thanks for tuning into the loser kid pinball podcast we are on episode 48 i am josh roop my co-captain as always scott larson and scott why don't you send us through those wonderful friends of ours so uh friends of the podcast so first and foremost let's talk about this weekend pinball if you don't have time to go through all the pin side forums to find out all the fun stuff that's going on. Please check out This Week in Pinball. Also, another site to check out too is Pinball Supernova. Just go ahead and see what's going on over there. The Pinball Loft, it's a blog. He talked about his experience of opening up his Avengers and just a fun place to check out. Pinshades, if you want to go ahead and play without getting the glare off your glass, go ahead and check out Pinshades. There's also a Black Friday sale. And if you want to enter in a code. There's LoserkidBF. That's L-O-S-E-R-K-I-D-B-F for Black Friday sale. Also, Brian Allen at Flyland Designs. If you want to have that alternate artwork for that classic Williams Bally game, go ahead and check out Brian Allen. Also, if you don't have a game, but you still want to display that excellent artwork, go ahead and check out Lit Frames. Flip Frames is a great way of making your pinball room more fun. And we will talk about our last sponsor for the show. But first, let's talk about who we have on. Josh, who do we have on today? There's one person you forgot to mention, Scott, which is Zach and Nicole Menning with Flip N Out Pinball. They are awesome. If you need your Avengers or you want a Deadpool like our next guest who's been streaming lately, hit them up at Flip N Out Pinball. Our next guest is number one on the IFPA. He has destroyed Pin Slash. If you haven't watched the video, please go check it out. Our guest is Raymond Davidson. How are you doing, sir? Hey, hey. Hey, guys. Thanks for having me on. For sure. And we definitely want to tell people if they want to check out how amazing Raymond is and how less awesome you are at playing pinball, go ahead and check out his Twitch stream. It's RayDayPinball, and he also uploads it to YouTube too. so if you want to see how the game's supposed to be played go ahead and check that out yeah what was awesome is like it seriously what was it like eight o'clock on sunday night and pin Slash is about to wrap it up and you're like no no i've got it i've got to do this and so yeah i just i had to try you know it's like why not and see what happens but you were just as excited as i think everyone else was watching i love that moment dude just the the the jumping up and down you got the one shot left it was oh man it was it was heart-pounding but raymond you gotta tell us you know you're working for stern now life has gotten crazier what got you into all this like how did you start all this well what was your gateway into the pinball universe yes uh well i mean we can go back to the very beginning which was when i was you know just a toddler coming over to grandma's house they um in eastern washington uh spokane i would go over to grandma's we'd uh you know family trip over there and i would always spend my time in the basement on the pinball machine they had uh you know they had a pool table and a foosball air hockey super nintendo but i would i would always play the pinball machine it was a 1976 gotlieb Pioneer, which is the two-player version of Spirit of 76. Nice. And my dad kind of showed me the ropes, you know, hit these targets to light this, you know, try to get extra ball, don't tilt because you get all these bonus points. And I just loved it, you know, right away. Something about it. And so I would just play it every time I was over there. And then, you know, time goes on and I start seeing pinball machines in restaurants, you know red robins and just kind of playing those while you wait for your food and i start figuring out hey wait you can win replays like you can uh you can keep playing if you're if you're good and so that really motivated me to like go online um and figure out you know read up on these things find the rules figure out you know how do i get these points and so now in like middle school there was a go-karting place that I'd ride my bike to after school and they had a Terminator 2 so I played that thing like multiple times a week and I don't know if you played much Terminator 2 but you won't get a replay uh just flip it around on it it it kicks your butt and you need to know exactly how to lock the balls to light the jackpots and shoot the cannon to get the jackpots and so that that game really helped me you know learn like very specific objectives and and how to how to just keep playing at that go-karting place for hours on just a couple bucks and i just loved it it was like my personal challenge of how long can i play on on a few bucks and and that kind of just fueled my passion even more until i found out there was a uh pinball show i believe it was the 2006 uh oak harbor pinball show in in the seattle area and i begged you know my parents please we got to go here and you know it was so far away it's like i think we had to drive like around like we could have taken a ferry but we didn't and uh way out in oak harbor and but you know my mom drove drove me there and uh we got to see the show and all these games and i just i loved it and so then i was bummed to find out that they didn't have it the next year but then the year after that was when the Northwest Pinball Show officially opened. And that was something that I'd go to every year. And that's where I entered my first IFPA tournament, which was the Northwest Pinball Championships. And that was, I think, in 2008. And, you know, they asked me, do you want to sign up for the novice division or the open division? Hey, if you sign up for the open division, you know, you'll get these world ranking points. I'm like, whoa, that sounds cool. I want to be ranked you know and uh yeah so so i i i just went for it right away you know yeah it signed me up for the open division and uh i ended up you know qualifying top 16 i think there was only probably like 30 people there but still getting top 16 you know meant i got to play on sunday and uh i don't think i made it past the first round but you know i got like 20 bucks or something for for qualifying So, you know, it made me feel good, gave me a taste of it. So then the next year I was super excited. And I don't think I actually qualified the next year. I was super bummed because I just, the next year people like, you know, Keith Elwin and other people started flying out. It was starting to become a big tournament and I just, I couldn't compete. And so I didn't qualify. I was heartbroken. I think I got like 21st when he needed to be top 16. and but then i just that just made me focus even more of uh finding all these resources online you know discovering dead passes post passes that sort of thing along with uh reading rule sheets i remember uh just pouring over the pages of lord of the rings and simpsons pinball party i just ate up every every bit of it and uh