This episode of the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast is brought to you by PinStadiums. I finally did it, Ian. I bought some new PinStadiums for Jurassic Park. And not just any old PinStadiums, which are still amazing, by the way. What did you get? I bought the limited edition Hyper Beams. Shut up. They are as cool as they sound. So tell me about those. Two times the power, over the top. It's like this nuclear neon glow. It's awesome. I saw the picture of it. No, I'm serious. It is bold. They're super bright. They got the RGB. It's just like the PinStadiums, only on frickin' steroids. And here is the best part. They're only $20 more. $20 more. $20 more than a regular Penn Stadium for this super awesome glow. They're limited edition. He doesn't know if he's keeping them around, but I bought some. So the pictures alone, they're awesome. And you've seen Scott's products, right? You've seen them in person. Oh, hell. I love them. Don't they always look better than they do in the pictures? The pictures look good. Pictures look too blown out. But it's hard to capture all that, and then you see them in person, and you're like, oh, my God, these are freaking awesome. Yeah. Spoiler alert, I sold my whitewater, and the guys were like, oh, my God, what are those, light bars you added? And I was like, yeah, those are from stadiums, and they're like, what are those? I was like, ah, I've got to tell you all about this company. You have to see them in person. So this is like a nuclear blast, though, in your cabinet, huh? Yes. Nothing says nuclear blast like dinosaurs. Yeah, exactly. You went that route, huh? I totally went that route. I'm going to install these things. I'm going to light up the night sky. All right. There we go. Can't lose your machine anymore, kids. Go to PinStadiums. Don't forget to tell Scott the poor man sent you. Enter poor man at checkout for 10% off your order. That's shipping, baby. That's shipping and more. You know what? We've been saying that's shipping. Guess what? That is shipping plus. So you get shipping plus dollars. Oh, like a dollar? No. My shipping, you ready for this, folks? So I said, I'm like Ron Popeo for all you younger kids who don't know what that is. I spent roughly $300. I bought these and some accessories, right? Yeah. So I saved $30. The shipping was only like $10. Nice. So I got like $20 off the product. I got $10. You know, I got free shipping. Yeah. And guess what? He emailed me that day personally and said, these things are packed up and ready to go. I know. They are shipped. They're on their way. Beautiful. Pinstadiums. Go to pinstadium.com. Email Scott. Get yourself some pinstadiums today. What a commercial, Drew. What a commercial. We are also brought to you by Pinshades. Pinshades are the coolest, most stylized, and functional shades for playing pinball on the planet. They look great, and they really help you track the ball better in all types of lighting situations, and are our favorite among some of today's top players. You can find your own pair on the Pinside Marketplace, or if you're lazy like me, Just Google Pinshades. Use the code POORMANS with an S at checkout for free shipping with your order. That is the only discount they are offering just for our listeners. How cool is that? Oh, yeah. It's time. You waited a week or more, and now it's finally here. The time has come for the sloppiest show on the internet. This week's episode of Poor Man's Pinball Podcast. Starring Drew and Ian. That's it, man. Game over, man. Game over. I'm on a need for someone to help me. I'm on a need for somebody's help. Welcome to the Twippy-nominated Poor Man's Pinball Podcast, episode number 54, the sloppiest show on the internet. We have an incredible show for you today. It's one of the best. It is. It's a great day for pinball. Ian and I are cautiously back in the studio together again with one of the most enthusiastic pinball people in the world. You know what? Some call him the man. Others call him a myth. Some call him a legend. I just call him the beard. Or Bill Albert. You clicked on the link. You knew he was here the whole time. Albert, welcome to the 40-Minute Pinball Podcast. How you doing, buddy? Oh, my God. Drew and Ian. and I thought the day would never come when you'd invite me on my favorite pinball podcast. Wait, favorite? I thought we were your fifth favorite. Liar. Where are we in the rankings now, Albert? Seven's favorite. Seven's favorite. That's right. We did start at number seven. And we've only went down from there. What's that? You guys are freaking trending up, man. So we're six and a half? I keep telling my wife that. She doesn't believe me. No, no. I tell my wife, and she's like, ooh, big deal. So, you know, I'm like, do you see this? This was our best episode ever. We had the most, you know, downloads. And she's like, yeah, great. Let me finish watching my Scottish porn. That show Outlander. Oh, she's into that? Oh, any pinball wives out there, check out Outlander. It's like 50 Shades of Grey, but it's set in, like, 1700s. It's like a Scottish soap opera. Did you watch that? No. Okay. All right. Yeah, no, I know, like, I don't know. Maybe it was your wife telling my wife. Yep, she was. No, I saw her texting Laura one day. I'm like, what are you doing? She's like giggling. And she's like, oh, I'm telling Laura about this show. Yeah. But to her credit, she'll call me in when the boobs are in there. And she goes, hey, honey, come in here. There's boobs. I'm like, awesome. Oh, there is nudity in there. Oh, yeah. Oh, like I said, it's. We're watching it. It's got time travel. It's got a little bit of good humor. I've only watched an episode or two, so it's okay. Doesn't matter. We had Albert today. We do have Albert. Albert, Albert, Albert. Tell me your tale, man. How did you – all right, so for those of you who don't know who Orbital Albert is, and shame on you, by the way, he is the host of the Pinball Nerds podcast, and he's one of my favorite guys to listen to because he is – it's like a – what would you consider it, like a blog, a podcast blog? I would have called it Pinball Nerds Audio Blog, but that would sound even nerdier. and I just use the term podcast so when people were googling like pinball podcast if they're looking for something where you know a little bit less edited a little less professional and maybe more about how I interact with pinball as opposed to like I don't talk about manufacturers I don't really refurbish games all that kind of stuff I'm mostly a tournament player who just is very passionate about playing pinball and kind of wanted to have a fun creative outlet talking more so if you look at my first 100 episodes, there's like five episodes that are about pinball, and there's like 95 episodes about me going to tournaments and my pinball friends and pinball stories, right? Right, right. How many episodes do you have? That's a good question. That is a great question, Drew. Are you guys really going to, I'm trying to drink beer here double-fisted. You're going to make me type something into Google? I don't know. I think it's episode 363. That's why I like this guy. See, he doesn't know. He doesn't need the accolades. He's just like, I do this every day. I love it, and I'm at 400 episodes. Speaking of that, Albert, what are you drinking today, buddy? I am actually drinking a beer from Prince Edward Island, which is the province right next to me, and it's actually Sir John A's Honey Wheat Ale. Gahan House is like the oldest continuously running brewery on either the east coast of Canada or whatever, I don't know, somewhere. It's good. It's good beer, put it that way. They don't do crazy like sours and triple IPAs and quadruple milk stouts or, you know, anything crazy hipsterish, but they do good, consistent beer the way it was meant to be done, and that's why I've started with something simple for you guys today. See, that's a beautiful thing because before all that crazy shit that they have nowadays, the very hipster beer as you referred to it, I mean, if we go back to the invention of beer, right, And then the masters of beer, because beer was invented, you know, the ancient Egyptians were drinking beer. Yeah. And it was more of a grog beer anyway. But the masters of beer is, you know, Bavaria, right, Germany. And those are like, they were the kings, and they were super strict, and they had these, this rule. It was like a law of the land. It was actually a law. Oh, the German Purity Law? Yes. 1684? That might be the one, where it could only have, what is it, five ingredients, right? You have your water, your yeast, your barley. Help me out, Albert. What do we got? Oh, and the last one is dehydrated yak jism. Oh, yeah. Delicious. Is that a staple of Canada? I think it's water, yeast, oats, and barley, something like that. Water, yeast, barley, and schnickle fritz, and that's it. The schnickle fritz. Anyway, so Ian here editing away. I just wanted to get the facts correct. It wasn't yak-jism at all. Actually, the German beer purity law, introduced in 1516 by Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria, his decree only allowed for hops, barley, water, and later yeast in every stein. So you cannot deviate from that system. You better make some goddamn good beer with just those simple ingredients if you're going to survive in Bavaria. How cool is that, man? All right. And, kids, be cautious when you Google German purity. Just saying. It's not pretty. Make sure you throw some beer in there. All right. Back to the show. Very cool. So, yeah, then when they came to, a lot of the German immigrants came to Milwaukee, where Drew and I live, you know, that was the law of the land. Like, that's why Miller lived on their lot, you know, their Pilsner. And same thing with Pabst and Blatt and Gettleman. All these guys, they all kind of had that same upbringing, that same rule of the land, which is this is why we do Pilsners, because there's five ingredients. It's hard to master, you know. But nowadays, dude, it's almost overwhelming how many beers there are and what types of beer. I mean, the Indian IPAs, the pale ales, you know, that's from old shipping, you know. That's when the ships from, like, Robert Englunds used to go to India to get all the spices for, you know, the big trade. And then the East India Company, and they would bring these ships full of spices. Well, by that time, their grog at the time was so gross, they had to throw some of those spices in. And that's why we got these really hoppy, very spicy beers, the India pale ales. Boom. and then it has transcended into... I'm shocked that you knew so much about beer. Ian's a beer fanatic. He's a beer... What's the word? I dabble. Beerophile. Yeah, I like to read and I like to brew beer. I haven't brewed beer in a while. I think I'm allergic to beer these days. But no, no, I love beer. So Drew, what are you drinking, man? Well, so I've been doing this from home and you guys have heard me talk about the Screwball Whiskey. we've gotten several of our listeners on it now and ian's like you got to bring some over today so i did so so that's what i'm drinking ian's drinking as well what do you think buddy there have been mixed reviews a couple people said wow this is great and a couple people said drew this tastes like horse shit so where do you fall on that spectrum and no nobody by the way nobody has said oh this is okay yeah it's either i love it or this is just dog shit it's too fucking sweet it's really sweet it's it hurts the teeth it tastes like peanut butter though doesn't it yeah a little bit but it's definitely the sweetest peanut butter i've ever tasted it's oh i dig it man and the weird thing is i don't like really sweet drinks but i like this you know what the thing is with this too is though i am drinking these aren't sips i'm taking i'm taking gulps out of it like it doesn't taste like booze which is dangerous very dangerous yep always is It's very dangerous. Why do you think I've gone through several bottles of these already during the corona? I can't feel my nose, and I'm pretty sure in a few minutes I'm not going to be able to feel my face. It'll slap you. It'll slap you back and forth. I'm feeling kind of good already. It's good to have you back in the studio. Can I mention that? It's just the energy feels different. I was sitting in my office staring at a screen talking to Ian. It's just weird because he came to see him, and here he is. Now I'm looking at his beautiful, beautiful bearded face. Speaking of bearded faces, Mr. Argar. I'm curious. Are you guys six feet apart or what? Four and a half. Four and a half? That's close enough. We have, like, pop filters, so I'm assuming that'll help. That's like a mask, right? Totally. We're going to die anyway. My wife is like, Drew can only come over if he has a mask on. That's what my wife said, too. I'm not wearing a mask. And all that stuff. And I just laughed to myself. I thought, it's going to be really hard to talk into the mic, but more hard, you know, even to drink. Oh, yeah. We would need a hole and a straw. It would have defeated the purpose. Yep. Here we are, risking our lives for you guys. So this gets sweet. I just want to say, thank you so much for recording. I missed, you know, my favorite entertaining pinball podcast for a while there. You guys only took a short time off, but now you're back and you're in the same room together. Did you guys miss hanging out together? Like, how long had it been since you guys met? Ian and I talk about this, what, a few times a week, where we're just like, I miss you, man. Yeah, yeah. Where's this been, you know? And, yeah, it's been challenging. Because you guys are best friends in real life. This isn't just for the podcast. You guys are, like, best buds, right? Correct. I don't want to call out the other podcasts, because a lot of these other guys, like, you know, They develop these friendships over the course of the podcast, which is cool. But you and I already had this bond before we started a long, long time ago. I mean, we knew each other before we knew our wives, so that's just where we are. Yeah. That's pretty rad. Well, I'm glad you guys are back together. And I'm just going to raise a drink right now and cheer for you guys because someday we're all going to get to hang out together. And they're going to say, oh, you have to stay six feet apart. I will risk a freaking ticket from Joe Copper just to come give you guys a big bear hug because Sunday we're going to hang out and record in person. That is awesome. No, that will happen. We're looking forward to it. You know, hopefully 2021 brings more of us together. And, yeah, Pinball will be that glue that holds us all together. I love it. And, Albert, my body is always open for a hug. Among other things. Okay, okay, this is like a