Welcome to the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast. I am your host Josh Rupp and with me my co-host Scott Larson. How you doing my good man? How do you have it neighbor? Are you enjoying all the snow that we're having so far? that's been freezing actually it was uh like uh freezing rain over here today so skiing is nice when you get up above the inversion oh i bet it's way nice out here it stinks because it's like it's just been snow it's been like sticking to the ground and it's just it's been terrible you'd shovel it and then i'd get all the way to the bottom of the driveway and then i'd go back to the top and start shoveling again because it's just sticking and piling up so bad yeah well Good reasons to stay inside then. You know what? That's a good reason to play some pinball instead of go outside, right? Yep. Hey, so before I get into everything, can you give a little introduction of yourself? Yeah. So I got into pinball probably about four years ago just on a whim. I picked up – started picking some arcade games, and one of the dealers had three pinball machines that he had just recently taken out of the house. and I saw Simpsons Pinball Party and I said, huh, I've never played pinball. Let's buy that. So I bought that and it was way too complicated. I had no idea how to play it. And it sat downstairs for about two years, playing it occasionally. And then over one year, I bought about 10 pinball machines. I still don't know how to play Simpsons Pinball Party really, but it's still really pretty. Yeah, yeah. You've got a really nice collection. I don't know if you've noticed the picture that I've posted as like the podcast picture, but it's actually me at your house when we did that tournament. I'm playing on that sweet Tron that you have. Oh, yeah. So I got all these warnings that said if I wanted to post something, I better make sure it was a picture of my own. I was like, well, I guess I'll use that because that's pinball related. Sure, it's a picture of your own. Yeah. So what's been going on in your pinball life, I guess? um you know the main thing is i installed a pinnovators uh thing onto tron and now my tron is a very customized pro version um and now it's uh keeps blowing the fuse on the gi so right now i still need to figure that out but i haven't had any time to actually tease in and considering i uh know very little about how to troubleshoot machines it'll probably take a a little while longer too. It's always one thing or another with a pinball machine, it feels like sometimes. Well, it's a good hobby. The challenge is you have to be able to have the time to do the maintenance on it. So I'll have to get some of my friends over who know a lot more about maintenance and we'll be able to figure something out. I need to also email the marketers of the LED OCD chip and the Pinnovators and see if there's a reason why the LED OCD is blowing. Yeah, for sure. It's basically the same Tron that Kevin Manning of the Buffalo Pinball has. I asked him exactly how he customized his machine, and I did basically everything he did. And it's still not working. Well, I didn't customize it myself. Someone else did. Oh, gotcha, gotcha. But who knows? Maybe I'll text Kevin and see if he knows what's going on because he said he was just about to install the innovator's chip. So maybe his isn't doing the same thing mine is. Gotcha. Okay. Anything else exciting going on for you? Gary got a Monster Bash LE, and I know you have your Monster Bash thing. You know what? I've actually – to segue really quickly, now that you've brought that up. So I get a, I was going to get off of work early today already. And then the babysitter said, um, nevermind, we don't have a problem. You can stay at work. And then I got a call not even like 30 seconds later. And they're like, we have a shipment here for you. Can we drop it off? And so, so I'm like, when, when do I need to be there? And she's like, uh, now, now. Yeah, exactly. So I run home, I clear the space. Um, and then I wait for an hour, like a kid on Christmas. I'm just like, just show up, please. so he finally backs in and i he drops it off in the garage and i'm like stay you know play some pinball and it was his last call so he starts playing pinball while i'm unloading monster bash and getting it open dude i've never had that experience before that's my first new in box i'm a broke kid so i never have those experiences yeah i ended up selling half the collection because monster bash is one of my holy grails so i just i had to go for it no longer part of the broke collection if you ever buy a new in-box pinball machine. Especially in LE. You're in the top 5% of pinball collectors. It's still broke if you have to sell more than half your collection. If you have to get rid of a Simpsons pinball party and a Star Trek Pro amongst a couple others, and plus pay off some bills and whatnot, but that's a different story. But yeah, I still feel broke. I'd look at it now, I have a nice shiny toy to remind me I am very broke. Yeah. No, it's awesome. It still looks pretty. What blows my mind is the manufacture date on it, September 28th, and they announced that a month later. I'm like, I kind of wonder what took them so long. When I talked to our buddy JJ over at Game & Change, he said they were having some issues with some of the parts breaking, and so they wanted to build it more robust. So I'm all for making something a little nicer, as long as I don't want to fix it later down the road. Yeah, the interesting thing is on Gary's anyway, the um on the uh hole once it goes down to drain uh there is a um you know kind of like a a uh a cliffy down there but it's gotten stuck on the cliffy twice because they did a cutout and obviously it was hanging up on that cliffy and so they made a cutout so the ball could channel through that and then it still hung up on it twice the knife opened it up gotcha well knock on one mine hasn't hung up yet but i've only got five games on it i seriously unloaded it it took the 30 minutes or an hour however long it took me and my son my eight-year-old son trying to help me with this pinball machine getting all set up and man it took forever and then my wife shows up and she's like you realize it's 6 30 almost seven right like we need to make some dinner crap yeah so yeah okay so you ordered a pizza and you kept playing i wish no i went and made dinner because you know wife's pregnant so because you're a good husband yeah yeah well that which let me change it really quick it was funny because last night uh i tuned into dead flip right and he he's