came back you know the next year and i think i ended up getting like ninth and uh every year after that it would be the number one tournament i'd look forward to and that just that's kind of what jump-started my competitive pinball because that got me ranked that got me looking at my rank got me finding more ranked tournaments to go to uh and when i got um second which was i think in 2011 at the northwest pinball championships i got like a huge prize it like 1400 bucks um i got second to keith by the way no not nothing uh weird about that uh a sign of things to come and uh i used that money to fund a trip to papa and so 2011 or 2012 was my first trip to papa and i got to compete you know i went straight for a division of course because i'm just like all riled up i'm like yeah look at me and oh my god i got my butt handed to I mean, I spent, I think I spent a thousand dollars in entries trying to qualify. Yeah. I mean, I had the money because I had won it and that's kind of how I justified it to myself. But it was also kind of like this horrible gambling addiction of like, I can just qualify if I just keep trying. Okay. So you were a teenager at this point, right? Yeah. I think I was like 18. Yeah. Okay. So you fly across the country to play into a pinball tournament and your family's like, hey have fun or do they come or like i i don't i i can't imagine that at 18 that i'd be like you know what i'm just gonna go do this thing yeah i mean i i had like a chaperone sort of like uh a pinball buddy that they kind of knew and trusted and and yeah i don't know i mean maybe i was like 19 i don't know i i yeah i was around that age i never really thought about it um but yeah they just were like yeah have fun uh and so uh you know flew over to pittsburgh and of course didn't qualify even after trying my hardest um but that was just like another level up moment just like when i didn't qualify at northwest uh that year so you know i just practiced more watched more videos and just kept dreaming of like someday i'll i'll play in the pop world championships and eventually that would would happen you know in the future years that is awesome that's i i'm glad scott had brought that up because i was kind of thinking like yeah like trying to do the math and stuff like that and you're like barely out of high school and you're flying across country to do this that's that's pretty amazing yeah yeah i i remember yeah because i don't think i was 21 because i couldn't um couldn't play in bars or anything so yeah it's pretty young so you went on to win papa right you spoil i have not i did not win papa uh the best i've done is i i got second that was the year where i got second at papa and second at pinberg which was pretty crazy that's awesome though yeah well that's that's what we call sharpen it yeah but then then i made up for it because then then later on i got first in IFPA two years in a row. Okay. All right. Definitely makes up for it. Love you, Josh. Love you, Josh. Yeah. No, it's, it's, it's, okay. Well, there is one thing I do want to talk about though. And I don't know of anybody else that likes this game like I do, but I actually have a Black Rose and I know you have talked about Black Rose before. So tell me why Black Rose is awesome. So Black Rose, actually the first pinball machine that I had in my house. My dad and I saw it at a movie theater and we thought the cannon was so cool. And we'd play it. We sometimes would go to that movie theater just to play it. And then it disappeared from the movie theater and we were sad. But then all of a sudden it showed up at a Red Robin. And so now all of a sudden we'd be going to Red Robin all the time to play it. And then finally when we moved to Seattle from Yakima um i had been in full swing of of pinball you know getting into it my dad was like we should get you a pinball machine uh what what was that game that we really liked like oh black rose he's like yeah and so we actually ordered a black rose off of this crazy expensive pinball website you know you're so naive back then where you just would google like buy a pinball machine and you click on the first thing you see and it would be like a 3500 game from like game room depot or whatever i don't not a real name but and so we we coughed up a ton of money got this thing shipped to us it was and it was pretty pristine but it arrived with the glass completely shattered over everything and it was just a huge mess we had to refuse shipment and i was so devastated um but then my dad just had the idea of well why don't i just there can't be that many operators in Yakima, Washington. And so he just investigated it and found the phone number of the guy that operated the one that we played at the movie theater and the one at Red Robin. And we ended up just buying that one from him for like $1,500. It was like half the price. Nice. Yeah. And so that's the story of how we got Black Rose. Now, it needed some love and care. We had to fix it up a little bit. But once we got it rolling, I just, I loved playing it because I would always look for ways to get extra balls in games because I figured, you know, if you get an extra ball, you know, that's like an extra life. Like if you just keep getting those, you're never going to lose. And on Black Rose, you can just shoot the whirlpool five times and you get an extra ball. And so I would just like focus on that. So I'd keep the extra balls flowing. And then the sinking of ships, I realized were how you get the big, big points. And so I would just try to see how many ships I could sink. and uh you know that's part of the what what makes me love that game is just the points just go through the stratosphere where it's like 20 million 30 million 40 million you know and it replays at like 25 million or whatever so uh that was just i just loved it it was like like one of my first games we played kind of had a little bit of history to it and then once we got it um you know i played all the time it would be the game that was in my house whenever i had a friend over I'd show them check out pinball they'd be like whoa you have a pinball machine holy crap like you know and uh yeah I just I just really like the way that game shoots with the um the left ramp to upper flipper sort of shot and uh you know the multiball and the sinking of the ships and oh the music I actually had some of the some of the music on my phone like it was so good it I actually have a I have a hard time thinking of selling that game for the same reason because it is that classic late 80s, early 90s. Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na. Yeah, it's just like beefy sound of just, yeah, it gets in your head and it's got the rhythm, got the, you know, you can kind of sing along to it a little bit. It gets you pumped up. Okay, so did you have lightning? Do you still have the game? Yeah, well, it's at my parents' house in Seattle. Does it have lightning flippers or regular flippers? uh regular flippers so that game never was supposed to have lightning flippers really okay i thought it was supposed to have lightning flippers i think yours does because one of your friends was like this is boring i'm throwing lightning flippers on and i think that's how yours ended up with them okay because mine mine is it's it's like it's so hard to get especially like lighting like getting the uh the multi balls because hitting that like left thing behind the you know, that left shot just... It must be at the very tip of your little lightning nub. Yeah, it is. It's basically the knuckle of it before it goes straight down the middle. And so, okay, so I have it on good authority now that Raymond Davidson says that I'm supposed to change this back to standard flippers. Yeah, I mean, I think you'll see it with lightning flippers in tournaments because it can play long, but only Doctor Who, Dracula, and I think Popeye were the three original, like, Ousler games that the Europeans said were too easy or whatever. I don't know the full story, but Black Rose was not one of them. All right. Well, now that I have permission to swap it back, because I bought it from someone who's like, you know, it's from Lee. Hi, Lee. He's actually stuck in quarantine in the Asia right now, so he's watching like a billion movies. So I bought it from him, and he wanted to take it back to as original as possible. So he put the lightning flippers on. So now, hey, Lee, sorry, Raymond says you're wrong. so now i can actually play it a little better but i i love the game it is so much fun and it would be hard for me to actually uh sell it now also a couple things i did on it which you may like uh do you have invisible glass on it and now i the uh invisible glass now yeah it it changes the game i when i swapped it out and i put it on and my wife came down and looked and she said i didn't know there was a ship decal right in the very back i'm like yeah it's been like oh yeah that that game black rose does have a pretty bad um yeah glare yeah yeah because it's got the mondo kind of back valley back glass and then also the display is kind of in a raised up place so it it glares on the play field as well yeah yeah so uh so that's my uh my suggestion for you go ahead and put that on i also put on some pin stadiums and it it makes it a total of modern game i also put in a a color DMD, uh, which makes it a lot more fun. But yeah, I, I just have a hard time just emotionally wanting to sell that game just because it is, it's from a different time and it plays differently and feels differently, but it is, it's a fun game. It's really fun to play. Yeah. And, and you know, those games, they're not making any more of them. So I think they're only kind of keep getting harder to find. So if you can have, if you have the space, I'd say, hold on to that. Yeah. So, so classic nineties. So you're going to pick four of the classic 90s games that you're like, okay, I'm going to select those for my vault, my keep in my basement games. What would you do? Ooh, that's tough. Well, I guess Black Rose. And then, I mean, maybe Terminator 2 just because it was one of the ones that I grew up on. Then, let's see. Really like Dracula. That was another game I owned for a while that taught me, you know, how to really better yourself. Dracula is really fun when you get all those multi balls going. And you're Johannes and can get like five billion points in one ball. Yeah, yeah. Just like do all the things effortlessly. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. And then maybe one of the expensive A-lists like Indiana Jones or something like that. I do like The Shadow, though. That's a fun game. That is a way good game. Yeah. Off the top of my head. I've been having a debate because I actually got to go up and play Scott's Avengers LE, which, by the way, is fantastic. Yeah, and he took my GC by like 500 points. Oh! Yeah, I was about to get hit. He came up to my house to sleep overnight because he was taking a class in the morning, and then he robbed my GC. I was about to throw him out at midnight. But I'm in a pickle because I do have my Avengers Premium on order, which is backlogged. But I had someone offer me a Shadow and a Judge Dredd. But the kicker is I wouldn't be able to get Avengers, and I'm like, you've got to be joking me. Shadow is fantastic. I love The Shadow, and I'm starting to just start to love Judge Dredd. It one of those games I think that kind of grows on you the more that you learn it you know Okay Josh I sorry After playing Avengers that is the one I turn on You have you know how many machines I have That the one That the one that right now is top of my list of never leaving my house Well, I don't think I could break my son's heart because I told him we're bringing home Avengers. And he's in that. The only thing that could top Avengers in my house is if I told him Harry Potter. I know that's the cliche. But seriously, like the child, he wears his. Wait, the child? You want the Mandalorian now? You want Baby Yoda? Yes, I'd take that. But my child wears, where are they? The Harry Potter capes, the ones that have the wand pocket on the inside. He's always listening on Audible to a Harry Potter book. I mean, but we watch the Marvel movies all the time. So like, it's Avengers than Harry Potter. But so I don't think I can go through with Shadow and Judge Dredd, but still. But I think I'm gonna be happy either way. I mean, Avengers is fantastic. It really is. Thanks. Yeah, I had a lot of fun working on it. Okay, I do have one question, though, and I have seen this a few times. Mine doesn't do it as much as some people talking about it, but sometimes when you nail the Captain Marvel shot, it goes about two-thirds of the way up before it does the loop around, and it just shoots right back down. Like, is there something I'm – like, my game doesn't do it a lot, but it does it sometimes. Is it – So usually if it's doing that, maybe your flipper – like, have you been playing for a while? sometimes the flippers uh can get a little tired um yeah and uh no no i i'm not talking it like doesn't make it up the ramp i'm talking it's screaming up the ramp at mach 2 and it's almost like it it seems like it hits an up post and immediately just rejects like comes back down the only thing i can think of is there's the plastic uh protector flap uh at the entrance so maybe it's rattling and hitting that I'm not sure the one thing I thought is if you look at the left side of the funnel ramp there's the wire form comes and then bends a little acutely out a little bit and I wonder if it just hits that just right but I've heard it from a few people that they've had reject on the Captain Marvel ramp so I'm wondering if I didn't know if Stern was aware of that or if he had experienced any of that so yeah i don't know you'd have to ask uh keith or the mechanical engineer um yeah i just uh write the software well sure but you play it yeah but but but you're probably also a lot better shot than i am so you're you're more likely to uh nail the shot so yeah there's definitely something to uh you know you have to it's designed to be hit in a certain spot and if you hit it in a little not quite that spot, then yeah, it might not follow the guides as it's meant to and kind of work its way around. Like if you hit it too early, maybe. I'm not... I don't know. Okay. So you brought up writing code. What is your job at Stern? Like I know that Rick Nagel's the head code person. Does he just say, okay, take this, I'll take that? Like how does it work with your job? Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much it. Like he... He kind of oversees the general picture and then gets in the real nitty-gritty of some of the more complicated stuff, coordinating the subway movements, devices, and that sort of thing. And then also writing kind of the structure of the code, how you're going to have your files and things. And then, you know, he kind of has everything set up in a nice engineered, crafted way. Then he can just hand out like, hey, you know, Keith just floods us with like mode requests, like have this mode do this, you know, do this, do this, do this. And, you know, Rick and I basically just pull from the queue and just sort of, you know, work on them as they come in. yeah i've always wondered because there's a lot of people working on one game and i i'm just like there's just got to be a lot to the software if you guys have two three guys working on the code all at once you know yeah i mean there's um other support programmers too that do wonderful things like the light shows like i i don't really haven't really done any of the light shows other than like super basic stuff like making the tower go bop bop bop bop bop you know in that little uh choreographed way um but all the fancy effects uh the uh brett he uh he's amazing and he does uh like the bonus you know light effects and he's still adding more now so um yeah everyone kind of just does what they're best at contributing and just trying to get get the software as good as we can so we've talked we've talked to other people who they're you know they're competitive is their passion and then they take a job at pinball like how has that affected your um i guess your pinball mindset like not not one bit really okay okay everyone everyone kept warning me about this and here i am still streaming you know after work still looking up tournaments and and and you know strategies and stuff and talking pinball and doing pinball podcasts like i just love pinball And, you know, I don't know. It hasn't really hit me yet, I guess. Like marrying the mistress is what it sounds like. No, no. OK, I will say I had to laugh so hard when in that we're in a text thread that talks. There's a lot of podcasters on there and stuff. And when someone said, Ray Day rage quitting, I'm like, OK, I got to see this. That was the calmest rage quit that I've ever seen. You're like, oh, I'm done. Click. And you sat down. I mean for me I'm getting like triple danger warnings where like Thanos is coming out of the machine says you know you're going to beat up the machine a little bit if you keep shaking it like that but yeah I was just so mad it was a it was a long stream and and it kept just draining me at the worst possible time I was like I'm done I'm done no but I can tell when you're streaming that you truly are enjoying every moment that you're flipping, which I think is something amazing because even there are times when I feel like I'm chopping wood and I'm not even remotely your level. So it must be, I guess it must be fun being able to go out to a machine and say, hey, I can do this. Like I can get really deep into this game. So here's another question. For you at a super high level, what are the things that you would tell anybody who's like, you know, I'm at a plateau. I'm not actually getting any better or worse. I just seem like where I am. What are the couple things you can say? OK, here's how you take your game to the next level. uh i think um watching uh people or playing against people that are better than you and just kind of observing all the little things um that they're doing that you're not doing and then also um you know try to apply try to you know do a couple drop catches you know try to try to really focus on um control and then learning the rules i think is really big i think like you can have a basic idea for the rules but if you want to beat people at tournaments you kind of need to know like you don't need to know everything but you need the stuff you do know you need to like have a plan for and so you're never just kind of flipping around aimlessly like you should always have something in mind whether it's the next multiball or the next mode so just like being able to formulate uh the next steps in your in your head um is super important and will go a long way because if you have objectives, then you're going to naturally want to figure out how to trap the ball because if you know that you need to hit the left orbit to activate something, then you're going to try your hardest to get the ball on the right flipper, whether that means dead passing it from the left or drop catching it on the right or post-passing. And so then your goal becomes get on the right flipper, whereas if you don't know the rules and you're just flipping around whatever it gives you, then you don't really see the benefit of the control as much. So they kind of go hand in hand. You kind of need both. So how do you go about learning those? Like, what is your resource? And by the way, you said exactly what Eric Stone said when he used to live in Utah. And so he came out and we invited him to do kind of a little tutorial to the local guys. and that was the one thing he said is when you step up to a machine always have a plan like you need to know what you're planning on doing so you so that's good to know that the number one and number two player have the same approach uh what do you do to compiling there's so many games out there and yes i know there are games that you see over and over again but how would someone go about okay this is how i want to find out the rules and this is the competitive approach because there is a difference between a recreational approach and a competitive approach to a game yeah um i mean it just depends on what your your goals are and uh you know recognizing the risk and reward of the different strategies um sometimes you realize like i'm gonna need a huge score so i need to play it more uh for the long game and other times it's Like I just need to knock it last. And so then you kind of shift over to just hitting the couple shots you need. And sometimes you combine the two. You know, you start hitting the shots you need to knock it last. And then once you've got that buffer, now you can start thinking bigger and planning out for higher points in the future and that sort of thing. So do you use like pin tips or do you actually just know that if you're in a tournament and you walk up to a game that you're not super familiar with, there has to be some way that you have a resource to say, okay, this reminds me of what to do. I mean, it's just, it seems