clothes tug, right? Nope. Whatever the fuck you want, I don't care. Albert, you asked for the answer. We asked him. True story. We were begging him. No, super good to have you here, man. So, Ian, it's a little sweet, but it's okay. You liking the screwball? I'm slamming it, dude. I'm going to have to go back to black labels. Just mix some black label in there, you'll be fine. Woo! Woo! It's going to hit you. What else, Albert? What else can you tell us about, Albert, before we get into our, you know, segments, if you will? It's really hard when I run into new people, especially out here on the East Coast, because they're a lot more conservative. And, you know, I came from the 10th largest city in Canada. I'm living in River Hibbert with, like, 300 people. I don't even know if there's, like, a population anywhere. But it's an hour-round trip. If I want to go get any groceries, the one gas station slash variety store in town closed down at the start of COVID. so like the other day for Mother's Day, happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there, by the way. Absolutely. We're a little late, we're a little late, but my wife really wanted to have poutine, right? Which is, I don't, do you guys eat that there? I think so. I know what it is. Yeah, I think there's some places around here that have it. Cheese gravy, fries. You're speaking my language, brother. Simple, right? Cheese gravy, fries. Yep. And I didn't have any frickin' French fries. It was like going to be an hour and a half round trip just to go to the closest store that had frickin' French fries. So I said, honey, can we just do it with tater tots? And she goes, yeah, I guess. And I could see a little tear in her eye, but I swear to God, by the time we sat down at the dinner table and she was eating those tater tots with that yummy gravy, she said, oh, my God, the tater tots sucks in the gravy even better. It's the best poutine I've ever had. And later that night, you got the poutine? Yeah. You know it. We're making our own gravy. You know, I'm listening to your story, and the fat guy in me is like, you can make that with tater tots? This story has everything. Oh, this is amazing. And what do you have in your fridge? American cheese? Doesn't matter if it's the Kraft slices. I don't care. You get tater tots. Now, I did go a little fancy. I didn't have any of the powdered gravy, so I used sausages I had from two days ago and basically grilled them up, used that fat along with bacon fat I had in the fridge, and kind of mixed it together with a couple different, you know, I can taste the diabetes, and it is delicious. Oh, my God, that's awesome. Yeah, I always hear about poutine, and it's like, yeah, you know, fries and gravy, cool, but then I'm like, tater tots, yeah, that's the way to go. So, Albert, I knew you were real into beer, but how did you get into pinball? I've probably told this story on the Nerds podcast, but it was probably in my first five shows, which really I think they averaged about 30 listeners. So essentially no one's heard this before. But when I was younger, every single time that my mom, I lived in a little town called Cheddon with 400 people about an hour away from London. And every time my mom would go to like one of the big shopping malls in the south end of London, which was like the big town nearest, I would spend all of my allowance money in the arcade. Yeah, I'd play some Street Fighter and a little bit of like, you know, the race car games and stuff. but I spent most of it on Twilight Zone, which was a game that kind of made me fall in love with pinball. And my mom being, you know, Dutch, she said, Albert, you're spending like, you know, 20, 30 bucks every time you go there. I wasn't that good. I was not getting a lot of replays. She said, this year for Christmas, I saw on the Sears outlet, which in the States you probably have never heard of Sears, but it was a store that used to be here in Canada many years ago. Sears is huge here, bud. Well, not as much anymore. Oh, it is? Oh, yeah. They're going out of business now. Especially in the 80s. The Sears catalog? Yes. Yes, the Sears catalog for Christmas, exactly. So there was, like, this pinball machine, but it was, like, my mom, again, was Dutch. It was above, like, what she wanted to spend. I think it was, like, $100 or something. And it was just, you know, one of those small, like, half-sized pinball machines. So built like a stern, huh? Sorry, sorry. I think it was a Transformers or something. Yeah. But I played this fucking game so goddamn motherfucking hard that I ran out the double D batteries in like six hours. And on Boxing Day, my stepfather Ian's driving to like nine variety stores in a circle trying to find one open with batteries because I'm sitting there crying like a little baby because I can't play my pinball machine anymore. Albert was 22 years old. Yeah, I was going to say. And that was me yesterday when my wife told me to turn them off and go to sleep. Albert, you're in good company here, sir. Yes, yes. Fly to... Yeah, that's so cool. No, I do remember... Do you remember that? That was like... It was like a little tabletop, like, pinball, right? The Transformer one? Yeah, it's like a... I would say it's about half the size of a regular one, you know, when you're a kid. Yeah. It seems fun. Yeah. But, like, I rolled that fucker. Like, I rolled Transformers or whatever it was back in the day, man. I scored a million points, and that's when my love of tournaments came about. That's cool, man. You know, Twilight Zone's a hell of a game to get hooked on. I know. Then you see the next game, and you're like, what the hell is this shit? We talk about top of the mountain. I mean, they couldn't fit. If you wanted to do, like, one more spinner in there, they could not fit another spinner. You know, if they made that game today, like, if we didn't know what it was, they would be like, there's too much shit in here. You got to remove some of this stuff. Like, you can't make the shots. You know what I mean? It's just crazy how, you're right, how much crap they packed in there. And it's so cool. Albert, in an alternate reality, what if, like, John Borg goes Gary Stern with that fucking design? He'll be throwing clocks on the floor, that's for damn sure. So, what do you think? What is he going to rip out of that thing? Gary Stern will say this. He'll be like, gumball machine? We can put that on an LCD. Clock? We can put that on an LCD. Upper playfield? That's a plastic. Upper playfield? The magnets in the mini playfield, they're gone. That's a video mode. Yeah. Pretend you're up on the upper playfield in the video mode. Oh, enough ripping on Stern. I'm sorry. They're easy targets. I don't know why. I love them. I love my Sterns. Everyone knows I'm a Stern fanboy. Yeah, I can't disagree with those statements, though. Yeah, it's okay. It's okay, though. But that's a hell of a game to get hooked on. So what was your favorite game then before you really got into pinball? Was it Twilight Zone? Well, it was kind of funny because I think I was, like, sick in bed with the flu or something. It wasn't COVID, guys. Don't worry. This is, like, four years ago. I was sick in bed four or five years ago, and I was, you know, browsing through the Google apps, and I saw Pinball Arcade. And then I saw, I think, the one free game or it was really cheap to buy Twilight Zone. I thought, well, that was a game that made me fall in love with pinball. Pinball doesn't exist in London anymore. There was one Whitewater, believe it or not, at a bar in London here, and I would play it every Monday night when I was there for pinball. And the bartender said, Albert, we would move that machine if you didn't go over and play that Whitewater. Oh, that's cool. And no one else sticks money in it except for you. Yeah. If I went out of a poker tournament earlier, I'd be like, well, fuck you guys. I'm going to play pinball and drink beer and have cheap wings over here. And I'd be a loner by myself. I couldn't get anyone to play. I'd be like, I'll pay your loonie. Like, I know you guys, loonies are what we use to put in pinball machines here. It's worth a buck. Okay. But anyways, I couldn't get anyone to play with me. And then I remember several years later, I found, of course, Pinball Arcade, started to fall in love with it that way. And then Youth Opportunities Unlimited, which was a charity in London, was having a KISS tournament slash like kiss had just came out and acdc had been out for a while it was like a kiss tournament with also acdc and i went and like on my third game i think you had to pay a dollar to the charity and a dollar to play on like my third game i got like the fourth highest score and all these like pinball nerds were coming up to me and they're like dude you freaking blah blah blah and i was like i don't know what you're talking about these words are strange like they're like oh you send it through the pop bumpers i'm like what i don't know what you're talking about you're like I push buttons and things happen. Oh, man, that's awesome. So you were just a natural is what you're saying. I think I played for a lot of years, and I've always been pretty good at, like, you know, like arcade-type games, but I gravitated to pinball when I was younger. And when you're playing a simple game like Kiss and you just got to frickin' put something in Gene Simmons' mouth like five times, how easy is that, right? It's the story of my life. and then I was lucky enough I know it's hard to move on from that gene scene I'm sorry that mental visualization I started playing in the Monday Night Pinball League at Call the Office which was my favorite punk rock bar which was like a six minute drive from my house and the rest is history I started playing in the London Pinball League then the Tri-Cities Pinball League then going to the Toronto Pinball Tournaments and my very top year of a tournament player, I played well over, what was it, 68 tournaments, so like almost 1.5 a week. So, yeah. 68 tournaments in one year. Yeah, and I broke into, I think I was 1600th in the world, but at the time there was only like 50,000 players or so. I'm back around two and a half thousandth now. I haven't looked in a while because, well, you can't even earn Whoppers anymore, right? Yeah. Well, sir, I'm at 30,000, so I'm gaining on you. Just give me time. My frickin' 8-year-old's ahead of you, buddy. Come on. No, just play more. Just play more. You'll get there. No, I'm only on there because of one local fun league that I'm in, so I had to be registered. No, I would love to do tournaments. If you played one tournament and out of 80,000 ranked players, you're 30,000th, you did something right. Well, I do well in the league. I mean, I'm usually in the top five, so. Oh, well, that's where you get your points, probably. Yeah, but we're playing with just people who play for fun, and I'm, like, pushing them out of the way and giving them elbows. Are you sure? It doesn't sound that way. No. It sounds like they're pretty hardcore. There's, like, usually 20 or 25 people, and there's, like, five or six that are hardcore, and then most of the rest are just casual. Okay, so if you're top five in a group of five to six hardcore. Yeah, I'm the worst hardcore. And then the, well, I mean, you have the occasional guy who's just having fun. I mean, that's a good thing because even those guys get hot because I know I'm that guy. Yep, it happens. You know, I've blown up a machine once or twice, you know, so. Very cool. Albert, what was the first game you actually bought? And how'd that go down? The first game that I actually bought, I was really lucky, and honestly I attribute this to helping fall in love with pinball. I got Meteor. Oh, cool. That's a good one. I'm receiving that one now. Kirk's, I don't know, like some people say Stars is better. I think Meteor is better. I think it's Steve Kirk masterpiece. I was really lucky. The one that I got had been worked on by a gentleman named Mike Dimas, who used to be part of the Canadian Pinball Podcast. I know Mike Dimas, yes. Yeah. Shout out, Mike Dimas. He fixes up machines, like, really well. He goes over them really well, makes sure everything's going. And for a guy like me, who I mostly love playing, I don't really refurbish machines. I hardly work on them. I've only changed the rubbers once in my life. I learned from some of my other past hobbies that I had that once I started, you've got to find what part of the hobby you like best. And to me in pinball, there's only three types of pinball players. There's someone who is primarily a tournament player and loves just playing with their buddies and screwing around. Then you have the guys who love flipping the machines. They like buying them. They like painting them. They like refurbing them. They enjoy waxing their playfields and doing the mylar. I don't even know what that is. They do all these things to them. I don't even know about any of that. I don't do any of that stuff. I was lucky enough to live like less than 10 minutes away from a guy who basically I bought all my machines from. He fixed up all my machines. Basically, it cost whenever I had a problem. I rented, I think, six or seven machines off of him over the years. And basically, as a tournament player, I just wanted to refresh my machines constantly and always have one EM, one solid state, and one new modern so I could try to get my flipper skills down and do better when it came to a big tournament like Pemberg. And I think that's the difference between a collector. A collector looks at their machines and goes, I want this machine to fit in with this one, and the topper to look good with this one, and these lights to match these ones. And a tournament player like me just thinks, like when you look at my five games, they're not worth very much money. Like, I could probably trade all of mine in and still not get a Jurassic Park LE, but I have machines from every single different decade and era leading up to the 80s with, and I can learn all my different flipper skills on them, and I think that's the main difference between a tournament player and more of a collector. A collector wants their, like, they want their friends to walk into the room and go, holy fuck, this is incredible, this is what, you know, this is the arcade I've always wanted to see, and me as a tournament player, some of my pinball buddies would look at my collection and go, well, why do you have so many EMs and solid state? And I'm like, because have you ever been to Pemburg? Like one in four machines is an EM. Like two out of the four is a solid state. You've got to learn those, man. So that brings up a good point then. So you kind of have a unique perspective. So what kind of games do you really like? I mean, what are your favorites? If I am really tired, grumpy, kind of out of it, like first thing in the morning, I never play modern games. They're too fast. I always warm up on usually like Singalong which is a machine that I have right now which is designed by Ed Krinsky you guys ever heard of Ed Krinsky? nope, school me my friend, school me he designed, he's the top pinball designer on the planet, he's designed over 160 machines according to internet pinball database he didn't design laser war you would have heard of at least 50 of his machines maybe even 40 of them no, there's a lot of those guys I'm finding in the industry where they're like, oh I can't believe Especially with those early solid skates and some of those EM models, you can, when you look at one machine and then you see a couple more that you like, you notice the same names pop up. Well, because he talked about Steve Kirk, and I happen to own a Meteor and a Stars. Yeah. And, yeah, I'm like, these games are both, yeah, they're both awesome. I do like Meteor better. I'm with you there. But the reason I like Stars so much is because it's got the EM sounds with the, you know, the computer. Yeah. So it's just got this cool, nostalgic kind of thing. Anyway, go on, Albert. Yep. I was just going to name a couple machines by him, and people would know these machines, but they might not know Ed Krinsky. He passed away a couple of years ago, unfortunately. I wanted to have him on here, but I didn realize that four of my machines were Ed Krinsky machines until I started researching him And it really is too bad that he never got to go on a pinball podcast because I think it would have been really interesting to talk to him Yes. But he did Volley, if you know the machine Volley. He did Surf Champ, a machine that I really, really, really want to get in my collection. He did, of course, Solar Ride, if you've ever played that. He did Jungle Princess, which I own by him. Solar Ride, the one Dave Jeff Brenner just picked up. Oh, okay. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, and he just, you know, he did Paul Bunyan. He did Pin Up. A lot of people have pinned up. Pinball Pool, you've heard of that. He didn't design all of these. Some of these he just kind of worked on them. Joker Poker, I know you've heard of that. Yep. All drop downs and nothing else. Jacks to Open. He wasn't the main guy on all of these, but he was on a lot of these. Ice Show, which, you know, they had an Italian version of that. Hot Shot, which you've heard of. So he did machines from like 1950s all the way up into, he had like two machines in the early 2000s that were limited edition that he kind of worked on. Big Hit, Arrowhead. There's a lot of these, Abracadabra, I'm sure you've heard of that. Oh, yeah, I've seen Abracadabra. There's a lot of these old EM, like he worked for Gottlieb for like 40 years. So like half the machines that came out were his. So he did the Gottlieb stuff like in the 80s? well the the last one i'm seeing like right now was like 1983 he worked on amazon hunt for gottlieb uh he ended up doing or sorry that was uh 1983 then 87 he did a solid state but it was just like a conversion kit that he did for premiere because premiere was got out by bought out by gottlieb so i don't really know how that worked so he's an em yeah we need to bring you back on for a history lesson episode. No, you need a Dennis Creasel or a David Dennis. No, Dennis Creasel. His Gottlieb knowledge. I don't think he'd come on our show, though. Yeah, that's iffy. I think we'd be the one if... So Zach and him would be talking, just imagine this, right? And then Zach will say something about the poor man's. And then he'll say, Dennis, do you listen? And Dennis will be like, yeah, I know who they are, but I don't listen to them. He says that all the time. No, that would be his go-to. When we made Twip, like, the second time or whatever, he goes, oh, yeah, those gentlemen over at that one podcast. I've never listened, but. You're not his style, guys. No, that's what I'm saying. Absolutely. He's buttoned down. He works for the health department. I mean, he's that type of guy, which is great. It's fine. And Drew and I love him, so that's why it's so funny to us because we get him. We understand where he's coming from because he is that, I don't know, with lack of a better term, black and white, you know, straight-laced. And Drew and I are color to the max. We're neon explosions. We're Penn Stadium hyperbeams. Two towers, the RGVs. Boom, boom, boom. Scott, we love you, man. Great product. No, so, like, in my career, I work with health departments on a lot of things. I won't bore you guys with the details, but every health inspector that I've ever met, they have like this, he's not a health inspector, but he works for the health department or whatever. They just have this certain personality about them. You know, it's kind of this button down, like, you know, check off the checklist type thing. So, yeah. Dennis Creasel, this is an open invitation. You can come on our show anytime. I would love to have you on. Oh, that'd be so funny. Don't misunderstand. I would seriously love to have you on, but I just don't think you would come on. Dennis, what you drinking? Vitamin water. God bless you. Get that H2O, brother. Electrolytes. I don't think that Dennis is a big drinker. I think you guys are correct. However, I will say this. I'm going to give the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast an exclusive right now. I just finished talking to Dennis less than an hour ago. and I confirmed with him that the return of Top 3 with Orby on the Pinball Network will be coming back soon. Woo! Oh, cool, man. That's awesome. That's a great exclusive, man. This sounds really sad, but if I open enough windows in my house and I turn down the heat and then I have a fan on full hitting my modem, I might be able to get through uploading an entire episode without my modem turning off. You know, I've listened to your stuff about your modem and your internet problems, and I'm just picturing, like, your wife, like, blowing on the modem and, like, honey, can you turn the modem slightly to the left here? I'm just blowing on it. I don't know. I picture when he talks about his modem, like, something made out of, like, Lincoln Logs, like something that's – If you guys haven't heard it, listen to the Pinball Nerds podcast. Yes. He talks about great pinball stuff, but he also talks about his internet issues in Canada. And that's just because you live in a rural area, right? Is that really... Yeah, so get this. Literally, like, one of my other big passions is disc golf, okay? I can throw a... Yes, I said it. It's also called Frolf. It's basically golf with a frisbee. Yes, could you get a more hippie sport? No. What do you call it? What? Frolf. Frolf. We call it frisbee golf. Yeah, we just call it frisbee golf. Yeah, Frolf. So I can actually throw a disc from my house down to the end of my seven acres or very close. And if I were to be able to be right there, I could get the internet for Eastlink. But for me to get the core, sorry, Eastlink out here is like the fast internet, which still wouldn't be fast in America, but fast for Canada. So all of my son's friends who go to their school, they're like, well, what's the problem with your internet? We can live stream. We live stream Fortnite. So I can't live stream pinball anymore. that used to be my even bigger passion than podcasting was live streaming pinball. And I cannot do it here because the max I've ever seen when I did the run test is 0.4 megabits per second, which means that I could barely, barely, choppily stream on Facebook with one camera. I definitely can't do four cameras. Do you know what I mean? You, sir, need a man shed. You do. Go to the edge of your property. I want to see a log cabin, homesteading, badass, with a pot belly stove, and a bunch of pinball machines, and your brand new East Link. My solution is, okay, your son's best friend, let's say his name is Jimmy, right? I'm going to get some ice. Call up Jimmy's mom and say, can I come over and play with Jimmy? And then just use his internet. Take his internet. Use him for his internet. Use him for all he's worth. I mean, come on. I've thought of that. There's also like a museum that's not used that much at the end of my street, and I thought, well, maybe I could put a few machines in there and stream there. But I just want to stream for my host. They've already announced that there's going to be like high-speed internet here within two years. So I'll just be patient. Two years? That's like an eternity. COVID's going to get us all by then. Man. And now, the moment you've all been waiting for. Of course, I'm talking about the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast, Personal Pinball News. What's your personal news for the day? So as a tournament player, like I mentioned, I love playing tournaments. And it was just two days ago that the province that I only live 20 minutes away from, which is New Brunswick, I play in a league there called the Fundio Flippers. And they just announced that people can get together because they haven't had a case there in like three weeks. so they just announced that people can get together in groups of five inside houses or up to groups of 10 if it's outdoors or on a patio so I'm considering messaging my league in a couple of weeks maybe not right now and saying hey guys is there anyone that plays that would consider bringing you know the minimum number of machines we need to play I don't know five six probably depending on how many well we can only have 10 players and say hey could we just do like a for funsy tournament because the international flipper pinball association is not allowing whoppers yet of course but at the same time i'm wondering if the future of tournament pinball for some period of time and i don't know if the united states will follow but it looks like canada is going to continue to slowly open and as they open they're going to say you know x number of people indoors but twice that outdoors. So say you're having a music event at a concert, you could only have 25 people indoors or 50 people outdoors for a large concert. That actually makes a lot of sense to me. Well, yeah, you're at way higher risk of catching any sickness, a cold or anything, from someone with recycled air in the same little group of space. But if you can go outside and you can put tents up or something, you don't want these beautiful pinball machines to be damaged. That's the last thing we want. But if you could find a way, I remember the Flip N Out Pinball Boys. They all did a stream there with, I think it was at Ken Cromwell's house, and they were outside on the patio. It was. So it can obviously be done, right? So I'm thinking the future of pinball for a while to get larger tournaments might even come to be outdoors, and I'd be okay with that. I like playing pinball outdoors. I think, no, I think you're onto something, and I think we will probably see more of that, like you said, and then, you know, that Flip N Out Pinball stream was pretty cool. And you should message him right away, like after this podcast. Yeah, why wait several weeks? Why wait? Because, okay, here's the thing, guys. I'm new. I'm new at this league. But you're a celebrity. They don't know me that well. They're like, who's this guy without this East Coast accent here? We're not for sure. Robert, lose the Canadian accent and just say, do you know who I am? He didn't say Canadian. He said East Coast. I don't care. That's what we do here in America, okay? We skip the line. We don't wait for shit. This is America, goddammit. You just replaced that with Canada. This is Canada, goddammit. And I am your celebrity god. I have two American friends, and they said this is cool. They were drinking screwball, and they got cavities now. All right, move fast. No, cool, man. No, I think you're on to something, and I'd play outdoors. That'd be neat. oh yeah of course i can't legally cross the border yet but we're all hoping mr justin trudeau our prime minister we don't have a president here unfortunately i'd love to have one like trump but that's unfortunate i know you're joking what no i just this guy this guy he's got a good tan though whatever you say about him he's got a nice tan nice orange tan Who are we talking about, Trump or Trudeau? No, I'm talking about Trump. He makes Oompa Loompas look like they're emo kids with white skin. I don't know. It looks like Trump is lit by Penn Stadium's Hyper Beans. Two times the power. It's funny. I heard that he gets his tan from a bunch of Oompa Loompas rubbing him down with, you know. Oompa Loompa oil? No, it's the butter popcorn oil. Oh, got it. It's the fake oil, you know. from the factory? Yeah, you just rub them down. It's the same color. It's a good time. Cool. He hires like five or six Oompa Loompas. Yeah. Cool. All right. Ian. Yes. Whitewater has left the building, hasn't it? Whoa. Why don't you tell us about that? Yeah, no, I sold it. I sold it. People are like, well, you know, here's a funny story. These guys come down to my basement and they were looking at the Whitewater, but the first thing and the only thing they really noticed was the laser war they're like whoa fucking laser war what did you do to this thing i was like uh yeah i uh we we put some money into it and we we thought it would be funny to soup it up because we've never heard anyone soup up a laser war and he's like never will again you're the only one i was dying i was like totally but it looks great there no it really does this is the first time i saw it in person completely put together you know buttoned up ready to go and and it is really breathtaking but and there is love for laser war but everyone's still like really you spent all that money on laser war and we're like yep sure did it's hilarious Oh, it's great. No, it looks great, and it seems like it's just a much better game. It is a good game anyways, but now it just seems that much better. Well, Drew noticed, and I was kind of shocked, Albert, when we got to the point where I had to replace the bulbs, and I did the check down, and I was like, okay, how many bulbs do we need? It cost like $8,000 in bulbs. Well, I know Joe Cam and Kyle, it was like their first day at an East game, and you could tell they went to town. They were just like, there was, you know, some inserts have like four bulbs, two flashers in the single insert. Like it's, the light show is insane. No, even without the LEDs, the light show is really good. I got small hands, but they're fat, and I'm like, dude, this is fucking hard. This is ridiculous. this they really crammed as many leds as they could or light bulbs as they could you know what i'm gonna grab that text message you sent me i'm gonna put that up on our page just to