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Episode 16 :: The Electric Bat Cast

Electric Bat Cast·podcast_episode·55m 59s·analyzed·Jun 4, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Electric Bat Cast recaps Stern factory trip and discusses pinball maintenance and game availability.

Summary

Hosts Cale and Rachel recount their visit to Stern Pinball's Chicago factory as part of a media trip with other pinball content creators. They discuss the factory tour, meetings with designers (George Gomez, Keith Elwin, Brian Eddy), licensing complexities revealed by Gomez regarding John Wick's gun content, and social activities. The episode includes audience Q&A about soldering techniques and game recommendations.

Key Claims

  • Every millisecond of movie footage in John Wick required licensing approval

    high confidence · Gomez explained licensing complexity during factory meeting; hosts noted this was privileged knowledge from their background in machine sales and licensing.

  • Custom injection mold parts cost $30,000-$50,000 each at Stern

    high confidence · George Gomez directly stated this figure during licensing/BOM discussion; explains why boutique manufacturers use 3D printing instead.

  • John Wick contains significant gunplay and gun-pointed-at-player animations in upcoming code updates

    high confidence · Hosts saw LE version demo with gun animations and shaker motor/lighting synced to muzzle flash effects; upcoming code updates referenced.

  • Licensing demands can change mid-development when movie studio departments change personnel

    high confidence · Gomez explained that licensing departments at production companies shift, creating new demands that force scrap of completed artwork worth significant money.

  • Stern's factory includes a soundproof windowless PD (product development) room where new games are created

    high confidence · Tour guides explained that media groups were kept out of PD room due to NDA concerns and the challenge of keeping that many people from leaking information.

Notable Quotes

  • “If you decide, well, screw it, I'm taking my ball and going home, there goes a million bucks. Yeah. And guess what? You're not going to get games out in time.”

    Cale @ ~48:00 — Explains why Stern doesn't simply cancel troubled projects despite licensing issues—the sunk cost and timeline pressures are massive.

  • “They're going to be there. Stern could survive 2008 and still be a pinball company. This is a blip on the radar.”

    Cale @ ~50:00 — Dismisses community concerns about Stern's viability post-John Wick controversy; frames it as minor disruption to established company.

  • “I mean, this is only for people who love what they're doing. Certainly.”

    Cale @ ~45:00 — Reframes Stern as driven by gaming passion rather than corporate profit motive, countering 'Disneyfication' accusations.

  • “The only places we didn't go were Gary's office and the PD room... because that's a lot of people to keep their mouth shut and none of them will.”

    Rachel @ ~25:00 — Humorous acknowledgment of NDA concerns with large media groups; hints at unreleased game development happening behind closed doors.

  • “Dwight is A plus tour guide and able to be loud in a factory... you could say that everybody was... this is the greatest day of my life because i'm at work.”

    Cale @ ~20:00 — Characterizes Stern employees as passionate gaming fans rather than corporate drones; Dwight Sullivan specifically praised for enthusiasm.

Entities

George GomezpersonDwight SullivanpersonKeith ElwinpersonBrian EddypersonGary SternpersonStern Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern company health appears strong; hosts emphasize Stern survived 2008 recession, positioning current John Wick controversy as 'minor speed bump'

    medium · Cale defensive about Stern's viability and dismissive of community concerns about company health.

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern manufacturing complexity: injection mold parts cost $30k-$50k each; shipping includes foam protection systems; QC and worldwide distribution infrastructure

    high · Gomez directly stated injection mold costs. Hosts toured shipping/QC area and saw foam machine and LE/Premium/Pro stamping system.

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern conducting community leaderboard challenges with Insider Connected; hosts attempting to score on Bond and John Wick leaderboards

    high · Hosts spent ~2 hours attempting to score on Stern leaderboards; Cale successfully scored on Bond 60th after 8 attempts.

  • ?

    event_signal: Major media visit and factory tour organized by Stern for pinball content creators and podcasters (25+ attendees including Retro Ralph, Jason Knapp, Arcade Matt, multiple podcast crews)

    high · Detailed recounting of multi-day Chicago factory trip with factory tour, licensing master class, arcade visit, bus ride with Gary Stern, and hotel afterparty.

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Factory visit generated positive sentiment among attendees; employees described as passionate, genuine, and excited about working on pinball

    high · Extensive positive characterization of Stern employees as gaming fans; Dwight praised as excellent tour guide and passionate about work.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.168

0:00
Today's episode of the Electric Batcast is brought to you by Stern. Insider Connected. Head to sternpinball.com to sign up today. Marco's specialties, everything pinball. Pinball parts and more at marcopinball.com. And Game Room Goodies. Check out gameroomgoodies.com for new and used pinball machines, arcade games, jukeboxes, pool tables, and more. And now, the click and clack of pinball, Rachel Bess and Cale Hernandez.
0:56
Four squared. What's that? 16. I'm not following you. I'm just saying it's four squared. Do you remember four square? Wasn't that a social app where you would check in? You remember that? Yeah. I checked into Target. Yeah. We're bringing it back here with ancient social media apps. I also remembered in elementary school as the actual thing with the red rubber ball and you did the backspin and screw over your friends. I don't remember that. You remember Red Rover? Yeah. I think they outlawed that because of me. I hurt a lot of people doing that thing. Yeah. So let's get right into what everybody wants to hear about the Stern trip. Okay.
1:37
You know, and we're not going to get, like, super detailed into it because so many other people have. Retro Ralph has a fantastic episode on YouTube. Yeah. And I really like it because he mentions me. Yeah. Well, that's why that one gets the nod. I also enjoyed the kineticist write-up. I thought he did a very, if you're looking for like every single nut and bolt of what happened, that was extremely thorough, a very long read. Yeah, but back to Retro Ralph and me. Sorry for the aside. There's a really cool part in his video where we play John Wick. We all get to play John Wick Premium for the first time. And it was me, Jason Knapp, and Retro Ralph. And I don't want to give anything away, but it was a nail-biter. A real banger. Yeah, we were. So go check out, just search Retro Ralph on YouTube, and you can go to his very cool video. It's probably the latest video. Man, and it's very well done, his editing and writing. Gosh, he is good. Yeah, super cool. So check that out. Also, like you mentioned, Colin's piece on the kineticist.
Electric Bat Arcade
organization
John Wick Premiumgame
Retro Ralphperson
Jason Knappperson
Colin (Kineticist)person
Arcade Mattperson
Triple Drainorganization
Loser Kid Podcastorganization
Ian Jacobiperson
Hot Nudgeorganization
Mark Guidarelliperson
Donperson
Bond 60th Anniversarygame
  • ?