like I would just ask somebody, you know, who has played the game and I just have slowly accumulated the remembering just from going to tournaments, you know, one way to get better is just to go to tournaments and you'll slowly see more and more games. And then every time you see a game, you add it to your your knowledge bank um but if you've you know never seen a game before i would just ask somebody i'd be like hey do you know how to get multiball and if everybody's like no i've never seen it either i have no idea well then you gotta you know maybe look at the rule card look at the play field you know try to find those green lights that say lock um on them and uh yeah pin tips that's a great site that uh a lot of people use i know it gets like record traffic at uh pinberg every year so you can definitely uh look at that for some nice starting points so the one thing i want to bring up because i was watching your pin Slash video and i noticed because if you know escape nublar everyone out there it's it's a time-based mode you're trying to do as fast as you possibly can well if you happen to watch ray day's video you were wishing it would drain like i was like why the crap is he wanting this to drain and later on asked you you said you know it stops the timer and if you can do it right and i'd never thought of that are you constantly looking for for stuff like that or yeah so as soon as the ball hits the drain it stops the timer and it doesn't start the timer until you hit another switch so if the next shot you make is the shot you want to hit you basically just warp piped the ball from you know one place to to your next shot and so all that time trying to set up trying to get trapped trying to hit the shot and the ball path that the shot would have to travel on is no longer counting against you if you drain pause the timer short plunge get the ball to a flipper and then nail the the shot that you're trying to hit but like did you just randomly figure this out is this something that like everyone in the top five you get together you're like by the way if you do this like i mean kind of yeah it's it kind of spreads like wildfire where uh you know you'll see somebody getting a crazy time and you'll see them short plunging. And then you'll be like, why are you doing that? And then they'll explain it to you and be like, huh, okay. And at first you might be like, eh, that's probably not that important. But then you start doing it and you start seeing results. So you do it more and more and then other people start seeing it and then they do it more. And yeah, it just kind of spreads around. That actually reminds me of speed runs. So like in classic NES games, when they get all the way to the end of Super Mario Brothers and they do it in like nine minutes, 20 seconds or something like that, there are all these little tips that they have to save time that doesn't count against them. So that's really interesting that you're able to utilize that in pinball too. Yeah, it kind of is. Yeah, I thought it was pretty awesome. Well, it's just funny, like the little things you don't catch. Like my very first tournament I played in, I was fortunate enough to get to the final four, and the last game we played on was Getaway. and so I started watching the gentleman before me the very first guy that gets up and he launches the ball and he lets it drain and I'm like what the heck is he doing and he just kind of lets it he tries to time it so he's still got ball save so he doesn't you know mess himself over but then he's like then he started playing and I'm like what the heck just happened because then he's in third gear already you know because of the ball save and that's when I learned oh if you let it drain it automatically starts building up your RPMs and you just yeah i think that's you know there are these weird little tricks like that but the the overlying theme is you just gotta gotta be curious gotta pay attention so because you saw him doing that and you asked the question you know you got rewarded because now you get to find out about this cool new strategy um whereas if you just turned a blind eye to it or you don't have the you know curiosity or the will to look at these things um you know that you're only going get better if you uh look at look at everything and try to find the best you know best strategies and and share information with everyone well that's what made me chuckle one of my favorite moments is i was on attack for mars i'm playing three other guys and um i remember we'd had keith l1 on and he's like never shoot up the middle in a tournament just go for the ramps and the orbits right that's like the best strategy on that game just get into Total Nuclear Annihilation and just blow it up and so i'm like well if i'm going to be doing that i'm going to go for the the billion hurry up and so on ball two i saw it all coming together i get stoked right and i hit the shot i get the one billion hurry up Total Nuclear Annihilation happens i'm excited i'm jumping up and down i blow up the game i walk away on ball two and the guy that's that's before me in the queue walks over and he's like what the hell i was like what and he's like and i'm quoting so and he and he's like what did you just do and i and i i tried to explain it to him it's funny because like two minutes later we've got a picture out of attack from mars and i'm trying to explain it because it just wasn't clicking but i'm like dude just it's the billion hurry up i thought everyone knew and it's it's cool to teach someone something new like especially in a tournament setting i've had that happen bowen karen's helped that helped me when we did like salt lake gaming con and stuff like that and he's like just hit this and this it was start starship troopers and he's like just do this this and this and you'll be good to go and it was funny because i did those things and he'd walked off and came back and he's like oh you obviously did what i told you to right so but it's cool it's like i think i think everyone should have that mentality of it's not about beating the other person about knowledge it should be about skill right so well it's a combination though and you have the the people like i said you can be the best best shooter in the world but if you never even stop to ask am i shooting the right things then yeah maybe you don't deserve to beat someone that put in the time to to like even ask that question right true now yes i i agree to an extent that it's it's you shouldn't beat somebody uh knowing something that the other person like can't possibly know or or like you know they're asking like how do i get this and you just like don't tell them and it's some super secret thing who knows what or if you're you know programming the game and you know something like that i think obviously it's just not what you want but if it's something that anybody can have access to you know you should reward people that that take that extra couple minutes because it's not that long or that much effort to just you know ask yourself