show everyone what we had to order for bulbs i mean it is it is insane i've done i've done a few led kits and mostly on williams games but i've never done one on laser war before and it just kept going the list kept going and now that it's all led most of it's just the white the bright whites But we did, like, there is, like, some color coding there on the surface. But underneath, we kind of color coded as well. But for the most part, it's just a lot of white light. But it was a lot of them. And it looks like a modern game. It really does. Drew mentioned it. He was like, dude, this looks like it could be released. Yeah. Yeah. It's up there. If you don't, you know, and even though, I mean, obviously, it's alphanumeric or whatever. But, yeah, just super awesome. I'd like to know who had more lights, Willy Wonka or this one. I know they have a lot of minis. This one's up there. It has a lot of lights. And this game is from the late 80s, mind you, so a lot of games from that era just didn't have a ton of lights. It's crazy. Yeah, they went all out with, hell, even the little plaque that has the stereo, now in stereo. Yes. That's four bulbs in there to light that little plaque. It's like a two-inch by two-inch or three-inch by three-inch square. or four inch by two inch. Ian and I are going to do complete walkthrough videos of our restores. Oh, sure. Why not? We put a lot of work into these, a lot of time, a lot of effort, and we just want to share with the world. We're just going to kind of walk through and talk about everything we did because it was really neat. Yeah, and I want to see this laser war. I want to see this go to Expo or one of these shows coming up. We're not selling it anymore. No, because we spent so much time and money on it, we're going to show someone. and be like, hey, this is going to the shows once they open. This will go to the shows. Yeah, Expo possibly. I think Expo could happen, hopefully. Expo, I would say, is 50-50 right now. There's a lot of talk about, you know, I'm certainly not giving it the go-ahead. Yeah, they had complaints about people puking in urinals. Wait, are we talking about COVID? Yeah. Wait, what? Yeah, anyway. He's finally dicking his hand virus. Drew started it They say it's Wuhan But it was really Drew's dick Another episode We mentioned Drew's dick Alright So no Whitewater's gone It was one of those Beautiful purchases When they send Just two big dudes In the basement To grab it And I don't have to do anything Oh that's the second one You've had like that Yeah they They struggled like all hell And I just laughed You did lift a finger Well you know It was one of those things Where I was like all right so like i had it all set up i had the wrench i was ready to go and it's gonna take the bolts out of the legs and they're like no no no sir we got this why don't you just you know stand off to the side back we're secret service yeah that was what they said and i was like well i guess i can sit back and watch you guys but the landing won't fit a dolly so oh sir sir we got this and for the love of you're like okay i said i'm pretty sure i don't care what kind of dolly you have my landing where the stairs meet, you know, the floor, it's just too tight. And I was like, good luck. And they're like, nope, sir, we got this. We've done this a million times. And sure as shit, I sat there and I watched them struggle. They could not get their stupid dolly on. And they had a dolly on like the first or second step. And then they were trying to lift the machine up. I was like, you know what? This is a trade secret. The stairs are carpeted and they're nice. and Drew and I, we literally just tipped that machine, and you can literally push them up. It's not very – there's not a lot of stairs. You just slide them. You just slide it right on the carpet, and it slides right into my kitchen, and then you hook up the dolly, and you can wheel it right to your – it's super simple. It's actually – it doesn't take that much effort. But except for Space Invaders. That fucking thing was a tank. I almost died. But other than the Space Invaders, yeah, it's super simple. But these guys just sweating. And I was just like, but you could, sir, we got to. You fucking got it. Okay, can I ask, what was your GC on Whitewater before you sent her away? Oh, you know what? I don't know. It was Drew's GC. Did you get over the billion? No, I had the GC on there, and I think it was $700 million. Well, that's still an incredible score. But, I mean, if I own that bad boy, When I played Whitewater back when I was in bowling league, maybe in grade 10, I know that I was able to turn the lights out on that thing, like, at least twice. Everyone. Did you get to the seventh raft? What's that? Yeah. Yeah, we can get to the seventh. We can get to the seventh raft. You know where all the lights turn out and stuff? You go to the wizard boat? Yep, yep. Yeah, I got to. Hey, Wet Willie's only got to get there once, right? Yeah, I got to Wet Willie's once on there, and that wasn't even the GC. I think that one was, like, maybe $400 or $500 million. No, no, you don't always get a great score. Well, you get, I mean, half a billion is pretty incredible. Well, see, I appreciate you saying that because everyone else would say that's a great score, except for our tribe member, Tim Lee, and he'll just tell me I suck. Yeah, that's true. But I will say, though, Drew doesn't play it every day. He shows up, it was like once a week. Yeah, that's true. For podcasting, and he blew up my machine. But the problem was, though, I was having issues with the, there was slight, very, very slight minimal battery leakage. And so there's a little bit of corrosion, which caused the game to reset every once in a while. So Dave Jeff Brenner, our good buddy Dave Jeff Brenner, came by. He saw, like, there was just a little bit of battery acid on the connector, not on the board itself. And so he removed it and put the NV RAM in, and I was already kind of done with it. So, I mean, Whitewater is the weirdest game for me because I have never had a game that played so well and it was so much fun, but I was so bored with it because the theme just does nothing for me. I'm such a theme guy. Like, I don't know why, but when I shoot it, I have a lot of fun. But the problem is getting that extra motivation to come down to the basin and play the game. Now, I have a two-year-old, so give me a little bit of slack there. because I'm busy as shit. But when I have a second, I don't automatically think, oh, I've got to play Whitewater. But when I come down here, have a cocktail, play Whitewater, get the games going, I have so much fun on that game. So Whitewater definitely deserves its spot in the top 100. It's probably the best game I've ever owned. I like it way better than Monster Bash. It is definitely the best game you've ever owned. And to your point, though, I mean, yeah, a lot of these games are fun. So, you know, like I said, I don't miss, you know, once again, other than my baby Metallica, I don't miss any of my games. You play them, you love them, you get rid of them, and you move on to something else. There's a lot of good ones out there. Yeah, so no, I moved on from Whitewater, and I'm happy about it. Okay, Drew, what do you got? Well, Firepower I'm not going to spend a ton of time on because, like I said, I'm going to be making a video. I've been putting small videos online. People have been, you know, commenting on and liking some of that. The powder coat finally came in. I'm waiting on decals now. So the decals have been ordered. So I couldn't put all the powder coat on because, you know, I need to get the decals on before I put the rails and stuff back on. So Ian's going to be excited because he doesn't have to listen to firepower talk. I don't mind it. I know. Just jokes. It was the Jurassic Park talk I couldn't do. That was like four months straight. I think I'm going to get it. No, I'm not going to get it. I'm going to get it. Oh, I can't wait to get it. I'm getting it. I'm getting it. I'm getting it. I got it. I'm getting it. Got it. It's the greatest thing ever, guys. Jurassic Park is the greatest game of all time. True story. Oh, it's Keith Elwin. What's that? Yeah, it's the King Keith Elwin. The code on that game is just so frigging deep. Like, you guys are decent players. I'm an okay player. But, like, you would have to be, you know, a top 100 player to get bored of that code. And even then, even I.C. Escher-Lefkoff and some of the top players out there just playing that over and over. And even then, I still think maybe you can argue that Jurassic Park doesn't have the best callouts. Fine. You can argue that Jurassic Park doesn't have the best art. You can argue that. I don't mind the callouts. I hate the art. It drives me nuts. But anyway, go on. Fair enough. Go on. But the code? Oh, yeah. Incredible. I am with you 100%, Albert. I mean, you're right. Because you play that game. And, yeah, I've been playing the shit out of it, and every day it's, like, just something new, and you're just playing it, and you're loving it. So, yeah, super, super, super cool. So, yeah, so I got, you know, Firepower is 95% done now. It's buttoned up, and I'm, like I said, I'm waiting on decals. I dialed it in. I bought a wave trigger board, which is basically a little sound board that you can make your own sounds and music for. You add some switches. I'm going to add some music to Firepower. How cool is that going to be? Depends on the music. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I'm thinking like some rock music. You can do all kinds. The sky's the limit, right? I'm going to add some sound effects. I'm going to add some stuff. I'm going to play around with it and see what happens. Okay. It wasn't very expensive. It was like $50. We'll see what happens. Yeah. Every time you hit a switch, it's Steve Ritchie saying, Play better. No, I thought of stuff like that, too. You know what would be great? If I can see Steve Ritchie at Expo and get him to record like five or six call-outs for it. Oh, he would hate that. Oh. That would be awesome. He would fucking hate that. No, I'll ask him if he'll do it, and he'll just say no, and that'll be the one thing when you hit a switch, he'll say no. No. Will you do this for me? No. I'm fucking Steve Ritchie, dude. So, anyway, so that's, you know, like I said, I got new speakers in it. I got all these cool lighting. I mean, it's going to be a... I think just with the music with Meteor, you have to hit like... You got to be kind of... It has to blend in with the game. What do you think? Give me an example. All right. I'm open. It's an open canvas. This is just me throwing it out there. Sure, sure. I haven't really thought about it. Okay. But the first thing that came to my head is if you want to do a rock song, get one with like the MIDI format, you know, or thingy-me-me-me. Yeah. You know what? That's actually kind of cool. You know what I'm saying? It's got to sound like of the time. Of the 80s. It's got to sound a little... You know what? Yes. You could actually find a guy on Fiverr.com who would use chiptunes, and they would make something that went along with that period. Ooh, okay. No, that's what I'm looking for. Like I said, I bought this thing because I knew it was a blank canvas, and I can start with just doing some rock songs just to play while I'm playing it, which is fine. so every time you plunge, you'll just play a different song, which is fine. Right, I get it. But I thought it would be cool, yeah, you're right, to integrate some stuff into it. So anyways, that's what I'm working on. Meteor, I decided it was way too expensive to do what I was trying to do. I could do it, but... Wait, are you talking about changing it to a Quicksilver? Yeah, either restoring it or changing it to a Quicksilver. What? It's more money. You didn't hear that, Albert? no no I heard you but I don't know what you're talking about you're going to try to take a meteor and turn it into a quicksilver well the boards are the same so when you buy like a new MPU you can use all those same stern games so you have the cabinet you know like you can buy because I was going to redo meteor like 100% right like you know new everything and I was going to get a new play field and just repopulate it with new parts Drew got it pretty cheap because it wasn't working So that was kind of the deal. So, you know, I looked into just restoring Meteor, and then I would be in this thing for, like, say $4,000. It would basically be a brand-new Meteor, which would be really cool, but it's still a Meteor. And for $4,000, I was like, well, maybe I could spend the same money. I talked to Dave Jeff Brenner, who actually knows how to restore games, unlike me. And Dave said, you know, because, like, Quicksilver is obviously a lot more valuable. so like if I could I could redo the whole thing and make it a quicksilver and then you know then it's worth five or six thousand when I'm done so then I could sell and get my money back basically so anyways it's a lot I think honestly like I haven't even done anything like that but I think that would be like I think in your head you think it'd be like 20 hours but I think it'd be like 40 50 60 or more oh no it would be like 100 hours no no I'm not okay no I wasn't I wasn't under So how much are you paying yourself an hour, even like at $2 an hour? My labor, I'm not charging myself anything for. He knows the guy. Yeah. No, no, no. It's true. It was just, you know, because when I – It's free labor. Drew, you're worth more than that, buddy. I am. He's, you know, it's for the love of the game. He likes to restore. Yeah, like the firepower, you know, I stuck, you know, a couple thousand dollars into it. and yeah, I'd probably get my money back because it's a really nice firepower now. You know, I rebuilt, you know, the pop bumpers. I rebuilt the slings. I, you know, did the board work. I mean, it's really nice. And so I'm confident I could do the same thing with, you know, a Meteor or a Quicksilver. But at the end of the day, I'd rather take that $4,000 and buy like another Stern Pro that I can have some fun with. Absolutely. That's my whole point is that, no, I could do it. And so what I'm going to do now, I'm changing course again. I'm just going to fix up the meteor because it is a good base. I'm going to make it nice, but I'm only going to spend, say, $1,000 on it, make it into a nice meteor, and then move on. Okay. So I think that's fair for what I want to do. All right. But moving on to the next point and my final point of four-minute pinball personal news, Spider-Man, Spider-Man, Spider-Man. So I've been talking about Spider-Man. Ian's sick of Spider-Man, but that's cool too. It's not that I'm sick of it. Albert, what do you think about – I would love to hear