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Ep 13: Big Buck Insanity

Final Round Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 31m·analyzed·Jul 31, 2020
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Final Round Ep 13: ICR streaming innovations, Stern showdown results, COVID tournament updates, and InDisc preview.

Summary

Final Round Pinball Podcast Episode 13 celebrates reaching 13 episodes and features a wide-ranging discussion on competitive pinball, ICR (Inter-game Challenge Record) streaming formats, recent Stern game showdowns (Iron Maiden vs. Lord of the Rings), tournament activity during COVID-19, and an interview with Carl D'Angelo about InDisc. Hosts Jeff Teolis and Martin Roberts discuss their recent competitive experiences, streaming innovations with heads-up challenges on different machines, and the state of pinball competition globally.

Key Claims

  • Iron Maiden won the Stern Showdown poll with 59% of votes, beating Lord of the Rings at 41%

    high confidence · Martin Roberts discussing poll results; confirmed with specific vote percentages

  • Previous episode (Ep 12) had 32 players and 10 additional people asking questions (44 total participants), requiring 5 hours of recording and ~20 hours combined editing

    high confidence · Jeff Teolis and Martin Roberts discussing production logistics of last episode

  • Martin won an ICR heads-up stream against Eric 5 matches to 4, both playing Star Trek machines with custom handicaps

    high confidence · Martin Roberts describing recent streaming activities in Melbourne during lockdown

  • Jeff participated in ICR challenges with Chuck Webster on AC/DC vs. Pro machines using non-score-based criteria

    high confidence · Jeff Teolis describing streaming experiences with Chuck Webster

  • Pinball Alps tournament in Switzerland recently occurred with multiple recent Stern releases including Rick and Morty, Stranger Things, and Black Knight

    high confidence · Jeff Teolis referencing Jim and Dina Lindsay's tournament stream from JDL Pinball

  • IFPA ranking system (WPPR) is on hold due to COVID-19, but tournaments can still be played independently without IFPA sanction

    high confidence · Jeff and Martin discussing tournament status and IFPA hold during COVID

  • Martin prefers Jurassic Park over Iron Maiden and Lord of the Rings due to greater replay value and engagement

    high confidence · Martin Roberts explaining his preference when forced to keep only one of three games

  • Jeff has not yet played Stranger Things, Rick and Morty, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Hot Wheels, or Heist in tournaments due to limited access and COVID precautions

    high confidence · Jeff Teolis listing recent games he hasn't experienced

Notable Quotes

  • “when you make it to 13, I mean, people start talking Hall of Fame. I'm just saying that's what they're saying on the streets.”

    Jeff Teolis @ opening segment — Humorous milestone marker for podcast longevity; reflects community humor about small podcast survival rates

  • “It was lots of fun. So thanks to everybody participating, but also thanks to everybody for listening and for your feedback.”

    Martin Roberts @ post-episode 12 discussion — Acknowledges listener engagement and production effort behind previous tournament episode

  • “As long as you agree to the terms of the battle beforehand, you've got a challenge.”

    Martin Roberts @ ICR discussion — Defines core principle of inter-game challenge formats, enabling flexible competitive play across different machines

  • “I prefer three flippers than two. But I'm not sitting there thinking, oh, this game's terrible because it's only got two flippers.”

    Jeff Teolis @ flipper discussion — Personal gameplay preference while acknowledging two-flipper games' merit; relevant to game design philosophy

  • “Lord of the Rings, hands down, because that's what I thought the fans would be voting for. Did that happen, Jeff? No, it didn't.”

    Martin Roberts @ Stern Showdown discussion — Reflects surprise at poll outcome; shows disconnect between host prediction and community voting

  • “I think Jurassic Park and Iron Maiden have a huge advantage over Lord of the Rings in that there are more than two flippers.”

    Jeff Teolis @ game comparison segment — Articulates specific mechanical advantage (flipper count) affecting shot variety and game design

  • “It's very easy. I've had Jurassic Park probably for the same amount of time that I had Iron Maiden and probably the same amount of playtime that I've had on Lord of the Rings. I'm done with Lord of the Rings. I feel like I've seen everything I need to do.”

    Martin Roberts @ game retention discussion — Demonstrates replay value as key ownership metric; distinguishes between critical acclaim and personal retention

Entities

Jeff TeolispersonMartin RobertspersonFinal Round Pinball PodcastorganizationMatthew RichardsonpersonBrian DyepersonChuck WebsterpersonEricpersonStern Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    content_signal: Episode 12 featured 32 players plus 10 question contributors (44 total participants), requiring 5 hours recording and ~20 hours combined editing, indicating significant production complexity and community engagement level

    high · Jeff: '44 different people. Just imagine how the editing is... I think it was pretty good. Yeah, I did about 10 hours of editing. How much did you do? About 10 myself'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Hosts developing new ICR challenge formats for heads-up streaming across different machines, with custom handicap systems to equalize play (warp ramp targets, extra ball settings, time handicaps) enabling competitive play without identical machines

    high · Martin: 'we just wanted to have this heads up and see how easy it was to create challenges... first to Klingon multiball, first to Nine Warp Ramps... with the warp ramps it was agreed that i had to go first to warp nine and he had to go first to warp seven and that was deemed equitable'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Pinball Alpen tournament recently held in Switzerland with cash prizes and social distancing; IFPA WPPR ranking system on hold but independent tournaments continuing in certain regions; clear geographic variation in tournament availability

    high · Jeff: 'it was in Switzerland. It was the Pinball Alps... they had every new game you can possibly imagine... it was a cash tournament. Social distancing... IFPA is kind of on hold right now with COVID-19 yes and no the ranking system the whoppers... That doesn't stop people from playing tournaments'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Host expectation mismatch: Martin predicted Lord of the Rings would win Stern Showdown poll; Iron Maiden won instead (59% vs 41%). Hosts note early surprise at Iron Maiden's dominance but accept result. Some community commentary disparaging losing games afterward

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.274

0:00
The Pinball Network is online. Launching final round pinball podcast. It's player versus player and player versus machine. Welcome to the final round.
0:39
Hello once again, episode 13, and lucky for you, I'm Jeff Teolis. And I'm Martin Roberts. Very lucky for you, our listeners. Thank you. We appreciate it. The final round, finally making the baker's dozen. You know, this is, there are a lot of shows that have never made it this far. Marty, when you make it to 13, I mean, people start talking Hall of Fame. I'm just saying that's what they're saying on the streets. I'm just telling you right now. Yeah. Speaking of what they're saying on the streets, what shows didn't make it this far?
1:15
That's kind of shitting on them, isn't it? Yeah, we won't name names, but you know who you are. I don't know. I still love that Down to Flip did one episode. And it was funny, and I heard it, and good people on it. One episode. One and done. 13, baby. 13. We've done very well. And let's talk about our last episode, because it was, I would say, a very successful episode. Certainly, the end product was great. Thanks to both of us for doing our fair share of the editing. But it was a lot of fun, and we got some really good feedback. That is why we do it. We want to entertain the people listening and the people in that case playing the game. There were 32 people, another 10 people that had provided questions. So in that podcast, 44 different people. Just imagine how the editing is. That's 44 different mics and 44 different settings. And to try to clean it all up, you had mentioned we recorded for five hours to get it down to just under two hours. I think it was pretty good. Yeah, I did about 10 hours of editing. How much did you do? About 10 myself, so I mean, it's stupid.
2:32

  • “They went into very, very strict lockdown very early, closed the borders. Now they're saying that they are virus-free.”

    Martin Roberts @ COVID discussion — References New Zealand's pandemic response as model for other countries; contextualizes tournament disruption

  • “I still maintain that InDisc is the best tournament in the world.”

    Carl D'Angelo @ Carl D'Angelo interview segment — Strong endorsement of specific tournament event; indicates reputation and quality benchmark in competitive pinball

    • Iron Maiden
    game
    Lord of the Ringsgame
    Jurassic Parkgame
    Metallicagame
    The Walking Deadgame
    AC/DCgame
    Star Trekgame
    Stranger Thingsgame
    Rick and Mortygame
    Hot Wheelsgame
    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesgame
    Black Knightgame
    Carl D'Angeloperson
    Keith Elwinperson
    IFPAorganization
    Pinball Alpsevent
    InDiscevent
    Don't Panic Fliporganization

    high · Martin: 'Lord of the Rings, hands down, because that's what I thought the fans would be voting for. Did that happen, Jeff? No, it didn't.' Jeff: 'Iron Maiden, 41% of the vote... I saw a lot of people going, yeah, Iron Maiden's great, Jurassic Park is shit. What? No, it's not'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Hosts discuss retention/replay value as key metric for ownership decisions. Martin kept Jurassic Park over Iron Maiden and LOTR despite latter's poll victory. Pattern suggests designer prestige and critical acclaim differ from personal long-term enjoyment metrics

    high · Martin: 'I'm done with Lord of the Rings. I feel like I've seen everything I need to do. Iron Maiden, I saw everything I needed to... jurassic park i want to keep playing it's just got last ability for me'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Jeff articulates mechanical advantage of three-flipper designs: more shots available, greater variety. However, acknowledges two-flipper games can achieve shot variety through clever design (e.g., Lord of the Rings, Metallica). Personal preference for three flippers stated but not treated as disqualifying factor

    high · Jeff: 'I think Jurassic Park and Iron Maiden have a huge advantage over Lord of the Rings in that there are more than two flippers... I prefer three flippers than two. But I'm not sitting there thinking, oh, this game's terrible because it's only got two flippers'

  • $

    market_signal: Jeff hasn't played Stranger Things, Rick and Morty, TMNT, Hot Wheels, or Heist despite being competitive player. Cites limited tournament availability and COVID precautions preventing home visits. Suggests significant geographic variation in access to recent releases

    high · Jeff: 'I play in a lot of tournaments... I look at the games that have come out recently that I have no clue... Stranger Things, I've played two games. Rick and Morty, I've watched a lot of streams... Haven't played it yet... my buddy, like 45 minutes away, has one. But I'm not going to anyone's house yet'

  • ?