    design_philosophy: John Wick's gun content interpreted as censorship/Disneyfication by some community members; Stern/Gomez actively defending licensing complexity as real explanation

    high · Gomez provided detailed explanation of licensing approval processes and mid-development changes. Hosts note this was reactive defense against 'political statement' accusations.

  • ?

    licensing_signal: John Wick licensing approval required every millisecond of footage; licensing departments change during development creating surprise new demands; scrapping artwork costs ~$1M

    high · George Gomez explained licensing complexity during factory meeting. Hosts noted Stern can't simply cancel troubled projects due to sunk costs.

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Stern art department employee (Joe) discovered he unknowingly used Rachel's art in Insider Connected badge design; positive resolution with artist acknowledgment

    high · Rachel met Joe at factory visit; he expressed excitement about using her art and she reciprocated enthusiasm.

  • ?

    announcement: John Wick Premium features expression lighting and speaker lighting effects; speaker lighting available on Pro/Premium models; LE includes enhanced versions shown in demo

    high · Tim and Elliot conducted demo of LE model with expression lighting and speaker lighting effects synced to gunplay animations and muzzle flash.

  • ?

    technology_signal: Stern factory includes undisclosed PD (product development) room with upcoming games; media group explicitly kept out due to NDA security concerns

    high · Tour guides explained that large media groups would be security risk for unreleased game secrecy; room is soundproof and windowless.

