, and I was getting a few different pieces together in that vein. And what the TPF poster started as was a tribute to Attack from Mars. But it started to kind of veer off into this, I don't know, this Western vibe. And it didn't really feel like Attack from Mars anymore. So I reached out to Ed Vander Veen at TPF to see if it was okay if I used the name Texas It's a pinball festival or TPF on the poster. He was totally fine with it. He was all for it. He just said, hey, use our logo and maybe give us a handful of them. And that was great. So I did that, and yeah. And those are all 3D, by the way, with the red and blue glasses. That's sort of my weird, goofy specialty. Well, that's what I was going to follow up with is why 3D? Like I don't know many artists out there that do 3D, and that seems to be your specialty. What made you gravitate towards 3D and the old-style blue and red glasses? Yeah, it was just a weird curiosity. I've always liked art in the gallery context that extends off the wall in some way. I bought a painting in Santa Fe years ago that was built out in three dimensions, and that sort of thing always just kind of trips me out and makes a piece more interesting. And I think, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago, I was working mostly in black and white, and it seemed like a logical conclusion, I guess, that if there are 3D comic books at one point in time, then I should be able to make my drawings work in 3D somehow. and you know it's it's been like i don't know nine years since then and just a lot of trial and error and uh self-teaching and sort of taking on a life of its own so do you do you put it through a program and actually how does it work how do you make something 3d because i've never obviously when they did this in the 50s and you know the the cowboys and indians stuff and when they had the you know, the take the back to the future thing again. They have these 3D things. How does that actually, how do you do that? I'm assuming there's a computer program now, but they don't do that. They didn't do that then. And how do you do it? Well, I don't know how they did it, to be honest. I work digitally for the most part, start to finish these days, just for flexibility's sake. I like drawing on an iPad and working in Illustrator and Photoshop. and there's an app called Procreate. And the 3D element, as far as my work goes, is a lot of manually shifting lines and recoloring and selectively pushing things forward and backward in that way. So it's kind of a goofy thing, but I don't know if anyone is doing it the way that I do. That's fine. I like the nostalgic, interactive element. And when I go out on site, if I'm doing an art festival or an art show, it's just a fun way to get people engaging with the work. Would you ever consider doing a – that would be interesting to see a pinball machine retheme and actually put on the glasses and have that 3D print job at the same time. That would be really interesting. Yeah, sure. I think that would definitely be interesting. I'd be curious to see how it would work with all the lights flashing at you and everything. That's true. It'd probably work better with an old EM that doesn't have the, you know, the Penn Stadium type lights in it that the modern games have. I think you're right. It's probably retro. It would be a retro feel. Yeah, but it could still work. And I think what interests me in pinball as far as the graphics go is it's consistent with the way that I think, which is in 3D but in flat layers, right? So, like, you've got your plat on the play field. They're flat, but they are elevated. you know so you've got the third dimension to it and like uh i don't know medieval madness comes to mind like the archers down on the uh down on the slings or on the um the outlands they're you know they're printed on the transparent plastic and so it looks like they're standing in front of that piece of hardware i think there's some cool 3d physically 3D stuff that could be done there in more of a capacity than it's done today. But that's just a curiosity. I'd have to tinker with it and see. So if someone came to you and said, I want you to re-theme the pinball machine, or hey, maybe Stern or Jersey Jack or one of the indies call you, what would be some of your dream things that you would like to do? Shaun of the Dead. Shaun of the Dead? Yeah, Shaun of the Dead. I would buy that. I think I mean games these days have so many different modes but I think, I love that movie and there's objectives throughout it, right? Like you've got to go pick up Liz, you've got to kill Phillip they got the jukebox at the end kill the queen I think my favorite is that his entire goal is to do exactly what he did at the very beginning where they said what are you going to do we're going to go to the pub and wait for the end of the world and that's exactly what they did in the movie wait for all this to blow over yeah it could even be your wizard mode waiting for it to blow over his friend turns into a zombie too but spoiler alert yeah there was actually I would you know that's a funny theme but I would consider Hot Fuzz because I think that is hilarious that is by far my favorite my favorite of his movies yeah they're all great I've actually only seen The World's End once I've been meaning to go back and watch it again because I've seen the others a dozen times. What do you have on the future coming up? Well, let's see. Pinball Life has their annual open house. They did their t-shirt design for that. I