    community_signal: Melbourne (Martin) in 'Stage 4' strict lockdown with mandatory masks; Canada (Jeff) in Stage 3 with restaurants/casinos at 25% capacity and selective reopenings. Clear contrast shows pinball competition availability varies dramatically by region

    high · Martin: 'we are now in strict lockdown so we are we're verging on stage four restrictions... it is now mandatory like by law for us to have a face mask when we leave the house' vs Jeff: 'Stage 3 is where we're at now, which means restaurants are open... casinos are open. Only slots'

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Chuck Webster noted as 'professional streamer' with skill to talk and play simultaneously; Jeff acknowledges this as 'acquired skill set' he doesn't possess. Suggests streaming creates distinct player profile/specialization within community

    high · Jeff: 'he is a professional streamer he can talk and play at the same time a skill set i don't have... it's a skill that is acquired over time and he does it well'

  • ?

    event_signal: Jeff references JDL Pinball (Jim and Dina Lindsay) from Germany as high-quality tournament organizers; Pinball Alps featured comprehensive recent release lineup (Rick and Morty, Stranger Things, Black Knight, TMNT possibly, Willy Wonka, Spooky games). Indicates organized international tournament infrastructure persisting during COVID

    high · Jeff: 'Jim and Dina Lindsay from JDL Pinball out of Germany, they actually streamed, just the last couple of weeks, an actual pinball tournament. It was in Switzerland... they had every new game you can possibly imagine... they had Willy Wonka they had everything from Spooky'

  • ?

    operational_signal: IFPA clarification: organization's WPPR ranking system on hold, but tournaments can operate independently without IFPA sanction. Historical precedent cited: dollar membership model doesn't stop play, just affects ranking eligibility

    high · Jeff: 'The ranking system the whoppers and all that kind of points that determine the ratings and everything else. That is on hold from the IFPA. That doesn't stop people from playing tournaments... You can still play pinball... if you want to be part of the IFPA, it's a dollar membership'