    • 2:48
    You know, Retro Ralph can't pronounce the kineticist. What's he say? I can't remember. Go check out the video. It's funny.
    2:57
    Also, Jason Knapp did a piece. He is great, man. What a real pleasure to hang out with him. Right. And let's get into that first. I think the most exciting thing for us was hanging out with all of these folks. Yeah. We had, okay, so there was us. There were the electric bats. The bats. And you had Hot Nudge. The Hot Nudge ladies. Yep, Hot Nudge. You had Loser Kid, which I was very excited about hanging out with these guys because we have – I mean, I don't remember like ever chatting with them or meeting them at a pinball conference or anything like that. So it was very cool to connect with those guys. Yeah, I feel like everybody else we've at least said hey to over the years or something like that. Or messaged on Facebook or whatever, you know, traded rumors. No, we don't partake in that. uh so and then we had uh retro ralph uh jason knapp uh colin from the kineticist uh and um arcade matt arcade matt which nobody knew like all it was all of us like 40 plus year old yeah most of us 30 at least 35 uh and then everyone's like who's that guy who's that guy and then it turns out he's like oh he's got two million followers he's the only one that really should Be here, out of all. He was the biggest star on the bus. And super nice guy. Go check out his stuff, Arcade Matt, on YouTube. And he does a lot of, like, redemption game stuff. He's like a world-class redemption game guy. Yeah. And has great production. So go check him out. Was that everybody? I don't want to forget anyone.
    4:39
    Hup Challenge. Oh, Hup Challenge. Yeah, Jordan. Triple Drain. Did you mention the Triple Drain boys? How can I forget Triple Drain? You know, we had Travis, Joel, and who am I forgetting?
    4:52
    Who was that? The other one. The other guy. Triple Drain. It's Tom. Tom Grass. How can you forget Tom? Well, I spend a lot of time talking to Joel, and I said hey to Travis, and I will wave to Tom. Tom's quiet. Tom is reticent. He keeps to himself and he just wants to play pinball. Yeah, nice guy. Just not like... But the coolest thing was, it was like the good time gang. Yeah. Like everybody was just really excited to hang out with each other, talk about pinball, and play pinball. Erica. We played a shit... There were a lot of people on this thing. Erica's pinball journey. Are we forgetting anybody else? I'm sure. Okay. And we all went and met up with, who did we meet up with? Gomez, Gary.
    5:45
    I mean, Seth. Seth and like 30 other people from Stern. And I just want to run through it real quick because if you want a detailed account of what happened, go check out. There's articles and what have you. And we mentioned that at the beginning of the podcast.
    6:02
    We did a tour of the factory, which was super cool. And I mentioned this before when we were on the pinball party, me and Ian. Ian was there. How do we keep forgetting about people? Ian from Nudge Pinball was there. But we did a podcast, and man, it was really emotional for me seeing where these things were made. And without these things, we wouldn't be doing what we're doing right now. Sure. And this was my first trip to the big new factory. You went to the old factory. Yeah. And the great thing about the tour was they took us to places where they don't usually take tours. They really, the only places we didn't go were Gary's office, Gary and Seth's office. Which I think we probably could have. If we really asked them, they were really open. And the product development, they call it PD, the PD room. that is a windowless soundproof room where they're making all the new stuff and of course they couldn't take us in there because that's a lot of people to keep their mouth shut and none of them will it's not half, it's a half so we did the tour and Dwight is A plus tour guide and able to be loud in a factory he is wonderful nothing but good vibes and man you can tell he just really loves what he's doing i think you could say that everybody was i mean there was a few people maybe like messing with some wires that yeah that you know enjoyed having a job but it wasn't like this is my life's passion basically everybody else there was like this is the greatest day of my life because i'm at work 100 making and it really felt like these guys first and foremost are gaming fans i mean i really i i felt like you know especially with dwight like he's the kind of guy you could fire and he's going to show up the next morning and do you know he doesn't really care he's like i'm doing this yeah because i'll because all these guys yeah all these guys love this stuff uh got to hang out with a friend uh kyle spiteri and he was he was on the tour with us and one of the mike one of the very coolest things was tons of these employees followed us as we were doing this tour and you could like you know uh what do you call it when you break into a side group and like start asking questions a breakout session is what they call that in yeah we get we have corporate ease absolutely you could uh you know circle back and land this plane and all that stuff we had a breakout session no so we did the tour it was fantastic uh to see how these things are made and and not only how they're built but the the qc the the shipping the the shipping around the world, the packing. You know what? Some of my favorite parts of the tour were not the parts that, you know, everybody enjoys seeing, like, the big stuff, like how it all comes together. I really enjoyed seeing the buckets of, like, Newton ball. Oh, yeah. And I also, like, seriously, one of my favorite part is at the end when they get shipped out and they have the stamps for the pro premium LE. and I grabbed the LE stamp much to the chagrin of the guy who actually needed to use it and stamped my name tag on it so I have an LE stamp on it. That's like, hey, these are the stamps. There's only these couple and they go on every single machine that goes out. I mean, just like the little stuff. And you're not joking. We disrupted their entire day.
    9:44
    Sorry, Stern. Thank you for letting us just... None of the employees could have any of their work on their computer or their table because we couldn't see anything. Right.
    9:55
    And what was really fascinating, if you've ever opened any new in-box sterns, we got to see the machine that makes the foam protectors for shipping. And that was cool. They were just huge vats of this liquid that turns into hard foam. That was a lot of fun. So we did the tour. we um after that did we eat after that or no we did the conference and we talked to gomez talked to us about things and there's a lot of everybody's talked about this as well um in you and i were in a unique position that you and i know how these machines are made and we understand the licensing stuff that goes on i used to sell while machines were on the line And they would call me, you know, emergency, we need some parts. And I used to have to sell. So I knew a lot of the pains that they were talking about. And we've just known over the years how difficult the licensing battle can be. So a lot of the stuff that he was saying about that and how much stuff costs. People are always asking. Build of material licensing. Why don't they just make a new injection mold part? Well, and then Gomez said, well, you're going to spend $30,000 to $50,000 for every one of those. So, I mean, when people are asking, like, well, why aren't these boutique companies injection molding stuff instead of 3D printing stuff? Well, God, nobody has the money for that. It's amazing that Stern can do that. Or why do our toppers cost so much? So it went a