Oh, there's a theme song. song, it must be time for another Pinball Profile. I'm your host, Jeff Teolis. You can find our group on Facebook. We're also on Twitter at Pinball Profile. Email us, pinballprofile at gmail.com and please subscribe on either iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play and check out our website, pinballprofile.com. Here he is, Josh Sharpe. Hello, Josh. I don't get to hear the theme song. It's done in post. It's done in post. Oh, man. I have to listen to this dribble. You're the first to contact me when it comes out. Oh, it was great, Bubba. Listen. I love it so much. My kids are singing it every day. Your brother was at IFPA 15, and so are a few of the people from all over the world. I think even Herbert from Austria is singing it. He better be. Anyway. What's up, man? You got nothing. No prep. What are we talking about? How was your holiday? Are you just bored today? No. What's going on? This is the mandatory. I've got to talk to Josh every couple of months just to make sure he's not screwing things up in IFPA. I feel like Han Solo. I've got a bad feeling about this. You're getting ready to do something stupid. A Canadian asking how our Fourth of July holiday was. Well, ours was a few days earlier, so it's all the same. I know you were away. You had a nice time traveling with family? We did, yeah. We had a nice little vacation out to Denver on a train forever, which my son really liked and my wife and I put up with. Trains are fun. I like trains. Trains are fun. 17 hours in a row on a train is a little much, but that's okay. It was the Pinberg of train rides. Lasted all day. Sounds more like the Sanctum. That's better. You know what? In fact, edit me in that I said that because that's a much better joke. Yeah, I'll try to remember that. I'm sure I forget. It's Jeff. Hold on. My daughter is asking me who I'm talking to. It's Jeff. You want to say hi? Hold on. You can say hi. Say hi. Hi. Hello. How are you? Great. Hi. You want to go back to your iPad? And I'm going to finish this phone call. There you go. You got another sharp on. How about that? Yeah, I didn't get Amanda on. I know that's not going to happen. No, there you go. You're working your way around. By the way, great parenting. Go back to your iPad. Yeah, I know. Go back to your iPad. Stop interrupting. How many movies have you gone through over these holidays? Just one. The Greatest Showman, 12 times in a row. Is it the music or the dreamy Hugh Jackman? The music. Have you seen it or no? No, and I want to. I'm all about the musicals. I love them. It's pretty good, but the music is very catchy. Very catchy. It's good. I'll be whistling that throughout Pinberg, I'm sure. It's in my head now. It's stuck. We're getting close to Pinberg. Yeah. Are you one of those guys when the banks come out, do you make sure you know every single game or you have that experience already in the back of your head? How many games are there? And how many games do you play? 40? Yes. do I care about the 90% of the games I'm not going to play? No, not really. You don't even take a glance at it when the banks come out? No. Why? Who cares? Because nerds like me get a game like Road Kings. I'm like, I've never seen this. But you're going to worry about that weeks before Pinberg that you may be put on Road Kings? What if that was the game that knocked me from C to D? I guess. How about you have a 90% chance of not having to play it? You're all about that, too. It's like when we talk about Star Wars. You never move the multipliers. It's all just laziness. People get worked up and freaked out over everything. It's like, I don't know, just play the game that's in front of you. Everything's going to be fine. What about when a great guy like Louis Bevins puts together that entire how to play every game list? That is amazing. This is why the sport moves forward. There's people that are younger and less jaded and more excited than people like myself. Man, they've got the energy to do it all, man. I'm just too old and too tired. When you say younger people, are you saying it's because you're a busy family man, making sure the iPad is fully charged so that your kids can be occupied? And by the way, I remember to put it in airplane mode so they can't play YouTube videos, or God knows what my daughter pulls up when she gets the iPad alone for five minutes with the Internet on. Yeah. Imagine if she just types in your dad's name and then she pulls up one of these interviews. You know what? You're like, surfing YouTube for her is like Kevin Bacon. You're five clicks away from recommended videos to, like, terrible things for a four-year-old. Terrible. That is true. So with that vacation, did that buy you any grace to maybe play in a few more tournaments? No. Come on. No. It's all, the brownie points will be, you know, I bank them, I