his wife is pregnant as well and i asked him what do you guys do and she's like well she's 20 weeks along i'm like dude my wife's 20 weeks on sunday i just thought about it if we both have our babies on the same day we should make like a pact like name our kid after each other but then i thought it was a terrible idea because like my kid would be the cool kid running around saying i'm jack danger and then his kid would be like running around saying i'm josh the loser kid like so i think you could have you could have dangerous his middle name yeah true true but it was just i'm like that's the short end of the stick i doubt he'd go for that yeah but well cool man well i gave my thoughts on monsters last week um i didn't know if you wanted to give your thoughts what your first impressions were yeah i'll give some quick thoughts um so the monsters always seem to be like a saturday afternoon rerun when i um i never watched the adams family uh when i was a kid and also the adams family movie i never watched it until like two years ago so i and since i really didn't get into pinball um i grew up in the 80s And so that was when the arcades were really ramping up and the pinballs were kind of left to die in the corner. Then I was I was really busy in the 90s during the first renaissance. We're kind of in the second renaissance. So I don't have that emotional connection to Adam's family, but other people have. In fact, I bought an Adam's family from someone. Actually, I bought it from Jeff Rivera from the pinball podcast. and I had it in my garage for about six months and I just didn't have room. So I moved down to, uh, to my friend's house to babysit. And then I decided this seems kind of ridiculous. It was his house for a year. And so I sold it to my good friend, Josh Roop. You know what, man? And it's, it's, it's getting plenty of good use out here. I couldn't pass up when you, when you called or texted me and said, Hey, I'm getting rid of it. I'm like the thing with Adam's family, dude, I, at first I didn't get the hype. Like I was like, this is just some kind of nostalgic crap that people always got because they grew up with it. Now that's in my house and I've been playing it. I understand it's, it's not a game. It's like an experience between the seance and the knocker and everything. It's just, and the magnets is fantastic, but. Okay. I totally get it for me. If you look at my collection, I have 12 games downstairs and Twilight Zone in the garage. And I need to I just didn't have enough space to get rid of one to move it downstairs. And also my friend has Adam's family and he's two minutes away from me. He's the one who has the Monster Bash LE. And so I've started viewing our collection as kind of a joint collection. And so that was the reason why I sold it was more of a if I look at our collection as a mega collection, then I'm not willing to hold on to that as a duplicate and sell one of the other machines. Oh, yeah, I get you. So that was the reason. So I don't I still don't have that emotional connection with Adam's family monsters. I actually did remember like monsters better than the Adams family. also the Adams family for some weird reason had guest spots on the Flintstones yeah I still don't figure that out but they so when Munsters was announced I thought well this seems like a it seems like their attempt to steal the thunder from Monster Bash is what it felt like well that's what I thought too it was a two birds for one stone between that and Alice Cooper because Alice Cooper is more of a of a monster game in my opinion than it is a rock star game or a music pin yeah but yeah yeah so i i i didn't really know what to think about it but like looking at it um i think that they from an art standpoint i think they nailed it they they were able to capture three different things i'm not sure uh the black and white version i think they did a good job of something different that will stand out from the others. I personally like the colorized version, but it seems like the downstairs, from what I can gather, has a lot more going on than your typical lower play field. So I think it'll be a home run for them, at least in the modern era. I agree. I'm not going to buy it, but hey, if I see it on route, I'm totally going to put $5, $10 on it. Oh, yeah. Well, I think that's the thing that has astounded me with the Munsters release is there is so much information. It seemed like anything you wanted to know, it was covered. Between them revealing it the two days with Jack Danger and Gary and Zach down in Vegas. And then they come back to Chicago and Jack goes through it with Dwight. And they take the glass off and they just go through every little thing. And then you have Franchi and all them on Special with Lit and they go through everything. and you learn that John Borg, this is his dream thing he's wanted to do for so long, and he's finally getting to do it, and Dwight even, it kind of sounded the same way as well. I mean, it just seems like anything you wanted to know about this pin, you found out within the last week. And so it would make me feel more confident if I was buying a limited edition, because in this market right now, it seems like you either got to be in on it or not within that 48 hours. And if you're not, then you're just – you're plain out of luck. But I don't know. Well, you're out of luck for a new inbox. But as we all know, in the secondary market, there's always that pin available. Oh, yeah. If you just have patience and something will pop up. The grail pins, they're only grail pins because it takes a while just to get them. But you can always get them. Oh, yeah. Unless they're like the Michael Jordan special edition or the Aaron Spelling special edition. you know those ultra rare ones that's different but if you want a pin you can get it oh yeah oh i totally agree that's what uh our buddy ryan's always telling me he's like i'll just sell one i have no emotional connection to these things man i i can't get back as soon as i want it so it's it's interesting to see i i think it'll be good i'd like to see the difference and see if the lower play field really does much for the gameplay. As we know sometimes the premium experience doesn necessarily make or break the game A lot of people I know buy just the pro version of Metallica And even Iron Maiden really has very little difference between the pro and the premium. I actually, on Iron Maiden, I prefer the AR package of the pro. Oh, yeah. But I grew up with Iron Maiden, so there it is. Do you think, speaking in limited editions really quick, do you