little bit into that. And for me, it was really fun to see everybody else's reaction. Like, oh, my God, I had no idea. It costs, you know, this costs that much. or that every little second, millisecond of footage has to be approved by license. This is stuff that you and I were privileged to already know, and we got to watch other people learn it, which is cool, which is fun. Sure. Yeah, and it was all a master class in licensing and a build of materials and how the math works. you know um and uh that was that was that was really super cool and and i think we were in there for like over an hour and it was never boring i mean everybody was just like very into this uh gomez yeah once again like how could you not be into it right gomez is so excited about everything this guy's been doing toys his whole life and he's the nicest person right um and it It was his birthday a couple days ago. Happy birthday, George. Oh, happy birthday, George. Yeah, good deal. And I think the whole thing was to stress, you know, one thing was, and he didn't come out and say this, but you could tell he wanted to explain how complex licensing was to, you know, say like the whole gun thing with John Wick. was not some type of political statement, had nothing to do with the Disneyfication of Stern.
    13:03
    You know, Stern isn't, you know, they're not pushing some type of agenda. And we really saw this when Tim and Elliot were showing us the game. And, man, there's a lot of guns in it. There's a lot of gunplay. There's even, you know, we saw some upcoming code updates where the gun is actually pointed at the player during this fight scene. And as the gun's going off, the shaker motor's firing and the lights in the speaker.
    13:37
    We saw in L.E. And as the muzzle flash is going off, these lights are strobing. And so there is some intense gunplay in this machine.
    13:49
    Yeah. Well I think I mean Stern is made up of people that love games It never anything nefarious They love like why would they have a job in this You could get paid way more in basically any other part of the industry This is only for people who love what they're doing. Certainly. Another point was so many people online are saying that, well, if they knew they couldn't use guns, why didn't they just drop the title? and Gomez did go in not specifics as far as that goes but just certain things that happen people need to realize they might be working on a game for a year and working with a licensor and they have certain demands strange things will happen for example the licensing department might change at whatever movie or production company they're working with and they have all new demands Surprise. Right. So if you scrap a project, you are losing a ton of money. Yeah. And not only that, you're losing the chance to bring a very cool IP to pinball. Right. And this sort of thing happens all the time. It was just noticeable to some percentage of the public with WIC. But there's all these licensing demands. Like this was, I guess, a bigger one, but throughout any, the production of any pinball machine, because you're meeting with your licensor every step along the way, you're going to think that some of the artwork that you have is golden. You know, this is perfect. This is great. And then all of a sudden, like the licensor, for some reason that either makes no sense at all or it's just something that nobody thought of, you've got to scrap it. So if you decide, well, screw it, I'm taking my ball and going home, there goes a million bucks. Yeah. And guess what? You're not going to get games out in time. like it's just the way things work and bob's your uncle yeah is bob really your uncle i have a grandpa bob well they that i think that counts um also just to dispel anything you know there's a lot of people talking about um oh you know after this release stern is doomed blah blah blah you know and i'm not gonna go deep into it you know i know a lot of stuff that a lot just the people walking on the streets don't know but the the folks here at stern are incredibly smart and if They could survive 2008 and still be a pinball company. Absolutely. This is a blimp on the radar. Did you say a blimp on the radar? You mean a blip. A blip on the radar. A blip would be much bigger. Like a minor speed bump, if that. I mean, everything is completely fine. I'm not worried about Stern one bit. Yeah. They're going to be there. So. But then, my favorite part. Was it the cake? Oh, no. So we ate some food, right? I liked the cake. The lemon cake was very good.
    16:54
    But I also really liked when they gave us the little goodie bag that had all kinds of cool stuff in it. But the coolest thing for me was a roll of quarters from Gary Stern.
    17:06
    Yeah. So to continue on with the – so after the conference, we all sat down and had pizza and wet meat sandwiches. Oh, isn't that what that is? I don't think that's what that's called. Portillos. They call it Portillos, but in Arizona we call it Portillos.
    17:24
    So we had pasta, sandwiches, hot dogs. I had a hot dog. Of the garden variety and the hog variety. And then we had two cakes. Well, two different, two types of cakes. There was eight cakes. There was lemon cake and there was chocolate cake. And you were excited. I mean, whole huge cakes. I think the ratio of cakes to people was like each person had a quarter of a cake. Yeah. Of a huge cake available to them. For sure. And that was a good time. And the best part is we go into a different conference room. Was it Cheetah? Each conference room at Stern is named after a classic Stern game. Galaxy or what? So we all go into the conference room. We're all spread out. And all of the employees come and eat with us. I mean, that was just like so cool. So, yeah. Yeah. So you're sitting there and then, you know, we had Mark Guidarelli and Keith Elwin and Brian Eddy. And they're all just they're taking the break while we're taking a break. And then after that, there is a very cool arcade slash bar lounge right in the middle of the office.
    18:38
    And, of course, it's a separate room. It's a, you know, walled off room. It kind of looks like a tiny, less horror electric bat. Like the colorways are all the same. So it's kind of a trip. You go in there. It's like they use the exact same paint as us. Yeah, I think they modeled it after the electric bat. Well, we need to send them some posters, you know, some things to put up to make it a little. For you folks at home, this is the room you see when they stream from Stern now. Very cool looking place. We went in there. they did the demo of the LE with a very cool expression lighting and then the speaker lighting which is this is also available for the Pro and the Premium which I think we might get I think we might have to it looked too cool Tim and Elliot did a demo for us and then that's when we got the bag of schwag we got a cool stern tote everybody got it not just us hey Kayla and Rachel we've got something for you Nobody else looked. Although I don't know if they gave Ian. He mentioned on the last podcast. It was just a joke.
    19:47
    The whole on flipping out with friends, he kept trying to get free stuff the whole episode. Got a satin jacket. A tote, a satin jacket, this T-shirt. Wow. Very cool. Which I'm wearing right now. Shill. Yep. You're a total shill. Go check us out on YouTube.
    20:05
    We love Stern. We do. We love Stern. We love all pinball. We love spooky. Wedgehead gave me this shirt. There's times when we were really mad at spooky, and then times when we were like, hey, you guys did okay. We love all pinball.
    20:18