think that's all sold out, but it's coming up pretty soon. And then I've been working with Jason at Pinhead. It's an Australian brand. an apparel brand that's all pinball themed. Pinhead Australia on Instagram. That's where I follow them. But also on pinhead.com.au. So there's some cool designs that we have that are coming up very soon there. And then, I don't know. kind of excited about the future of pinball and hopefully you know staying active in in that space i'm trying to get more involved just in the local community here um going to like league nights and stuff like that i mostly i feel like i would be like a home use player but i don't own any machines so i need to make more of an effort to actually get out and engage with the other people that are playing on location a little more because I'm still sort of like a solo player for the most part yeah yeah the the nice thing is if you have a location that keeps the games in good repair that's always been the challenge of location games is that half of them have been uh ridden so hard that they you know if if you it would be like finding a car with with two and a half wheels and a steering wheel is broken yeah yeah and It's pretty clear sometimes if the location owns the machines themselves or if they have an operator. Because we have, there's a place here called Bishop Cidercade. It's a bishop cider company. They make hard ciders that are really quite good. But they turned the front end of the brewery into this amazing free play arcade. And they've got, I don't know, it kind of changes numbers from time to time, but I think they have somewhere in the 20 to 30 pin range, and they're all in tip-top shape. There's always somebody there working on them. They're always getting, like, the newest, like, limited editions, and that's a really great place for me to go play. But more often I'm going to a local joint that's maybe in slightly less high repair. I don't know if I caught this, and you may have said this earlier, but how long have you been into pinball? Well, I would say I've always loved it since I was a kid, but it's really been the last couple of years that I've started learning a lot more about it and keeping up with it. Okay. So it's kind of an exciting time for me because I think I came back into it at the right time. The industry is certainly on an upswing. There's always new pins coming out and always new opinions about it. Even if I can't run out and see it or play it myself, I can listen to folks like yourself talk about it or I can get on pin side. It's a good time to be into it. It really is. Speaking, you're getting out more into the local scene and whatnot. What is the game, if you hit the bar or whatever place you go, you see that one pinball machine, you've got to play it. What is your addiction right now? What's your theme or your title that you can't get enough of? Well, it was TNA at Cidercade, but it's not there currently. I need to drive a little further out to a place that does have it, that I haven't been to yet, but the joint that's down the street from me, they've got a pretty decent selection of some of the 90s classics and then some of the newer sterns. So when I go there, I pretty much go straight to Medieval Madness, Metallica, Guardians, or Iron Maiden. Nice. At this stage, I'm really just trying to work on my flipper skills and stuff. I'm not putting up very good scores. You know, when I first got into the hobby, I feel like I still feel this way today. I did get in and I was like, crap, I need to work on my flipper skills. I want to get more competitive. I've learned over time, though, I enjoy playing the machine to experience the machine. I know a lot of people are like, oh, we need it competitive. We need the depth. that we need. And I did just recently play Jurassic Park, and I love the depth, and I wanted to keep exploring it, but that's the thing I love about pinball. It always feels like there's a nook and cranny of the code on the play field that you can explore. And so, I don't know, that's how I enjoy it. Yeah. Yeah, man. It's always more fun if you're better, though. I think for me, the flipper skills part of it is just getting better with my aim, you know, to where I can be purposeful with the modes and the shots, because a lot of times it still feels pretty haphazard. Yeah. Well, and there's nothing more frustrating than trying to, you get a mode started on a game that you have to complete the mode, and it's like, shoot the left orbit, and you cannot hit the left orbit to save your life. Yeah, it's kind of embarrassing. Like, you feel like that should be a given that you can hit the left orbit. Well, if your skills are to the level where you're always playing rescue ball or you're always out of control, then that's not fun either. So, you know, that's how my kids play. My kids just keep hitting the buttons until the ball drains. And so, yeah, it's certainly more fun when, you know, if you can take a laser shot and say, I want to hit that, it makes it a lot more fun. Yeah. That's why I always recommend South Park to everyone, because the gobble holes on that thing are the size of your fist. Yeah, you feel like a pinball god playing South Park, but then you want to destroy your own world because you walk away after ball two. Yeah, I've been wanting to get back. I love South Park. I've been binging it from the beginning. And as far as I know, there isn't a South Park machine really close to me. It's so not worth it. yeah it is hot garbage it is it is so bad