    • Yeah, it was worth it, though. It was worth it. I enjoyed editing it because I got to listen back to it. It was lots of fun. So thanks to everybody participating, but also thanks to everybody for listening and for your feedback. By the way, that's just the post stuff. Getting all the questions, getting all the recordings, figuring out the format, getting everybody's Skype form and all that other stuff filled out. It was a big, big project. So once again, and I said this last episode, I think of people that put on the big, big events and all the things that they have to do. We did a small, small scale of it, audio only, not real machines breaking down, just people and their microphones and their Internet. And it was a lot of work. But anyway, again, a lot of fun. Congratulations to Matthew Richardson, who beat Brian Dye in the finals on Episode 12. spoiler alert if you haven't heard it but the banner's on yeah also facebook spoiled it as well so make sure everybody you are liking our facebook page please if you don't like our facebook group if you don't like our instagram you can piss off on the twitter thing we don't do anything on that yet we'll get there yeah you go to twitter because we won't talk to you there but instagram facebook even if you aren't on those platforms i would sign up just to get on them because there's a lot of good juicy bits on there that we put and you'll be hearing about some of them later in the program indeed you will so jeff what have you been up to this last fortnight what i really really want to know i'm oh i just can't wait to find out everything that you've been doing i wasn't gonna ask this week because i was thinking marty's not gonna ask me and i'm gonna to be hurt.
    4:18
    Avoid the pain. This is stupid. This is kind of not pinball related, but pinball is a hobby and some say a sport. So since mid-March in my home, I used to enjoy watching sports. I'm a big fan of baseball and football and all these other things. We all love sports. I've canceled all my subscriptions to everything. So I had to reinstall them this week so that I could see baseball and basketball next week in hockey and I don't like footballs coming back but just I was just oh wow it's been so long since I've seen sports and it was kind of fun so that's what I did I did an ICR challenge and uh once again put my foot right in my mouth because I thought I was going to kick the hell out of Chuck Webster I've seen him play doesn't matter he is a professional streamer he can talk and play at the same time a skill set i don't have yeah it's it is a skill that is acquired over time and he does it well so marty i did a little bit of that um it's summer here so a lot of outside stuff no pinball except some things we'll talk about after our interview what about your last couple of weeks marty so an update for everybody about australia but with the area that i'm in in victoria we are now in strict lockdown so we are we're verging on stage four restrictions it is now mandatory like by law for us to have a face mask when we leave the house so i am now in full lockdown but i can stream and i have been streaming um and obviously uh we've got eric dave and ray and stacy also streaming on Melbourne Super Bowl, but I did, for the very first time, my first heads-up stream. Who'd you do it with? With Eric. We both got a Star Trek, so we decided that we would play together with a split screen, and we did ICR Challenges. Like a best of three, best of five? Well, we kind of just kept going until, well, it was sort of four all, and we thought, okay, well, let's go one more game. But what was fun about it, and it wasn't that I wanted to have a structured ICR, I just wanted to have this heads up and see how easy it was to create challenges. And we did things like, you know, first to Klingon multiball, first to Nine Warp Ramps, or first to Rangers multiball, or first to 50 million points. but what was really interesting is that i i may be a little bit of a better player than eric that i was playing against so what was really interesting about that is the ability to create handicaps so for example with the warp ramps it was agreed that i had to go first to warp nine and he had to go first to warp seven and that was deemed equitable and there you go it's agreed, therefore it's a challenge. And the reason why that's probably important is more so when you're playing against somebody and you've got different machines because you can then create some different weighted challenges so it still seems equitable even though you've got machines that are completely different. Does that make sense? It does. I think I know what you mean. I mean, you were playing the same machines as far as they were both Star Trek Premium or LEs? Yes, that's correct. Okay. What the difference is, is obviously the pitch, maybe the rubbers, maybe the tilt setting for sure. I assume you had the same settings as far as extra balls on or off. Yeah, because one of them was to get an extra ball, and so we made sure mine is hard-coded to the seventh warp ramp. So Eric just went into his settings and hard-coded it to seventh warp ramp, and there we go. Oh, you didn't give them a little advantage there. Okay, you did on the warp ramp, but you helped with that. No, I know. I know, but what I'm saying is we sort of gave each other the same goal but different difficulties to even the match. And as long as you agree on those conditions, you've got a challenge match. Okay. Well, what I did with Chuck, Chuck is a regular streamer, and you know him from the Trash Talker Invitational. He's been with the New England Pinball League, and he streams quite a bit. He'll stream things like fixing machines, which is actually quite interesting. I enjoy that as well. He just got a brand-new Hot Wheel, so he's been streaming that over the last few days. But I said to him, I'm like, hey, you have an ACDC, don't you? And he has a Premium or an LE. I just have a Pro. And I said, okay, well, let's come up with a way to stream each other. Now, what you and Eric did was a speed challenge, which is pretty cool, right? First to do this, this, this. If you're both starting at the same time, That's a whole different challenge and fun, by the way. I really enjoy that. What Chuck and I did was take turns on, you know, ball one, I'll go, ball two, he goes, kind of back and forth. Or we would play the whole game and then the next person would go. But the challenges weren't score-based because the play fields are different. There's a lot of similarities. But we did things like, okay, play a game, extra balls are off. How many jam multi-balls can you get? And then at the end, you say, okay, I got two. And then I would play and we tied and we'd have to do it again until somebody won. And then the next challenge would be how many different songs can you light? So it takes eight songs in that jukebox to then relight another song. So it takes a lot. That was a challenge. We had things like most combos. There were things we could do that were similar on different games. so I remember Josh asking me he'd be curious to see how people are going to be playing different games if they don't have the same games, there's lots of ways to do it yeah that's what I was saying, so let's say I've got Star Trek and you've got ACDC and our challenge is first to get to multiball and you may say well hang on, Vengeance is really easy to get to compared to Jam Multiball and I can say okay well how about you have a 30 second head start, great It's equal now. Let's go. Because you can determine how you can make these two completely separate pinball machines even when it comes to a challenge. Well, you could do something else too, right? I don't know the answer. You'll have to tell me. How many shots does it take to start Vengeance Multiball? It depends on whether you go for the target directly or whether you go for the torpedo targets on the right. But let's just say six shots. Okay. So in one way, I would say it would be easier to start jam multi-ball, the easiest of the multi-balls on ACDC, than vengeance because I can backhand that left ramp over and over again. Well, that's if you can backhand. That's true. There's some bricks. But I'm just saying, I think there are less shots than it takes. And vengeance multi-ball, doesn't it capture the ball for a little bit? Yep. But you're just saying, As long as you start, it ranges multiple. So once it captures that ball, that's it. So your ICR challenges, certainly with Eric and what you're describing to me, are challenges, no question. They're different games, which is the unique thing, and I think others are doing it too. There are so many people that have done these ICR challenges on Match Play. I don't know how many of them are actual heads-up challenges, basically speed runs, as opposed to I'll play this full game, you play this full game. because you could do, you know, I don't know, what's your second vengeance multi-ball? It takes a lot more shots than six. Well, the next multi-ball really is Klingon multi-ball, which takes, you've got to get the targets. The next one after vengeance multi-ball is vengeance battle. So, or is it vengeance scoring? One of them, which takes a lot more. The point I'm making is, as long as you agree to the terms of the battle beforehand, you've got a challenge. Does it count combos in that game? Does it show you how many combos you have? Yeah. There's something you could do, right? Because, again, both Steve Ritchie games, you both have two ramps. You both have two orbits. Those are the four shots to make your combos, right? Yep. I think even if you get an away team, that's probably a combo as well, isn't it? On the right? I don't think it is because I don't think it's got one of the little red inserts for combos lit. Now when you do the right orbit on Star Trek Does it go into the pops or does it go all the way around? It depends on which mode you're in But for the most part it goes around Okay, so you don't have that on ACDC Because it'll stop and go into the tunes and stuff Yeah, a little scoop there Interesting, okay Yeah, anyway There's things you could do As I said, the point of it was I was keen to just explore and create these challenges on the fly just so I could determine how easy or difficult it is to do an ICR challenge. And everybody that's listening, it's easy. Just do it. Now, does Eric play a lot? I know Eric was at the event in Australia in January that I was at. So does he normally play a lot? He streams a lot, yes. No, I mean in competitions. Well, relatively new to the competition scene, probably 12 months. Okay. But then obviously COVID happened, so there haven't been a lot of tournaments. Now, I assume because it was an incredibly unfair advantage for you was he discouraged if in fact you won? No, not at all I mean, as I said, we did Ah, because you threatened him like he'd be off Melbourne Silver Ball streams Correct No, no, no, no and we were for all and I wasn't throwing the game like I was playing properly but he was firing back just as much as I was It was up for the challenge? Yeah, very much so. I won in the end five matches to four. So, you know, it was even. Well, there you go. Now you just have to have other people do that. I mean, I find it fun. I thought it would be interesting because you're used to your own machines, if you have machines. And you know what's weird, though? I don't know what you're like. I know on your streams, if you have a bad ball, you continue to play. You don't start over again. But a lot of people that own games, I'm guilty too. If I have a task of, all right, I'm going to try to do a wizard mode here or certainly get deep in the game and I absolutely crap the first ball, I'll start over again, which is stupid because if you do these challenges, you can't do that. If you're in a competition, you can't do that. You should really learn how to battle back. But a lot of homeowners don't do that. They're like, oh, I'm just going to start over again. Yeah, I agree. Here's the other thing. For those people that are listening to the podcast saying, well, I don't have a machine in my house. Well, I would encourage you to look up Don't Panic Flip on Twitch because they did a heads-up challenge, somebody with a real physical Xenon and the other person with a digital version, and they did challenges, you know, in real time. So Josh did allude to it, but, you know, you can still do that. As long as you agree, then fine. I don't think you're supposed to mention it though You're not supposed to do it But you just threw them under the bus And actually I know You can still Play with people And Dr Curly Tech He has got a jungle Princess An old EM Not that old I think still that was late 70s And we are going to do a heads up stream With me on a digital version Why not? Yeah. You can still play together, guys. There you go. There's ways of doing it for sure. And that's the one thing I miss. Certainly with COVID-19, I definitely miss the people. But the competition, you know, it kind of gets the blood going. It's fun. So we just kind of gravitate to any kind of competition. It could be a bloody poll on the Internet.
    16:35