    So what else did we get? We got a fanny pack. A fanny pack, but a roll of quarters. Gary gave each attendee a roll of quarters to go play at Logan. Which they took to us on the stripperless bus. Yep, and you kept your roll of quarters. Yes, I used my own quarters. It's on the shelf right now to remember this. And we'll have to get that signed. We forgot to get it signed by Gary, but we'll do it. We'll do that. Okay, so after we did this thing, they put us on a bus. Yeah. And this is a very funny story. We talked to the person who had to order this bus. And, you know, it's a completely blacked out bus with neon lights. And they said it was very hard to find a bus that would fit all of us that did not have a stripper pole. But they did pull it off. Why? why was it important that it not have a stripper pole? Yeah, I would have liked it. I would have swung around a little bit. You've seen me do my thing. Yeah, you would have showed off. Yeah, I'll tell you what.
    21:17
    So we all get on the bus. And I've told this story on Jason's podcast, on the Pinball Party podcast that me and Ian were on. But Gary puts us on the bus, and I'm like, are you going to ride with us? And Gary's like, no, no, no, I'm going to drive myself. Okay, so he shuts the doors. We're cruising down the interstate. Next thing you know, I mean, we're flying down the interstate, and out of the corner of my eye, I see Gary in his convertible with his hair flowing in the wind, and he's like cruising next to us leading the pack. It kind of looked like 1982 California. We were the wild hogs. Let me tell you what.
    21:54
    And so we went to Logan. We played games with all of these people, got to hang out with more Stern employees. They all showed up. Yeah. I met Joe, who does the art, the icons for Stern Insider Connected. And he told me he was the one that used my art, unknowingly used my art in one of the badges. And he was excited because I was so excited about it. Yeah. And he was great.
    22:24
    And then we played until like, what, 10, 1030. The bus took us back to Stern. and um we what i don't know if this was a trick but one person forgot something i forgot something inside so one person forgot something inside the office so roper let us in and say you know what let's hang out and play games because the games are still on so for like maybe like two hours we all played uh trying to get on the stern leaderboard um everybody was playing uh the john wicks so we also disrupted the cleaning crew so we we really screwed up the entire day at the factory they just have to write you know what i thought was so great like there was no assholes like sneaking around the office looking for clues like we all just stayed there playing the games in the little area that's true everybody was just really happy i thought that was a nice um i thought that was nice too yeah 100 um and i so i really wanted to get on the leaderboard and when when Ian blew up the John Wick premium, I was like, you know, screw this. I'm not worried. You know, I'm not going to do that. So I went to the, they just set up a Bond 60th. And I'm familiar with that game. I was like, oh, I can get on the leaderboard. And I played it eight times and finally got on the Stern leaderboard. So hopefully. Do you remember what your score is? What it took? It wasn't great. Was it at least five digits? Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, for sure. For sure. and so Stern Employees if you see my name up there like please keep it up for just a little bit longer don't blow me out of the water like play the other games play John Wick and it's been like two weeks your score is like all it would take is those guys just yeah no your score is not there right on so I think that was it that was the recap and if you want more details like we said you can go check out Jason Knapp's article Collins article then after that we hung out in the hotel room with a bunch of other podcasters. Oh, yes. There was a little bit of marijuana involved. Don, we forgot. Did we mention Don was there at the beginning? I think you did. Was that another person we forgot? Hopefully I did, because, man, how can you forget Don? Yeah. I love hanging out with this guy. He's a trip. He is a party animal. What just a little ball of excitement. And fun. Don is great. We went to Don's hotel room. We all stayed in the Holiday Inn right across the street from the Stern Factory. And we all went to Don's hotel room, and he set up a mixing board, and we did a drunk cast. You and I don't drink. Right. But these other guys were having a great time. And if you want to check that out, I think Don has it on his Patreon. Yeah. That was a lot of fun. Good times. Thanks, Stern. Good deal. So now, I know you have the earnings right now. But should we hit some questions from the audience? Do you want to touch on the giveaway since we're talking about Stern? Oh, you know what? I'm glad you're here keeping me in. It's what I do. This is the first time we're going to do a giveaway. We're going to give away a Stern Insider Connected Kit. Yeah. And depending on what game you have. And this is how we're going to do it. If you're in our Discord, good. If you're not in our Discord, go to our website, electricbatarcade.com, click on the podcast tab, and then there's a link to join our Discord.
    25:59
    And then in there, you can just do it under the general channel. Post a photo of the game you want the Insider Connected kit for and why you think it should be connected to Insider Connected. Oh, you even have a question? Yeah. Okay. And then we're going to pick one person out of that, those entries.
    26:21
    Randomly. Yeah, okay. We're going to use a little random generator. And then... Might use some dice, a combination of dice. Depending on how many people we have there. And we are going to send you an insider connected kit. Yeah. So you can get going. Yeah. Comes with a QR reader and a dongle and you'll be online. As simple as that. And you'll be able to do online updates too. Yeah. Really cool stuff. Okay. What do you think? I keep looking at myself in the monitor there, and I've just got these gigantic glasses. I think you look cool. I think I look like I know about science. And you do know about science. People don't know you used to work in a science lab. For over a decade. I've done a lot of things.
    27:07
    Let's get into it. Man, we have a lot of questions here. I think we might overshoot our welcome. Okay. But let's go right into it. We'll do a few of these and then get into the earnings report. Sounds good. We have some good ones here. And we might not get to all of them. We'll hit some.
    27:27
    Thank you so much for sending in the questions. I think that's what really makes the show happen. So you guys can ask what it's like on the streets operating these machines. Yeah, we will get to them. It's been a little while since we've recorded a podcast. We just kept having things come up that kept us from doing it. So keep sending them. We're not going to forget about any of you guys. We love you and keep on listening.
    27:52