spend them, I bank them, I spend them. I'm sure I'm spending them on something. I'm earning them right now because my wife's on a little vacation after the vacation. Even she agreed that the train ride and then the Denver vacation, the kids were very close to us for four or five days in a row that she needed some time away from them. So I'm giving her that right now. So I'm sure I'll spend those rounding points. I don't know. We have league finals next week that I'm sure will run too long, and then I'll use those up. Okay. By the way, Josh, early reports from Double Danger are that the Team Josh t-shirt are in the top three sellers right now of the three pinball profile shirts available. Of all shirts in the world It right behind like Derrick Rose and Kobe Bryant jerseys I do have a I don know about that Derrick Rose Oh what teams do you even kick off of lately? Now, most of the people buying them happen to be named Josh and they assume it's them. I'm sure Joshua Henderson and Zilberg and some of these other people are looking at those shirts. But Josh, there are going to be a few people there, maybe even signs rooting for you to do it at Pimberg this year. Man, the pressure. There's only one place for me to improve upon from last year, right? There's no spots left between last year and glory. Is that your best shot at winning a major, do you think, Pinberg, when you think of all the big tournaments? And I say that because for those that weren't there at IFPA 15, it came down to the last game for you to even make the top 32. And you've said, you know, you finished second there. You've missed the cut there. Whereas, Pinberg, you're pretty consistent. Yeah, I mean, it's worked out. Like, I don't know. So my playing abilities seem to come and go, so you never know when it's going to be present. But, yeah, Pinburgh and Papa in general, I've had decent runs of late. Can't complain. I mean, I can complain. I do complain. But, like, overall, it could be much worse. I'm supposed to once per episode with you say something nice about you, so. Bring it, man. There it is. Yeah, I'm going to put you on speaker so my daughter can hear it so she knows that other people like her dad. I'm already getting weird feedback from your phone anyway. I don't know what crappy Fisher-Price phone you're on there. You should see this house right now, Jeff. I have until 11 p.m. to clean it up. It's a freaking disaster. Do you want your compliment or not? Go. Okay. Do it. I'm amazed that your status, your ranking in IFPA is still so high because you don't play that many tournaments and you bleed off a lot. So that means the ones you do, you must do very, very well in. That's hard to maintain that. I call it the Lyman method. Lyman would literally just play Papa every year. Back in the day, this is sort of after the initial rankings came out. like, I don't know, 2009, 2010, 2011, like, he was sort of on his hiatus from playing, and, like, he would just do well enough in the one event he played a year to, like, make the ISPA, you know, World Championship cut. But it's nice, because I can sort of bomb out, I can finish in, like, 50th at Pinberg, and it'll go on my top 20 resume, because I think my lowest is, like, an 11th or 12th, something really terrible, because, yeah, I don't play enough. I don't play, Don't play nearly enough. Do you think as the kids get older, will you play more or less? I wish I knew the answer to that. Do you have a goal? I have to think if either of the kids gravitate to it. We were in the basement earlier today. My son was playing while my daughter was on her iPad. If he gets into it, that will obviously give me some additional hall passes to go left-calf style and bring the boy with me. If they're both into it, then I don't even know. I don't know what it would be like to try to travel with two kids. I would have mandatory Zach coming with me, but now he's going to have a kid. So we haven't settled into what that new normal is going to be yet, but I'm looking forward to figuring that out. So will you not take the same route your father did? Because your father had both you guys into pinball but not into competitions. I don't know where you've ever received any humiliation from anybody, But, you know, your father tried to protect you from that. And you, I'm wondering, will you do the same with your kids? What it really was for your dad was, I want the kids to have fun playing pinball and not think about, oh, I didn't do as well as so-and-so. Yeah, so like I grew up, whatever, I was my kid's age in like early to mid-80s. So the things that I could do at home for entertainment, like pinball is way cool at the top of the list. So my dad would come home from work, and it's like, I don't know, what could you do in 1984? Like, watch TV. Like, was Nintendo even out yet? We probably had, like, ColecoVision