where i'm not kidding i think i was playing it it was the first time i played it and after ball two i was like i am so bored of this game i walked away oh but the fart sounds come on i know i know you want to get mr hanky out of the toilet though yes yeah okay i have i appreciate the the intelligence and the genius of south park Like, I will say it's just not my type of – there are some episodes that I find very funny, and there's a lot of times where I'm like, this is just over the top. Yeah. Well, you used too much. I'm going to bed. A little too much, yeah. You can tell how old that game is because the show has come a really long way from the pieces that are in the game. Yeah. No, it's true. I mean, they are creative geniuses. I totally get it. I just haven't been able to watch it that much. well uh brad i'm gonna i'm gonna talk to you up for a second man these posters are freaking awesome you sent me the twilight zone one and we got it here and my kid put on the red and blue glasses and it's funny because he was he just stared at the poster for i swear 10-15 minutes and then he starts walking around the room to see if everything else is in 3d Yeah. What if the world were in 3D? So I'm going to tell the listeners right now, you've got to go to Brad's website. What is that website, Brad? Yeah, there's a few different URLs. They all go to the same place. bradalbright.com, albrightillustration.com, oldschool3d.com. It's all the same stuff. and then at Brad Brad Albright on Instagram. You can see a lot of things there, work in progress and whatnot. And then Facebook Brad Albright illustration is the page where I dump stuff like that. You got to go to these websites, guys. These posters are awesome. And I noticed the one that you sent to me is limited. So is there only limited run of these Addams Family and Twilight Zones and all the other posters you do? Yeah, so I do my posters in 16 by 20 size. That's just my standard. And I always do the biggest size as the signed. Well, they're all signed, but they all, it's in a numbered edition. And, yeah, I like everything to be an easily framed size, so I try to keep them in sizes where you can just go buy a frame off the shelf. Some people have asked me about the Led Zeppelin artwork in prints, and I've sent a couple of them out. The caveat that I have is that the back glass works great as a normal-sized poster, but then the play field ends up being this kind of goofy size where you'd have to get a custom frame made, which is fine for a lot of people. They don't mind doing that. but that was kind of an aside you were asking about the limited editions I guess dude these are great they're fantastic so like I said everyone that's listening at least go take a look Brad had mentioned to me he's like well take the glasses and you can actually look at my website and see stuff in 3D and the wonderful part about these posters too is you don't even need the 3D glasses because I know some of that older stuff If you look at it, it looks like someone had smoked something, and it didn't make any sense until you put the glasses on. These stand by themselves. They look great in the collection up on your wall next to your pinball machine. They look fantastic. Yes, thank you. That's something that I'm very conscious of when I'm working. I don't like the old style in the cases where that red and blue distortion is so extreme that you just can't even look at it. But I know that people aren't going to just have their glasses at all times, and you don't want to have to look at it that way all the time. So I try to find a happy medium. So if you want to make that game room look all nice, you better go hit up Brad, man. This is the stuff. Thank you. Oh, and I'll be at Houston Arcade Expo in November. Cool. I almost forgot to mention that. Houston Arcade, and then you're playing on TPF in March, correct? Yeah, definitely. TPF in March. Part of my journey this past year, year and a half, has been at first I was doing any and every show I could go do anywhere to get in front of people. And then this year it's been a lot more selective. And I just really enjoy this community specifically. And I think the more kind of focused events like this that I can find, the better. So, you know, I don't know, two years from now, maybe I'll be driving up to Chicago. Who knows? Well, cool, man. We appreciate you coming on and taking the time out of your super busy schedule to hang out with us. We hope everything goes great. And, yeah, man, thanks for coming on. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. I'll continue repping the podcast at the dog park with my hat. Perfect. Yeah, thanks, Brad. We'll see you down in Texas next year. All right. Thanks, guys. All right, Scott, that was fantastic. What did you think? What stood out to you between the two interviews? You know, it's interesting how if you can find your little piece of the pinball community, because there's so many different places you can go. You can be a home collector. You can just be a casual player. You can be an enthusiast. You can be someone who listens to pinball podcasts. You can be someone who goes to tournaments. There's so many different areas. And people, it's always amazing to me how many different ways people contribute in this community that I'm still finding more ways that people are connected. I agree. And it's awesome that something as simple as, you know, Brad talked about he heard Roto-Dave on Head to Head, and that's how they started to collaborate. It's awesome