    Keep on trucking. We have another question from the heavyweight champ of questions Gutter Ghoul Gutter Ghoul Gutter Ghoul he always thinking Always thinking. He wants some advice for soldering stuff still attached to the play field. Juggling a mech, solder, wires, and a hot iron always feels like the most dangerous juggling act. Now, for us, it's easy because there are two people. yeah but i do a lot of it solo and as do you so number one tip would be uh find a friend if there's anybody else around that can be really helpful just to have somebody like hold the mech so you don't have to disassemble like way more than you feel like disassembling but please be careful that their hands are not below where the solder is going to drip i once I had a friend, I was over at his house and he was trying to solder something and he had it balanced on his knee. I was like, oh, God. And I stopped just in the nick of time, told him, maybe don't do that before you burn a hole in your knee. That makes sense. Have a friend. Tip number one. Have a friend. And tip number two, if you know you're just going to have yourself and whatever timeline you have, I know it's kind of a pain in the ass, but take photos and desolder whatever mech from the wires and then do it on a bench. Oh, you're saying if you have to solder something that's on the mech, not the wires to the mech, because then you've got the problem when you put it back in, you've got to resolder all that. But that is often easier than, yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of this stuff. It's just kind of tricky, right? You just figure out how many things you can hold with one hand and kind of pinch it together. Sometimes alligator clips can be useful. But if you don't want to, if you're soldering a wire to something, you don't want to have anything pinching on that wire because the heat of the soldering iron is going to heat up all of your insulation around that wire. And then if you had like an alligator clip or something pinching it, that's going to melt right through and then you're going to have exposed wire. Also, be careful about blowing out your diodes.
    30:19
    Don't blow out your diodes. Well, you know, when you're soldering something, you can heat that thing up and just ruin it. Oh, you're talking about like your switches. That's usually. But also diodes. Don't do that either. Yeah. And one trick is you can use alligator clip as a heat sink. Yeah. Do you know about that? Yes. I'm teaching a little something, aren't I? Actually, I think I taught you that. All right. So let's not blow out our diodes and move on to the next question. Hopefully we answered your question. Go to Gould with not just talk to us Tuesday. We see it. We see him almost every Tuesday.
    30:56
    This is a good one from Roland. I have not seen these yet. Yeah, I know. I'm completely unprepared. I wanted to hit you from behind where you didn't see me. Like, sneak these questions in. Okay. Thoughts on Hollywood Heat. That is a, is that premiere or Gottlieb? I think that's a premiere, but it's definitely, it's in the Gottlieb canon. Yep. John Trudeau.
    31:24
    For a tournament game. So, thoughts on Hollywood Heat for a tournament game, a location game. Please Tell Me You Are Hot for the Heat. I'm not hot for the heat. I don't really know. I mean, I've played it a handful of times. And actually, you know, Mark Mandletort actually gave me one when I was still in South Carolina, and I, like, left it behind.
    31:44
    And then Heath ended up with it. I like it more than – I wouldn't ever leave No Pinball Machine behind.
    31:53
    That, for a while, was the game that you would re-theme. It was like Raven and Hollywood Heat were the two games that you would re-theme to do whatever you wanted to do. Like my buddy Wes had one that was the Goonies. Oh. The one that made its way around Pinside eight or nine years ago. Did you ever see the Grand Theft Auto one? I didn't. I don't think I saw that. That one looked very cool. The artwork is... It's already there. Yeah, that's good for that. Yeah. So I guess it's a fine pinball machine. I don't... but it's not one that I desire. And I'm wondering why he brought that up specifically. Did he buy a Hollywood Heat? I think he noticed one on sale locally, and he was thinking about purchasing it and letting us use it. Well, I'm good on it. I don't need it. But I think that would be a fine machine to have for some home practice stuff. Yeah.
    32:48
    Thank you, Roland. Thanks, but no thanks. We don't want a Hollywood Heat. Okay, moving right along. This is Ben, new guy. Hey, Ben. Ben from the Portland area. Ben on Discord. Why aren't there any Sopranos on location in AZ, at least according to PinMap? Is that what it's called, PinMap? Mm-hmm, PinMap. Yep. We have over 20 on location in and around Portland making it. Hold tight, I've got to flip over my notepad here. one of the most popular games in the area it's also a great game for stall ball any idea why sopranos hasn't taken off in a z are we hoarding them all well first of all we're in the middle of the desert and we don't even know what gobble ghoul is right but uh sopranos 2005 uh stern machine based on the very popular hbo series i only know of one in the area our friend keith has it and oh and did he have it on location i think he did maybe have it like way in the west valley for a while i don't know if it's on location now i don't know if he even still has it there are not i i can only remember playing that game in like league Like maybe one time. There's just not that many copies of that game around. And kind of weird seeing that this is a Gomez and Lyman game. You'd think it'd be way more popular.
    34:22
    Yeah, I don't know why it isn't. But yeah, so not any reason other than Portland has them all. But you also don't see a lot of games of that era of Stern on location. You don't see Elvis's. You don't see World Poker Tour.
    34:44
    You don't see that many Simpsons. I wish, man. We would love a Simpsons. Simpsons is fun, but it's kind of a bear to work on. And it may have something to do with board set issues, too. People might be nervous. Is Sopranos White Star? I thought it was, but it may not be. You think it might be Sam? I don't know. Yeah, see, we don't have this game. 2005. I don't remember when the delineate, which there was a time when it was very hard to come across white star boards. You had to get them refurbished from Stern. I don't know if that's still the deal. I thought you told me that you saw somewhere that that those were available. Yeah. Maybe third party or something. I don't I don't remember all that. Anyway, I don't really I don't know what the reason is for it. And you bring up a very interesting question. I'm have to like search that. Ask Keith if he still has his game and go play it a little bit. You know, but Keith loves that game because when he first said he had it, I was like, would you ever be interested in selling it? And he said, that's the last game I would sell because we bought T2 from him and I asked him about it. And he loves it. He loves the game. Cool. Yeah.
    35:53
    Oh, this is also in my notes. Another thing is it is very expensive. No kidding? It sells for anywhere between $7,000 and $8,000. Well, that's why. just why did you just tell open with that if i just spent eight thousand dollars on a game that's 20 years old i'm gonna buy a new game for eight thousand dollars right that's crazy i buy a brand new stirred no that's that's why because the people in portland bought them all when they were new we didn't buy them when they were new and now i'm not gonna spend eight thousand dollars on that game are you for real yeah 100 yep and it's probably the title yeah oh speaking of that game when we i don't think this is something they didn't want us to talk about but in the conference room they talked about gary trying to secure that that ip for uh from hbo that was a Funny story. So Gary goes to New York in this high-rise building with a case that contained the back half of a populated play field. And he went into a boardroom, sat down with the HBO executives, and explained to them what pinball was. What pinball was. Because some of these guys probably only remember, like, classic ballets. and he had to show them how interactive they are now with these complex mechs and ramps and everything.
    37:19