or something, so I could, like, play video games with him that were not that awesome. And then we had, like, seven pinball machines in our apartment. So that was the cool thing to do. You know, unfortunately, the number of cool things that my kids like to do here, like pinball, I don't know, top ten probably in the house. but they found other ways to entertain themselves that pinball wasn't, it's not the greatest thing in the house to them. So I'm going full, like, letting them make their own decisions about it. I never ask them to play in the basement. I always just wait for them to bring it up. So I'm taking that strategy from the Raj a little bit in terms of, like, letting them find their own path. I wouldn't say I would be against them competing the way my dad was. I'm fine managing either of my kids and the emotional stress that comes with playing and often losing when you start. I think I can deal with that with them. But we'll see. It's exciting to see what's going to happen. They're still pretty young, so there's still time for them to sort of find out what it means to them. I guess they're not that young, right? Like, Escher was already, I don't know, ranked like 80th in the world at six. My son is, like, figuring out how to, you know, trap a ball at six. Not doing much of anything. Yeah, didn't Escher do incredible at Expo when he was four? Something ridiculous like that. I wonder if your kids will also follow the generations that have been involved in pinball machines or video games. Zach is now at Stern. You're with Raw Thrills. We know what your father did. I wonder if they'll take that path. It's interesting to figure out. It will hopefully be around by then, and I'm sure it will be. I wonder if they'll kind of gravitate to that as well. We'll see. I'm looking forward to seeing what interests them. I think my daughter is definitely the performer of the two kids and my son is heavily leaning towards like numbers engineering guy so far As much as you could deduce at age six and four that their paths currently is you know he would he pay a million dollars to us to not have to go on a stage to do anything and my daughter would run on to any stage in any moment right now do anything yeah i think you're right like the pit like the pinberg stage are you going to be on the pinberg stage again this year jenna let's bring it all back to pinball what's your pinberg plans playing in the finals or hosting the finals? Josh, I want to point out that I purposely tank so that I'm there for the people to bring you those quality interviews. Yes, I will be there again. I'm looking forward to it. That was a lot of fun last year. Yeah, it was cool, man. You know, Mike Primo and the Papa TV people, they do such a wonderful job and they've got some good things planned for this year. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that too. Of course, there's a backup in case I make the top 40 in the playoffs. Yeah, not going to happen. Who's kidding who? You did all right at Becker's. You did all right. Came down to last game. Yeah. How many people can say that? I mean, that's great. Stupid Dragon Fist, which I'd never played before, and I needed to win the game, didn't win the game. Sorry to repeat the story. The point is I played it the next game. Like, I thought, oh, okay, let me try this again. And I'm playing it, and Becker's watching goes, that's the grand champ score. I'm like, where was that in the tournament? But, oh, well, that was fun. You know, and Italy next year. Oh, boy. That's kind of the goal. I know a lot of people want to make that trip. What was the cutoff? I guess 85 would have been the cutoff this year? Yeah, I mean, it gets weird because, you know, everyone that canceled, I mean, what was your, you were 100-something, right? No, 85. I was 85 going in. All right. So what was it for Europe when it was in Denmark last year about? Somewhere in the 60s. I can never remember where it ends. I always wonder if it's higher or lower in North America versus Europe. It is usually a harder cut in North America. Really? Usually, usually. So I don't have to work as hard to have a chance in Italy. Usually, but there's more than the average number of Americans, Canadians, that seem to be, I don't know what it is about Italy, man, but people are very interested in the non-pinball parts of Italy, for sure. I didn't even know there was pinball in Italy. I'm just looking forward to the gelato and the pizza. See, I think that's why it's so high up in everyone's list. Well, we've lost another one to the dark side as far as going to the pinball world. And I say that jokingly because it's very exciting when we see some of these great players go to the pinball companies. A year ago, we were talking about Zach. We were talking about Keith Elwin. We were talking about Tim Sexton. And