think the rage or just whoever is throwing a temper tantrum about the extra 100 units is warranted? Or did you hear about this? Yeah, I heard about it. I think that the bottom line is if you know how Stern has resurrected their marketing ploy is they're trying to cater to three different markets. So they're trying to cater to the route market, home market, and the collector market because it's the guy that came from Harley-Davidson. And so they can't – and if you really look at it from a car manufacturing standpoint, no car manufacturer is going to manufacture one version of their car. They have to cater to multiple audiences. and you can't fill all the audiences with one with one uh pin you know it's just like in the 90s you know valet williams they all just put out here's twilight zone you buy that and that's it yeah but it was also a different time um i have no problem with them having a different collector market uh with uh star wars i know they had a hard time or at least i hear they had a hard time selling all the le's i actually had a thousand down on the le and uh when it was released i just looked at it and said you know this maybe this isn't mine yeah so i i actually moved moved on but i don't really care that much having something limited that doesn't really mean anything to me uh limited versus premium i kind of view them as the same game and so as long as the gameplay is the same on the premium and the le and the le is more of a cosmetic package i don't have a problem with it oh yeah but i i know there are people who they do buy games because they are limited like the primus game they you know they want to buy that because it's limited to 100 i don't really get a buzz of having something that someone else does but i'm also not the only demographic they're targeting yeah true so i don't really care well and the only reason i went with the limited on the monster on the monster bash the monster bash the monster bash is just because i i knew it was going to be in my collection indefinitely you know i i don't foresee me getting rid of monster bash monster bash and attack for mars and medieval madness fall in a very interesting category i think a lot of pinball players could feel the same way is you might get bored of it but you always come back to it so like my collection with the monster bash and the attack from mars i know there'll always be staples and so then i have one rotating pin besides my world cup soccer which is a different story but i always have a one rotating pin that i'm going to play for anywhere from a couple months up to a year whatever it is but i know it's not going to stay in the collection because it's going to rotate out i'm going to get something else because you know stuff stagnates but i always i always go back to attack from mars for the last five years it seems like i've always just loved attack from mars and so So I don't know. I get – like there's a lot of people out there right now saying like Monster Bash gets old. It's easy. It's fun though. It's one of the funnest games I've played. Okay, but who is saying that? You have to consider the source. So the people that are playing that are heavily involved in tournament play. True, very true. And so they're the ones who are chasing scores. They're the ones that – see, full disclosure, I don't have time to go play tournaments. We actually have, I would say, a fairly decent tournament scene in Utah. Oh, I totally agree. With Dan and Josh. They've done a great job about getting it going. But I don't have much time. If I make it to three tournaments in a year, even casual tournaments, then I'm doing a pretty good job. And I'm into it just for an escape and maybe some socializing. And so I don't care if I get a billion or 10 billion or 100 billion on something. And so that's why it doesn't matter to me. I'm just looking for fun. But I totally understand if you're a heavy tournament player, you're going to want something that's super challenging, high-risk rework, and a Lyman Sheets rule set that goes down that only 1% of the market is even going to scratch the surface on. But again, I'm not that guy. And so I just want a fun game that my kids can play, people come over to my house and play. and when people talk about Monster Bash, they talk about it being a gateway pin. Oh, yeah. Like this is a great starter pin and that's really what I'm searching for in a home collection because I want people to go down and push that button. Oh, I totally agree. I want them to say, oh, that was fun. I want to do that again. I've never played pinball machines. I can't tell you how many times I tell people, yeah, I have pinball machines and they look at it and say, do they still make those? Oh, I totally agree. you know living out in the middle of nowhere um there's not very many people are into pinball so when people actually do come over to my house i don't want them to get discouraged and that's why i have attack from mars but one of the ones that people love that are new beginners is actually world cup soccer because it's so easy to understand and really if you're flailing you can just shoot it into the goal like eight times out of ten and you're good to go and so i've had people have come over and they'll play them all and then they'll tell me that they love world cup the most yeah the the ones that people play on mine uh they always play medieval madness but that's the one that they all go and play um consistently just because it has something for everybody it's still challenging enough because it's still the the risk of going straight up the middle and hitting the castle but it still has the all-time best toy in any pinball machine with the exploding castle and so they look at that and say i want to do that again well i think the nice part about medieval madness it kind of takes out some of the risk for the reward i mean you look at attack for mars yeah you're hitting that those drop targets and you hit that uh or sorry no you hit the target bank and then once those drop down you're going for the drop target and so seasoned players like attack for mars because there's more of a challenge but it's the exact same gameplay on medieval madness but you have the moat there so it's like you hit the drawbridge and then it say you know you don't have to worry about draining first shot well it also angles so it actually bounces off and goes to the right flipper and so um you get you know it's a i would say it's a more elegant game on medieval madness but i totally understand the heavy tournament player who has the outpost completely removed and taken