Greetings, Spooky Pinball Podcast listeners, and welcome to episode 131, the February 1st edition of the Spooky Pinball Podcast, and if you haven't heard the news, the last episode of the Spooky Pinball Podcast. Wait, what? I did not agree to this. What's going on? I forgot to tell you about it. I'm sorry. All right. But I'm done. Darn kids. Noah, you said Christopher Franchi announced this. Yeah, the Super Awesome Pinball Show, actually. We kind of leaked it to... I talk to Chris every once in a while. He asked me to come back again, which is strange, because why would you do that? I'm me. there's better people what have you been up to in between episodes uh anyway um yeah man it's and you know what it's more important than uh this being the last episode of and i'm not saying we'll never do this again if we have a reason to do it again we'll do it but the last regular episode of the spooky pinball podcast it's been 11 years but february 1st 2021 is our eighth anniversary of the day that we actually started spooky pinball the company uh in case you haven't noticed it's not what it was eight years ago it's gotten a lot bigger and a lot harder to manage it's it's a lot more time consuming right yeah more production uh game play tester guy over eight years uh i have gained responsibilities when we started some of which take a lot of time six i was six years old there's uh i remember i sent you a foot a picture it was a screenshot or whatever of us in the ben heck show and i don't know if that would have been in the first couple years we did the podcast it probably was but yeah it was a long time ago i was a wee lad That would have probably been about the third year. Okay. So the third, three years in on the Spooky Pinball podcast is when Spooky Pinball, the company, began. That's when we started to get to know Ben. And, yeah, so 131 consecutive episodes. We technically missed 11 straight years, the first of the month, every month by one month. But enough. We're having a hard time finding time to squeak all this stuff in anymore. To be quite frank and honest, we've... It's hard to do a pinball podcast when you don't review other people's stuff. It's really hard. Like every other podcast. We're in a very awkward position where a lot of the things we say could get us in trouble. And that's just being honest that when we get on here and if we have to talk about everything, we have to be very careful as to what we say all the time and there's a lot of people out there who don't they can talk completely freely of everything in the pinball industry and that's a little bit trickier for us that's not to say we won't still give our opinions and talk about things but it's it's an awkward position for us anymore especially when there isn't enough going on that we can go to shows to get interviews and talk to people and announcements everything is from home and it's very well covered by people who quite frankly are a lot better at podcasting yeah and you know even in the early days of spooky pinball we made it a point that you're going to find if you go back through all the episodes and they're all they're still out there they're going to be there you're going to find very little well this sucks we don't like that game it just that's not us it's pinball is fun people it's it's all subjective art is subjective Rules are subjective. Losing my voice. Playfield layouts are subjective. What you like, somebody else may not. So, you know, our advice has always been to those who always say, well, is this game better than this game? Play it for yourself. Always, always, always. And I know a lot of other podcasts say that, but let's face it. When we started this podcast, there were no pinball podcasts. You were technically the first, right? No. No? No, no. No, there were podcasts before Spooky Pinball. Sorry. But at the time I started, the three or four that had existed, and some did a great job. Joshua Clay Harrell, great job. This old pinball. Those podcasts are great with some industry legends. Some of them aren't here anymore. And definitely, thank goodness, those have been preserved forever. And Rob and Steve on the Silver Ball Podcast was a blast. We've had Rob. We had those guys actually come back out of retirement on our podcast for a while there. So pinball podcasting has legitimately probably been around for about 20 years now then, hasn't it? Yeah. Early 2000s? Yeah. Like, oh, three. That's a fairly accurate assessment. Probably, yeah. It's almost 20 years of pinball podcasts that everybody can go back and listen to. I'll hold my notes up for a minute here because I'm very absent-minded. But yeah, when we started this, there was nobody doing pinball podcasting at the time. And we've been fortunate enough to have literally everybody in pinball that's important to all of us and all of you. And today, come on, it's everywhere. Everybody's got a podcast. And for us to sit back, be polite, only talk about spooky stuff, and we don't, like I've honestly said on the show. I've got the new Elvira game in our basement. Love it. Greg is and always will be a good friend of ours. Dennis is still a great designer and doing all that kind of stuff. We've got a Guns N' Roses downstairs in the lunchroom that we play with the