that we live in a hobby where you can kind of reach out like that. Well, if you look at it for Magic Girl, the bright spot about having Magic Girl is that it introduced us to new artists. And it was a new way of getting people into it. And so if Zombie Yeti does Magic Girl, which really never got made and who knows, may get made in the future. However, the pinball community said, wow, that guy's really good at doing that. You should bring him in. and that certainly transformed him into a different, you know, it opened up different avenues. And so even a bad story can be spun into a positive story too. I'm glad we got those guys on, especially with, you know, we've been talking about Clear Coat for a month and a half now. It feels like it won't go away. And so we figured, why not? Well, let's get someone on who deals with Clear Coat every stinking day. And so it was awesome to have Chris on as well. Well, it's amazing because obviously what Chris does is – he is a – the reason why it's high-end pins because he is a high-end restorer. That's what he does. It is reassembling a Rolls-Royce bit by bit by one person. And so it is – he admitted it. It's a different process than mass-producing something. And so something that he can do for a clear coat can be completely different than how they're using the clear coats and everything else. And so there certainly are challenges with scalability of manufacturing. And so obviously they're still trying to dial it in. And the good news is that at least the manufacturers seem to acknowledge there's an issue, and they are trying to deal with it because they don't want to send out a product. that's the problem either. Well, and the wonderful part, you know, the shiny light, like you said, manufacturers are taking care of the issue at hand If you listen to the most recent Slam Tilt podcast they were talking about this They had issues in the past What do they do They contact Stern Stern takes care of them. I know our friend Tommy over at This Flippin' Podcast, he's already had issues with his Jurassic Park. He had issues with his Iron Maiden. But you know what? He reaches out to Stern. It might take a little bit, but they take care of him. And it's good to see also that Jersey Jack is stepping up to the plate and helping with the Willy Wonka stuff as well. Yeah, it seems that all that we've talked about before, judge a manufacturer by their customer support. And it's not just the vocal minority who are screaming on Pennside because we really know one side of the story. We don't know both sides of the story. But every time my experience, when I send in something for Stern or I send in something for Jersey Jack or I've even sent in something for Chicago Gaming Company, I've always found a satisfactory response. And so if you're going to buy a product, buy someone who can stand behind their product. You're never going to have a perfect product. That's not realistic. And so as long as there are issues that they will try to resolve, then you're still winning. And you know what? Speaking of all this, I want to transition really quickly. I think you owe Stern an apology really quick. Me? I owe Stern an apology. Why's that? Yes, because they finally took your advice, and we never acknowledged it. Okay, what is that? Now I'm curious. Yes. The advice is showcase your pinball machine at the major events. What they've been doing recently is they showcase Jurassic Park, what, two weeks before Pinburgh? Yep. That's a major event. Well, they've owned the show. Yeah, you're right. The rant that I did way back in the day when – and I do understand why they did it, and I may have been a little hyperbolic. Like they wanted to give monsters because they had the two living monsters, actors. They had them there, and I think they didn't want to steal the spotlight from that. But, yes, I appreciate that. Man, be the big dog. I want them to – and, yes, actually, ever since that Dark Knight for Stern post, Stern has been really amazing about what they've done. and I don't know if it's bringing Zach on board and revamping their PR. I will also acknowledge, too, that Jersey Jack has upped their game, too. And so it's a good thing that they're all trying to become more of a well-oiled machine. Yep. Well, and that brings me to the next point, though, too, is we have one of the biggest pinball shows coming up. Pinball Expo coming up here in the middle of October. And guess what just happened? And Elvira drops. Elvira drops. We're a month away, and this thing is probably being primed and ready and setting down at Pinball Expo for hundreds of thousands of people to play. Yeah. And so it's an awesome time, and especially I think it's smart for them to do it before a show because then you get the game there. They can work some of the kinks. You don't get the whole crappy photos from back behind. Yeah, you don't get the leaked photos from the promo orientation. I'm sure that they did a week before that someone's taking the screenshot and sending it out. Yes, this is done right. And I appreciate that while we still have leaks and still have rumors of games, they seem to be a lot faster at, hey, you want information? we're going to get you information. Yep. So, yeah, it's been great. And I respect how challenging it is for them to – PR is a hard job. And if you haven't tried it, then you don't understand how difficult it is, especially when you're trying to get – to control the message, to be able to manufacture a machine or to develop a machine and get