all the rubbers off and they want that ultra brutal game um but you're still catering to the top 2% of players. The average player, even the average home player, they don't really care that he's on a fun game. Oh yeah. I totally agree. Well, that's cause that's why we were going to have some of our staples. No matter what, there's going to be games that never leave your collection. You text me the other day and text me half of the ones you're like, I'm like, what's available in your collection. And you just text me the ones that aren't available. And it's like, whatever else you want, go for it. You know? Yeah. Yeah. I guess we kind of went off track there about Munsters but I mean really I guess that's what it comes down to what's your personal preference and really Munsters also feels like a throwback to the glory days of the 90s and that there was pinball was campy it was fun, it was a little tongue in cheek maybe a little irreverent and times have changed I totally understand that Um, but I think that that's why people who are interested in are going to say, oh, I want that. Um, I don't necessarily want another music pen, another movie pen. And I'm not saying those are bad. I mean, they're brilliant marketing strategies. You go where the money's hot. Oh, yeah. But this is that's one reason why even when I just looked at the layout and the cartoonyness of Oktoberfest, I thought that looks like it's throwing back to the the 90s glory days as opposed to the 2010s glory days. So I think that's why it's going forward. And I think Monsters will be a big hit. So I think Monsters will be a big hit. And I think they did a brilliant job of finding their market. So, you know, it's a competition. I still think Monster Bash will be a big seller for Chicago Game Company. And I've always had that attitude that games should never be limited. that if there's something that people want to buy, they should be able to remake them, make a run of 100, make a run of 200. Oh, I totally agree. And keep visiting it as long as you have the license and the ability to produce it. That was the challenge with ACDC is that people couldn't buy the premium after they did their run until they did the vault edition just because they didn't clue in or have the technology to actually do small batch runs that they do now. Well, I think the other thing about monsters too, and Dwight really pointed this out, was the fact that they made the monster multiball or whatever it is, kind of like the mini wizard mode, a lot more attainable for those that aren't necessarily new to the hobby. are new to the hobby. And so I think, like you said, it is a throwback to the 90s because it felt like with Medieval Madness, the easy goal is to destroy the castle. But for the expert player, there's trying to become, you know, kingdom or I can't remember what it's called, ruler of the kingdom, whatever it is. And so, I mean, you see that with Attack for Mars. And those really basic, the quote unquote basic games have great strategies for beginners and they get them hooked. and then it's got meat for the experienced player. And that's what I feel like they're doing with Monsters is they really want to kind of do that throwback. They want to bridge the gap between the two because honestly, the last five years, like you said, they've all been kind of almost tournament games and that's been a lot of their demand. And I wonder if Stern's going to start doing kind of, you know how they release three models a year? I think each model might be different. One might be catered like this. One might be more of a tournament like a Keith Elwin, Iron Maiden or whatever it may be and then whatever the goofy title might be in the middle, the Deadpool or whatever it is people still love it but it's not necessarily a tournament game Yeah and I think they're actually getting that with the games that they can I kind of delved into that with the scalability that they can say hey we're going to run 100 of Primus or we're going to do something that is still hey we're gonna we're gonna run i have no idea how many supreme games they made but hey that's a moneymaker for them so good oh yeah they knocked it out of the park with that one yeah absolutely and uh it's the same thing that you i think as the pinball audience we just need to realize that um you know a 44 year old male is not the only target audience oh i totally and people forget that there's so many other audiences out there and you know what guess what maybe a game is for you maybe it's not but see that's that's why this a podcast appeals we're not the top 10 scott we're not going to the i might not be killing it at the tournaments i at least try i go out for the social aspect for the most part i get a little frustrated but you know i i don't know this is we're not we're not the right we're not ryan and martin from the head to head where they're killing it every time you know no no we're the bottom feeders like i'm okay if i'm like oh Okay. All right. Whatever. I didn't go straight down the middle. What's funny is my first tournament I did was the Salt Lake Gaming Con like two years ago. And I honestly didn't think I was even – so with that one, the way that the tournament worked is if you were in the top 16, then you went to the finals and then they did whatever they did. Well, I drove 180 miles. I didn't think I was making it because there was over 100 and some odd people that went into that. It was just – and Dan texts me as I'm driving back to Vernal. I'm halfway there. So what is it, 90 miles? and he's like where are you at i'm on my way home he's like well you made it into the finals you're in the top 16 yeah oh i didn't know you know okay well good luck yep well someone take my spot i guess i don't nothing i can do now but well let's kick it back to one of the things that we wanted to talk about was made some advice to give to those people that are coming into the hobby so i i was thinking about um at least what i would do talk to people who are getting into the hobby and the best advice i can say is games are out there so if you don't get the one game you want guess what someone has it and eventually they're going to get bored of it and they're going to move on and so this isn't you're not marrying a game you can buy a game you can have some fun you know a little bit you know you don have to commit to one game for the rest of your life You can certainly just have that game and sometimes it can be an expensive game Sometimes it can be a cheap game But you can always find some sort of fun. And if you don't find that one game, great. Go