    And we can be battling to see what is a better machine based on certain criteria. It could be a crap movie. It could be a Stern machine. What's it to be? Oh, yeah, the Stern showdown kind of ended, and I've got to say I was surprised at who won. Not that it's not a fantastic game. I just thought pretty high praise pretty early. That's all. So do you want to explain what happened? Yeah, so effectively it came down to the top two most popular Stern machines as voted by you. Not you, Jeff, but you, the people listening. it was Lord of the Rings versus Iron Maiden. And as soon as I saw those two, I went, okay, you know what, Lord of the Rings, hands down, because that's what I thought the fans would be voting for. Did that happen, Jeff? No, it didn't. And the funny thing is, I think if you were to talk to Keith, he would probably not even vote for Iron Maiden over Lord of the Rings or over his other game, Jurassic Park. I mean, I know he's proud of it, but I think he's set on this program, too. You know, he really likes where Jurassic Park is. He loves Iron Maiden. Certainly, that's the foot in the door. But listen, it's a great game. But I was kind of shocked that it is the be-all that ends all. Especially, remember when it came out? Oh, I don't like the music, the theme. Oh, yeah, it's crazy. It doesn't matter. Yeah, it is a great game. There is absolutely no doubt about it. And the fact that it won, I'm not mad at it. You know, at the result, I'm not mad. I go, okay, fair enough. Lord of the Rings, 41% of the vote. It doesn't mean that Lord of the Rings is shit. This is my whole ones and zeros, because what it also opened up when Iron Maiden won, I saw a lot of people going, yeah, Iron Maiden's great, Jurassic Park is shit. What? No, it's not. You don't have to like one over the other. You can say Iron Maiden absolutely was number one, but a close second was Lord of the Rings. Jurassic Park was also up there. these games are great games just you know anyway ones and zeros grinds my gears marty you've had iron maiden yes you have lord of the rings you have jurassic park out of those three games which made the top four you only get to keep one which i said park you didn't even blink an eye no not even no hesitation or whatsoever jurassic park easy so you have to give the criteria why you think Jurassic Park is the better of the three. I'm also in the same camp too, by the way. I just, I want to know as somebody who's owned all three, why you think so? It's very easy. I've had Jurassic Park probably for the same amount of time that I had Iron Maiden and probably the same amount of playtime that I've had on Lord of the Rings. I'm done with Lord of the Rings. I feel like I've seen everything I need to do. Iron Maiden, I saw everything I needed to i didn't feel like i needed to keep going jurassic park i want to keep playing it's just got last ability for me for me right doesn't mean that it is the best game just for me it's the one that i would keep and therefore i think it's the better game it's interesting because we're going to bring this up a little bit later but just remember that i said this i think jurassic park and iron maiden have a huge advantage over lord of the rings in that There are more than two flippers. I think that's a big factor because that means there are more shots. There are only so many shots you can have on two lower flippers. And Jurassic Park and Iron Maiden gives you a whole variety of other shots to make. I agree with that. However, you knew that was coming. However, you can still get a lot of great satisfying shots from two lower flippers. And that's what Lord of the Rings does. It's actually got a nice variety of shots that feel and do different things, so it doesn't need an upper flipper. Interesting. Okay. That's what I say. I don't know. I'm just... I love three flipper games. There you go. I've said it. I prefer three flippers than two. But I'm not sitting there thinking, oh, this game's terrible because it's only got two flippers. I don't care whether it's got two or three. I just know that I do like three-flipper games, but I'm still happy with two-flippers. Metallica, I still say Metallica is Stern's best game ever. It's only got two-flippers. I have to agree. That is the one I thought was going to win it all. Apparently, all those Metallica fans that put in 7,000 votes, they forgot to pay their internet bill because they missed that last vote. But yeah, Metallica is spectacular too. I did actually stream The Walking Dead in the last fortnight at Ryan Seas, and I know that you're watching. And again, it is a two-flipper game. And I'll tell you what, I want a Walking Dead. I want a Walking Dead in my house. I love the game. I would like to own one as well. I'm shocked to hear you say that. And the reason I say that, if you go and watch you and Ryan play The Walking Dead, I watched for over an hour. every time you played that game you blew that game up like crazy ridiculous scores and i've played that action machine it's difficult but my god were you good at that game and so when you say you want that and you've played iron maiden you've played lord of the rings and you've done everything you want to accomplish what's left with walking dead you were killing it okay i may have gotten good scores, probably because I got a multi-ball and had my multiplier running and got some great scores. I didn't get far into the game, though. So, I mean, I think I was, what, like 500 mil and I hadn't even gone into Horde. You know what I mean? So, I still, you know, last man standing. I still haven't killed enough walkers. I haven't gotten to Siege. There's so much I haven't done. But also, I had these consistently great games. why wouldn't I want that in my home collection to continually make me feel good yeah you really kicked the hell out of that game That good Yeah I loved it And how good was it to finally learn about the Walker Bombs and how to actually I knew about the Walker Bombs. I didn't know that. Howard Dobson told us. Howard Dobson told Ryan because Ryan didn't believe me when I was telling him about Walker Bombs. So, anyway. I mean, if you play Walking Dead in a tournament because you don't have one at home, chances are you're going to be playing on a pro which doesn't have Walker Bombs. So, you know, not everyone's going to know about that. Anyway, there you go. Two Flipper Game. I freaking love The Walking Dead. It's funny you mentioned not playing a premium or an LE in tournaments. I play in a lot of tournaments. Obviously, I haven't over the last four months. But I look at the games that have come out recently that I have no clue. I mean, really, let's think about it. Stranger Things, I've played two games. I could have played more. I chose not to. I might have walked away. Yeah, yeah, why not? Rick and Morty, I've watched a lot of streams about that. Haven't played it yet. Really want to play it. I haven't played Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I haven't played Hot Wheels. I haven't played Heist. And my buddy, like 45 minutes away, has one. But I'm not going to anyone's house yet. It's not wise. Indoors, all that stuff, I may. We'll see, but not yet. There's all these games I haven't played yet. And I imagine between now and the time that tournaments start up again, there'll be a lot more. For sure. Yeah, I think you're right. Once the doors are back open, it's like, okay, here are five machines that I've not played before. Thank you. And by that time, we're probably going to have Stern's new machine, whatever that is, because Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has been out for a while now. We're due another announcement, surely. I did see a bunch of games in a tournament. I don't know if you noticed this with our good friends who were on our episode number two. Jim and Dina Lindsay from JDL Pinball out of Germany, they actually streamed, just the last couple of weeks, an actual pinball tournament. It was in Switzerland. It was the Pinball Alps. And Daniele Acari was there. I mean, one of the greatest players of all time. He's so good. I mean, they had every new game you can possibly imagine. I don't know if they had Hot Wheels. they definitely had Rick and Morty they had Stranger Things I think it was might have been an LE too I didn't see the projection yep they had Black Knight they had they might have had Turtles they just they had Willy Wonka they had everything from Spooky if I recall too which was pretty cool it was neat to see a tournament once again and you're asking okay wait a minute I thought tournaments were banned the IFPA is kind of on hold right now with COVID-19 yes and no the ranking system the whoppers and all that kind of points that determine the ratings and everything else. That is on hold from the IFPA. That doesn't stop people from playing tournaments. Tournaments are banned. This was a cash tournament. Social distancing. Some people were there. And don't you remember years ago when the dollar came out and people were like, ah, that's ridiculous. You're killing pinball, Josh. And he said, I'm not stopping you from playing pinball. You can play pinball. But if you want to be part of the IFPA, it's a dollar membership. for the game, for the tournament, so to speak. That's going to go back to the players. But that's what's on hold right now. You can still play pinball. Yeah. We can't. Where we are, absolutely not. But other countries can. Yeah, it's funny. When you say Stage 4 for Australia, here in Canada, and I'm not sure what it's like in Europe or certainly in America, but the stages, the higher the number, the more open it is. It's the other way around for you. So we were at Stage 2 for a long time. Stage 3 is where we're at now, which means restaurants are open. Believe it or not, casinos are open. Only slots, no touching of the cards or poker chips or things like that. And it's certainly social distance, 25% capacity, every other machine off, that kind of garbage. Restaurants, six feet spacing. You have to have a mask when you're inside except for when you're eating. That's now opened up. You were there. You've gone back because of some cases.
    27:03
    I think it's going to be a back and forth thing for a while for us. Yeah, I mean, look, I think probably the, and I say this now, but hopefully they don't get a second wave. We are obviously going through a second wave of outbreaks, probably be worse than the first wave. But I think the real poster child for this is New Zealand. Now, in their favour, they are a much smaller country. So, I don't know, maybe there's billions of dollars instead of trillions of dollars that are at stake there. But they went into very, very strict lockdown very early, closed the borders. Now they're saying that they are virus-free. None in the country whatsoever. So they're not having another wave because they're still, the borders are closed. So nobody's bringing it in. The problem with us is people are bringing it in and people are traveling and spreading it, which is not great. In Canada, the Canada-US border has been closed for some time. and in fact closed. It keeps getting postponed every four weeks. So now it's August 21st is the next time they're saying they will re-look at it. They're going to postpone it another four weeks. What breaks my heart, I'm in Canada, and we are the second largest landmass country in the world. United States, very large, very close, just like Australia is huge. But Canada and Australia, I mean, we don't have the population like the U.S. have. You're what, 25 million? Yeah, I guess so. something like that. Between 20 and 30 million, we're 35 million roughly. The US is like 330, 350 million. So they have 10 times as many people. It's tough. And that's obviously increased the numbers. They're just such large cities in the States. And I think we all need to maybe take a page from New Zealand a little bit and be tough for a short period of time to nip this in the bud, so to speak. Yeah. Yeah. If it was an easy puzzle to solve, it would have been solved. You know, that brings us to our sponsor of the week, Marty. There's a buzz in the air that everyone is talking about. Every generation comes a singer who captivates the world. Not since Beatlemania has there been this much hype in the music scene. And for all the wrong reasons. One plus one is two. That's the math I can do. For the X in I'm through. Help me Cause multipliers are poo As a part of the Pinball Network, the Final Round Pinball Podcast must contractually inform you of the new album, Zack Attack and his many hits. This album is a baseball pitcher's wet dream. No hits, but that doesn't stop Zack. Blinded by Dwight Some call it abuse, another flasher in your eyes Here's what the critics are saying about the music of Zach Many. This is Zach's wife. Please don't encourage him. Hey, it's Ken Cromwell of Jersey Jack Pinball. And I had to leave the pinball show, honestly, because I couldn't take his singing anymore. And listen to even more praise from his fans. I have to listen to this shit every week. Um, I think he happens to have the voice of an angel. I should know. All you haters can fuck off. Zach is back. So kiss my sack. We've been golden to spin the soundtrack And I'm letting loose, I'll drop a deuce I know those pinball haters are round Courageous, annoying, tone deaf And a darling to several pin-side threads You'll be flipping out to Zack Attack and his many hits Available now Morning, may cause nausea, diarrhea, vomit, dog howling, anal bleeding, genital warts and spontaneous combustion It's the final round Marty, our next guest, back-to-back weeks You remember him last week as the guy who shit the bed in trivia, couldn't advance to the finals. We bring him on anyway. Carl D'Angelo joins us. Hey, Carl, sorry to bring up that fresh memory. It's still fresh, Jeff. Thanks a lot. It still hurts. You don't lose often, so I was shocked that Phil Birnbaum, albeit Canadian, was able to knock you out in a difficult pop bumper question. I know the podcast listeners couldn't see it, but right after that, I put on my cone of shame because that was a cone of shame moment. Marty, as soon as he gave his answer, he just went, like he knew right away he blew it. It was the time. The time ticking down was the pressure was on. Yeah, exactly. So what people don't know is that, Carl, you're also known as the very first person I ever met when I went to the US for a tournament. So you're famous for other things as well. Right. So that was obviously InDisc. And you know, I know, Jeff knows, everyone knows, I still maintain that InDisc is the best tournament in the world. There you go. Wow. That's awesome. And I've been to Pembroke twice. I've been to Puppa. I still think InDisc is the best. And I guess we do want to talk about InDisc and what's possibly going to happen in 2021. But before you do that, sorry, you did mention that Carl was the first person that you met. Carl, I want you to relive that moment because I remember the first time Marty met me at Papa, and I remember how I would never forget that moment. What was it like for you meeting Marty Robbins at InDisc? I have to assume that I was sitting at a registration desk and going, name, please. Would you like to buy tickets? Wow. See? Photographic memory. The magic moment. Just like I think I met Marty and he's like, oh, hi, I'm Marty Robinson. I'm like, oh, are you with Jordan Treadway? And he's like, well, he's over there. I'm like, okay, beat it. That was my – It was pretty much exact. That's the Marty touch. I think I was more stunned that someone traveled so far for that tournament when it hadn't gotten – I mean, it was getting bigger, but it hadn't reached the level it is now, of course. So I was surprised to see an international traveler arriving. arriving well yeah i mean i had only decided to come over four days before it started i was i was i had a month of leave i was on vacation and i was just a bit bored and i thought oh what can i do and i just sort of looked at what tournaments were going on indis was in four days bought my ticket and came over but the reason why i i bring that up and as we talked about it previously about what makes a tournament successful is, you know, I'm fresh off the plane. I've arrived. I've driven from LA to Banning to, you know, the middle of, let's face it, middle of nowhere. And you're the first person that I see. And I don't know what's going on. And it's memorable because we've always sort of said that as a tournament organiser or tournament director, you are the first impression that people are going to get of the tournament. and that's what I got from you was it was positive, it was enthusiasm, it was here are the rules, here's what you need to know, go and have fun, come and see me if you've got any further questions. And that's obviously the first impression. But it's sort of leading on to the bigger question, which is why do you think Indisc has become such a successful tournament? And it's now obviously one of the big majors. so why has it been successful do you think i think the quality of the tournament um the work that jim puts into the games to make sure that everything is running just at its peak you know the best it can be um the games are fair so no one feels cheated out when they're playing their entries the uh the variety holding in every year you never know what games are going to come up and games that aren't normally used in tournaments so that's always exciting um the venue has definitely become more of a draw over the years. I think the year you came, that first year, was the year that we only had a single row of games on at the museum, right?