hey i wonder if there's an add a ball in this multiball and and then try to ask people or play yourself to try to find it um and you know that sort of thing yeah i i actually ran into that in a black rose where my buddy came over and he short plunged and he didn't open the the locker you know david jones locker and just let it drop and i was like what are you doing he's like oh there's a if you don't activate the play field you can just keep shooting until you open up open it up and i'm like wait really yeah i'm very very observant yeah i i had no idea i and i'm not really that observant of a player. So, okay. It sounds like that's, that's my tip is I need to step up my knowledge of the game. You got to start standing over people's shoulders as they play, not touching them, just kind of like, you know, stalker-ish kind of style while they're, they're playing, you're just right behind the tape, but they know you're there kind of thing. You know, I, I, I love it when they have it set up. So they actually have a screen right above. So it shows the play field. I, when I see, when I see things like that, I'm just like, that is amazing because everybody can see what they're doing. That's one of the limitations of pinball is because it, at least previously before flat screens became ridiculously cheap, you kind of had to be really awkwardly involved in watching the action as opposed to just, you know, just taking the person's word for it. So. Yeah, definitely a lot more technology, technological advances, especially just pinball streaming in general has blown up. Oh yes. Yeah, and I love that high-level players, and even like their number one player, is actually streaming and showing the knowledge. Actually, that's one thing that's amazing about pinball is you're actually giving away tips. Like as the high-level players, you guys aren't hiding it. You're actually saying, no, this is what you do to get better. That's what always blows me away. You want more competition, man. Tournaments aren't any fun if you're the only one that shows up, you know. I don't know. Johannes is pretty good. I don't know if you need any more competition than that, man. That man is insane. I watched his Avengers Pro run. What was that, like two weeks ago? Holy crap. Oh, my good God. That guy's crazy. Oh, insane. Yeah. Yeah, that was otherworldly. Yes. It's amazing the flippers. Like, I don't know. It's the same thing as, okay, so like in Avengers, when it has the countdown, down when you lock it in the tower and you're trying to shoot the Hawkeye shot. Like, I don't know, like maybe I flip way too slow or, or trying to figure that out. But I think there are some people that are just better at fast switch or something Like I don know what it is Maybe my timing off but when I see people repeatedly hit those shots when the ball screaming by I I just in awe yeah definitely uh definitely helps having a good yeah timing and coordination and whatever magic uh sauce uh Johannes has well and let's let's talk Avengers for a second so I I got on Scott's Avengers two weeks ago he He has the LE. And at first, I'm not going to lie, I was not happy with the game. I felt like I'd played forever. I felt like I didn't get very far. I was so confused what was going on. I finally slowed myself down. I said, just stop shooting the flashing light. Actually read the screen. And I love Power Gem. Like, I got into Power Gem. That is so addicting. Hitting that spinner to build up Hulk. Oh, my God. Somebody actually read the LCD? Thank you. It's crazy, huh? it's been driving me crazy watching like jack danger play and never look at the lcd and and he'll play like space jam it was like all right just hit the two orbits and like no there's so much more than that or power gem oh just hit the red shots no no no there's so much more well that's what's crazy is it's like the easier shots on avengers if they're flashing yeah you hit them but they're not worth as much as a critical hit shot which is a little harder to hit and then i i thought it'd be the genius that would just sit there and just build up hulk and build up hulk because that spinner shot isn't really super hard to hit and so i just start hitting it right and i'm like why why is it not building up anymore oh it caps out all right let's make a shot and let's start building again that is so addicting that's how i took his gc to be honest like power jam yeah so that was my uh i i basically came up with how that would work where you know at first it was just literally the spinner could raise the values and there was no cap no restriction and i'm like that's insane okay that that spinner it spins really well and people are gonna abuse this so i i made up a nice compromise rule where you get one shot so when the hulk spinner stops spinning then it unlights until you hit another uh you know glancing blow or critical hit and then you can take another uh another shot at it so you kind of have to alternate if you want the maximum pointage. I also love the gamma ray shot with the sound. I hit that shot regularly, but when it starts building up, I swear there's like a short circuit in my brain because it is so stressful to actually hit that shot. But when you hit it, it is so great. It just feels like fireworks are going off because you just crush it. Yeah, the points, they go up. It's like every spin makes the next spin worth more. So if you rip it once you'll get like a nice big score but if you rip it again you just get like a huge score because it's each spin it just keeps getting bigger and bigger yeah yeah i don't know what kind of spinner you put on there but there's like zero resistance i was amazed at that too because it's not like an opt it's just a normal spinner but it just the metal or the size or the weight it just it just goes yeah the the one shot let's see i'm trying to think i i every shot felt very doable this is the thing i loved about this game is as you're playing it there's never a moment where you feel like the game messed you over there it always felt like oh it's my fault for not hitting that shot it's my fault for because all the shots feel very makeable except for maybe the hawkeye the the orbit that comes back around the left side which takes a lot of concentration to hit um but other than that i just i feel like this game is so well balanced and i never felt walked away from the game thinking this game has it out for me i kept thinking i've got to play one more because i've got to get better because i've i've got to make these shots oh it is it has the most addicting like one more game uh feel to it of any game i've played in a while yeah for probably for that reason huh yeah i know i i'm with josh i think that there are some games where there's that one shot that you're just like okay yeah that's just impossible for me to hit it doesn't feel like any of the shots are out of reach so i mean some yeah you have to work for it a little more but you're right it feels like that that captain america shot through the pops that just doesn't look possible and