and explore this other one. Because if you buy those games and you just say, I need to keep this game because I'm never going to find another one. You know what? You will. Oh, yeah. asking things like, hey, what's going on with this? Or how can we fix, you know, how can I fix this or that? Because as we say, it's a cannonball flying around at high speed under glass. And so it's going to break something. Well, not only that, like you said, though, get a part of the community. I know at least in our community, we actually sell the pinball machines a little bit cheaper just to keep them in our area. Because with Utah, there's not a ton of pinball machines in Utah. So we want to keep them within the community, I guess. and we don't mind taking a couple hundred bucks off to see it go to a friend instead of traveling across the states you know or even out of states the the one thing i keep thinking about is budget because there's no reason we've got this going on are you interested so do what i was just saying a lot of our deals are kind of handshake deals of hey i know you were looking for this game do you want it yeah sure i'll take it yep so like i was saying the the next thing i think is budget there's no reason to be looking for a limited edition iron maiden if all you can afford is a world cup soccer and so figure out what your price range is and then start studying pinballs in that range and when i say study go for uh i go through ipdb i go through pin side i find out if it's near me on location and then i go play the crap out of it because you're gonna love any pinball machine you get for about the first 20 to 50 plays and then you're like well what do i do with it now especially those ones that don't like one of the first ones i owned was a teenage mutant into turtles love the theme that's one of my dream things i would love to see that made into a pinball machine nowadays too too much of a conversation to go into there but that's that was one of the first ones I got. I got at home. I started exploring it, was really into it. And then it came down to after about 50 plays, I realized it's just collecting the turtles, which is a bunch of, uh, target banks and shooting the two left ramps. Cause there's no right ramp. You just shoot the two left ramps and that's about it. I mean, there's a sewer hole and you start multiball, but other than that, there was really no depth or code to it. And it just got really boring after a while and it got even harder because i bought a crappy version because i figured well this is going to stay in my collection the whole time so it doesn't matter if it's crappy or whatnot if i want to re rebuild it or whatever i'm going to well then i got to the point where like well i don't even want this i don't think i can get rid of it because of how much it's worth and how much damage is done to it so that's always it i i would also say it's just like buying a car don't buy be careful about buying a clunker and thinking you're going to fix it up and turn it into gold if you look at the game and think you know what this is going to take a lot more effort and value your time if it's going to take you 40 hours unless you want that experience of building it up just put a dollar figure on how much you make per hour $10 an hour $20 an hour then multiply it by how many hours you think it's going to take and if it's going to take 2,000 of your hours to do maybe it's just better to save up and work at your trained job and just buy a better game oh yeah you could do what i did i i i go into homes a lot i do heating and air conditioning i'm a technician so i go into homes a lot and i'd walk by pinball machines here in town that looked like they had i mean there's a layer of dust on the glass yeah one of the grandkids who wrote their name in the dust and i looked at the dude and i said hey do you ever play this thing he's like well it broke five years ago. It was a high roller casino. He's like, it broke five years ago. I never use it. Why? I said, you need a new water heater. I'd be more than happy to install a new water heater for you for free. We do a trade. You give me the pinball machine. I looked up how much it was worth. You give me the pinball machine. We'll call it even. He was like, that's the best thing you could ever have offered me. He thought it was the best deal he'd ever made. I ended up with a pinball machine that I might not necessarily they want, but I knew that I could fix up and then turn around and sell because it was in decent condition. And I mean, you don't have to have the top 100 in your house right off the get-go. I started out with Teenage Mutant Turtles. I started out with Amazing Spider-Man. I fixed them up. I flipped them. I got my World Cup soccer. And my World Cup soccer, I got for cheap, but it was beat to heck and back. It was just terrible. That's one other thing. That's one of my big advices to anyone that's getting into pinball. I tell them all the time, don't buy one that's broken as your first one. You're going to get frustrated. You're going to wish that you could just play it. And you're going to go out and you're going to probably buy another pinball machine just so you can play that one so you can work on this one that you just bought while you fix it up. Your first game should be one that works. Yep. You just turn it on and go. And also I would say that be part of the community. Pinball is social. Pinball really isn't a solo sport. There's a reason why it's morphed into this social thing. And if you have a reputation of doing fair deals with people, then they will include you into the bigger picture. but if you if you have a deal of being a shark about being aggressive about either either aggressive about low-balling someone or giving them a ridiculous price you know the community is small enough that you're going to get reputation and you're not going to get very popular yep so i think if you just have that i'm not going to be a jerk and i'm just going to be fair then that will come around and you'll be viewed as an asset to your local community no i totally agree i I can think of a couple guys that – I had one guy – when I was trying to get rid of my Simpsons pinball party, he reached out to me and he said, why are you selling it for the price you're selling it? It was like – I think it was like 500 bucks less than what was the pin side value, which everyone knows is solid as gold, right? But he's like, you could sell it. I just sold mine for – it was like 5,800 in the same condition to some guy across the country. Why don't you do that? I'm like, I