minions after work on Thursday nights, and it's a blast. There's a lot of good games out there, and it's been a really wonderful time to see, especially in the last year or two years, watching all these companies pumping out games. Because when we started this podcast, it was hanging by a thread. There wasn't a lot of games coming out. There was only one company, and they were struggling. so the first few years of the podcast was heavily lifted by jersey jack being new at the time jersey jack announced he was going to be a pinball company on our podcast Steve Ritchie that's wild Steve Ritchie announced he was coming back to pinball on this podcast so yeah i mean we've we've been around a long time showing the highlight reels but let me run down my notes here just to make sure i'm not missing anything um our announcement duh we announced three years in two companies were announced on this podcast yeah uh and there might have been a couple others but we're not going to talk about them they didn't go so well uh anyway yeah we announced on this podcast that i was quitting my day job to to go do this um you know so what does this all mean going forward we're going to do uh more video content. We've been struggling to find time to do a lot of that stuff with everything else going on and the company expanding and we're expanding again, adding on to the building that we've been in for six months. Jeez, what took us so long to grow again? And we're looking to do a lot of really cool things coming up here in the next year. We're looking to expand even more. We want to get more games out the door. We want to be faster, stronger. Right behind us here on The door is a whole list of things that we're improving on. Because it's important to us to not only be this great little family pinball company, we want to be as good as everybody else. If I'm being honest, we're close. We're getting there. We've gotten a lot better, but we know we've got some growing to do, and we're going to do it. And as far as just in general us ending the podcast, this isn't a never ever again will we ever kind of thing. This is a the monthly schedule of your guaranteed monthly schedule for us in the first is we ending that Yep We will still come back here and there for things that we can deem important enough to sit down and talk about for 45 minutes to an hour Like when we release a new game yeah we probably going to sit down and talk about that for an hour and throw it out there But there's just not enough for us to talk about as of lately. and we're much more in favor of going to a video format where instead of us talking about our top five favorite this and that, we can actually show you like, hey, here's how we go through test menus on the line or here's everything in the new code update and what to expect. And that is very much so what we're in favor of going into. Little things that every pinball fan should know, like how to adjust switches and cleaning your game, changing rubbers, just all that little stuff. Even just basic mode explanations, tutorials. Keep an eye out for that stuff because that's what we're moving to instead of the audio format. We want to throw more rules explanation videos out there and just everything that Bug's talking about. And hopefully it's going to be more him than me because I have a weird voice and a face made for radio. So look at that hair. I mean, come on. That's the face of the company. They're listening. They can't see. Well, this is both. If you're listening at home, yeah, you should probably jump on YouTube when this comes out, and it's going to be whenever this comes out. And keep an eye on YouTube in general, because that's where you're going to start seeing more of the updates. And more and more, everybody kind of seems to be going that direction regardless, so it just makes sense. Plus, it's so much easier to help people with pinball and show them tutorials and adjustments and little things like that in that way than to try to explain it to them. And apologies for the episode last month. Apparently it had a hard time getting to Apple or iTunes. It's still having a hard time getting to iTunes. Yeah, we received a bunch of emails about it. We knew. We made sure it was available elsewhere. But yeah, I don't know what to do about that. We had to go in and clean up a bunch of stuff on our website, and I don't know how the link got broke. But haven't found a way to fix it yet, and we're working with the host to figure that out. Yeah. We'll do the best we can. but uh moving forward uh on the audio side we'll take a quick break here and we'll head over to the em dungeon and be right back but on the video side we're going to keep rolling so and thank you james thank you so much for all the hard work that you've put into the em dungeon sorry you didn't quite get to 100 episodes but uh we appreciate everything uh that you've done for spooky pinball and you and your wife carol are wonderful and it's uh we're lucky to to have you a part of all this so thank you we hope to see you guys soon yeah somewhere hope to see everyone soon moving you got your list so yeah so we're staying on the video side here bugs already cut on the audio side um this is just a list of guests that we've had on the spooky pinball