    35:17
    You had the main bank, but you also had the classics bank as well. Right, we had those. But the first year we ran at the museum, the museum didn't allow us to turn on all the pinball machines. So it was just in-disc held at the Museum of Pinball. whereas now we've grown so they're turning on all the machines it's a big festival for them as well now so the first time I went was Arcade Expo 2 so it was when both happened together but then Arcade Expo 3 moved later in the year and you still kept Indisc running and we liked the January dates and we thought that was one of our positive things because the rest of this country Most of it is in snow at the time of year. We think people want to get out of the snow, travel to California, where typically it's not too cold at that time of year. There are exceptions, of course. But, you know, people from the East come in their shorts in our wintertime. They're like, oh, this is nothing. And we're freezing over here.
    36:22
    You have to wear cargo shorts. It's part of the uniform. Hello. Apparently, yeah. So what else? I think the streaming has helped because that broadens the audience for the tournament. So people watch it. They see how well it's going. They want to come. They hear word of mouth from people that have come that say it's run well. Our prize pools are generous. We don't skimp on the B Division prizes. We make sure that B Division players are paid appropriately. Thank you. I appreciate that. Just saying. So it's not all about the top end. And it's just a very well-rounded tournament. And because it's grown so much, I hope we've scaled up well to the size we are. I mean, I still can't believe when we started, we were in the little back of a bar. That's where a league is held with eight machines for the tournament. And now we're this massive. We're taking up half of a hall at the Museum of Pinball. It's insane. Well, I think there was probably 150, 160 people when I went for the first time. How many people are competing now? It was around 400 or 500. My memory is a little failing on me. You can't count up to five pop bumpers. You think you can count the number of people at Indus last year?
    37:42
    I have to admit something right now is I haven't been paying attention to any tournament stuff since all these lockdowns, isolation. It's been nice not having to set up my software for all these different tournaments. So it's just kind of been in the back of my mind. I haven't thought about Indus too much. I haven't thought about the software. I should be writing new stuff for the software, but I'm not working on other stuff. So that kind of stuff, it just kind of faded away, I think. But, yeah, it was around 400 or 500, if I'm not mistaken. I could look it up. At least you have the venue that can hold that many people. I know that is a logistical concern, at least projecting how you're going to run this tournament, how many volunteers are needed, how many techs. You talked about the work that Jim did, but there were a lot of techs that helped out, the volunteers, the TDs, the scorekeeping, all of that. It's such a big, big project. And Marty, I know you can appreciate this with your Melbourne Silver Bowl tournament. The magnitude of this tournament, it doesn't start out this way. It grows, like you say. But one of the key foundations of running any good tournament is really the software. Yeah, absolutely. So that players know what they're doing, where they have to go, how to enter. And it all starts with the Never Drains software. and Carl, I mean, I can't imagine some of the tournaments I've played and I would imagine, and Marty, you're the same, if that didn't exist, these tournaments would stink. I have to think someone else would step up and do something by now. Take the compliment, for God's sake. No, no.
    39:10
    You know why I wrote that? Have I told you the story of why I wrote the software? No. I can't remember which year it was. I was going to California Extreme. game. It was the second or third time I just got into competitive pinball. You know, it used to be you bought your seven entries for twenty dollars or whatever it was and you get a sheet of paper and you hand that sheet of paper over to a scorekeeper and they write down your name or they write down the game you're going to play and they stick it in their stack. So you have no idea when you're going to be playing this game. You're just waiting. I remember I was waiting to play Ripley's, believe it or not, and it must have been about 10 deep. But you couldn't tell because The scorekeeper would have to keep them. They'd have to shuffle the papers to find you.
    39:50
    You're five, six, seven. You're seven back, seven away. So that's why I wanted the cueing, which is really why I wanted to write the software. And then people would put, they would buy multiple papers. So you would have one set of entries playing in main, one set of entries playing in classics. So some would be playing on main, and they'd be called over to play a classics game, which just throws everything else off because if you knew you were third or fourth in line, you go take a break, you go walk around. They skip a player, you're missed, and it throws off everything. So people that don't play in tournaments are wondering what you're talking about. Your software prevents cheating the system in a way, is that you sign up for whatever game it is, whatever bank it is, and that's where you're in the queue, as opposed to, I've got a foot in this door, a foot in that door. You're in whatever you decide to be in. And, yeah, I mean, a lot of people who don't like competitions will say, I don't want to wait around, wait around. Well, with your software, you're going to have to wait. That's fine. But you know when you're going to be playing. It will send you a text. You can see the queue line. You can go off and do other things like in Banning and check out the, I don't know, 500 machines or whatever they have there in the other room. There's so much to do. You can go grab a bite to eat. You can relax. That's what's the wonderful thing about the NeverDrain software. Exactly. Well, further to that, you can actually look at all the machines and you can see how many people are queued up on them. So you make the decision of whether you're going to go for, let's say an EM that's got seven people in the queue, but you know that it's going to move very quickly, or a longer playing game that's got three or four people. But you know, and also it sort of gives you an estimate of how long it's going to take for you to get onto that machine. So it's your decision on what you're going to do next. And that information is really good as a player. Yes, invaluable, I'd say. But more so than that. So that's for the user experience. And I've obviously used Never Drains for the Melbourne Silver Bowl Championship twice, I think, maybe three times. Let's just say it's twice. And the feedback that I get from the player is how easy it is for them to use because they can all just access it via their mobile phone. They can, you know, select which machine they want to go on and then they can queue it. They can also see their points. they can see other people's points as well. As a TD, as a tournament director, the interface that you've built for me to run a tournament has everything that you could possibly need. And I remember for the first time I ran the tournament, I was thinking, oh, geez, what happens if something goes wrong and I'm over the other side of the world and I can't get any support because you're going to be asleep? But the good thing is, every single time, It has run just absolutely rock solid, and it's just a very user-friendly interface for a tournament director to fix scores, to add entries, to put the machine banks in there, and to order at the end. So you've obviously had a focus on the tournament director experience, not just the player experience. Right, right. And a lot of that at the very beginning was modeled after Adam Lefkoff's software that he had. So he had a Windows client that he would run, and a lot of the player side was based on that. And then the admin side was just, I feel one of my specialties is UI and just usability, basically. So I always thought, what would make this easy for me to run? And, I mean, that's how the thing started, too. I never intended this to go wide. It was just for me to run at Indisc or what was Indisc at the time, at the very beginning. It blew up. One thing I've noticed, and again, I've never used it on the organizer side. I've just used it as a player. But something I've seen recently is kind of a winnings pool. And so this does audits that you would obviously see as an administrator. But now that can be relayed to the players too. Oh, look at this pool bank is going up and up and up. Not that that's the reason you play, but it's kind of nice to see that transparency and the NeverDuring software offers that. I think that's one of the reasons our high stakes bank got so high this past Indisc was people saw the prize pool rising and rising and rising. We were very stunned at how large that got this year. Yeah, it certainly benefits the pump and dump sort of herb style format as well, which every entry goes into the prize pool. And it was the same for the last Melbourne Silver Bowl in that, you know, I think we had additional maybe $4,000 in prize money that just came from additional entries. It gives people that visibility that they know if they go and put more money in and let's say they don't do anything great with those additional entries, at least they know it's still going to the prize pool. Right, right. So the way that works in the software is you have a set of percentages you can set up for each division and break your prices based on that. So you can even split like the A and B division 60-40 or however you want. Or if you have some admin fees you have to take out at the top before you split the price pull-up, you can do that as well.
    45:02
    It's easy for me because I just send you a note saying, Hey, Carl, I'm doing it again. Remember, I'm absolutely ripping off the in-disk format, so just copy everything across.
    45:13
    Carl, you talked about the high stakes tournament. Now, right now, with the way the IFPA is with COVID-19, there is no competitive pinball for Whopper points. But we are seeing tournaments show up for dollars. And there's some other tournaments, too, that have some prizing elements. It's just really smaller scale, masks, social distancing, all the important things. But if we don have competitions for a while I wonder how many more of these cash tournaments are going to show up and I know when you had the high stakes tournament and it grew and grew and grew one of the comments you mentioned to me and I think you said it on air, so I hope I'm not telling tales out of school here, is that if you were to run it again, because of how big it is, you're going to care less about Whopper points, otherwise maximizing the Whopper tournament, and just focus in on the cash aspect of it, because that is the nature of that tournament. Right. That division was never built for TGP, for high whoppers. It was built to be a, this is a high-end division, high stakes, high entry fee. It was $50 to play four games? Play four games, yep. So that is a high ticket. And of course, there were some great discount packages too, but $50 to play four games and that money goes into the pool. And what happened is the pool got bigger and bigger and bigger. And so then with more players, one of the IFPA rules is the very minimum you have to have is if you have 40 players, you have to take in at least 10%, maximum 50%. You want to do the minimum. But as that number grew and grew, that expanded the playoffs in the time that was needed for that tournament. Yeah, exactly. We had budgeted for 80 people max for an eight-player final, and we got up to 150-some-odd for a 16-player final. We were forced to do a 16-player final. I think it was, right? Well, whatever it was, it added time, and that was the concern because that was kind of the tournament that ended the in-disc, and you have hard times to get out of there. So that was the stress level you were receiving. Yeah, because the main tournament we knew was going to be long with 40 players, And so we wanted high stakes as short as possible, which obviously didn't happen. So thankfully, we didn't run terribly long. We didn't run over time. And the museum, thankfully, is very flexible. And if we run long, they're okay with it. They let us run. They let us finish out the event. We don't have to have a hard cut off time. You know, if we ran to 2 a.m., you know, we still could. It wouldn't be right, but we could. They've got a guy there that would shut down everything after we left for the night. So moving forward, does that tournament then become even a higher stakes tournament so that hopefully less people play or you don't care about the IFPA points and you'll just, you know what, no matter how many people are in, eight people finals, that's it. See, it's either that because of the time crunch that we have or it's either reduce the number of finalists and don't care about IFPA or we raise the entry fee. So it's going to be one of those two. We haven't discussed it as a team yet, but I know that's the first thing I mentioned after the tournament ended, was raising it to 75 or 100 in entry or just getting rid of the whoppers. So you just have whatever the final eight players, you know, whatever you earn for an eight-player final, that's what they earn. So one thing I've noticed, obviously, is that it is in disc, so it never drains in Southern California. And it's now the main tournament is called The Open, and it is one of the Stern Pro Circuit events. What changes did you need to make moving it to the Open? There really wasn't too much. Josh came to us with that idea of becoming the new major, and really his only main concern was not having too many wacky games in the bank. Like barbed wire? Like barbed wire and Rescue 911 and all that stuff. So have 50% of the games be, quote, unquote, normal tournament games. And apart from that, they were more helpful just to, you know, Josh wanted to get the Open up and running. He said it's been an idea of his for a long time, but he didn't have, you know, he figured another 10 years before he could get something off the ground. So partnering with us let him get that off the ground and gave us additional exposure and some prize assistance. The reason we were able to go to credit card payments for entries was because of the IFPA. So everything funneled through their system, their payment processor, which was fantastic. Not having to deal with so much cash was extremely helpful.