your opinion on Spider-Man from Stern versus the Spider-Man Vault Edition versus the Gottlieb Spider-Man. That's not even an option. Go ahead. Okay. First of all, I fucking hate Spider-Man. I only got to play one game on Spider-Man, and that was in a tournament in Toronto. One game, and you hate it? I looked my ass because he knew the rules. However, I looked at the show notes. Thank you guys for sending me some show notes today. much better show notes than I've ever had on Pimple Nerds Podcast and I took a look and I do think I like the Vault Edition better as far as the artwork goes but it sounds like there's a possibility that Stern was making, how do you say, more, I don't know reliable, better quality machines back when the original came out so then there's an argument for that. Now I do like the shots on it and I love Spider-Man so I love the theme. okay that those are those are fair points and i think a lot of people have that same sort of sentiment so what i did so no got leap got it bro thanks i've never played the got leap i haven't either it looks terrible but i love the art it's amazing on that so i put this up on pin side and this was my i know people are gonna be like oh shit only you know 100 people saw it or whatever this is a fire thread for me this is the biggest threat I've ever had on there, even including my podcast. It's been on there for two years or whatever. Every time we do anything on our podcast, everyone says, you post here too much. I know. Quit posting your stupid podcast stuff out here. It's crazy, Albert. They're joking. They're joking. So I just put on a quick little post on Pinside that said, hey, I'm thinking about Spider-Man versus Spider-Man VE, the Vault Edition. What do you think? And I put a poll up there. And I got arguments from both sides, kind of exactly what you were saying. A lot of people said the call from the original were better because they got the actor J Jomen Jameson J Simmons which is very cool Yeah But the art is way better J Simmons Yeah Oh I love J Simmons And the art on the VE is, you know, much better. So it kind of went back and forth. And then Steve Johnson, who was having a moon cookie, said that, you know. And by the way, Steve, thank you for coming on. We loved it. Oh, absolutely. Steve, that was so much fun. I tried to get it in in the beginning of the show, but we were just so excited that we were back. but Steve did. I think it's caramel. A caramel moon cookie. This is podcast gold, okay? Steve just got a caramel moon cookie from his wife and later she's going down on his moon cookie. Okay? We're talking about changing his life. He's like, I think it's caramel. It's not vanilla. This is my life, man. Can I just say this? Yeah, go ahead. I love that episode. I just listened to it today while having a bath. So good. That's what I do. I go for a nice bath when I'm done homesteading for the day. I'm working on the farm. I picture it being a horse trough. Is it not a horse trough? Oh, yeah. I get out in the horse trough. But my bathtub is in, like, the southwest corner of my house. So I open up all the windows. I close the door. it's possible I may have a marijuana cigarette while I'm enjoying my bath listening to your guys awesome podcast thank you and the cool part is between six o'clock and eight o'clock p.m the sun actually will shine where the sun doesn't normally shine do you know what I'm saying like I'm laying in the bath getting sun from both angles oh man it's incredible it's incredible if you get a tanned penis so much like are you sunning your butthole Yeah, so much vitamin D on that penis. Good job, man. Hey, I listened to this guy, and the only thing that made me go, huh? I loved the whole episode, but he said one thing at the very end that I went, are you sure? He talked about Kaneda, I don't know, five or six times, but at the end he said, I've only heard two episodes. And I was like, I'm pretty sure you've heard more than two episodes. I think that's the going shtick, though. Nobody wants to admit that they listen to Kaneda. I will say it here. I've listened to almost every episode of Kaneda. I have listened to every episode for the last two years. Yes, exactly. I have listened to every episode for the last two years. Okay. But sometimes, like, if I'm really mad at him, like, when he made fun of me for joining TPN and called me a C-class podcaster, and a couple of other times we've had little arguments, he will ban me, and then he'll block me. And then, like, two days later, he'll write back and be like, sorry, Alberta. Chris, you know. No, hang on. Hang on. I'm calling out Chris on this episode. Do you guys know, I've never said this on the podcast, when he won the Twippy last year, 2019, for the Best Pinball Podcast at the Texas Pinball Fest, when he first sat down, the first thing he did is he turned to Chris the Pinter, Chris Grovesner, my good buddy, and he said, now that I've won the Twippy for the best podcast, will Orbital Albert finally come on the show? And Chris was like, I don't fucking know. Ask him. I'm his friend, but ask him. Don't ask me. So four or five times I've been scheduled to be on the show, and then he's done something really negative or really rude. He's listed on This Week in Pinball as being a pinball promoter, but if you think about it, is he really? I would say most episodes he's making pinball sound bad and catty, and he's bringing up the negative parts of pinball. It's like, you know what, if Kaneda comes back, like I said to you guys before we started recording, he is the Darth Vader of pinball podcasting, of pinball media. He'll come back and then we'll... That soundbite is going to live forever, by the way. I'm serious. He's the Voldemort of pinball podcasting. I view it differently, man. When I listen to Chris, all I listen to is a guy who expects perfection in pinball, and he's trying to do his best to, I don't know, when you call out a company's faults, he's trying to tell them, hey, step up your game. What are you doing here? Now, do I agree with everything he says? Some points I find are very valid, but I also find some parts, like you said, your words, a little catty. Like when I step in front of an Oktoberfest, do I think that's the ugliest machine ever made? Hell no. It's actually not a bad-looking game. I think the art is fine on it. But the way he talks about it on and on and on for months on end, you go, dude, you just got to drop it. It's not as bad as you think it is. Now, is it the theme you want? No, obviously not. But, you know, there's a lot there to like. So, yeah, but I always just, I get it, what you're saying, though. But on the other end, I still think that at the end of the day, I still think he wants the best in pinball. And he wants to hold these companies accountable. But, you know, he has the personality that it is what it is, right? It's just one of those things. I totally agree with what you just said, Ian, but when you're blocking Albert. Okay, hold on. I didn't say he was like. No, no, I understand that. Kaneda, to me, hold on. Now, personally, now we've had our little fun little messages back and forth. I talked to Kaneda quite a bit, and yeah, you know what? The man is sensitive, and it's okay. But, yeah, he can be. He's a man of emotions, and I can understand that. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. He gets pissed. you're blocked. In a week, he's like, God, I'm an idiot. Okay, I'll unlock you. This is my favorite message I ever got from Chris. When I called him out and I said that he was the Jersey Shore of pinball podcasting, that was my favorite message ever, and I've screenshotted it, and I may have shown it to a couple people, but I did not share it on my pinball nerds podcast. Oh, yeah, Bob's a listener now. Go ahead. You all know it said, hey, Albert, can you do me a favor, dot, dot, dot, then new message, fuck off. and then he went on a rant for like nine pages of like I'm not even going to go into it because it was personal stuff he's saying blah blah blah you know I was going through a bad time and that's why I did this to you and blah blah blah and I'm like dude like I didn't even write back to him I just waited for him to just vent for like two weeks of like I could scroll down of just the blue messages of him saying I'm like dude I don't even care I get that more people listen to your podcasts than most others, but it's because A, you're usually right, not always, quite frankly. He's right less often than most podcasts, but he's entertaining and his pace and his cadence of speaking for a solo pinball podcast is incredible. And I'll keep listening if he puts out more episodes, but I listen with a grain of salt. When I listen to poor man's pinball podcast, I fucking believe you guys, because you guys are genuine and you're sincere and you're honest. When I listen to him, I go, you don't even own a pinball machine. I'm not sure if you're as passionate about pinball as me. And that's kind of my thing, right? No, I was... You're spot on with that, because I'll say this. I mean, I respect what he does for pinball, and kind of piggyback what Ian said. You know, when he calls out a manufacturer, you know, when he's not chastising people, and he's just like, hey, you know, this game is not good for this reason, that's great. And people get upset with him about that, And it's like, no, that's his opinion. And some of his opinions are valid, and a lot of people share them, but a lot of people won't say those out in a public space. Right. Because they're friends with the designer or the coder, which I get. And, you know, to your point, yes, what you hear, and we've said this many times, what you hear with Ian and I, that's just Ian and I. Yeah. We had microphone, no microphone, whatever. We're having the same conversations, and we're not. We're discovering this. We haven't been a part of the community as long as some other guys on here. So when we talk on our podcast, it is a discovery. It is looking at it with bright eyes. We're super excited when we learn about a new machine or new rules or whatever. So that enthusiasm shows through in the microphone. I just want to finish the Spider-Man versus Spider-Man thing because it was cool. Oh, Spider-Man. Yeah. So I put this thing on pin side. I put up a poll. I put up a poll on our tribe member page. So here were the results, okay? On Pinside, I got 48 votes for each one. That's pretty good. Wow. 48 votes for original Spider-Man? Seriously? Yeah. Down the middle like that? Yeah, 48 and 48. I know. I tell you, it's very polarizing. You needed to put Gottlieb in there, brother. So 48 and 48. But here's the kicker. So as of these notes, which are a couple days old now. The flowers. Shut up. Well, no, no. Shut up. Whatever. Fuck you. So the two tribe members voted for original Spider-Man. Ten tribe members voted for the Spider-Man Vault Edition. Ooh. What did Steve Johnson say? Take the original and put the Vault. The Vault Plastics. I picked that. Steve, you're right on. A hundred percent. And then have a moon cookie. It's not for you, man. And then, hey, man, it ain't banana. It's not banana. It's not banana. Dude, I'm totally sound clipping that. Oh, we do. It's peppered throughout this episode already. We've heard it a million times. So anyway, so we're pretty close, though. We're at basically 50 votes for each one. Wow. Well, let me say this, Drew. Now, I've known Drew for a long, long time. And I know Drew is, you know, when you have guys that are obsessive about shit, Drew, and people waver. They waver. They get obsessed about one thing, and then they go to another thing. Drew has been a hardcore Spider-Man fan since I've known him. Huge Spider-Man fan. Since my teen years. It's not even a joke. He knows everything about Spider-Man. So this was actually like he is seriously doing the research. He wants to get it right because if he does get it, he knows he could never sell it. Yep. So he wants to get it right. Absolutely. I want another Spider-Man for you. I want Jersey Jack to do a Spider-Man. Oh, that would be, yeah, fucking stern. I could do, I'm sorry. What would be your choice, though, right now? Me? I know you haven't played many, if at all. Have you played Spider-Man? Yeah, I do. Remember they had it at Bounce with the Trump mod? Oh, that's right, they did. They had the Trump mod. There's an actual Trump playing Sandman with Trump sound effects. Every time you hit the Sandman, he goes boing, boing, he makes some weird noise. Oh, fucking annoying, dude. And, you know, I'm going to go with whatever's built better, and they say the original's built better. They do. And the original. And I do like Steve Johnson's idea of putting the plastics on the VE. They sell another set of plastics, which I liked even better. On the slings, there was one black just Spider-Man logo and one red Spider-Man logo. And then on the bottom, the rails, it had Masked Menace, red and black. Perfect, man. So, yeah, that was cool. so I would definitely do that. Yeah, you know what, though? I think if you get the original, you can mod it to what a Spider-Man fan would love. That's a good point. You know what I'm saying? And it's cheaper. It's about $1,000 cheaper. Well, dude, all you have to do is start with that. I would have said go with $1,000 cheaper. I think Spider-Man averages about $4,800, and the VEs are closer to $6,000, $50,000, $6,000, whatever. Yeah, dude. you're going to be happy with your answer. No, I know. I know. So, okay. Well, we'll wait. Okay, can I say this about Spider-Man? Yes, you sure can. Mr. Ian Harwer, the world's okayest pin turn, also tribe member, I don't remember what number, but he's a tribe member, right? He is. What do you call him, Rich Man Ian? Yeah, Rich Bucky Ian. He calls himself Rich Bucky, and we just kept it going. You know, I will stop you just a second and just say that this has to be Glenn Glenn Waechter's You're Skateboarding Glenn. Yeah. And our Glenn tribe member number. This has got to be his wet dream episode. I just want to throw that out there. Oh, you stole the word. Where's number seven, dude? He's number seven. Yeah, he is number seven. His daughter has number seven in Little League. So I remember something. So, all right. Anyway, go ahead. Ian Hauer, your, you know, biggest fan probably, he fell in love with pinball while playing Spider-Man at his workplace. I believe he works for Google or something like that. Yes, he does. And they have Spider-Man in the break room, and that caused him, over about a year of playing it on breaks and lunches, to fall in love with pinball. That sounds it. I'm getting Spider-Man. And that's why we have this top 150 player on the planet, and a good friend of mine, a good friend of yours who, you know, is helping Pinball Podcast. He does commentary whenever he's at