just, I don't want to, you know? And so I sold it to someone in the community here. They, it was their first pin. They were excited. They knew they were getting a solid pin. I haven't, they haven't had an issue with it and it's been fantastic. And to go back to the Ninja Turtles, when I sold that one, the funny part about that one, uh, I told the people, like it works a hundred percent. They got it home and she calls me and I've been like 12 hours later. And she's like, how dare you saw some machines not working? How dare you? Like you swindled us and dah, dah, dah, dah. And I said, what's it doing? And she's like, it won't kick the ball into the lane to kick out. And I'm like, well, did you level it? Oh, well, we'll try that. And I never heard a word since. Yeah. Just some of the easier stuff. You know, if you're going to buy a pinball machine, make sure that you understand the basics of even just leveling the pinball machine too. so okay well i i won't i won't give them too hard of a time because i bought simpsons uh completely not knowing uh like what to do with it so i was lucky it was uh it was a home use only mint condition so yeah but you got to explore it though i don't know yeah but that's part of having like having other people in the in your community that you can use as resources and say hey what's going on here so yeah oh yeah and like you said that's probably one of the biggest aspects of the hobby that you need to do is go out and just talk to those that are in your community so that way you know that you have someone to fall back on i see a lot of that in our community something breaks that's the first thing they do they go to facebook we have a big facebook page for all of us and then they just said on there hey this isn't working what do i need to do and within nine and five ten minutes there's three guys on there that's already given their their opinions on how to fix it or they'll send them to the site where they need to fix it pin wiki wherever it may be so that really is the best way to do it there's also if you find a tech who's a local tech who actually is really good at fixing pinball machines and you're willing to spend the money they'll do a great job um we have we have one here uh his name is ray and he's come out and really he was very he was invaluable when I first started getting into the hobby and I still use Ray if I want just something fixed and I just don't have time to do it um it is more expensive because you're paying premium prices but that's his livelihood and you look at it that way oh I totally agree I I wish there was an equivalent in video games because I have a video game where the monitor keeps flickering out and I would love to just pay someone to come and fix it for me oh I agree so uh let's talk about the future of pinball what are your thoughts or at least your hopes for 2019 i think it's going to level out a little bit in that we've had rapid growth in the last five years um basically the years that i got into pinball and i think you're going to find that uh the growth will be slower i think it'll still be steady um because people are still can finding that enjoyment of connecting with something physical um they're kind of burned out on video games they're burned out on the cell phone interaction they're burned out on social media and this is something that's just it's kind of raw it's physical and it gets back to hey go out and talk to people as opposed to just staring at your phone screen um so i i feel that it still gives this connection that nobody has had since the death of arcades really um oh yeah but i think that you'll probably still see the rise of more barcades uh more kind of adult themed uh arcades out there and when i say adult themed i just mean that uh they're geared toward you know selling selling food and drinks and hey you're there for games too um yeah yeah yeah yeah because because that would that would go off really well oh come on you're not talking about like a gentleman's Let's go to the gentleman's club and play some pinball and see some strippers. More and more of those coming up. I think that Stern's kind of in their stride with where their market share is and where they can sell their games. With the technology out there, I don't know. this ability to actually wirelessly wire your scores, I think that will become a huge thing. And I think eventually it will creep into big tournament settings where you don't have to have scorekeepers. It'll just be automatic. Or you'll still need tournament directors. But I think that that will really help out. I also see a little bit of an evolution. I think some people are getting burned out on the tournament whopper chase. And so I'm wondering how that's going to end up because the people who are really doing it, it's really a part-time job for them. If you look at how many tournaments they play in, you look at the Raymond Davidsons, you look at the Steven Bowden, you see all those guys who are – every weekend they're doing something. and I think for the one percenters, that's fine, but really there needs to be a way to connect more with just the casual guy who has maybe a night every two or three weeks that he or she can go and play. No, I totally agree. So I think, in my opinion, in the next year, we see more competition. I know that Stern has really hit their stride and they're doing fantastic on what they're doing, But really, what's their biggest competition right now? Jersey Jack. Remade Games? Yeah. Jersey Jack and Chicago Game Company. Absolutely. And the problem is, though, yeah, well, and the problem is, is like Jersey Jack, they've hit a stumbling block between Pirates of the Caribbean. And they've, I mean, Jack went on head to head and said, hey, we're going to try to do two titles nine months apart. And it's like, but the problem is, is they just barely got out Pirates. Are they giving up on Pirates? I mean they cut short, dialed in so they could bring out Pirates a year ago, and now it's finally leaving their factory. But that's the problem though is Stern is really honestly the only pinball people that have been around. And so they had a head start. They knew what to do. They've been doing this for years. And so I think a lot of expectations come from the other companies because they look at Stern and they go this is what Stern is doing This is what everyone else should be doing We should stop holding Jersey Jack especially Spooky which blows my mind because they come out and they said we are boutique pinball We're going to make this at the rate that we can make it. And I think