then you hit it you hit it on accident it just yeah swishes perfectly cling it feels so good yeah the only i think actually the one the one shot i do have complaint with is the one that's behind uh what is it the sanctum shot the one that you've got to get the extra ball and stuff off of and i'm like i always it's always in the way and then even when it's not in the way you end up missing it and then hitting the disc and then it gets put in the way so it's like extra compounding frustration are you talking about the sanctum shot i think that's what it is right? The one that's behind the spinning disc. Yes, yes, it's the sanctum shot. I got an extra ball there once or twice, and I was thinking, dang, I don't want to shoot for that. Yeah, it does always feel like the knob's in the way. I feel like I have a lot of luck backhanding that one. You can kind of slide it up there and hit it, and it feels safer and more accurate, I guess. You have to be really fast in letting it go, though, so the upper flipper doesn't get in the way. uh i think you can sneak it in there really i think you can okay yeah i i love that game i'm super excited about it and uh so you have you have the ellie and um josh is getting a ellie as well he's a premium he's getting a premium yeah nice so you'll have the uh the portal and the and the marvel action yeah i i love the no actually i I will say, too, one of our buddies up just up north from me, he just got the Pro, and he's loving that, too. And so I told him, I was like, hey, when this kind of dies down to craziness, I want to come up and play it because I've heard a lot of people have good experiences on the Pro, too. Because I think if you didn't see, like, the Captain Marvel ramp or the illuminated subway, you would still look at that game and say, that's amazing. It doesn't feel like there's a lot of ripped out stuff in the game. Yeah, it's a heck of a lot of game for a Stern Pro. Yeah, it's definitely, you know, I have the Pro Playfield, so I've been streaming that. And, you know, I wish I had the LE one because that's the one I'm used to and it has, you know, the portal. Clunk, I love shooting that portal in the Marvel ramp. But I've had just fun with the Pro as well. So they're just, they're both awesome. And, you know, if you can afford to get the premium, definitely get the premium. And if not, get the Pro. And I love that the game, it actually, even though you have two options, the pro and the premium slash LE, that you still feel that both games are, they are sufficient for what you can get. It's like Metallica. I don't know of anyone who buys Metallica and says, oh, man, I wish I had the other stuff. However, even in Avengers, though, you get something extra with the premium LE. But even if you don't, you don't feel like you're missing something in the Pro. It's still a lot of game for your buck. Yeah, definitely. It is a wonderful game. Like, I'm excited for my Premium. And I really think whether you buy the Pro or the Premium, you're going to be very happy with this game. It's just like Jurassic Park. There's a lot of bang for your buck under that glass. Yeah, it's very akin to Jurassic Park. You know, Jurassic Park Pro has pretty much everything you'd want. but the premium has got that sweet, you know, moving T-Rex and the Raptor gate that you can actually trap balls behind. And it just adds that extra, extra awesome little frosting, like frosting on the cake, right? Yeah, that's a good way of describing it. I actually need to adjust my Raptor pit on the left side though, because the ball, when the door goes down, the ball actually just kind of hangs up on it. Oh yeah, I got to level it, yeah. That's probably a common thing on like Attack from Mars too, right? Yeah. Yeah, no, it's good. So in Avengers, what is your favorite mode? If you activate the portal, which mode do you say, I want to do this one first? That's tough. I mean, I definitely head towards time gem because I like the perk of getting longer ball saves and being able to add time. And the time gem mode is nice when you only have one or two balls, which usually early on in a game you won't have any portal locks or you'll only have one. and so you can really focus left ramp right ramp and then hit the moving target um whereas if you're in a multiball going crazy it's hard to hard to hit that target as it's moving um but i also really like playing mind gem because ripping that disc after you've hit all four shots you can get some serious huge huge points out of out of spinning that disc and oftentimes i'll play thor because thor starts off you know you already have like two of the letters so if you play mind gem uh half of the mind gem is spinning the disc and in thor if you spin the disc it lights an add a ball so you're kind of doubling up on your disc action um so yeah i usually go mind or time which is surprising me because honestly i i could all i played was power gem like i played the other i i went through each mode because i had to see what everything had to offer but i just i don't know what it is but power gem just yeah i do love power gem um that's that's probably definitely that's yeah actually that'd probably be i might pick that more often i don't see that they're all like actually honestly lately i've just been taking whatever the random one suggested is to me because i usually do that too yeah i do that because i like the variety on it yeah yeah and i get super excited when i i collect all the avengers and i'm able to start soul gem because it's just a different way of playing that usually you're flipping with impunity but now you're like ah i only have a few flips and i need to i need to i love i love how keith had designed the two kind of uh parallel tracks in the game where you have your your disc modes and your gem quests but then you also have avenger collecting and kind of like iron maiden like you have all those power triangles going on at the same time um and what makes it just leads to fun moments where you just you never really know when soul gem's gonna happen um and so it just kind of like shows up and you're like oh hey soul gem time or or maybe you want to get to it and you see oh i only need a couple more spins let me just finish off hulk here and then you get to play soul gems it's just it's really cool how it works kind of hand in hand um with uh with the rest of the game you know what you've got a now you've got a program it just popped in my head when you said you know it's soul gem time you should program in there so you know you got mc hammer says stop soul gym time you know see i'm singing i'm thinking like soul train like you know one of those 70s disco songs so i i would be shocked if this game doesn't take number one on pin side because it is well okay sorry medieval madness has got this weird askew score that's like no one's ever gonna obtain But Avengers is just so amazing. I would not be shocked if it's up there at number two. I know we had, I think, four or five games in the top ten earlier. Had Avengers, Jurassic Park, Iron