    49:53
    Had you already gone from the pump and dump format to a card format? Yes. Yeah, we did that, I want to say, three years ago. Okay. So why did you do that and are you glad that you did it? I am glad we did it I think that format holds players to it's a more difficult format so you have to be consistent and we wanted to run one of the best tournaments in the world and felt that format was the format to hold players accountable to so to speak and we figured with Papa having switched to the best game format there was a void in the landscape and we decided to fill it Are the results of now what you're seeing what you set out to achieve? Yes, yes, I definitely would say that. We still have some people that we've had some locals that are extremely unhappy with the decision to move the card format because it's a more difficult format. But we're very pleased with the change and we'll continue with that for the foreseeable future. Another addition, and you keep adding things. I mean, years ago, of course, you added the women's tournament, the high-stakes tournament. Last year, Carl, you didn't have enough on your plate. You had to do that huge match play classics event to kick off InDisc. We wanted to add another day. So we thought, how are we going to pull people in on a Thursday? Because Thursdays are generally light. It's another vacation day people have to take. I remember the pop-up tournament Thursday was always the lightest day there. So we thought, how do we pull people in here? and the match play ideal was born. We were questioning if we could actually pull it off with the number of games we needed, but I think we did. Those were all mostly the museum's games that we were able to use for that tournament in the other hall, not where the main banks were for Indus. So, Marty, you might remember where the tournament used to be held. That's where the classics were that first time you came. So we had the banks there. Oh, right at that back corner. Right, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I do know. Jason Wordrick won that. I can't remember who finished second. Who was second?
    51:53
    Who was second? It escapes me right now, but anyway. Okay, 2021, I know it's like we're, what, five, six months away from when Indisc would be. I know you haven't talked about it. What are your thoughts on Indisc 2021 happening in January? My own personal opinion is that it will not happen. We haven't talked together as a team about it, but the landscape of how things are happening here with COVID, we're not trending in the good direction. Listen, everybody likes to be number one, but California now. No, I'd love to get out of my house. I really would, but I'm stuck here. So we're less than six months away, right? It's August, just about. So it's probably not going to happen, is my guess. When do you have to actually make commitments as far as deposits and everything else that you have to do in advance? I mean, you have shirts, you have merchandise, you have those incredible gold coins that were pretty neat. There's all kinds of things you have to do. Organizing the volunteers, when does that take place normally? In October. That's when the real crunch to do things is. We start talking even now. Around this time, we would be starting to plan things, gyms, prepping games, Jay getting all the extra stuff, like the challenge coins, prepping all that. So October is really when we crank down, finalize plans, finalize games, and so on, make sure the museum is good with the dates, because they wait until they finish their Pinball Madness event in October, typically. And after that's over, we rearrange the arcade side to put the pinballs in or figure out where we're putting things. So right around there. But again, August, September, October, it's tight. And for me personally, I think without a large event, it's 500 plus people in just the tournament alone. Without a vaccine for this or therapeutics or something available, I just don't see it happening. Would you write it off for 2021 and just go, yep, let's just reconvene in 2022? I would myself, yes. Yeah, my own personal opinion, yes. I've already in my mind written it off. Of course, I really should talk to Jim.
    54:13
    But I know I've mentioned it to Jay a little too, and he's starting to see it as well. A couple months back, he was like, oh, maybe it could happen. But he's starting to come to the side, I think, that, yeah, it's just not going to happen this year. And it's sad because we enjoy running it. He mentioned to me that it's the thing he looks forward to the most in getting the games ready, setting things up. And it's sad. It sucks. Yeah. Now, look, I'm absolutely in the same boat, admittedly on a lower scale. We had 150 people last year. And I also haven't spoken to the organisers of Flipout, which is the pinball event that my tournament is run at. And that's due to being, like I said, beginning of December, we were saying, we haven't had the conversation about whether it's going ahead or not. It's not going to go ahead. And I feel exactly the same thing, because it's a lot of work that goes into it. But you really look forward to running the event, seeing the results, seeing everybody have a good time. And that's not going to happen. So I know your pain. And I'm probably going to do the same thing and just go, let's worry about it the next year. Yeah, yeah. It's like I don't want to admit it, but I have to admit it. I know COVID has taken us on a different path, but I remember a few years ago when the dollar was brought into the IFPA. And Josh would say, look, we're not stopping you from playing pinball. Go ahead and play pinball. If you don't want to be part of the IFPA, no one's stopping you. But it's incredible. Like, you could do your event in Australia. You could do Indisc. You could do any event. What's the turnout going to be without the Whopper? And, of course, there's the factor of, well, there's the safety aspect. But, really, I think that is one of the biggest reasons Indisc has grown as large as it has is because you've got two classics events. You've got a classics match play. You've got a high stakes. You've got the women's. You've got the open. There are so many, quote-unquote, wopportunities. That makes it a very attractive pinball vacation destination. Right, right. And we wanted a lot of variety there to grab anybody that came in the door. And I'm disappointed because next year I really wanted to have Jim bring his big buck hunter. Oh, stop it. And put it there for everyone to play. I was going to put a $1,000 prize for anyone that could get to open season during the tournament. Well, there you go. Marty, this whole conversation, I mean, we were really fluffing you up a little bit to talk about Indisc. I mentioned this before. This is an absolute intervention, Carl, and your stupid obsession with Big Buck Hunter. All right, Carl, that was disgusting, pathetic. I wanted to reach out and give you a hug, virtually, of course. When we were watching on IE Pinball, you trying to get to open season on Big Buck Hunter. Carl, I say this in all sincerity. what the fuck is wrong with you could not have said it better what is wrong with you don't know what I'm thinking of now either what I'm trying to come up with or trying to do oh tell us go ahead no no I'm just sick that's all you can just say it I'm sick I get these games generally from Jim because I don't have them and he's got a lot of games just sitting around right now so I asked him do you have Stern Indiana Jones maybe because I've never seen that done. I have no idea how long that is. The new one? The new one. I just think from what I've read, it sounds like a grind to get there. It doesn't sound that difficult, but a grind. It's a grind. Buckhunter sounded easy on the surface. The goals didn't look like much. There was just something about that game and how drainy it is that, oh, my gosh. It was infuriating. At the same time, I think I should have held off on finishing it to keep my viewership up on Twitch. I was really trying to get partnered, and I was close to getting, you know, the average number of viewers I needed to get partnered, I should have thrown it. So, well, that's what I was going to ask, because obviously I've watched you do that stream a number of times, and I think we said it was maybe the 15th session that you got it. But I thought that you knew that it was a really difficult wizard mode to get to, and that's why you chose it. But you're saying that's not the case. Oh, no, no. I knew it was difficult. I hadn't heard of anyone doing it until I had one guy email me, and I'm sorry, I forgot your name. and then Zach McCarthy said he had done it. But those are the only two accounts I'd ever heard of anyone actually finishing this. I knew, like Josh thought it was insane. So I knew it was a tough challenge, and that's why I made a video before I started the series to lay out the goals. I actually filmed some footage and made a nice intro video for this challenge. I saw that, yeah. Right, because I expected it to take a while. But I expected Iron Man to take me a while when I did that, and that took three days. So I thought, okay, if I play this enough, I'll get it done in a week. Yeah, it's a long time, I feel, of playing the same game over and over again. A week passed. I got into day eight. Then day nine. And then the insanity started seeping in. One stream, I decided any time I fumbled the ball, I would take a shot of sake, which is crazy. So it just started built and built and built until finally I did it on day 15. But yeah, I'm insane to do it. Hey, Carl, I love watching you on Twitch, on IE Pinball, do these wizard modes, and you did Sperm Attack on Family Guy. I can't believe you did the wizard mode on The Simpsons Pinball Party. You're doing it on other games. I think you are nuts to try it on Stern's Indiana Jones. Holy grind, my God. And what's weird about that, too, is anybody who's a competitor knows how to play that game. You just keep hitting the captive ball scoop thing over and over and over again. Rinse, repeat, do it over again. That's it. oh, Carl, you're a madman. But I do like that you have courage to try to do all of these wizard modes. I mean, my thought is I want to get games on camera that you don't normally see. So no one had filmed the Big Bug Hunter wizard mode. No one had filmed the Family Guy wizard mode, Sperm Attack. I've heard of people getting there, but no one had it on camera. Same with Simpsons. I don't think there was a film version of Super Duper Mega Extreme wizard mode. So that's kind of what led me down Indiana Jones. I thought Avengers 2 would be one interesting one to do also. But I don't know anyone within Avengers. What I like about those, first of all, yes, you don't see them streamed at all. You probably might have a few years ago, but not now. But here's what I really liked about Big Buck Hunter, was I got to see so much more of the game that I'd never seen before, because you have to play the entire game to be able to get to the end. And I'm keen more so Avengers than I am Indiana Jones, even though I've said I quite enjoy Indiana Jones. I'm a big fan of that era of Stern. I know a lot of people aren't, but I was always a big fan of Big Buck Hunter. But I'd love to be able to see so much more of Avengers, and nobody streams it anymore. Right, exactly. Well, no one has it either around here that I know of, so that's challenge number one. What does that tell you, for God's sakes? Hey, hey, hey, hey. Okay, so I had an Avengers here once. A friend of mine was moving, and he wanted me to babysit his games. So he had me pick him up from his workplace, and I had him here for a good two months. And I went through the game. I know what's involved in Avengers. I've beaten it. It's a grind. But no one's done it on camera, and you don't see it. So it would be interesting, instead of seeing the same games over and over that you see on streams a lot. You see a lot of Jurassic now. I mean, I'm guilty. I'm playing Jurassic now. You see a lot of Deadpool. Team NT is starting to come up everywhere. So it's nice to have something different, I think. So with Big Buck Hunter, the general consensus is people don't really like that game. And I don't know what your thoughts are before. What are your thoughts on the game after? Shit!
    62:02