podcast i made it simple for pinball everyone we've had literally everybody i mean all the famous designers all the artists all the programmers, all the company owners, Jack, Gary, you name it. They've all been on here. Probably each designer at every company they've worked for so far. Yeah. But for the more famous people from outside of Pinball that we've been lucky enough to have on the show, Sid Haig, Captain Spaulding. Did an interview with him after we got done recording all the speech for Rob Zombie. Bill Mosley at a show. Did some great Rudy from Funhaus impressions because he apparently loves that game because it's strange and weird, and so is everything that Bill does. We've had Rob Zombie on the show. I don't know how we never had Alice Cooper on the show. We literally stayed with him. We could have. He was busy watching. It's kind of weird to just pull that out when you're sitting on the couch watching League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with Alice Cooper. You don't want to go, hey, you want to do an interview? No. Rob Zombie, Matt “Count D” Montgomery, Piggy D, who did the music, and Allison may be doing more with us here not too distant future. Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, two times. We had her on the show. Butch, Eddie Munster, Patrick. Sam Jones from Flash Gordon and Ted. We caught him late at night at Texas Pinball, and man was he having a good time when he did that interview. So go back and check that out. He doesn't remember the interview. We've had Ed Ed Robertson from Barenaked Ladies several times. and Sven Gulli, we've interviewed him. The first time we got to work with Sven Gulli, Rich, at Pinball Life Open House, it was a few years ago. We interviewed him, and yeah, he's a great dude. And of course, big Todd McCulloch, NBA star, you know. Now a pinball star. The man's great in tournaments, right? Who was the first big-name interview you ever got on the show? Outside of pinball, like somebody... The big name outside of pinball, the first one was Elvira. I think that was like the 15th episode in. Gotcha. We managed to snag her. Because I know you didn't get an interview, but Matt Kinseth, NASCAR driver, Matt Kinseth, did an intro at one point. I don't remember when. Matt actually has been on the show. So, yeah. I mean, that's just some of the names that we've had on over the years. And it was a lot for a small podcast from Benton to get any of those people. It was just super lucky. going back to the early days this is you know i don't know if you were at these or not we did some pretty wild and crazy stuff at expo pinball expo we used to do expo was always really weird when i was little for some reason probably for a good reason yeah uh we had t-shirt cannons and we'd fire off ping pong balls all over the room and and do all these crazy game shows and have Ben Heck dress up as Sean Connery, and he would do Alex Trebek, you know, that's not what your brother said last night, Alex. Just all kinds of crazy stuff that we used to do back then. I was lucky enough to moderate a panel with Cassandra Peterson and Greg and Dennis at Texas Pinball Festival to talk about the future game that was coming out, and whoever thought that I would, you know, Literally getting to sit on a panel with those three was an absolute honor. And again, all because of the Spooky Pinball podcast that never would have happened without the show. I will never make that mistake again. Outside of that, I mean, the podcast leading to the company and just people passionate and wanting to do more with pinball has gotten us to Japan. We spent 10 days in Tokyo doing some just amazing things that we never dreamed we'd get a chance to do. We got to stay in Hawaii at Ellis' manager's house. I've told that story before. I'd never been to California. We got to go there, all because of pinball. Texas, more times than I can count at this point. It's been phenomenal. Debuting Total Nuclear Annihilation at Ed Robertson house that I didn't get to go because I didn't have my passport in time. but you know scott and jack danger got to go up there and set up a game in ed's house and debut the game the first production game we surprised everybody you know didn't tell them where we're going to production and uh just let's keep going down the list here how many times have you been backstage at a rob zombie concert my son twice yes you remember the first time yeah what was extra special and cool about that about the first time yeah i fanboyed out in front of his wife yes but what else was happening at the concert what else was happening at the concert there were multiple haunted houses at the oh yeah yeah yeah he uh his haunted house attraction show was man that was a while ago yeah his haunted house attraction was at the the first concert we went to where it was three consecutive houses and that year it was 31 was just coming out so that was one of them. Devil's Rejects was another one, and the other one was Captain Spaulding's Playhouse or something along those lines. But yeah, I remember... There's a lot of vulgar things about those that I remember that I can't talk about. Yeah but that was honestly the first time we got to hang out with Rob and not only did we get access and get