    And so I can just imagine. So that game came out in 2005. So it was the early 2000s. Yeah. Gary is toting a half a play field. Around New York City. Just so he can bring this really cool game to all of us. Yeah. Thank you, Gary. There's a lot of hard work that goes into this. we have we have a few more questions but do you want to get to the um the earnings report yeah the earnings report this is what everybody's waiting for oh okay well if this is what they're waiting for then this is what we'll do okay okay so this is for which month this is for may we're in june now so ladies and gentlemen here we go you know we should have a don't you think we should get into where i edit in like music no because that will take more time it will be even harder to get podcasts out. We have... Welcome to the Earnings Report. I think that's better. We'll do it live every time.
    38:19
    Yeah. Okay, so do you have a guess? Oh, no. We're starting... Let's start at 10. Start at 10. Is that cool? Yeah, that's cool. I do not have a guess for 10. Okay, yeah. This was Medieval Madness. Medieval Madness remake. with the laggy flippers and everything it's it made the this is the first time it made the leaderboard yeah no no rhyme or reason there was no like a high score challenge or anything i don't even notice those flippers we have like you do i don't yeah i play very well i'm more in to physics and electronics my scores are higher yeah so figure it out uh number nine batman 66 that makes sense i think that's always in the top 10 isn't it yes people love batman 66 um number eight elton john okay number seven now oh elton john has dropped a good bit yes i think the honeymoon is over i think the honeymoon is over and also it got moved whenever wit came in so it's in a less wick got the star space yeah yeah but also um you know it's still in the top 10 i am curious still over the next few months how it's going to perform because cool it still may plateau it i mean hey if something is going to plateau at number eight like great that is a fantastic earner and just so you know it earned 42 percent of what the number one earner gave so a little bit less than half of what our top earning game is. Number seven is actually interesting. It's not a pinball machine. It is the Aliens shooter. Interesting. Yeah. Aliens Armageddon? Yeah. Is that what it's called? Yeah.
    40:20
    A lot of people played that this month. Number six, Foo Fighters. Okay. Number five, World Cup Soccer.
    40:31
    Interesting. It's its second month in the arcade. It's a fun game. People love dog soccer. Dog soccer is great. Number four, John Wick. And John Wick was only in there for ten days. That's why that is extraordinary. Yeah, so it had one-third of the days and 61% of the number one earners. Right. And let me, this game is good. like yes even with this software is not even like halfway done i know it's like 0.8 0.81 or something like that but there is so much more coming and people really love this game nobody complains about any artwork or anything like that this is just a fun very interesting game um and and we kind of we kind of talked about this before it was even released i think people are excited about a new designer always it's always fresh and if you look at it there's a lot of people saying it looks like game a b and c it plays like none of those it is it is fast and furious the game that it feels the most like to me is johnny mnemonic oh really another keanu game i mean it just that fast okay when i think about like fast flowy games i think about johnny mnemonic and how I don mean in the shots necessarily although there are some yeah there a couple similar shots um but i just like it plays so fast to me it feels like uh it has that speed of black knight um but but it has more of a like borg like feel to me um i don't know what you mean by that? Well, like tighter shots, but not too tight where it's frustrating.
    42:27
    Yeah, but... Yeah. I mean, I think it's fun, and I want to see what's going to happen this month. This is going to be a very interesting earnings month. Yeah.
    42:38
    Number three, Jaws. Okay. No surprise there. 79% of the number one game. Number two, Godzilla premium 81 of what pulp fiction earned what is it what is it with godzilla oh you already went into number one yeah i skipped the right what do they call it you blow you blew the lead or whatever uh yeah they say yeah um yeah because i wanted to talk about uh a couple of things about earnings reports don't let me stop okay so pulp fiction made number one some people were asking about what galactic tank force earns relative to that 19 of what number one did so it is galactic tank force is well into the lower half of earnings right right it has been relatively stable since that last code update but there's your your your wtf gtf update and um one other thing is that looney tunes is notably outside that list oh so scooby-doo came in at number 11 which you know that is really interesting because a lot of people want to play looney tunes uh i mean for one thing it's the only one on on the streets in arizona uh but i i'm guessing what keeps people away from looney tunes is they keep losing money i think that well they get the money back from the bar i think the thing that's keeping people away from it is that it is turned off well that's what i mean you play it and then a ball gets stuck or one flipper doesn't you know stops working um there's still something the code is needs help Right, so what happens, like, a ball gets trapped and it sends out a chase ball. And if you don't knock that ball loose with the chase ball, it won't start a new game. Like, if you end up ending a game with a ball stuck on the play field, unlike other games that just compensate for that, this software does not do that. And so it's just whenever you try to start a new game, it says ball missing and won't start a game. And then there's some other issues that, again, I'm sure have something to do with the fact that we keep these games on for 20 hours a day.
    45:17
    Software-wise, it will just make a flipper stop working. Also, you coin it up on the LCD. You can see the credits. but when you press start nothing happens and i don't know whether some kind of ram dump because the game's on for so long and it just can't handle everything but uh you know i don't mean to be trashing spooky because they've come a long way from halloween halloween was just halloween and ultra man which is a gigantic embarrassment uh scooby-doo is great yeah scooby-doo we do had a lot of issues early on once we got it running properly it always seems like when you get a spooky machine it's kind of like right halfway done and you have to finish You need eight months or so before it's going to totally do what it's supposed to do. Yeah, and it's probably fine at home. But also, for people who are listening, if you ever run into these issues, like you try and play a game and a flipper isn't working, turn the game off for 30 seconds. Yeah. Turn it back on. Nine times out of ten, it'll work. I've never seen software kill a flipper, but this game does that. Yeah. Okay. Cool.
    46:30