it all ready and release it at the right time. That is so hard. And so I have nothing but sympathy for them trying to do it the right way. However, they've also done an amazing job of releasing high-res pictures, doing a gameplay. And so you're able to get, once it gets close enough that the inevitable leaks will come out, you know that the official release is coming very soon. And you're going to – don't even bother with all the grainy, washed-out pictures. Just wait a week, and you'll see the good ones. So I've got to ask you, what are your first impressions of Elvira? You know, Elvira's tough. In today's day and age, when you're taking a character that we all – I'm not going to rehash the history of pinball. And is it okay to be sexy in 2019? And I don't know what the answer is. I think it generates such challenging feelings in so many people. And I'm not saying appropriate, inappropriate. What I am saying is that it's a challenging topic. Now, the good news is Cassandra has always been very gracious. She's always been very embraced by the pinball community. And so if there is any theme that even remotely has a sexy component or an attractive component, I'm not sure exactly how you want to label it. I think that she is the one that can pull it off. and so I'm glad that there is a figure in pinball that can pretty universally say, hey, you know what, this is fun. Let's get back to the fun in pinball. And even a theme that could be challenging, we can still all just agree there's a level of fun that she's bringing to it. and so I appreciate this that there seems to be less drama associated with it. I'm actually surprised that there's less drama but I'm also relieved that there's less drama. Well and I think our friends Martin and Joe over at Head to Head had a pretty good discussion of where is the line drawn you know they kind of discussed like Wonelli versus Elvira because Elvira is a a strong figure type and she's the one that's telling the joke. She's the one that's. And so it is, it is interesting to think in that point. I was wondering because I came home yesterday or the day before and my wife was watching Dukes of Hazzard. I thought, I wonder if you could do like a Dukes of Hazzard pinball machine from that perspective of Daisy Duke. I mean, she does wear some skimpier clothes and whatnot, but she is a strong, powerful woman and she is portrayed as that and she can stand on her own two feet and if a boy slaps her on the butt at the bar she kicks him on his back and sticks her foot on his throat you know what i'm saying yeah so i i just don't know but putting that aside um because i don't think we'll ever figure out that rubric's cube no putting that aside i am pleasantly surprised with this i know that people have said it's it's just a basic family out i don't mind basic family out. I don't think that's a big issue. I think it's wise, the amount of toys that are in here. I think the toys, if they're done properly, which the video that did a full in-depth three and a half minute of what all the toys did, I think if they work great, then awesome. Because that's the thing with me, I'm not... Don't get me wrong, I love Lyman with Batman 66, I love the code, I do not like the play field. It feels clunky to me. I hate that the Riddler hole rejects. I don't like the turntable. It's just, it's not my cup of tea. And so when, when something is as beautifully in depth as Batman 66 is stuck at that price range of 7,500 or higher because of a turntable, it just makes me shake my head. Now the flip side of that coin, you look at Elvira and it's stuck at 75 or higher because of all the toys in it. Yeah, it's a basic fan layout, But that haunted house is cool, the top of the house spinning. You've got the gargoyles. You've got the crypt, which I thought was really cool. I don't know if that's been done yet where there's May South Park we were talking about. Anyhow, the crypt, I don't know if you've seen this, is actually in the ramp. And so you shoot up the ramp, and as it comes down, if the lock is lit, it will go – the coffin top will open up. The ball goes in. The coffin top goes down. if it's not lit, the ball just rolls right over the top of the coffin and keeps on playing. I don't think we've seen much of that, and that's really cool to me. So I just think the price point is deserved on this one, and it achieves that price point in my opinion. Yeah, it's basically Lord of the Rings is a basic fan layout. They use diverters, and they use clever ways to maximize the fan layout and give it variety, which is really what this has done. So I'm reserving judgment until I play it. I think that you can't have a theme that fits everywhere. I think that this theme will fit the genre and the homes that it's going to fit in. And it will fit in very well in many bar elements. the price point is challenging because usually location pins are geared toward the pro version so i i understand that that can be challenging i in utah i'm not sure i'll be playing one anytime soon i only know of one batman 66 here and so i'm not sure if someone will be buying it i know there are people who are big fans of it and I hope to play it, but I really want to get my hands on it. The price is, it's a challenge because if you're looking at a premium Elvira versus a premium Jurassic Park, I'm not, you would have to really be in love with the theme or the flow, the Dennis Nordman flow versus what the new hot game out there, which is Jurassic Park right now. I'm ready to see one. Like