tournaments. He's an incredible player. He's a wealth of knowledge. And, you know, even when I'm going through a bit of a tough time, he usually always sends me a message and says, hey, buddy, blah, blah, blah, you know, very constructive criticism if he ever gives me criticism on the show, which I appreciate because you guys know as podcasters, you have some of those listeners or listenerds in my case, and they will send you negative stuff, and you just don't respond to it. But 99% of the people who respond to you, they send you constructive criticism to try to help make your show better. And he's definitely one of those guys. So I really appreciate him, and he loves Spider-Man. So if he loves it, and he's one of my favorite professional pinball players, you can't go wrong buying one, whether it's the OG or the film. I love your optimism and positivity. That's why we love you, brother. That's cool. No, that's awesome because, like Ian said, I am a Spider-Man fan. I have so many Spider-Man comics. I love it. Yeah, this is happening. Flip N Out Pinball. You want a new Stern? Boom, we have you covered. You want a new Chicago Gaming Company remake? Boom, we have you covered. You want a brand new Shiny from JJP? Guess what? Boom, we have you covered again. P3 Multimorphic, we can do that too. We got mods, shaker motors, even some used pinball inventory. Flip N Out Pinball also sells the Stair Climbing Escalera Hand Truck. Email Zach at Flip N Out Pinball or call or text 812-457-9711. Zach at Flip N Out Pinball. Flipp, letter N, Out Pinball. Okay, well, let's move on to just one cool note about one of our awesome tribe members. Are you ready for this, Ian? I know what you're going with. So we have lots of cool people in our tribe, but now we have Mr. Tribe Member Number 9, David Jeff Brenner, the restore guru of pinball machines. I call him an expert in early stern and bally machines, because that's what he is. He has become American Pinball's technical services manager. Cool. How cool is that? Yeah. Congratulations. So last week he sent a picture, or maybe it was two weeks ago, he sends a picture to us. He's got an Oktoberfest and a Houdini. Well, he doesn't tell us that he's working for American Animal. No, he doesn't tell us. He just sends us his picture. It's basically a big dick pic. Yeah. You know, he sends us this pic. Oktoberfest and a Houdini are like wrapped up, and he's like standing in front of them. Oh, I got two new games. Totally happened, dude. And then we're just like, what the fuck? You know, he bought two new games. Because this guy has 50 machines. Literally, 5-0. Yeah. He's got 50 machines in his basement. And now what? He bought $10,000 worth of more machines? They're like, what's going on? Yeah. Yeah. And he's talking about how, oh, yeah, I just, you know, started getting into Oktoberfest. And it's like really fun. Liars. Lies. And he's getting into it. And he loves it. No, that's actually the truth. He loves Oktoberfest now. No, that's a cool game. But he wasn't telling the full truth. He got the games for free. Fuck yeah, he did. You know why? Because he works for American fucking pinball. So soon he's going to get a Hot Wheels ship to his house. Yeah, absolutely. So we'll be playing that, right? So that's cool. So anyway, basically what he's going to be doing in the short term is making technical videos. He's going to show people basic pinball maintenance, how to open your machine, real basic stuff. But then he's going to go into more troubleshooting. He's going to make videos. Yeah, if you have a problem with your Oktoberfest, they're probably going to get you in contact with David Jeff Brenner. Yep, he has an American Pinball phone number now. It's just like, hey, call this number and talk to Dave. Makes me want to get an Oktoberfest even more because he can fix it. And just call him and be like, yep, Otto is fucking up. Yeah. Bro, this thing, like, isn't giving me high scores? What's that all about? So, anyway, congratulations to Dave. I just wanted to throw that out there. Absolutely. He's a tribe member. He deserves it. He's literally the first tribe member that is in the industry, right? does that mean he loses his tribe stripes or what it's funny you say that Albert because you know but right he's the first right because everyone else he's awesome he keeps them he's a really cool Zachariah collection that TurboGrafx usually records with or is that a different person no that's him baby he's big into the Zachariah so he No, he will still remain in the tribe, even though he is a member of the pinball media slash pinball industry. Okay, so for people who are a little lost, our tribe members, we have the five pillars of excellence. We'll just throw it out there. Tribe member, the fourth pillar, ladies and gentlemen, the fourth pillar is you just can't be a part of the media and all that stuff. Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Sorry, man. I thought I was the only one who knew the fourth pillar. Now you just told everybody. Yeah, we called everyone because Drew's already throwing it out there. So, you know what? We're going to throw that fourth pillar away. The fourth pillar is gone. It's one, two, three, and five now. Yeah, we have five pillars of excellence. And four is gone. We can do whatever we want. This is our... Have you met us, Elvis? Nothing's strict over here, baby. Let's do this. Let's go through the four and a half pillars of excellence. Four and a half pillars. All right. First pillar is get a like us on Facebook. Second pillar of... I did that. excellence is you got to email us contact us shoot the shit with us the third the third pillar of excellence is help promote our podcast whether it is sharing it with your grandmother and saying oh grandma look at these guys they're amazing or I mentioned you on at least 100 podcasts no have you well probably 99 All right. Fair enough. The fourth and fifth pillar were secret. Fourth pillar, now you know, is we weren't doing media members or people in the industry. That has just gotten toppled over because of Dave Jeff Brenner. But that's okay. That's okay. It's because of me, right? No, there was a few guys, actually, that we grandfathered in. Obviously, we had, like, Ryan Kuiper, who did TurboGrafx-7 on stream, GammaGoat himself, Ian Haywar. um so they're and chris the pin turn also has a twitch stream so what right that's those are the three yeah yeah yeah i'd give that so so the fourth pillar has been crumbled it's been toppled it's fell over it's it's just gone like like like our whole podcast it just kind of fell over it just doesn't matter so so with that in mind ian what does that mean that means open season baby It's open season. Open season. It is open season. I love open season. Anyone can be a pod member. Anybody does? Anyone can be a pod member. Absolutely anybody. Anybody we want. Wait. So before, we weren't going to allow certain people in because of their job or their media credentials. But now, it's all gone. It's all gone. It's all gone. Just like our dignity. Just like our shame, our self-esteem. She's gone. Screwball talking. It is. Isn't it nice to be back together? Oh, I love it. This is great. This is way better than staring at my fucking computer screen. So, Albert, before we move on, because we're obviously doing our tribe member induction, can you just say fuck, fuck, shit for me? Fuck, fuck, shit for me. Okay. Thank you, sir, may I have another? Poor Man's Pinball Tribe. Thank you, sir, may I have another? Poor Man's Pinball Tribe. Thank you, sir, may I have another? Poor Man's Pinball Tribe. Oh, yeah! Who is our next tribe member? Number 26. Tribe member number 26, Orbital Albert. Albert! Albert! What the fuck? I want to set this scene up. I'm not casting right now. My life is complete. I'm done. See you guys later. Have fun. So for you guys who maybe don't know what the fuck's going on, including Ian and I, because we don't know what's going on. Pretty drunk. We had all the notes for Albert. Yeah, we gave all the notes to Albert, I should say, for this episode. We had somebody else in mind for the tribe membership. Which he will be inducted at some point. Ian and I had decided earlier today that Albert has met all the criteria. We talked about the Dave Jeff Brenner thing, all that stuff that you guys just heard. And we decided we would surprise Albert. Even though he thought it was someone else because his notes say somebody else, he got it. How do you feel, Albert? You fucking guys. I'm fucking over here, man. No, I'm just kidding. I'm really hopeful. Oh, I love it. No. Because I've been bugging you guys for a while. I'm like, so, like, you know, you listen to my podcast. I listen to yours. You know, I talk about you guys a lot. When do I get to be a tribe member? And secretly some time ago, you know, you told me, by the way, you know, pillar number four is we really don't want to include media, which I understand, especially the first year you guys are getting started. But now that I get to be a part of it, I just feel like my life's complete. Oh, wait. It gets way weirder. because when you become a tribe member, we induct you into our secret Facebook group, which is way fun. It's really weird. It's weird, fun. Everyone loves it. We also donate $10 in your name to Project Pinball. Project Pinball. That's awesome. Which is always a good thing. You also get assigned a number, and now you are no longer Orbital Albert. You are number 26. Okay. You are a goddamn robot, my man. I love you. Oh, thank you so much. Tomorrow's episode, I'm not going to say, welcome back to the Boundary Steps 363. I'm going to say, welcome back. You're with Poor Man's Pinball Podcast Tribe Member number 26. I love it, Albert. I love it, Albert. I'm going to get a t-shirt that just has the number 26 on it. That's it. We've been talking about that. We'd like to do that at some point because it would be so cool for the ad people at a pinball show and it would just say like number one number two number three and we'd be like we own you bitch oh that's so weird i am not comfortable with that at all oh i'm totally comfortable are you guys coming to pembert next year on your are you on the wait list no no but you know what i the fucking wait list like right now i hear it's so much well the wait list is over because they're they're They're turning over on us. No, it's not. Oh, okay. Well, I won't look into that. Anyone who gets on the wait list now has a better chance of getting in next year because of the 1,000 people that got in, a good number of them are flying from overseas. Apparently, people are coming to Pembroke from 500 different cities around the world, and a lot of them may not be able to get the time off next year, or they may be in Pembroke once every three years, every four years. Get on the list right now. If you choose not to do it when your number comes up in six, seven, eight months, fine. Get on the list like, okay, maybe not right now, but like, you know, tomorrow or the next day. Throw yourself on the list. I got your beers for four days straight, boys. Bullshit. Bullshit. Yeah, have you met us? Bullshit. But even... Ask Zach Many how much it costs to date me. Oh, shit. I would... Or Chris the Pinscher. You're the one that had to buy some beers for a while there. You know, I would just go to, what is that, Indisc? Is that the? No, Replay Effects. Southern California. No, no, Replay Effects is the show that Pimberg's at, right? Yeah. So I would, you know, even if I can't get into the tournament, I'd still go to Replay Effects because I hear just how much fun it is. Dude. We would party. Yeah. We're going to have a four-man's pinball podcast after party at, like, It's the most dirtiest, dankest, sloppiest, disgusting, crack-infested cockroach bar on the planet, and we're going to get dirty drunk and love it and shut down that bar. Is that a reputation? What are you trying to say about us? I'm trying to say that at 3 a.m. when all the other fucking pinball nerds go to sleep because they've got to play Pimberg in the morning, y'all are going to be paying the waitress to let us stay an extra hour or two to sing karaoke and do shots. We'll be paying her for something else. And we're going to, yeah, of course it's Kraken Fest. I love it. I just want to say, Albert, I am so excited that you are part of this now because people ask us every week. We don't joke about that. There are literally at least a couple of inquiries every week. How can I be part of this? Do I want to be part of this? Being part of the tribe, we've talked about it. It changes people's lives. we are here changing lives people, changing lives oh my god it's too much okay I'm not going to lie, it changed mine when I didn't know you guys wanted to have me on the show you know I was having an okay day, I was doing okay you know here in Nova Scotia we're getting less COVID cases every day which is nice, I think we're like, there was two like last week one day then there was one, then there was zero then there was like four, they're all in senior center is like five hour drive from me, but in my county, we still have none. So like, yeah, I got to be careful grocery shopping, but like still there's not even one person. So like, it's not even a big deal. But when I got that message from you guys to come on the show, the last three or four days, I've just been like excited. I thought I get to be part of a real pinball podcast. I feel like Pinocchio. I'm a real boy now. Wait, wait, wait. But you are part of the pinball network. This conflict of interest, that's all I got to say. Jesus Christ. We renounce your tribe ship. It's now time for Slam the Dream Theme, which is obviously a rip-off of Head to Head, which was also a rip-off of Slam Chilled, which probably came from Coast to Coast or even Top Cast. Really what it's saying is there's no originality in pinball these days. We know it. You know it. Go for it. Cool. So one of the last things we have today, We talked about the dream theme off. We did this several weeks ago. Months ago. Yeah. Who knows? It's been so fucking long. But we got a bunch of themes from people. Listeners. Yep. Listeners. All kinds of. They are people. They are people. Excuse me. We put them in a hat and we. Randomly picked. Yep. So this week. We picked three names. We got one for me, one for Ian, and one for our new tribe member, number 26. Orbital Albert. Albert. 26. 