    Sorry, sorry. I worry it's going to give me nightmares if I see it again, but I don't think it's a bad game. I think it's actually decently balanced, score-wise. The goals are ridiculous. Yeah, so I never want to play for the Wizard mode again. I never want to play for open season. But I'll play the game. I still enjoy it. I think the black Mac is nice as long as it's tweaked and works well. And just in general, if you talk rules, that's just some minor tweaks here and there, really, to make open season a little more attainable. But apart from that, I think the game's well done. Well, it was a massively loaded question because, you know, I've always said that it's a decent game. It's certainly not a AAA title, but it's better than people give it credit. and you're proving that. But more so, more so, I'm keen to know whether people's opinions on Avengers will change because it gets a bad rap. I think it's a better game than people give it credit. Even George Gomez, who was on Pinball Profile recently, said, I kind of made Deadpool to have that same shot, the shot that does the hard left turn, in this case goes up the ramp, because the one in Avengers didn't really work. Going up and then a hard left, it rattled, and that was the problem with that game. I actually think Avengers is a good game too. I enjoy it and I think it gets a bad rap. I think it's underrated. I was going to say, you haven't played a tweaked one then because if you play one that's been set up right and that ramp has been fixed, it shoots nicely. The game is just a spell-a-thon though. You have to shoot the shots so many times to get anywhere in there. We look forward to seeing you do that.
    63:34
    If anyone has one to borrow in SoCal, hit me up. I'll do it. I'm up for it. Also, don't forget, Avengers got a relatively big code update sort of later in its life. So nobody has really streamed any of that code update. So I've not myself really seen any of what it's got to offer now. Right. The game I had here, I had it before that code update. So I still haven't played that code update. So I'm curious to see it too. There you go. You were talking about tweaking it and that made it better. I've seen you play Rick and Morty. And I know that there was some tweaking done. You've talked about it before, and I think there were some posts and whatnot. What was the tweaking you had to do? Because I've got to tell you, I'm a huge fan of that layout. It looks great. And I've heard from yourself and others that some slight adjustments had to be made. Right. And I made a big post on Penn's side with all the changes I made. It's in the big Rick and Morty thread there. It's one of the highlighted posts in it or whatever. I forget the term they use. But I relocated several of the ball guides in the game because I felt it didn't shoot as well as it should, in my opinion. These are all my opinions. No one has to really do this. I know since after the shutdown, Spooky had started changing the orbit shot, the big loop shot that was the main complaint from people. They've taken out two screws and kind of given the guide a bit more of a curve, which is what I had done on this one. So I modified that. I modified the right orbit. because I found when I would shoot that shot, the right orbit goes from above the upper right flipper to the garage. And what would happen is the ball would bounce off of there and then come in this turnaround shot, which is it would come backwards through this shot and go straight out in the middle. And it's not designed to do that. And then there's that lane right to the left of the right orbit as well. Right, the garage shot, the main garage shot. So I changed the geometry on that too. I pulled the rail back, and I actually had to take one of the wood guide rails on the side of the play film. I had to pull it up so I could push one of the tabs under there to give it more depth on the shot. It just needs a bit more of a curve, in my opinion, to grab the ball. So it was too sudden a movement, and the ball would kind of ricochet off the guide and bounce around. And that's why so many of the shots would not complete. It's good to hear that Spooky's made those changes, though. I mean, I was just talking to Todd McCulloch, who enjoys the game. He was saying how much he likes it. and I know there are a lot that are going to be receiving it. So, you know, I would say that about almost any company, any game. If you get a game first off the line, there have been reports of problems that have since been fixed. Right, right, exactly. And the game I have here is game number four. So, you know, very early in the run. So, yeah, it's great that Spooky is listening to what others, you know, other owners have been saying and making adjustments on the line to improve the game as it goes out. Do you think it makes a good tournament game? I think it has the potential to, yes, certainly. There's a lot of risk and reward, especially in the mega seeds component on the game. Getting into other dimensions and collecting those mega seeds for your large bonuses can be very lucrative, but risky too. I was watching Daniele play it at that Pinball Alps tournament that was streamed on JDL Pinball. And I wouldn't say Daniele is an aggressive player, but maybe just the way it was set up, He was tilting on almost every ball in the little demo he did. That is a game you do not want to tilt. You know, a lot of the newer games, a lot of the Stern games aren't big bonus-based. There are some that are, but most are not in the last few years. This Rick and Morty game is a huge bonus game. Right, right. I mean, I've had my biggest game, I think I had a $60 million bonus from some of the mega seeds. So, yeah, it can be huge. Most games average around $10 to $12 million, I'd say. I'd say in a tournament, if you get $10 to $12 million, you're probably having a pretty good game. What are your thoughts on other recent games that have been released? Do you get a chance to play them? I haven't. Not the most recent stuff like Hot Wheels and Team NT. I haven't played it because I haven't gotten out of my house. What do you think of Stranger Things? They look fun. I need to play it more. I played it really early on, so the code was very basic. It was pretty much just play Telekinesis, Multiball over and over again. In fact, one of the videos I'll have going up on YouTube very soon is the Pembroke Satellite. You can see that. I play the game during the tournament. and it's around a billion game just playing telekinesis pretty much. You were avoiding the Demogorgon and the center visor? Oh, yeah. But see, I think this was before, I can't remember if it was, if it was before the change where you had to hit the Demogorgon in the hole. You had to get the ball in to complete it, if I remember. And now it's a bash toy. Right, now it's a bash toy that has a health bar they hit so many times or get in the middle to complete it immediately. So Stranger Things, the code keeps changing. you know we talked about Rick and Morty and the geometry what is the problem with Stranger Things I see the left ramp have some rejects unfortunately you know you look like you got a clean shot up there boom comes straight back down Of course any shot to the center visor and the demigorgon can put your ball in peril What are your thoughts on, you know, is that something that can be tweaked or is it just the way it is? Well, the left ramp is more a pro or premium thing. On the pro, it goes right around. It's the lock on the premium that it's that extra, I don't know if you've seen it or not. Have you played the premium no i have not because at the very top of the ramp there's basically a jump ramp to get the ball to log do the magnetic lock on the backboard so it's that extra jump ramp it just needs that little extra bit of momentum to get up there and that's why you see the rejects on the premium anything can be tweaked i think i've i've heard i've read about uh demogorgons changing the angle on them making them angle a little uh downward towards the playfield fixes some some of it or changing the height so it's just a matter of you know once you get the game if it doesn't play right, just make some minor modifications and see if you can get it to play right. It needed a magnet, is what it needed. On the Demogorgon? Instead of shooting it through to have it capture it? Just something to bring it in there. Having a magnet at least will get it in the mouth, so to speak. Yeah, I could see that. Kind of like the ring on the rings. So it sounds to me like another top player is probably going to go and work for one of the manufacturers. Is that what's going to happen? You're not going to work for Stern? No, it's not going to happen. I don't believe so, no. I'm here in California for life, I think. So obviously we're talking about streaming, and I would say IE Pinball is pretty much the gold standard for when it comes to streaming quality, I guess. I mean, you've obviously got your big setup. Again, another thing I completely ripped off. So my multi-camera, well, in actual fact, you know this because I reached out to you. the gear that I've got. So the capture cards, the cameras, everything, the switches as well is all what you use as well. Has that been an evolution for you? And do you care about whether it's the best quality? All I care is that my streams have, yeah, I hold myself to a certain standard. So I do want to have high quality. But I do see a lot of other streams now that are tremendous quality as well. So I like how everyone else has risen up, especially with COVID. it and there's so many streamers out there and so many have have done such a great job i i'm blown away at how many people stream to evolution of my stuff yeah you mentioned that you use the cameras and switches and i don't use those anymore really no because you've got your mobile rig yeah i shoot with the mobile rig but now i'm using mirrorless cameras what so i'm using like slr style mirrorless digital cameras instead of camcorders on my stuff holy shit your vein a lot of people do though so i'm not the only one yeah especially like look at jack jack's doing that too so you're talking about it you've got these gx something cameras what are they right the panasonic gx85 and i just picked those because they are one of the cheapest ones you can find used and well i've had one for a long time and i thought one day you know because it was my general point and shoot camera that i would take out and you know when i'm out in the world and we want to take photos of things so i thought i'd try it one day on the on the play field and colors looked better than the Sony camcorder, just that the focus was tighter, I felt, and it did low light really well. It does look great, Carl. All right, enough patting yourself on the back. It looks awesome. But the one thing you're missing, all right, and I'm defending my good buddies in upstate New York, is you don't have karaoke like the Slam Tilt podcast guys do. There's no Stu McVicar. There's no Bruce Nightingale singing ELO songs. Sorry, the bar has been set and you aren't there yet. Yeah, I'm solo. That's my problem. I need someone else here. I watch a lot of game time television now. I don't know if you know of Ryan and Leslie or not. They make drinks on their show. They'll make a tiki drink every year. Yeah, I met them in San Francisco. What are they doing? They're streaming twice a week now on Tuesdays and Saturdays. And it's just a fun show. The dynamic of having two people there is something I wish I had here. Someone to read the chat, someone to interact with. And it's hard being a single player and just reading the chat and trying to interact with chat and playing. I don't know how Jack does it so well. So it's something I think I'm getting better at it over time, but that's where I feel I struggle with my streams. Yeah, well, so I've actually now got some additional people streaming on Melbourne Silver Bowl. and I say the hardest thing it's not that hard but it's the most awkward thing that you need to get used to when you first stream is talking as though there are people there or people that aren't there. You've got to talk regardless of what your audience is and that's a bit uncomfortable but you get used to it really quickly. Right, exactly. I try not to look and see who's watching and I just try and talk all the time when I'm playing. I'm trying to do that now so I'm not silent except unless I get deep in a game that I kind of focus in and get silent, I noticed. I was on with Chuck Webster, and I was not streaming, but I had an iPad on a step ladder tilted towards the play field, and I was wearing a headset so I could hear Chuck talk, and we did an ICR challenge. And I was trying to talk to him because I knew it was being streamed. Talking while you're playing and concentrating is not easy. I mean, I guess if you do it more and more, it becomes a little more natural, but boy did that ever screw me up when it came to playing. Exactly. A lot of practice. That's all I can say. Just do it over and over again. I'll still drain while looking at the chat. So, yeah, it's just part of it. Not that I want to bring this up, but considering you mention every single episode that you won your championship when you came up to stay up. I haven't this episode, but thank you very much. There you go. Time to bring it up.
    74:27
    This is when we played at the Trash Talker at Pinberg when you and everybody was trying to distract me and I was playing and it made no difference because I am so used to having to multitask as I'm playing Vice Train. And you're used to people shit-talking you all the time as well. Correct. As well. Well, especially you.
    74:47