you said, though, we probably won't see one here in Utah anytime soon. But I do want to play this. I think it looks really fun. I actually enjoyed Scare Stiff. I know a lot of people say it's kind of shallow when it comes to gameplay. But one of the other complaints, too, is that there's not enough. Not enough. What's the crap? The quotes and stuff get really repetitious. They do. They said when they released House of Horrors, they have like 30 different movies they're pulling from plus. And so they'll have plenty of stuff to work with. Yeah, and that's likely where the price point is. You're paying more because perhaps it's a premium game with a premium code set. it seems like Lyman is going to be doing these premium encyclopedic code sets which I think caters to a crowd and if you are willing to spend the extra three or four hundred dollars for what is likely a home game anyway then I think you'll you'll get that and I've said it before it's wise of Stern to have different markets that they're catering to. So I think this is a big win for them. I don't know how many they'll produce because I think the theme is limited to which locations it'll go into and which homes it'll go into. However, I am very grateful that this is – it seems to be embraced by the pinball community on all levels. So I like this new – this Namaste Kumbaya that we're going through right now. Well, and speaking of the amount that they sell, our distributor, we go through Game Exchange out of Colorado. So when we spoke to JJ, it wasn't even two hours after this thing had been released to the public, and he said his limited editions were almost all gone. Yeah, and that's so. They only sell in 400 of the limited editions. There's not a specific number on the Super LEs that we've heard. You probably have to contact whoever. But the exclusivity through Fame Club is not true. There are some of the very, very small amounts of the Super LEs at distributors. So just call your distributor, say, hey, do you have it super readily available? But honestly, I think this could be an evergreen title for Stern. I see that the premium level is selling for a while now, as long as it comes out of the gates and everyone's loving it. It could be. They'll certainly make their, as Steve Ritchie said in his pinball seminar, hi, I'm Steve Ritchie, and I sell pinball machines. That's Stern, right? Stern is there to sell pinball machines. And if you can still sell it, they will make it. I think they're still making Metallica premiums. So you're still going to. Why not? If you can produce 50 at a time and with the manufacturing process, it makes it very customizable that you can put a few on the line and do it. So it's a smart move. So I'm excited to play it, and I'm excited to experience the rule set. Well, my other opinion of this, too, is I think we'll see a game like this every year or every other year where it's exclusively Lyman Sheets as a code because Lyman's proved that his pins are journey pins that have a lot of depth to them, and then they're able to attain a higher price point. So I think these pins are specifically geared to compete with Jersey Jack because Jersey Jack has a lot of depth to their pinball machines, right? They come into your home. They stay there because, I mean, Wizard of Oz just – It's an encyclopedic rule set. That's the bottom line. Correct. It's an extra level of rules that other games are good, but they don't have – but you're right. You're not going to get to that level on a location environment. It has to be a home environment. and so I think this is where the whole all stern is pinball everything comes in it's a pinball lifestyle it's a lifestyle brand right so I think that wraps it up for Elvira we're just excited to get some hands on it see how it plays I think it's a home run if it plays smooth as butter you can't go wrong with Lyman code you really can't think of the last Lyman code that was bad it just doesn't exist it doesn't. So, Ghostbuster Code just came out. Dead Flip premiered it with Dwight yesterday. It looks really good. RU God is actually now in the pinball machine. So that insert that everyone's like, this isn't used. It's finally being used. And so I think everyone's really excited about this one. I think even though the layout could be a little clunky and airbally, I think with the mods that have come out to help with the flipper gap, to help with the air balls i think if you you mod this the right way and with this new code it could be a keeper for the collection it could be uh the theme is great the art is great um i i still prefer the flow of different games and so i would lean toward other ones but you know what whoever kept their uh their ghostbusters at their home waiting for that code now is your day go download it go try it out send us feedback tell us what you think yeah i i want to hear about it because and i also want to hear if you have put in the center post that into your game the one that you don't have to actually drill into the play field uh i want to know what your thoughts are on that if it makes it a better game uh if you enjoy it more because of it not to yeah i you know my attitude is if it's your game and you want to do something to it and certainly something that is removable give it a shot i mean i i heard people say you know what makes it fun it doesn't make it just a complete and brutal game i'm pinball should be fun so really quickly we got a reply back from um the email that we received last episode of our ongoing discussion