to watch the check and everything else but we got basically led right through the haunted houses you know by the security and everything it was the best thing that came out of that was meeting piggy though yeah absolutely for sure because it meant we got him to do alice cooper and who knows what else who knows what else hint hint but yeah that's definitely the best thing that came out of that in my opinion was meeting matt and oh for sure growing that relationship how many times have you met alice cooper backstage two backstage three it was twice okay twice yes but we've met i don't you met him multiple times yes you're making me look horrible you got to meet him at days of the dead and then we were backstage at at davenport was the first time that's when we did the photo shoot and any of the promo material that you see yeah that's where we did that. Then we got to deliver Alice's game to his home and stay there for 24 hours, immediately followed by a trip to Los Angeles where we got to go to Monsterpalooza and do a studio tour that we can't even talk about and a bunch of other cool stuff. And then at Dubuque, he was literally playing... 20 minutes from our home. That's when we found out that the entire stage had been changed and it was changed to Nightmare Castle. The stage show. The stage show. So, yeah, to me, that's still, like, the biggest honor we've had, is to see this kind of become reality. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I want to thank some of the people that have just helped us over the years with segments and all kinds of crazy weirdness. I hope you have a lot of time, because there's been a lot of people. first and foremost uh on the list of our friends that are just goofy enough to help us out brian kelly do you remember actually taking over for brian kelly and on his yeah i was really little at the time and we would censor it out and everybody was really concerned that i was swearing in the podcast but in reality i was saying fork and ship fork and ship with a p and then i would beep it and it would sound like the young man was saying other things and then and I'd get angry emails about what a terrible paranoid. Ashes. Yes. Our accountant, Heather, who still is, used to do a segment called Heather's Tax Tips for Pinball Guys that was extremely suggestive and funny. I don't remember that at all. I have no recollection. That's probably for the best. Don't go back and listen to them. Ben Heck's been on the show more times than I can count. You should thank Squirrel Morgan. She actually started commercials. She was our original commercial writer. She used to do all the early, early commercials. She wrote those out. And then she would recruit her friends and you and everybody else to do parts and bits in the commercials. You should thank your wife for being your co-host from the start. I was a little too young to be doing it. It took, I think it was less than six episodes for me to realize I needed somebody to talk to. So your mom got volunteered. Danny and Dave Peck, of course. For the awesome gameplay explanations and everything that they've been doing. and just love those guys. Dave is our distributor down in New Zealand, and the fact that we actually have games in New Zealand is still kind of a mind-blower. Like, how'd that happen? But a lot of work that Danny and Dave put into those segments, so thank you. There's a person behind the camera right now who is the reason you can see us on a camera right now that we would, of course, like to thank. Bunyip, David David Van Es, he's made all of this basically possible and happened for us because we don't know what we're doing. Yeah. And he's been on mic and camera multiple times with us, too, so you know who he is. James Willing, of course, with the EM Dungeon, as we mentioned earlier. Joe Newhart from Pinball Star Amusements, who helped us do so much over the years with interviews and stuff. KP, Chris, at Kingpin Games, who donated the soundboard and stuff that everything's running through to help out the podcast and is our service tech. And you're never getting fired, Chris, so stop trying. Terry from Pinball Life, of course, for being our one and only sponsor. Yes. Not quite the full 11 years, but pretty damn close to the whole run. He jumped in early, and he stuck with us through the whole thing. And we'll talk about shortly what Terry's giving away, which is something pretty special. We can't even show it on camera, but we'll talk about it. I can't even give you a link because it's not even out yet, and somebody's going to get two of them, and it's going to be pretty cool. Jack Danger has come over and streamed games with us I don't know how many times and been on the podcast several times. Always a joy to hang out with Jack. Scott Denisey, of course, and everybody in that circle from Doug to Jay to Dino. I mean, I always feel like I'm going to leave somebody out here. You're definitely going to in this instance because this show has seen a lot of faces. Yeah. Brian Millard, Jesse Bonesack, all those guys from Minnesota, all our friends up there. Getting a little choked up. Half the friends I have in this world are because of pinball. Crazy Jay up in Minnesota. He was one of the first heavy metal horror guys that