    We made it into a podcast. We did. You guys are great. Carl, thanks very much. Indiana Jones, that's the next one. Avengers. COVID's got to stop, man. You're going nuts. Well, there's other ones. there's World Poker Tour, there's Star Trek, the Stern Trek, there's ACDC, get to Encore again. There's a lot in the queue. It's just a matter of what games will arrive here. You mentioned ACDC. I was never close to Encore until COVID, and now I've been able to do it four times. Still not completed, and I don't really want to reveal what it is for those that don't know, because it is a great wizard mode. It is, yes. That'd be good for people to see. Best of luck to you, Carl, and if Indisc happens, you know we'll be there when it does happen and we'll see you around sometime awesome thanks mate thank you so there you go carl d'angelo first person i met at a tournament in the u.s what did we learn he didn't remember it just like i didn't remember it uh when he said hi to me at papa you need to be a little more flashy let everyone know who you are anyway what a good person for you to meet because like you say and i agree that was a good point that you brought up when you're running a tournament, it's not just the tournament itself and being in queue and the gameplay and all that. It's that first impression of, am I going to have fun? Is this a welcoming atmosphere? You felt it with Carl. I'm sure people feel it with you with Melbourne Silver Bowl Championship. And that is very underrated. But again, I'm glad you brought up that point. Yeah, well, it reminds me of my actual first tournament experience was here in Melbourne. It was a, you know, we call them comps in Northcote. And the very first person that greeted me was Jimmy Nails. And anyone that knows Jimmy Nails, he runs the Brisbane Masters. And he was in Melbourne, then moved to Brisbane. And it's just no wonder that it has just grown and grown and grown because he is that face of the tournament. And he is incredibly welcoming, really supportive, really passionate, and just wants every single person there. to have the best possible time they can have, and there's a tournament where somebody wins in the background, if you know what I mean. But the most important thing is for people to have a good time. It's important. It is the most important thing because there can only be one winner in a tournament. There are other tournaments and you can do well and all that stuff, but it has to be about the experience. I think you heard and commented on it when I had Juana Summers on Pinball Profile. She is part of the Women's Advisory Board for the IFPA, a brilliant woman, and her first experience playing in a league was being disqualified on the very first game she ever played. That could be discouraging for people. They had to follow the rules because it was a tournament league or whatever the case may be, but she still had a positive experience. So whoever at that event made her feel good about it and just said, you know what, it's unfortunate. here's why they properly must have explained it and she still had a good time and still came back that was the first time she ever played that could turn a lot of people away depending on how you handle that yeah exactly remember ryan c obviously is now right into tournament play and putting tournaments on he went to a tournament had a really bad experience because there was somebody that was really aggressive and abusive and nothing was really done about it and then he just went okay, well, tournaments are not for me. And I had to convince him to come back and say, well, that's actually not how tournaments normally go. And when he came back, he went, oh, okay, you're right, that was just a one-off. So it really is about, as a tournament director or organiser, when you see something, you just don't think, well, how do I feel? You've got to think, how is this impacting everybody that's part of this and their enjoyment? Because you're right, one person wins and chances are that person's going to come back next tournament because they won. Everybody else didn't win. So what's the draw for them coming back the next time? And it really is, it's the feel, it's the spirit of the tournament that matters. You know, I'm not big on things like participation badges, but what I do think you can take from this is finding out who are the first-time tournament players, who are the people that have never been to an event like this. And you should go out of your way to make sure they know the rules, how they can have fun, things that they can do, places like pin tips.net. Should they want that? If that's something that matters to them, just give them that tournament experience that other people have had by the volume of tournaments. You know, you want to kind of get them up to speed a little bit. And these are the things you need to look for. You want them to happen naturally, but you want to make sure those new people have that wonderful experience. It's like, imagine if you never told Ryan about, okay, you know, like that's a guy who runs several tournaments in Melbourne. Like that would really change the scene there. Yeah, absolutely. We would not have it the way it is because of that. You know, so when I was running the Melbourne Silver Bowl League, which was a selfie league, the top 16 people that got into the finals, every single one of them got a show bag every single month. Got a what? Show bag. Do you know what a show bag is? a goodie bag, a gift bag. Okay, all right, all right. Sorry. And it had alcohol, it had food, it had crazy stuff. I used to work for a sales and marketing company that did a lot of promotions in department stores and malls, shopping centres. So I used to be able to get all this product and just put them into these gift bags. Then you got caught for stealing and... No, it was all above board. They gave me the stuff. But obviously, the better you did in the tournament, the more valuable and more stuff was in the bags. But I did that because I wanted anybody that turns up, because they may get out in that first round, I want them to go away with something saying, oh, okay, well, that still feels good. I'm going to come back. That's very interesting. You know, I've run a few tournaments once or twice, maybe around the globe, in fact. But that is the idea I had. And I want to do this again someday. Look, everyone's going to get something, whether it's a shirt or... Everyone's going to get something for participating. and it's a keepsake. I've got a ton of prizes from sponsors. Every prize I gave away was done randomly. It didn't matter where you were in the tournament. The winner got the Whoppers. The winner got a nice trophy from ULIC Store, but everything else was random. So I wanted the experience to be just as much fun for the person in last as it would be for the person in first. And I think that always can't be the case, but boy, if you have an opportunity to do that or even just raffle prizes or goodie bags or whatever you can do, That's a good way to make it fun.
    81:45
    You want everybody there to feel that they can win something. There you go. Done. We're being too nice on this show.
    81:54
    Completely out of character. I mean, I gave Carl the what for, and rightfully so. I mean, seriously. Good point, though, he had about we're seeing a lot of streams of the newer games, like a lot of streams, as he mentioned, with Jurassic Park and Deadpool and Iron Maiden when that was new and all that kind of stuff. It is neat to see him take a look at some of these older games. That's fascinating to me because, like you said, a lot of the original tutorials or videos were not when the codes were updated, or they just weren't as deep, certainly not wizard mode deep. I also don't think streaming quality was as advanced as it is now. A lot of those tutorials were just kind of a top-down view, weren't they? Yeah, correct. Yeah. fingers crossed about indisc but we have to have a vaccine before that's a possibility we will see yeah in the northwest they were supposed to have a big competition too i think was part of the stern pro circuit this was just a few weeks ago and the tournament didn't happen but what they did was have funny enough this is going to sound like an original idea they had a trivia contest in lieu of the tournament what i know crazy idea it was original unlike the pinberg challenge or yegpin or pin fest before that because being in the northwest and i don't know if you've been there before but what would you say is northwest name some places seattle portland vancouver they um like to partake in certain recreational activities i will say so they had this trivia question where they would say a name this was done by skillshot pincast and they had people on like hannah hatch who I think won it, Todd McCulloch were on it, Kayla Greet and some others. The trivia was funny. They had all these people on Zoom. They threw out a name, and you had to guess whether it was a pinball machine, a strain, or both. And it was pretty bizarre. I mean, there were some names I'd never heard of, so you assume strains. Yay. That's an interesting trivia contest. Well, so why am I getting interesting? I'll say this, Marty. It was a lot easier to fucking edit that show. much easier to watch somebody else after they've done all that work. But it wasn't probably the most talked about competition or battle that's out there live right now. No kidding. You thought the Stern Showdown was big.
    84:28
    Once again, we have done it here at Final Round Pinball Podcast. And not to pat myself on the back or you, Marty, but I am doing it. Of course you are. The crap movie Great Pinball Battle 2, round one took place, and once again, people are like complaining, that's not a crap movie. It was this, this, this, this. Okay, there were plot holes. Who gives a shit? Okay, so what you're talking about is Demolition Man. It was probably the big controversial one out of that. Remember, so round one was Congo versus Godzilla, Flintstones versus Last Action Hero, Batman Forever vs. Barry Shelley's Frankenstein and Demolition Man vs. Meteor. And people were like, oh, Demolition Man's not a terrible movie. You guys are on crack. Not the exact words. Let me tell you this. Demolition Man has a 60% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, an average score of 5.43. This is just all off the top of my head. And 34 out of 100 on Metacritic. So, box office, 159 million.
    85:31
    Not great. but this was your pick you picked Demolition Man I was kind of like oh it's not that bad but it wasn't a successful film but also off the top of my head which I may have just gotten from Wikipedia did you know that this movie is a complete rip-off of an author's book it's true was it called Wiping With Seashells? no it was called Fight of the Dead so this is a Hungarian science fiction writer his name's Istvan Nemir I'm going to say basically he wrote a book that came out in 86 and he is ready for this here is the premise of the book a terrorist and his enemy a counter-terrorism soldier a cryogenically frozen and awakened in the 22nd century to find violence has been purged from society can i tell you something i've never seen Demoman the movie.
    86:29
    I know. It's all this kind of thing. I mean, even I've seen it only about a year ago. It just doesn't interest... I should watch it before I call it crap, but we needed a movie and it's not exactly a winner title. You know, oh my god, people lost their shit when we had Bram Stoker's Dracula in the first battle. Yeah. Who won that, by the way that was the shadow so the winner of this crap movie great pinball machine battle part two will battle the shadow for the ultimate crap movie great pinball machine wow this is way better than stern showdown yeah absolutely anyway so we're now into round two so you know by the time this airs it will all be done and we will have a winner yeah so congratulations flintstones for winning No chance. Though I will say, I will say, the Flintstones is a better game than people give it credit. There you go. I'm just saying. Who was Flintstones against in round one? Last Action Hero. And who won? The Flintstones. Yeah, I think I voted Flintstones too. I've played Last Action Hero. It's not bad. It's data east. I think the art bugs me. I had Lethal Weapon 3, which I also enjoyed. Eventually the art kind of bugged me in that game too, as well as the okay, okay, okay, okay. But I find the last action hero is just a little... It's a messy looking play field, in my opinion. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, the thing of it is, so these are based on pin side rankings. Flintstones rated at 131. Last action hero is 151. It's not necessarily that that makes them a terrible game. Just that above them are just better games, great games. It's all for shits and giggles, isn't it? That's all it is. Wow, 13 shows just like that. Just like that. It seems only recently I was looking forward to retiring from podcasting. Well, we might have a special treat for you next week, Marty. You don't even know about it, but... Okay. Next time on The Final Round, what could that be? Oh, my God. Click here. oh by the way i gotta say i gotta say something this is going back a couple of mondays ago i laughed my ass off at the pinball show the flagship show here on the pinball network zach had to do a solo show dennis was sick and for some reason you know zach of course treats a podcast like a karaoke machine and he started singing hearts alone song which is maybe one of the hardest songs to sing.
    89:15
    Certainly one of the hardest to listen to. Oh, go fuck yourself. It's no Barracuda. They're all great songs. When Anne hits that note in Alone, I mean, come on. That is American Idol. It's a power ballad. Damn right it is. Anyway, Barracuda's better. I give you that. Anyway, he didn't know what heart was, so he had to do a retraction, talking about how great heart was, because I threatened to leave the Pinball Network if he bad-mouthed
    89:45
    the female Led Zeppelin for God's sakes. Anyway, great band and it was a good show. I like what we're seeing here on the Pinball Network. We're seeing a lot of streamers too. Holy... Yeah, for sure.
    89:58
    Absolutely. So make sure first of all, please go to Facebook and like our page but also throw a like to the Pinball Network as well because then you can see all the content that's being distributed via that network. Lots of streams, lots of great podcasts, too, some good history lessons, some nice little radio dramas, if you will, some different voices you haven't heard in a while. So a nice variety, and we're glad to be a small part of it. Oh, I say that small. We're 13 episodes in. We're fucking huge. Yeah, we are the best. Your words, not mine. All right.
    90:31
    Just going by what people say on This Week in Pinball on the promoter's database, the praise. My goodness. I mean, thank you. It does mean a lot to us. I joke, but it is very nice. So thank you for all the nice compliments on that. All right, Marty. Episode 14, two weeks from now. We can do it. All right. Thanks, everybody. We'll speak to you soon. Stay safe. Hit the hook, baby.
    91:09
    And if you turn me to the moon, I don't want to get too alone. I don't want to get too alone.