Bowen Kerins is now with Spooky. And now Steven Bowden with Deep Root. That's pretty exciting. He's done every podcast that there is. It's time for him to take the next step forward. It's awesome. It's a pretty good lineup that they've got as far as some people that have great credentials for some of the games that have been made. And you've got David Thiel with The Sound and now Steven Bowden. Really, I know it's a lot of bravado right now that we haven't seen anything. You've got to see it first, but I like the lineup they're putting together. It's definitely, yeah, man, they're pulling from experience, which is probably the best way to get going versus, yeah, I don't know, trying to have a bunch of non-pinball people create a pinball item. And, you know, definitely they're leveraging some good talent. So it'll be cool to see what comes out of that building, all eight games that are getting launched at the same time or whatever the heck's going on up there. Well, you never know. I mean, that's the thing. They said as soon as they launch one, it should be ready in two weeks. And I've been pretty impressed with the launches we've seen lately. And I certainly think of Iron Maiden. You know, that came out almost at full code, was shipping basically that week. And the updates were already at the one point whatever code. So pretty exciting to see. And I did hear some other podcasters talk about, boy, how are they going to follow this up? And I didn't take it as a negative. I thought, hmm. And I even said this to your brother. I said, when they launched Iron Maiden with a teaser at the Papa Circuit event, I said, that's the way it's going to go on from now on. You're going to come out with a teaser. You're going to come out immediately with Jack Danger and the Deadflip stream. And you're going to see the game. And it's going to ship that week. And it's almost full code. I bet you that's the new norm now for games. Maybe. Remember, pinball is a manufacturing business, right? So, you know, everything's all great and on schedule until, and we see it at Raw Thrills too, until the game, a game has to be on the line, full stop. Like, that's the business. If you can do reruns, awesome. If you can sell the current game, awesome. If there is no demand for anything in the catalog, guess what? Next game's up. It doesn't matter where it's at in development. So we'll see. Hopefully, I mean, they have, The good news is that the Sterns catalog right now is freaking awesome. So they should hopefully be giving themselves enough runway for the upcoming games to be pretty flushed out, hopefully. You know, I wonder what the fine line is as far as momentum. And I know you can't speak on behalf of Stern, but even for Raw Thrills, let's think you've got a hot, hot game. You know, you can't make them as fast as the orders are going out, let's say. What do you do with production of the next game? Do you hold back as far as releasing it because you don't want to kill that kind of buzz? And I'm thinking of Iron Maiden. This is one of the hottest games in the last, say, 10 years that have come off from everything I've heard. I'm sure the next game is going to be fantastic. I have no doubt about that. But there is some momentum right now. I'm assuming Stern follows our logic. But if you have a winner that you can run with, just beat the hell out of it. Yeah. Because what happens is on the production side, too, if you can set up and have those line workers building the same thing over and over again and not switching between games the quality that they put out is way better so we're seeing that with our halo game right now that just started two weeks ago yeah two weeks ago we pretty much shut down our factory for five weeks to build just halo because the demand for it is so nuts and it 24 7 we not building any other product even if you had one ready to go you like we got to wait We do We have another game ready to go. It would come online whenever it's necessary, but right now it's not necessary. We shelve it. We know it's good. The design team for us can continue to tweak things. It gives them more time to really tweak things down to a little bit more minute detail for us. It gives us more testing time. So we take all those benefits as they come if you have a runner on the line that you can just go to town on. Is that the inside term? The runner? Is that what you call it? I was going to use a much filthier word, but I was able to clean it up before I let it out. It's rare for you to do that. I've heard some of your filthy things on other podcasts. I know yours is a family show, man. Yours is a family show. I know how to bleep myself. I'm a saint on this show. What happens on other shows, I can't... I was going to say, I'm definitely... I think you're on the other side, my friend. I don't know what you're talking