were also into pinball, so that combination is pretty rare. And Bug stealing my notes. And then, like you said, of course, Mom and your sister. It's endless. Who declined to be on camera or on audio. They outgrew it. They serve their time. They're doing their office stuff. And Squirrel is our parts supply chain management and sales and 500 other things. And Mom handles all the payroll and accounting and taxes and all that kind of stuff with Heather still. So they've got their hands full. And I guess, is this the part where I walk off camera and hand my hat Indiana Jones style over to the boy? Not quite, because we're going to go to the Danielle Peck segment first. so stay tuned we'll be right back on the audio side but uh video side will keep rolling and uh why don't we actually get down to that pinball life giveaway that you were just talking about sure let me turn around here and professionally read this off my phone like a jack wagon the spooky pinball podcast is brought to you by pinball life pinball life a store for pinball parts online there's parts in the all these games from pinball life uh so this is uh the the reason behind this. This is a prototype. There's only a handful of these in existence. Terry doesn't want to show it on camera just yet because it's so top secret that he doesn't want to get in trouble. So, what it is, is this is the Pingulp 3.0. Isn't that exciting, bud? 3.0! Now, we've all had Pingulps before, but I have one of these prototypes over there that I can't even show you, but we'll describe it to everybody on the audio side and everybody on the video side you're just soon you'll get one okay but somebody's gonna get two of these right now and then it's out of our hands as to who shows it to who they are plastic they're removable they are reversible they also hang low enough so this is from terry by the way so that your hand doesn't hit a beer bottle if you are slap-saving or flailing away in general like yours truly, being Terry. And myself, I flail terribly. Also, this can be, if one desired, locked into place using a security screw. Once installed, using said screw, a drunk in a bar... Are those... is that a real thing? Do those exist? A drunk in a bar can't pointlessly steal the Pingolt 3.0 and throw it away until the next morning when he or she wakes up sober. So anyway, this is it. 3.0 pin gulps. And when you see it, they're actually extremely clever. And they do work either left or right. They're cut out for coffee mugs and wine glasses and all that kind of stuff. So it really actually kind of neat So this is the third generation of the pin gulp And some lucky winner hope you have a contest in mind my son oh i do uh is going to win two prototypes these aren even available yet so bug tell our listeners and or viewers how you can get the two prototype pin gulps courtesy of terry and margaret and scott denisi and jose and all and justin and all the wonderful people over at Pinball Life. You're going to email of course bug at spookypinball.com that's b-u-g at spookypinball.com and just flood the inbox everybody tell me your favorite spooky pinball episode and why. It's really complicated but there's a lot to choose from there's a lot of a lot of guests we've had that you can talk about but give me a good reason why and then hmm what number do i want 10 going deep okay cool so email bug at spookypinball.com the 10th entry will win the pin gulp 3.0 this very desirable pin gulp by the sounds of it but tell me your favorite pinball podcast episode of all time and why and yeah you will have your chance to win the pin gulp 3.0 my favorite episode was still the murder mystery radio drama that we did the old one. That's my favorite one, too. I don't know, the Adventures of the Lion Man was pretty cool. That was a whole series of stuff and things. That was ten episodes, I believe. Ten episodes, I think each were from like ten to, one of them was almost twenty minutes. Elvira telling us stories about how she used to play pinballs and bars and how much she loved it. That was pretty cool. I have a lot of good memories of writing commercials and editing commercials back when I was little and I didn't have any responsibilities, so I could spend a lot of time on them but uh that's always just looking back at the commercials we did i remember game show ones and mxc spoofs and tons of song parodies i still want to do song parodies i'm not gonna lie i just want to here and there post two and a half minute videos to youtube of whatever dumb pinball song parody i think of maybe that'll be something i have to keep up with you gotta do them all on the ukulele maybe i was thinking about covering money for nothing as Quarters for Nothing. I don't know. Quarters for Nothing, get your games for free? Get your flips for free. Get your flips for free. I don't know. That ain't working, dude. I have an obsession with the Dire Straits recently. I don't know why. Very pained. But yeah, there's been a ton of crap that we've done that I wish we had a full list to show, but it's there. You can always go back and look at it. But like we said, it's not the end end. And you're still going to hear and see us, just not nearly as often, unfortunately. And a lot more short videos online. Yeah. So our YouTube