Charlie's brilliant on the way that he does his stuff. Like, yeah, it sucks that you have to wait 18 months if you're number 500 to get your Alice Cooper. But he's not overexerting himself. He's not giving false promises. is he's telling you up front what he's doing, and he's giving you a good product. And so there's nothing wrong with that. And so I really want to see what happens if Deep Root comes in, or not if, when they come in, and see what they can do, because it would be nice to see Stern have a little bit of competition. I really think that Stern believes themselves that they're the only one in this market that kind of controls what goes on. I bet you that 80% of the cells are stern, and it's because of the way that they are able to present themselves. I mean, Monsters is a fantastic example. It's like, boom, here's Monsters. Here's everything you need to know about Monsters. Here's photos. Here's all that jazz. And in two weeks, you can have it in your home. It's like no one else can do that. So I want to see for 2019, I want to see maybe expectations lessen a little bit from the community, but expectations for the companies themselves to be brought up to a higher standard. Yeah. So I think it'll still be a challenge for companies to figure out where to put the games though, because there's only so many, so many people out there that can buy a $5,000 toy and put it in their house. And really you need to find way. When I was a kid, you would find either arcade or pinball somewhere, either at, you know, the skating rinks or at the mall, there was always a place that, you know, a play an arcade, but that doesn't exist anymore. Like all the, all the skating rinks, they've all turned into kiddie gambling places with those ticket redemption games. And there needs to be, they need to find a way of reaching beyond this niche market. But I also may be naive. Maybe that is the best you can expect in today's market when there's so many avenues for people to seek for entertainment that maybe they are happy with just the lane they've chosen and the barcades in the home market will be able to fill their expectations. Oh, yeah. You know what I would like to see? And I know this is totally just like a fantasy, like it's probably not going to happen. but Stern has this wonderful back catalog that everyone rants and raves about you know Stargazer and Meteor and Stars and all that jazz and I know that they can't remake those without I mean what's the Stargazer going for now like 1500 bucks or something like that yeah and that's the and if you look at Twilight Zone for example like I know it's not Stern game but a Twilight Zone would probably be over a $10,000 game when you look at how much stuff is in there. And so they've had to figure out a way of making it economical because it's no longer the machine that people are putting money into on a regular basis. At least half their market is home buyers. And so they need to find a way of getting it into the home buyer. Well, and this is what I, so this is my thought process. So they make like a Spider-Man Home Edition, which would be on the lesser end, right? And I know people hate this concept, but make the playfields interchangeable. I mean, if you look at a Stern right now, really the only thing that defines it is the SD card you put in it and the playfield. And so if you could build those Stern classics and it's just swappable playfields and you're pretty much just paying for an SD card in the playfield itself, that's really going to cut the cost i mean i would pay i would easily play pay you know two to twenty five hundred dollars if that's all i was getting was the play field and all i had to do is slide i mean obviously the cabinet itself the whole setup first go would be four or five grand because that's what the home editions go for but if you knew you're paying a little more up front and then you're you're those games that are less obtainable right now they were easier just to put into the machine and call it good, I think people would go for that because there is a high demand for that right now. So that's something I would like to see in the future. Sure. Who knows? I see what you're saying. You realize you just described Highway Pinball, right? Well, yes, but that's the thing, though. You're taking a product people already know and love and that they can play, and you know people would fork money out like that. I mean, look at Nintendo. They made the NES remake. They've made the Super Nintendo remake. Sure. They've made those because they knew that they could sell them. The problem with Highway is he had product no one wanted. Yeah, full throttle. No one wants to buy that. There's one in Denver right now. I feel bad for the poor guy. He's got down to $3,500, and he still can't sell it. I mean, no one wants to buy those things. The only reason people want to buy Alien is because it's Alien. That's it. That's what it comes down to. Because the theme's important. That's why I, without knowing anything about pinball, I bought Simpsons Pinball Party because I like the Simpsons. Exactly. Well, that's why I bought Ninja Turtles is because I loved Ninja Turtles. That's why I bought Spider-Man or Amazing Spider-Man, the Gottlieb one. Yeah, I think the Stern one's better. Just a little bit, but there's a 30-year difference between the two, so I hope the one's better than the other. Yeah. I think what I would like to see is I love that they're doing the vault editions because I think that there's all these games that have been artificially high because of their scarcity. It's the demand. It's the supply versus demand. And if you're able to – the bottom line is Stern legitimately doesn't care what the aftermarket of their product is as long as they can still sell the primary product. and so they're well they have they have no skin in the secondary market there's nothing for them in it they have no money like yes i will say that there are people who buy things on the anticipation that they can flip them later but if stern has the opportunity of selling 10 000 metallicas they're not going to cap it at 2 000 and say well we want to keep the the home buyers happy They're just like, no, we want to sell 10,000 games. So I would love to see some of these older games come back. And who knows? Maybe some of those older games like a Fathom or Stargazer or Sea Witch. I just don't, as we saw with Total Nuclear Annihilation, they're going to be a lot more expensive to make than you think. So I just don't see them doing it. But Scott Denisey was awesome. He brought a lot more concepts. I