about making pinball more open to the general public. Robbie, I'm calling him Robbie. I know it's not. I know it's not. Anywho, I apologize for totally... Who's that Robbie? Yeah, I totally slaughter his name every time. I do apologize, man. But he said he spoke with the location owner and said that they have it set up so there's no replays, but they have extra balls only because he's referring to the Roger Sharp comment that replays are self-inflicted wounds. And now that he understands that concept, he's more on board. And now he understands that position of an operator. He likes it. He wanted us to discuss really quickly, though, what are some of the challenges and approaches to catalyzing the next generation of pinball enthusiasts, especially since we have kids and whatnot, you know? Yeah, really, you have to have a location that has a motivated person that maintains the games. If you buy a game and put it on site, it will get run down, and it will just become non-fun. This is my challenge with trying to go and play location pinball is because my games run really well at home. And trust me, I have money, and I would love to go and play your games on site. But if you don't maintain them, I'm not going to play them. I'm sorry. That's the bottom line. And incorporate it somehow is that it brings people into your establishment. And so you have to find someone who is a tech. And I know that that's challenging, but you have to invest in that. if you're not going to have the same type of, you're not going to have the same person who comes in who just wants to play a video game. People will drive hours to go play your game. It's new money into your establishment. And so if you're willing to do that and set it up so you have food, drinks, whatever, to make it a moneymaker, that's fine. But that's really the only way it's going to be maintained. it's going to be profitable if your machines play well. That's why you have places like Sunshine Laundromat. That's why you have Netherworld. That's why you have Logan's Arcade. You have all those places that good players will go play because your games are good. But if you're putting out a crap product, people are not going to give it to you. Well, and here's – so with you picking the general public side of the coin, I'm going to flip the flip-foot coin and talk really quick about the next generation. So he asked specifically kind of like how we get our kids into it. I make every experience with Pinball Machine with my son positive. I don't ever give him crap for how he's playing. I have some easier games, like World Cup Soccer is a fantastic game because it bodes really well for beginners, and it bodes really well for novice slash experts. There's depth to it to get to World Cup, but it's satisfying just to make a goal. Like I've had people come over and I've had teenagers come over to my house, youth groups, and we've turned on the machines and played them and they will stay at World Cup because they just love making the goal. And hearing goal, I even had a young gentleman say, hey, he'd been to my house twice. And he says, I hope you never get rid of this machine because it's my favorite. and he doesn't even like soccer. So I think the thing is, too, is you've got to have a positive experience. You have to have friendlier games. Don't get me wrong, I do love playing some faster, meaner games, but you've got to have a game that people that have never played the hobby before walk away feeling satisfied playing it. Yeah. Well, I'll give you the example. The example for people of my generation, playing Contra on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Okay? so it's a it's a three guy game and it is brutal like you cannot beat it with three guys unless you are amazing okay but what did everyone do everyone put that in and they did up up down down left right left right ba start and got 30 guys okay because it was fun that way you could actually go to the end of the game and it go okay so maybe it was cheap it went to the end of the game and but i still play contra to this day i put in the the old the old uh game and i do the code and i just have a fun time because not every pinball pinball game has to be going for the gc it doesn't have to be so brutal that well i just did it just right so i had that one one hundred games, you know, sometimes I want a one and four game where it's just fun. And now there's a fine line between making it too easy that you're thinking this ball's never draining and this is boring. So, uh, but I, I've done that on most of my games. I've actually gone in and really set a lot of things for a lot easier just so when people come down, they have that good connection. And, yeah, if you want to make them difficult for you, fine. But have a few games that people will come down and say, hey, why don't you go play that game? That's fun. And don't send them to Walking Dead. Send them to Medieval Madness. Everybody loves Medieval Madness. Well, and that's the thing, too, is, like I said, every time, doesn't matter if it's a kid, doesn't matter if it's an adult. If it's their first time playing, make it a positive experience. You know, help them out. Don't overload them. I mean, it's hard to do that sometimes when you've been in this hobby for five years. You're like, there's so much depth. Like, I have a friend that I started explaining medieval madness, and I kind of got carried away. And he's like, how do you remember all this? And I'm like, I just do. And he's like, well, this applies