26. Number 26. That's a good number. That's a good number. So what's going to happen is we're just going to take turns. We are going to talk about, so we're going to tell you what our themes are. Then one person is going to tell how great their theme is. They get 30 seconds to just talk about how great their theme is. Then we'll move to the next person. They'll talk about how great their theme is and onward. Then, once that first round is done, then we're going to talk about why the other two themes suck ass. Right. And in that 30 seconds, you're going to talk about what you see, what you could see in a potential pinball machine. The first 30 or the second 30? The first 30. Yes, correct. Yeah, why you think the theme is great and what you see in a pinball machine. So, fairly straightforward. And I have my timer. All right, here we go. Okay, so we'll start with what we chose. Or, no, sorry. what was chose for us. Nope. Why don't you just go, Drew? Ready? Three, two, one. Drew, go. Well. Hang on. Shit. You had one job. All right. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. You ready? Yep. I'm ready. One, two, three, go. My theme was Die Hard, this great movie from 1988. Theme, it's a simple premise. It's got so many options for modes and rules. You know, just the title alone. It kicks ass, but it makes no sense. But that's fine. It just pure 80s goodness You know the movie has a sense of humor It an easy story Great characters Awesome villain in Alan Rickman I mean you know it awesome Hans Gruber. And you've got so many cool call-outs. Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker. All right, hold on. That's time, but we'll do 60 seconds. I promise. I'll never hear you think about going on. Hold on. We'll start starting now. Okay. What? All over? No, no, no. You get another 30 seconds. A couple more cool call-outs. Start all over from scratch. I promise I'll never even think about going up in a tall building again. Oh, God, please don't let me die. Just a fly in the ointment, Hans, the monkey in the wrench. Welcome to the party, pal. I mean, so many cool, cool call-outs. You know, you'd have this cool building. It'd be a great world under glass. And with the LCD sequences, it'd make great integration and a top-ten game. Period. The end. Shit, that was one minute exactly. All right, cool. What do you got, Ian? You want me to go? Yeah. I'm so sticky because of this fucking Kool-Aid you call liquor. It is Kool-Aid, kids. All right. Starting now, I got the Blues Brothers. And you might think to yourself, easy loss. Nobody wants the Blues Brothers as a dream team. Well, you know what? Digging into it and getting to the soul of this game, I realize it could be an awesome pinball machine. All right. Think about the plot here, all right? So Jake and Elwood, they need $5,000 to reopen their orphanage that they grew up in. Okay? And how are they going to do it? They got to get the band back together again. All right? So right there, I just threw out two of the biggest modes you could have. First mode, get the band back together. Right? With all the call-outs, with all the music. Don't say anything, Drew, because it's not your turn, mother fucker. Nope. And then, you know, they have to get the band back together. They've got to get to 5,000. There's a car chase with the cops to get the money back in time. Mission from God. We're on a mission from God. multiball. It's happening. And I think it's going to be a fantastic game. That's time. All right. That was really hard for a minute, but I had a lot I wanted to talk about. All right. Albert? It's all you, brother. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love Die Hard. I love the Bruce Brothers, the Blues Brothers. Yeah, they're fine. But let's be honest. If you think of any arcade game on the planet, the most iconic game to this day, it isn't fucking Batman. It isn't Spider-Man. It isn't even Pac-Man. And it definitely is not Galaga. And I love Galaga. it's Donkey Mother Fucking Kong this game has stood the test of time and even movies about King Kong which is basically a reference to Donkey Kong according to Wikipedia which I checked it has stood the test of time so my bro Mr. Jack Black who is a huge pinball supporter was in the 2005 movie and he killed it the only parts of the movie that were even watchable I think it was like 3 hours It should have been edited to like an hour and a half. Sorry, Jack Black. But the only watchable parts were the ones with Jack Black in it. And if you got Jack Black, a huge pinball nerd who loves Pat Lawler, he has Jablinski Games on YouTube. He loves pinball. He's always showcasing pinball. We're cutting you off. That's a minute. If you got him to do the call-outs, it would be an awesome game. That's a minute and a half. All right. Okay. You can talk. You have the gift of gab, man. You kissed the blinding stone. I have 60 seconds to talk about why Donkey Kong and Blues Brothers suck ass. Can we get a rebuttal? You can. You can do it every once. Should we do a third round? Sure. A rebuttal round? You ready? Yeah. We can do it every once. Okay, ready? We're just doing this as we go. Donkey Kong. He's an overweight monkey throwing barrels at a stereotype. Yawn. He doesn't talk. Call outs. Think about it. They're non-existent. They're terrible. People talk about 8-bit wonder sound effects. They never talk about Donkey Kong. That's not what it's about. He's a one-trick pony. Boring, boring, boring. Blues Brothers. Two amazing actors, admittedly, in one amazingly bad movie. It's cheesy. Not in a good way. Very forgettable. Backglass would be very iconic. I admit that. Backglass? Yeah. You would have the Blues Brothers on there, but it would be a cool piece of art. It's simply unplayable. Why don't you just buy a Magic Girl from J-Pop and call it a day? Done. Shit, 42 seconds even. Damn, what? Right in front of the cut. I didn't even do notes for the rebuttal. You're a mean bastard. You're a mean bastard. All right, all right, all right. My rebuttal. Okay, here we go. You want to get a rebuttal? It's my turn, and then it'll go your turn, Albert. Okay. I'm going to write more notes. Let's do it. Yeah, you got some time. Okay, here with Donkey Kong and Dire. Here's the thing. The two Ds that nobody gives a fuck about. All right. So Donkey Kong, yeah, great game. Back in like 82, that wasn't even Mario's best game. Everyone knows what it is. I don't think it's going to hold up. There's not enough there. There's not enough for deep rule sets. I'm sorry, it's done. Die Hard. I admit, it's one of my favorite movies. But do I think about the Nakatomi Towers being four inches tall so they can fit underneath the glass? What world under glass are you living in? You know what you're going to have under that glass? You're going to have maybe the bathroom, maybe some office cubicles. But for cats, there's nothing World Under Glass about that movie that you're going to be able to pull into a pinball machine. It's unplayable in that sense. Yeah, the call-outs are great. The video clips, if you could ever get them, yeah, that'd be good too. But yeah, there's no World Under Glass because you can't do a fucking skyscraper under the pinball machine. Alright, I'm done. That was two seconds over. Good rebuttal. Alright. What do you got, Albert? Toast it. Roll fest. So here's the thing. I love Dan Aykroyd and both of the Belushi brothers, but when they were taping the Blues Brothers, I wasn't even a sperm yet in my dad's penis. I'm serious. This movie came out in 1980, and I wasn't born until July 30th of 1980, so it's past its prime. Although, here's the weird part. When I was taking a look at this, apparently Dan Aykroyd, even though he wrote the entire movie, start to front, including all of the commentary, like all of the speech, the language in it, he was only paid half as much as Belushi. Which is like, that's crazy. Because this guy was like a coke fiend at the time. So anyways, yeah, not going to happen. And this is all I have to say, is that if anyone on the planet wanted to see a Blues Brothers game, it would be me, because I used to be part of a Rogers television show called the Brews Brothers, and it would be the easiest homebrew switchover of my life. All right. Now, as far as Die Hard goes, it might be Die Soft, because honestly, it's comedy for people who don't know funny, and it's fucking tuning for people who haven't seen Rambo, and then it's a movie for people who are evil. Edit. Time. Time. Zip. You're rambling, man. You only had one minute, bro. None of that diehard stuff went in, so you just hurt me. Well, I called it die soft. Die soft. Got it. All good. I love it. All right, here comes our rebuttals. Drew, here you go, brother. What am I doing now? You're doing the rebuttal of the rebuttal. So why I think you were wrong about yours. Yeah, just defend it one more time. Okay? Yeah. So your idea about four-inch buildings, you could have the top of the building. You know, you could have the bottom of the building. You don't need the whole building. I mean, you do only have so much room. That's just the way pinball machines work. Oh, shit. I mean, Jesus Christ. But just the call-outs alone and, you know, the action sequences, I mean, you're way off base. So your whole thing, and you said yourself, that has one of your favorite action movies of all time. Done deal. Why wouldn't you want this as a pinball machine? Boom. Anything else? Nope. No rebuttals? You're just going to rebuttal mine? Boom. I guess Elbert didn't make funny. What? I'm sorry. What did I do? All you did with Drew is call him die soft. Don't worry. It's done. Okay, Bruce Willis peaked at Pulp Fiction. People who say Die Hard is his best film are just wrong. But Die Hard is still awesome, and I will still watch it every year. And I'd probably buy it if it was a pinball machine. Okay. Rebut. Here's my rebut. My rebutal. Rebut. I'm rebuting. Okay, so, Blues Brothers. Yeah, it's a little out of left field, But you know what? You guys have not come up with a good argument why it won't work. It literally has the plot of the movie in the game in mode-based form. You can go right through it. Everything you guys said, totally wrong because it works. It just does. Yeah, it's older, okay? I don't care if you wear the sperm in your dad's dick, which is not where the sperm goes, buddy. But I will say this. Your dad should probably go to the doctor and check that out. It worked, though. What was I? No, end of the story. Yeah, it's older, but a lot of the classics are older, and Munsters is definitely older than your dad, your sperm, or whatever, whatever we're talking about. I'll just say this. I win. There's no, your four-inch penis slash tower isn't going to work here today, Drew. Man, that's a minute. Hey. My wife says four inches is plenty enough, thank you very much. All right. My wife is a saint. Albert, you have one minute to make sure that Donkey Kong wins this, okay? Ready, set, go. I don't want Donkey Kong to win. I'd rather Die Hard. I freaking love Die Hard. It was one of my favorite movies forever. Your rebuttal was terrible. Yeah. If we had to do Donkey Kong, can we at least have, You guys know Dwight Sullivan's Champion Pub, basically his best game ever? Yeah, Champion Pub, best game ever. Yeah, Champion Pub, Dwight Sullivan's best game ever. Widely known on Pinside, of course. Good game. His best game, he's got the jump rope guy where you press the flipper button. That's fucking cool. It is cool. It is cool as fuck. Now imagine if you have a fat-ass motherfucking Donkey Kong over in the top left corner, and you get into this mode where this bitch has to jump these fucking barrels coming down, and, like, you've got to press your flipper, and then they start getting faster and faster, and you get close to Donkey Kong. Donkey Kong, and it gets Donkey Kong. I don't know where we are anymore. I love it. Is that time? No, he's got time to talk more. I don't need any more time, but I was going to say that. Fucking, it's not banana. And it is a half-capped berry, Berliner Jim Weisz, which is a German style. It's made with lactobacillus, so it doesn't actually follow the German purity law. we talked about earlier, but it's a 4.5% beer from Tata Magoosh Brewing Company in Nova Scotia, and when Drew and Ian come to hang out with me here on the homestead and play some pinball, I am fucking bringing them to get the monster... Basically, they give you one, like, quarter pint of all 14 of their beers. It's called, you know, like, the Giant Ladder. I'm bringing you guys to Tata Magoosh to do the Giant Ladder with me, and you're going to drink some of this wonderful beer. Yeah, bring your yogurt beer or whatever that lactobacillus, acetophilus beer you got. Hey, if you add it to dairy, it becomes kefir, but that is a different story, or kombucha if you add it to water. Kombucha, now you're talking hipster. I don't know who you are, sir. I've got like nine kombuchas brewing right here, man. I believe you do. I believe you do. Let's wrap this up with some mailbag. How is that? Because this thing. All right, so guys, that was our. Dream team off. Dream team off. It was awesome. That was so much fun. Albert, that was so cool because that was the first one we completed with, like, a little bit of notes and kind of. We did all right. Yeah. Yeah, I think it was good. It was fun. I'm not going to lie. Die Hard. So we all agree Die Hard might be the best theme. Nope. And actually, honestly. It couldn't work in pinball form. I think Donkey Kong would be a cool theme, actually, for pinball. I would say Die Hard would work better in the Multimorphic with the. It would. With that height. The height. Oh, my God. Yeah, with that crane back. So what we're going to do, we're going to put this up on Facebook. You guys just vote for who had the best argument, not necessarily the best game. There will be the three on there, and we'll see what happens. Perfect. Thank you. So, awesome. So we've got a couple of mailbag items. Are you ready for this, Ian? Yes. Ready for this, Albert? You're born ready. I'm ready for the mailbag. Not fucking banana. Here's the thing. I'm not going to lie to you guys. I've got one email in two years of doing this, so I'm very jealous. Whenever I hear, like, any of the other pinball podcasts do mailbagging, I'm like, this is cool. I like it. Seriously? Only one? Well, no, no. I get, like, Facebook messages and stuff. Oh, okay. From time to time I'll be like, hey, send a message to blah, blah, blah Gmail. And, like, no one does. Everyone, are you guys like me? Like, 90% of your messages come in through Facebook? Not really. We're okay on our emails. We're probably. You guys are a real podcast. People email you. That's bullshit. Yeah, that's bullshit. We're by far the least podcasty of all the podcasts. Yeah. Ask any other podcaster and they'll be like. Up to top 40. Yeah, the top 40. We're like number 40. Okay. So, we have. But we do have a couple people that like us. So, here we go. Ian and Drew, I had to drive down to Florida and discovered your podcast. Fantastic. You guys sound like you're having a great time. I started with the latest episode and went back and listened to the first 10 episodes. You poor bastard. Now I'll alternate old and new. One thing you guys mentioned a few times, pinball prices on older machines. Well, about two years ago when I got into the hobby, I also started a website, pinballprices.com, because except for Boston Pinball site, there were no good guides. I have verified records on over 1,000 titles covering almost 4,000 sales. It covers Pinside, eBay, you know, on and on and on. Back to my gin and tonic. Thanks again, Doc Finlay. So Doc Finlay of pinballprices.com. Thanks for writing in, man. He sent us a few, so we appreciate that. and go check out pinballprices.com. I was on that site. It's kind of cool. It's very cool, and you know what? I probably should have followed the advice because I was able to track whitewater sales. Beginning of the year, they tend to be below $5,000. By the end of the year, they track closer to $7,000. Sure. So it evens out to about $5,000. How do you suspect that is? Why is that? tax returns, different things Christmas I always find it though I think fall tends to be the best time to sell your machine just in general that's my own life even when I was selling arcade machines like when summer was running a little short in time that was when I was getting the most money from my games so go to this pinballprices.com it's kind of cool And you can look at your game, and you can see, you can basically. It'll show, like, all the sales for the last couple of years. Yeah, you can deduce when the best time to sell your game is to maximize your profits. Yep, you click on it. I was about to put my Roller Coaster Tycoon for sale, but you're saying I might want to wait until, like, September, October to get a little more. Check the website. 