about. Anyway, I hope the iPod battery is fully charged. I do appreciate this quick little check-in. We're looking forward to seeing you at Pinberg. You've got to be one of the favorites again. And, you know, I mean, I guess no one really saw Colin. Not if you're Tommy and Taylor, man. What? One of them picked Zach, but I think it was Tommy that didn't pick either of us. Maybe it was Taylor. I don't know. I forget. Like, did they do a top four? We said it was a year off for both of us. It was like, damn. Whoa. I'll show you guys. What did you do to tick off Indiana? The poor man's Illinois. What'd you do? I don't know, but now I'm trying to think of something that I can do. I'm kidding about that. Indiana's a great state. Where are they? Are they in Gary? Where are they? Indianapolis? Where are they? The crossroads of America. That's right. Every time I go through Indiana, which is if you come from Canada and go to Illinois, you're only in Indiana for 10 minutes, let's say. No, you do the Michigan, like right around Michigan, Indiana portion. And that drive, even though it's 10 minutes? Right. It's 12 miles in an hour and a half. There are six different airport strip joint signs that you see and 10 different fireworks warehouses. That's all I know about Indiana. I might be wrong. Anyway, Josh, good luck. I will see you in a couple of weeks, hopefully on the big stage. You've got to make top eight to do it. Is that true? They're not doing the other final rounds on the big stage before the top eight? What do I know? It could be. I doubt that, but who knows? Come on. I don't know. What do I know? Or are you guys not broadcasting until the top eight? Is that what you were trying to get at? Again, I don't know. I'm told when I get there. Top 40, I have to believe, like previous years, top 40 will get on the stage for a finals. Last year, all your games were on those three banks? Yeah. That's a lot of Hobbit. At least there's new code. I played the same bank all three. I had a buy, but the three rounds that I played, I played the same bank three times. Now they've got that colored action button. Anything you can do to an action button, I'm in heaven. I'm a big action button fan. That's just over the line. Now I'm with you. It's gone sideways. Oh, no. It brought me back in. I'm in. Oh, no. You sucked me back in. It's like we're on an episode of Crossfire. We have to switch chairs. No, I'm not about the action button. You're fine. Come on over. I'll go to your side. I'll go to Team Josh. All right, cool. All right, buddy. Have a good one. Look at the time. The TV dinners have to be made pretty soon. Time to feed the kids, right? Dude, come on. How many Kraft dinners have they had? I'm bailing out. I'm taking that to McDonald's tonight. You nuts. This is the last dinner I have to do with them. It's as easy as you can get tonight. Very nice. Well done. Okay, buddy. I won't be eating it, but I'll be sitting there with them watching them scarf their faces down. Did you hit a Dave and Buster's at all during this babysitting time? Yes or no? No. Chuck E. Cheese is really close to my house. Same thing. And Chuck E. Cheese, value-wise, is pretty. Your money goes much further at Chuck E. Cheese than Dave and Buster's, especially if you have kids who don't skillfully play. They just go nuts. Well, it's embarrassing when you try to go to Chuck E. Cheese and they say, Where is your kid? And you're like, What? Oh, I've got to bring my kids? Damn. Funny enough, my boss and I, we have a Chuck E. Cheese test location that's right by our office. And we're always coming in to check on how things are doing. And they know us by now, but it's always just so awkward to be walking in and they have a little gate. And it's like, hey, yeah, we're here to see these games. And then you're like two grown men staring and watching kids play. So you sort of have to sit in a booth and pretend like you're talking to each other. but really you're just watching to see how are these people playing our game. Yeah, and all the new employees there are like, let me just check the registry here. Let me just check, see if he's on the list. The cops are in 50% of the time. Excuse me, gentlemen, can you come with me? Nice. All right, Josh, good luck. We'll see you on the big stage. Thanks, man. Safe travels in. I'll play your song on the way out. This has been your Pinball Profile. You can find our group on Facebook. We're also on Twitter at Pinball Profile. Email us, pinballprofile at gmail.com, and please subscribe on either iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play. And check out our new website under construction, pinballprofile.com. Josh? Hold on. Can you do me a favor? Can you say I'm? I. Jeff. Jeff. Teal. Teal. My wife won't let me play. I'll never win a major. The pure heart of the devil Oh Oh Flattery Flattery Flattery