to every pinball machine, right? I'm like, no, they all have their own individual rules. And he's like, now what? Wait, what? And so boil it down. Make it basic. If you're going to – I like doing – I've got an attack from Mars. So when someone comes over and they've never played pinball before and they start to take a plane tack from Mars, if they even destroy one ship, I make it a huge deal. Because if you've never played pinball, and especially where you destroy a ship and it has all the flashing lights and the explosions and stuff like that, they're going to remember that. That's the thing about pinball. And every person will say this. It doesn't matter if you've been in a pinball hobby for 30 years or if you've been in it for 30 seconds. Pinball is about moments. Some of the biggest moments are hitting that jackpot on getaway. getting to tour the house on Adam's family. People remember those moments. That's why they go back to those nostalgia games. They might not be the best in the world. The games, not the people. They might not be the best games in the world. Or the people. But they remember that because of how it made them feel. So if you make them feel positive, they're going to want to know more. They want to get more involved. Well, it's the same thing as like, that's the reason why they have mini wizard modes. Even for experienced players. Because the mini wizard mode, they're like, yeah, I got to that step. You need to have that dopamine to get you to say, I want more of that and I want to get farther. So, yeah, absolutely. I think that in your home collection, make sure you have a few accessible games. Don't make them Pinberg A Division quality every time. People will just hate it. Well, and that's what I was talking to you about this week. I think I've officially landed on my favorite era, big shocker to everyone, is the 90s Williams Bally games. And the reason being is because the wizard modes are far out enough. I don't hit them every time I play the game, but they're close enough that I can hit them every once in a while. And some of these games are just fantastic when you get to the wizard mode. Like Johnny Mnemonic, love the wizard mode. Everything shuts down. It goes to power down mode. and just the light show on that. Adam's Family, same thing, scared stiff. When you finally actually hit all, when you get totally scared stiff, the whole game acts like it's breaking down. It just starts freaking out on you. And it's one of the best feelings. It's like I broke the machines that I was playing so good. You know what I'm saying? And so that's what I love about those. There's still a challenge to it, but I don't feel like it's a challenge I'll never get to, five-year mission on Star Trek. Yeah, but at the same time, there are games that have those like Valinor, but people, hey, can you destroy the ring? Yeah, I got that. That's why there's steps. Make sure there are achievable fun things. Make sure pinball's fun. That's the bottom line. Make sure it's fun. Don't take off all the widen up the outlanes, take off all the rubbers, and then have your friends come over and ask them to have a good time it's not going to happen oh and the other thing too if you have people over don't blow up the game they get bored really quick yeah i've gotten all the way to um power failure on jurassic park and the people love the light show but they get really bored the 15 minutes in between you pressing the start button and getting to that mode well that's why tna was is such a great home fun game to play because you have quick things yeah i i go i go to my friend's house who has all the Bally Williams games. And yeah, if we're playing a few, you know, a multiplayer game, if one person starts going like really far into it, you're going to kind of lose interest and just start another game. So, well, I think that's an awesome note to end on. Once again, if you want to get a restored pin, hit up Chris Hutchins with high end pin restorations, or go check out some of that wonderful artwork with Brad Brad Albright.com. We'll put both the links in the show notes. If you want to reach out to us, reach out to us. You can hit us at LoserKidPinballPodcast at gmail.com. You can hit us up through Facebook, either Scott Larson or Josh Roop, or the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast page. We're even on Instagram. I'm finding more people are hitting us up on Instagram than on Facebook. Hit us up there. You can send us a direct message, whatever it may be. But we're always happy to hear from you. It's funny because we've been chit-chatting with a lot of people. It's good to be involved in the community. Last thing, I just did a fresh batch of hats. If you haven't reached out to us and you haven't got a hat yet, as what's now being officially dubbed as the Keith Elwin hat from the last guy that bought a hat from us. Not trademarked and not Keith Elwin endorsed, but he does like the hat too. Yeah, but apparently that's what it's known for, I guess. I don't know. Sounds fun. And Keith, if you're listening, dude, thanks so much, man. I would have never thought when we started this that it would be cool enough for Keith Ellen to wear our hat. So thanks again, man. All right, Scott, you got anything else for us? I don't think so. Catch you in one to two weeks, depending on our schedule or the news sources. Awesome, man. Always great talking to you. Okay, signing out. _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: f907a191-256b-4d2e-859f-43e1dc3ab22c*