10% more or something. Yeah, let's do it right now. What was it? The Roller Coaster Tycoon, right? Yeah, like, early 2000s, roller coaster tycoon. I'm guessing American, the average is like $2,800. I don't know. Roller coaster tycoon. Here we go. So the average in 2019, the average selling price was $3,059. Oh, my God. And how much is that Canadian? Can I ask Google here if you don't mind? I don't care. Just edit this out. You'll edit it out. No, no, no. It's okay. But you're going to love this. The 2020 average so far this year, $3,600. It's going up. 2018 2018 it was 29.47 so it was trending up roller coaster tycoon is hot baby hot hot hot well here's what I call roller coaster tycoon the poor man's and I said this actually of course your podcast was already out but you know I stole the name I called it the poor man's Willy Wonka because if you look at the shots on roller coaster Tycoon. It's got the exact same four flippers and almost the same placements. I'd rather have it with a one-up. Pat Lawler's been known to say many times he was kind of upset that, you know, Roller Coaster Tycoon didn't go down as being a really exciting, fun game. People didn't like it as much as they thought they would. The biggest issue with Roller Coaster Tycoon is you can time out all of the modes. So if you wanted to, you could actually get to Wizard Mode in 13 shots and probably, I think I've got to Wizard Mode in without timing out, I've done it just under four minutes. so it's actually the easiest wizard mode on the planet so people hate for competition play as well as for home play because it gets to the end very soon so with a code update that game might be fantastic yeah if you're listening it would be super rad I don't think it's going to happen I played it once what I try to do is I try to get to wizard mode twice on ball one without extra balls that's entertaining I also try to get to wizard mode three times with no extra balls by the third ball That's also fun. I can't do anything without extra balls. And then I also never, ever, ever time out the modes because I believe it's kind of a jerk move when you're in a tournament, especially if that tournament is being live-streamed on Twitch. It's a jerk move to time out modes. I'm sorry. You heard it here. Hot take. But time out modes. I'm sorry. He's calling you out, Ian Howard. Especially on live stream. That's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying. Oh, I love it. Okay. Let me get through the rest of these, okay? Yeah, go for it. Drew, go for it. Wowzers. Wasn't expecting that, but thanks. It's amazing. Someone actually checked the bottom of the barrel and scraped me off. I have to record a drunk podcast episode with Jeff Teolis and Martin tomorrow, but I promise I won't listen to it. That was from Dr. John because we made him a tribe member last week. He's number 25, and he was really happy about it. Yeah, he's just fun. He sends us lots of cool messages, and we love him. Dr. John's awesome. Yes. And Emily. Yes. Great live stream. Really nice guy. huge awesome pinball promoter he goes on to say looking forward to the invites we're inviting them to our uh poor man's tribe which he will be invited to shortly don't tell anybody albert uh hope it's full of inappropriate posts and general debauchery it is it is like there's stuff on there yeah people don't post on their regular stuff and they post it there we're like Okay. There is a cock in there. What? Yeah. What? Don't worry. You'll see it. You'll see it. You'll have to become a tribe member. Don't worry. All right. Here we go. True. We have a special giveaway. What? We're finally going to do a giveaway. We have all these great sponsors now. One of our awesome sponsors is Flip N Out Pinball. And Mr. Zach Mennie has agreed to give us a Stern shaker motor. So we are doing a Stern Shaker Motor giveaway. Isn't that cool? That'd be cool, man. Thank you, Zach. That's Zach. Flip N Out Pinball. You can email Zach, Z-A-C-H, at Flip N Out Pinball, or call 812-457-9711. Beautiful. The Shaker Motor giveaway. So what we're going to do. The Stern Shaker. Yep, a Stern Shaker Motor. It's from Flip N Out Pinball and your friends, Drew and Ian, at the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast. We love you. The rules are simple. Write us a paragraph, maybe two, no longer than that. So two paragraphs max, maybe 100 words, 200 words, whatever it is. Keep it a paragraph. Keep it short. Why you should be considered for our awesome tribe membership. Okay. Ian here again. I just wanted to say, unclarified, that this is the stern shaker motor for the spike system. So I'm sorry, Orbital Albert. Roller Coaster Tycoon doesn't quite make the cut. I think anything post The Walking Dead, which I believe was the last Sam System game, anything post that, this is a shaker motor that will work in your game. So if you have a Spike System Stern, this is what this shaker motor is for. And I'll put more details on our Facebook page. So thanks. Bye. I know what you're thinking. Now we've got 26 tribe members with Mr. Orbital Albert here. What about the guys that are already in, right? Okay, you guys can write us why you should keep your membership because you're hanging on the fence. We might kick you out. You never know. We can do whatever we want because through the fucking pirate. Yeah, I love it. So for all you listeners out there who are now part of our awesome poor man's pinball tribe, tell us why you should be in. We will read these on a future episode. if you're already in the tribe tell us what you're going to do to keep your membership because frankly you guys aren't doing enough what? this isn't like Costco no Albert see you wanted to be part of this you're in buddy you're joining the ranks you have no fucking say anymore buddy so it is the middle of May we're going to put a deadline on this of the 29th of May of this year. So you got a couple weeks. So you got about two weeks. Figure it out. Write your paragraph. Send an email. Poormanspinball.gmail.com We will be putting this on the air. Yes. We are going to be reading these. So, you know, make sure it's, you know, your grandma would approve. I don't give a shit if she approves. Nah, your grandma doesn't listen. Your wife probably doesn't listen. Nobody listens. Your wife is probably judging you for listening to this shit. Poormanspinball.gmail.com Write us a paragraph. Yep. why you should be in the tribe. Yep. And we will read these on the air in a June episode, and we will give away a shaker motor to the one that we deem is the best. A stern shaker motor. Come on, guys. A stern shaker motor. It's fucking free. A fucking shaker motor. Thanks for that. A paragraph. Looking out pinball. Yeah, just write a paragraph. That's it. So, you know, while you're at it, what does it take to be a tribe member? Like us on Facebook. Some other shit. Like us on Facebook. It's been a long time. No, no, no. Like us on Facebook, send us an email, and promote our product. Yeah. Other than that, the fourth pillar fell down. We're at the fifth pillar. It's still secret. And that's it. Okay? Boom. Done. So there you go. Love it. This is our first giveaway. First giveaway. We got a lot. Yeah. We have some more in the pipeline, too. We got a lot of things to give away. I love it. So there you go. All right. So for a Stern Shaker Motor. That's cool. Get excited. That's cool. All right. Orbital Albert, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, sir. Oh, my God. It was, honestly, the best Monday night of my life, maybe. Like, I had a great time chatting with you guys. I can't wait to hang out. I'm going to be probably writing my paragraph tonight because that roller coaster tycoon, I have an actual roller coaster. Like, you know, it's not a real roller coaster humans can ride. But, you know, I have one of those little K'nex roller coasters as a topper on my roller coaster tycoon. Can you imagine those little fucking Fraggle Rock heads just shaking around when the shaker motor turns on. I'm going to be writing you guys a paragraph, like, right now. Do it. Thanks for having me on the show. I really appreciate it. I can't wait until it comes out. And for now on, I'm not called Orville Elbert. I'm only known as 26. Oh, I love it. I remember number 26. That is fantastic. Guys, do not forget. Buy our shit. Silverballswag.com for the best. Oh, my God. Poor man's merchandise. Franchi. T-shirts. Franchi art on t-shirts. We also have hoodies. Come on. Do it. SilverBallSwag.com. Tell Will that we sent you. There's no discount. Buy our shit. Give us money. We love it. Great shit. Buy it. Orbital Albert, where can they find you? Tribe member number 26. Where can they find you? What do you got going on? What's in the hopper? I know you mentioned it earlier, but tell us about the Pinball Network. Tell us about your podcast that you do on a weekly basis, multiple times a week. Tell us all that good stuff. man. So if you type pinball nerds podcast into Google, you'll find it on your favorite pin catcher or whatever the fuck that's called. Uh, your favorite RSS, whatever that is. I know I'm on Google, Apple, whatever that other stuff is. It's on there. Don't expect much because the poor man's pinball podcast, Ian and Drew, these guys are motherfucking professionals. Okay. Can I get one more? They make an incredible podcast. You know what the difference is between a podcast and a blog. No, let's out. An audio blog is where I just talk about whatever the fuck's going on in pinball and me playing a tournament or whatever and I don't have any sponsors. I don't do any editing. You're going to hear lots of ums, lots of yas. Basically, if you've listened to every single solitary episode of every pinball podcast out there and you're still bored, I'll be your fifth favorite pinball podcast. Come over and listen to me rant and rave. sometimes I'm in a good mood sometimes I'm not but usually I am I try not to be a Debbie Downer wherever possible he's good shit people can I get one more fuck fuck shit so I can pair it with some audio of you saying we swear too much please please orbital Albert for those listeners who don't know I was in a bad place in my life I chose to be my own real estate agent for a company called Purple Bricks in Canada so I was fielding like 50 calls per week I was renovating my house myself I was a plumber an electrician a fucking drywaller a goddamn roofer a gardener I did was was renovating my house well being my own real estate agent well being a stay-at-home dad well being a minimalist like I run a tea company called anger alpaca I was what does this have to do with you not and then liking us swearing please get to that and then the poor man's pitbull podcast come out and I'm like these guys are swearing like nine times per minute. These are the guys in high school who I would like fight with at the first party we partied at and then the next party we'd be best friends. To be fair, he was one of the first people to message us. He's like, I like your show, but you guys swear a little too much. He actually said that. He broke it down. Yeah. Which is great. Where's per minute? Yeah. Who fucks per minute? They've gone way down. Pretty awesome. We've gone down. I want to see that go way up. Fuck, fuck, shit. We are who we are. That's what it is, man. I love it. We're going to party someday. I don't care if it's in the tournament or not. I don't care if we're just at replay. I don't care if I get to come hang out with you guys and record and play some pinball. We're going to hang out, and I swear to God, it's going to be like the best night of my life. It'll be fun. Yeah, it will be fun. I can't wait for that, Albert. Albert, thank you so much. Side number number 26, thank you for hanging out with us for these couple of hours. This is going to be a great show. We had to edit out some shit because it was so much fun talking to Albert. there's not much more to say. It was just good to talk. It was fun. Thanks, Albert. Shut it down. Shut it down. Shut it down. We're fucking done. Guys, send us that paragraph. Yes, poor man's pinball, gmail.com. I'll give you two fucking weeks, and that's it. Dos. Paragraph, get a shaker motor from... Flip N Out Pinball. Thank you, Drew. Love it. Flip N Out Pinball. Also, emails, poormanspinball at gmail.com. Like us on Facebook, the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast. Anything else? What are we going to do? Don't forget about Penn Stadium. Don't forget about Penn Shades. We love them. Absolutely, we love them. We're trying to support all the little guys. You should, too. Fucking let's get crazy. We love you. Orbital Albert, pinball extraordinaire, tribe member number 26, the beard. Thank you very much again. Thanks, Albert. Have a good night, boys, and I'll see you at Pemberg 2021. You will, sir. The opinions expressed on this show do not necessarily reflect that of the show's sponsor. I wonder what you got in the bowl What's inside the bowl, girl? I always want more I always wanted to know what kind of book... I always wanted to know what kind of book...