channel is going to be... The focus will be on videos. Yes. YouTube will get expanded. A lot more informative stuff. A lot more just fun little things that we can do. And as we start to expand and grow, we can document the new building and the new processes and why we're doing it. but mostly we're going to really spend a lot of time getting this company to be the best it possibly can be. Like I said, it's a long list and we do pay attention and everybody that points out, hey look, not quite happy with this little thing or we feel this could be a little bit better, we listen and we're doing all we can right now to get ahead of that so that the next game we put out I feel is going to be the best thing we've ever done. I think people are going to be pretty surprised by what we actually have to offer. I think so, too. And the Fang Club is growing, which was kind of a surprise. I thought a lot of people had maybe jumped in just specifically to get Rick and Morty, and a lot of you did, but it's continued to grow since then. So it kind of gives us high hopes and optimism for what's coming up here, and we want to make it worth your time and effort for supporting that. We'll be releasing more information on the Fang Club itself very soon. We're actually switching to a different web store host. And all the materials and the products and everything have all been approved now and are starting to come in. So it's good stuff. The Fang Club will be launching very, very quickly for 2021 with Bela Lugosi as our president mascot, whatever you want to call him. The original bloodsucker. all right so yeah email bugget spooky pinball.com for your pinball life giveaway and for anything else about the podcast in general and uh do you have any more closing notes on this nope my notes are behind me and they have all been emptied and uh thank you everybody for all the support and love and from everything in the early days when we were going to house parties and shows and just recording with our friends uh to you know the industry legends and and some celebrities and everything that we've done over the years just thanks for sticking with us and and don't be sad don't be sad we're not going anywhere we're going to be around uh you'll just be able to see more bug on youtube hopefully less of me this is exactly what they asked for you're a handsome young man there boy look at you we're not doing this all right i want to thank everybody too for just sticking around in general for it because I mean this is something that I've been working on for a very long time since since you got too busy when we first started you kind of put it more into my hands to work on and take care of and I've had a really good time doing that and I'm really looking forward to all the new things I actually have working that I am working on that everybody will get to see so that I have some things outside of just the podcast in the future but But I just thank you, everybody, for this whole trip. I really appreciate it. It's been crazy. I feel like I've grown up with everybody. You literally have in every way possible. Everybody was listening to a 15-year-old talk. You know, the downside is you grew up with Brian Kelly sleeping in your bunk beds when you were little and kicking you to the sofa. It's really not a downside. I wouldn't change that for anything, if I'm being honest. It just means that most of my friends are like 35 and older. It's what it is. Do you remember I came out about 2.30, 3 o'clock in the morning, and you and Jack Danger were sitting on the sofa in our old house playing video games? What were we playing? I don't have a clue. It was a video game. I didn't. We were playing, yeah. I remember we were playing something. If it was a football machine, I would have remembered. It wasn't. We were just sitting there playing video games and hanging out. You looked like two giant, overgrown, goofy teenagers. No offense, Jack. he's like my older brother that ran off to college and got a bunch of tattoos and met a bunch of people and got really good at pinball yeah i got really good at pinball came back and i was like what you been up to man yeah but yeah um i'm pretty much wrapped up here then that's it i feel like we're rambling we should probably choke back the tears and so if you found the spooky pinball podcast on zoom itunes stitcher radio or any other podcast hosting directory. Be sure to like and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And YouTube. Go subscribe to our channel. We need more people. Go to pinballlife.com. They are the world's coolest sponsor that we are super thankful for having over all these years. Go to spookypinball.com. You can find our pinball podcast, our movie podcast, which... More on that later. Are we still doing that? More on that later. We're going to put you on the spot here. Are we still doing the movie podcast? Short videos. Okay. Short videos. Alright. I'm good with that too. Maybe not all the short videos will be just about pinball. Well, for the movie stuff, sure. Yeah. But I think that wraps it up. Email me, bug at spookypinball.com for your giveaways. And thank you all so very much for all the years that you've been with us. And we will see you next time. Will we? Will we? © BF-WATCH TV 2021