mean, under the Playfield digital displays, I mean, there's a lot more to those games. I have a really hard time believing that Beatles is an $8,000 game. I mean, based solely off the product itself, not necessarily the license. I mean, the license, yeah, if it is a million dollars plus, then yeah, I get why it's $8,000. But the actual game itself... Okay, but have you run the figures on that? I guess I have not. So you run the figures on it, and it basically – licensing fee on the Beatles, which they say is the most expensive, and I'm making a few assumptions here, I know. But even if they paid a million dollars for it, you're only paying $500 for the license. True. Per game, right? Per game. At $1,900. Per game. Yeah, $1,964. So you're only paying $500. So that's for them to break even on that. So The Beatles is a prime example of a game that they are selling based on a fixed – and I – fixed scarcity, and I'll say scarcity in air quotes. I know you can't see my claw hands in the air. but uh because we don't know how many of these things they're making anyway and i just can't see even if they made more than 1966 of these beatles i don't think the demand will be there from the average market there will be from the beatles collector market but from the average market i don't know i i wasn't interested i like the beatles and i wasn't interested i like the beatles too and i i mean i really believe that they're one of the main reasons we have modern rock music but i just you price i would rather have a monster bash at eight grand than i would a beatles yeah just no question no question whatsoever of course i would also like some of the other ones that i want the chicago gaming company to make whitewater i'd love to see what they do to modernize that center and you can still get whitewaters for around five six thousand dollars but you know eventually they're going to run out of the uh the expensive remakes and hey again a chicago gaming company can break even uh selling something even though a 30 year old game is selling for six thousand someone can say well i can buy a new one for seven well this is the brilliance of chicago gaming in my opinion you've got a lot of games at that six thousand dollar range that 5500 to six thousand dollar range and where their base model is pretty much the same as one of those games that you're buying like obviously someone's going to mod out their game but you're buying a brand new in box classic let's say white water i mean heck i don't know why but creature from the black lagoon has shot through the roof for 5500 to six grand yeah i mean if they remake those games they'll easily make their money back on them because you're looking at it as well here's the base model which is essentially the exact same game you bought 20 years or 30 years ago and then we have the tiers up from there so i i just i think chicago games have a lot more under the under their belt than a lot of people think well i i think they do i mean for me i i am the guy who would rather have the uh the medieval madness remake over the original because the one that i bought is new as opposed to a 30 to 40 year old game and unless i'm going to get hep to rebuild it and spend ten thousand dollars for it mine's going to be a lot cleaner than that one is yep well we've been running almost now let's let's wrap this up okay i wanted to give a couple quick shout outs you know i am very very humbled by the community this week what started out is something that i was just going to test the waters with i did not expect this kind of response thank you to head-to-head pinball thank you to this Week in Pinball, Zach Minney. When I record that introduction, that's all it seriously was, was an introduction. And I sent it off to Zach. I feel like one of the most professional podcasts is This Week in Pinball, head-to-head, special one lit. I'd sent it off to a couple of those guys, said, what are your thoughts? Like, I'm so nervous. I don't think this is going to work. And they all said, you know what? That sounds fantastic. The sound sounds great. Put it out there and so i did and between the shout outs between like i said shout outs from head to head shout outs from this week in pinball even dead flip i mean jack danger on his stream yesterday it blew me away the one that really floored me was kaneda actually left a comment on the soundcloud saying welcome to the party i was not expecting kaneda to even say hello but i mean that's it just goes to show that the pinball community is a very tight-knit community and at the end of the day, like we might fight about the dumbest things, but we're going to support each other and I think that's awesome. I think it's crazy that other podcasts shout out other podcasts. And seriously, yeah, it seems humbling. I actually found a random Canada video that talked about him replacing his bedroom in his New York City apartment as to like a retro gaming den. So I'll send you that link. It's pretty interesting. Sounds good. I'll check that out. I'll give a shout out to actually Jeff Rivera, a local guy who is part of the Pinball podcast. He's one of the guys that I just reached out to. I had no idea where he was recording from. And when he was going to pick up his Ghostbusters, I thought, it sounds like he's driving around where I live. So I contacted him, and he's been a good friend ever since. So I would say that I probably wouldn't be as deep into pinball if it weren't for Jeff and the Salt Lake Area Pinball Slap, whatever we stand for. Yes, Salt Lake Area Pinball. Well, no, I totally agree with you. Jeff has been fantastic to me, too. And, I mean, if it wasn't for him, like, it was kind of funny going to the first tournament and Jeff was there. I was like, oh, dude, I'm with pinball celebrity, man. Like, I didn't know. and so um it was so funny because like jeff doesn't like to talk about it like he doesn't like to talk about he's part of the pinball podcast he's he's proud of his product but he's not one to brag and so it took me a while to find out that like you said that he was even from the salt lake area and uh someone had said he's our batman you know yeah he goes out there he he does his stuff and then he he just kind of keeps it quiet to himself yeah but no man i totally agree but thanks for joining. I'm really excited for this. I'm really excited to get this up and I've known you for years now but we'll get into that next episode. But yeah, I was stoked when you said you wanted to do this. So let's make this a thing. All right. Well, we'll catch you later. All right. Later, Scott. Okay. Bye.