    Those are my observations about the earnings report. So Pulp Fiction, Godzilla, Jaws take the top spots. How far is Pulp Fiction above Godzilla? Godzilla made 81% of what Pulp Fiction made. So – A good bit. Yeah. Yeah, because everything else, you know, it goes down by a couple of percent here and there. but the top three made you know it goes 100 81 79 and then wick with 61 um i am expecting wick to be the top burner of next month but we'll see if that happens or not cool especially with uh some cool code updates because yeah because our our players really pay attention to that um it's coming one thing jarred was asking and we might do this this uh on another episode and I'll have to go back and check exactly what he's asking about, but I think it was like top earners of like... Of classics is what he wanted. So the reason I didn't do that this time is because I don't keep track of how much, of 100% of the classics, just because menu navigating is kind of a pain in the ass. But I started this month, so I have data where they ended in May. So at the end of June, I'll probably do a top three of classics. Certainly. So Jard, it's coming just for you. Jard did an amazing thing. I think he deserves a shout out. What did he do? He made a contest because he's a very generous person. Oh, yes. And he gave away a trip, airplane trip, and expo tickets for four people this year. So that's four round-trip airfares. And do we know who won?
    48:27
    I believe that we do. Okay. I believe it was the Kennedys. Bob, Amanda, Robert, and Connor. Yes. Congratulations. I hope you guys can make it. If we weren't going to be there, we would watch the shop for you. But wouldn't that be fun? Yeah. You and me running the Atomic Age Modern, which is a very cool vintage shop and quickly becoming more arcade than vintage. They are doing amazing stuff. A great family. Check out their tournaments if you're in the area here. Is it Fridays?
    49:06
    Fridays. Every other Friday. Super cool tournaments. because they have a really unique selection of games, and it's a lot of fun there. But I'd really be interested in watching the shop while they were gone, because I could see you behind the cash register while I'm playing pinball. Well, that sounds like a good time to me. Well, then let's trade. I'll watch the pinball. You watch the cash register. All right. We have a bunch of other questions, which is perfect, because I think we're going to do another podcast maybe next week. Yeah, we'll do it in a week or so. Absolutely.
    49:42
    I think I'm going to wrap it up. Oh, okay. What do you say? Yeah, that's great. You got anything else to tell the people?
    49:48
    We have some tournaments coming up. Uh-huh. One of them is Roland is a glutton for punishment and has decided to hold an all-day tournament on July 21st in Phoenix. Yeah. So we're going to be there. Now tell people who aren't from Phoenix why this is notable. It's going to be 120 degrees. Easy. And we have air conditioning, right? But there's no amount of air conditioning that's going to keep that room just breezy and like a grocery store. There's like one month here where it's basically like living on Mars. Yeah. During the daytime, you stay inside, and then everybody emerges out of their holes when the sun goes down. Yeah. So this will test not only your pinball, but also your endurance. So you need to do some physical training, but you should come out, and it's limited to 64 people because of the style of tournament that it is. We'll have more information about that as it gets closer, but July 21st. And then we also have the second annual Waffles Tournament where Jay flies out from California. We get the California folks out. And they also like to do this during a hot time of year. I think that's because hotel rooms and plane tickets to Phoenix are very inexpensive. Right. And they don't have Waffle House. They don't have Waffle House. Do you know there's not one Waffle House in California?
    51:19
    Really? Yeah. There's no Waffle House. You know, let me know if I'm bullshitting because I'll drop it in the comments. But I believe that's true. There's no Waffle House in California. That's why they come in here. Don't you think they would go to a California Waffle House? Yeah, it would be a much quicker drive. And that's on Tuesday, June the 25th at 12 noon. It's six bucks. And the coolest thing about this is, you know, our tournament players, if they're lucky enough to not have to go to work or they work from home, they can come at noon come at noon play waffles get a good warm-up maybe maybe get some whopper points and then play in league yeah so we'll be you have a full day and we will have places for you to put your laptop so that way if you're working from home yeah or anything uh that requires you to be logged in to slack or whatever and we have just ask us for the wi-fi password We'll get you on there. Yep. So show up. And also, thank you to Chewy for putting together one of the coolest tournaments I've ever played in. Of course, this wasn't sanctioned. This wasn't for Whopper Points. But he set up a team challenge where you get a team of three people. What was this called? Chewy's World Famous Team Challenge? Not to be confused with World Famous Teen Challenge. Oh, God. Successful New York financier. Yep. So you have three people, and it was set up like a – it was heads up. What is that called? Head to head. Yeah, heads up. No, but the style of tournament or match play. Head to head. Flip frenzy. Oh, it was a – yes. Yes. It was a flip frenzy. So you have three people, and you can't change the position of these three people. The first player always plays the first ball. Your second team player always plays the second ball. And no surprise, the third player always plays the third ball. That's your anchor. That's the cleanup guy. Yes. After the first two people screw up. Yeah. So we'll get to which players we were. We weren't. But the best part is we had the best time. So it was me, you, and Roland. Roland was the cleanup guy. Next time he wants to switch it up, well, he's first. See, because I thought it would be good if we set up the game and then Roland cleans up the slop. But, you know, we have a different strategy for next time. Yeah, we'll do a little better. Basically, it was Roland playing one ball against everybody else's three balls. We were getting him ready for Nationals next weekend. Oh, yeah. When is that? That's cool. Is that June 7th and 8th? It's next weekend. Next weekend, tune in to IE Pinball and watch. We have Roland and Mark, right? Yeah, both Roland and Mark. We're sending two of the best bats to show you guys what's going on in Arizona. Yeah.
    54:17
    But back to Chewy's thing, we're going to do that again because we've gotten so many requests. It was just a blast. So start getting your three-person team together.
    54:28
    Some people made some shirts. We had the $5 shakes looking sweet in their swag. We were the No More Shine Box. You made that up at the last minute, and I had to explain the reference to about 20 people. Yeah, but the cool people got it. Well, we might switch up the name.
    54:47
    Okay. We have a bunch of stuff to fix at the arcade, so we're going to head out there. Thank you all for joining us. And we have a ton of questions in the queue for the next episode. But don't make that keep you from submitting more questions. Please ask us questions. We're glad to help you guys out to get all these pinball machines out on the street, making money, and introducing new people to this wonderful sport and hobby of pinball. My name is Cale. I'm signing out. I'm Rachel. I'm going to go order some parts from Marco's Specialties, and thank you, Game Room Goodies, also for stuff. Yes. And don't forget Stern Insider Connected. You can win one. Join our Discord. Post a picture of the game you'd like to put an Insider Connected kit in. And go order some parts from Marco and some games from Game Room Goodies. Right on. I'm Rachel. I'm going to go work at the arcade. I'm going to go hold some soldering things. I'm going to go hold some mechs for her while she solders those bad boys. Thank you. Hope you have the best day. Go put some quarters in these machines. Let's keep it all alive and running. And we'll see you next time. The bats are out. Bats out.