Maiden, I think, and maybe Deadpool. Yeah, right now, Deadpool, Iron Maiden, Jurassic Park, and Avengers. All four are in the top ten. Deadpool must have just got moved up because of the code update actually I hadn't hadn't seen that up there before hey that's what the code update and anything interesting with that code update yeah um so Tanya who's the lead programmer on Deadpool he'd been kind of working on this in the background um getting all those high score tables like all 20 of them or whatever yeah and he also you know reached out to me he was like hey is there anything that you would want in the game i'm gonna we're gonna be doing a deadpool release any suggestions and so i came up with um well it'd be cool to be able to get mech suit multiball again because before you got to 45 weapons you got to play mech suit and then you never saw mech suit the rest of the game so he's like oh okay well we could just make it you know if you get to 150 weapons and then 250 weapons so technically you can keep getting him as opposed to not being able to get it and then i also suggested like an extra ball um for ninjas because in that game there's ninjas that you collect but they don't really do anything it just says like you've ghosted a ninja and so i was like well it'd be cool to tie that to something like an extra ball um and so i think those two were kind of my biggest uh contributions oh and also um i had sort of complained to him that certain modes would block other modes and he agreed he was like oh yeah let's uh you know let's not have the super spinner or the katana rama block out sauron um and i also that was the other thing i said is sauron should probably be worth more points so he just cranked up the scoring on that and so it was this really great collaborative effort um you know to get a code update out and everyone was just thrilled with except for like two or three people on pin side were angry at It was crazy how mad they were that we added three extra songs to Disco Multiball. We didn't remove any. We added three extra songs. So when you got Disco Multiball, now you had four different songs that would play at random instead of just the one song. But apparently the three new songs just didn't jive with people. I don't know. They didn't like it. They were like, oh, they're so low energy or whatever. I don't know. I thought they were cool. How dare you? Yeah, seriously. It reminds me of Total Nuclear Annihilation when Scott actually changed the soundtrack a little bit. And people were like, oh, that ping or that boink at the beginning. Yeah, the beep. The beep was lower. It just takes it away. I'm like, really? You noticed that? I can tell by listening to it, but really it was a non-factor. So the fact that people were put out that, oh, I can't hear that same song when I get Disco Multiball, it blows me away that, you know what, that is important to them. Yeah. And so, you know, Tanya, bless his heart, like within three or four days, turned around another release, adding all these adjustments to let you stay with the old or change the new Disco music. And so now everyone's happy. Wow. That is impressive. That really is. That's great that he wasn't like, you know what, forget you guys. But within days, just took care of it. Was like, you know what, let's just get it done. See, as opposed to Bruce Nightingale, who had the great line, you can't satisfy anybody, so don't even try. Oh my goodness. My favorite Bruce-ism. Yeah. Bruce's are great. He's so organic with them. I'll hear that even when Ron doesn't call them out. Yeah, I notice them all the time. I'm like that that sentence he just said, I don't think is how anybody else would have said that. Well, the funny thing is, after he said that, I messaged him like, aren't you married? Because I think you probably want to try that. well and i love the name of the songs to disco all day disco all night disco afternoon it just yeah some yeah it's uh it's it's fun that deadpool is fun um it's kind of a mindless game for me where uh i bought it because uh i oftentimes you know i have a lot of keith games where you're kind of invested in like thinking of your strategy and all this deadpool is like you just part you just beat up bad guys and listen to disco music. It's just a fun kind of escape. I was really happy with picking up a Deadpool. It makes me feel like playing Street Fighter 2 when I was in high school. That's what it makes me feel like. It's like, yeah, this is fun. Just go ahead and shoot and have fun. That's pretty much it. So the real question we have for you is, how many actual WWEs do you have sent around from winning them? okay first off how many did you win because i think i've won four new in box sterns um and only one of those was a wwe le but that one got it never actually crossed my path they got shipped straight to uh travis murray of a pinball podcast okay all right he uh he reached out or i I put it up for sale on Pinside and he reached out to me and was like, hey, yeah, ship it to this address. Here's money. You know, he sent me the money and I'm like, all right, Zach Sharp, this is the address this game is going to. And Zach was like, yeah, OK. It seems legit. And so I just basically got a prize payout essentially. And then I ended up buying my Iron Maiden with the money. Now that is an upgrade. Nice. OK. Did you get the premium or the pro? Uh, just the pro cause sadly a WWE is, is, uh, not even worth a pro. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You can't hit a home run on anything, right? Or on anything. You can't hit a home run on anything that there's a Bruce isn't for you. Yeah. You, you, you can't hit a home run every time, but okay. I will say though, uh, Josh and I have gone through the releases that Stern has had in the last 10 years and it's crazy how many amazing excellent games are in that run where if you wanted to just build a collection on the last 10 years you could easily have 20 great games in there oh yeah i mean uh neil mccray in the united kingdom he uh he was showing his his game room he said he had like 20 capture cards for his lcds so when he streams he can show you the display and And I'm like, wait a minute, 20. I'm counting on my fingers. I'm like, wasn't there only like 24 LCD games? Like he owns every Stern except for like four in the last five years or whatever. It just goes to show you how many hits have been being cranked out. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. And I'm actually, since I didn't play pinball until like five or six years ago, I don't really have that same nostalgic connection to a lot of those Williams Bally games. My friend loves Adam's Family. That's his favorite game. He sold his gold because he wants to have a fully restored, you know, like from HEP, just super nice. And I was like, I played Adam's Family, and I just don't get it. It's not – I just don't love it. And so maybe I'm just in the minority, but I like the complexity of the new games because there's so much more to do than the three things that a lot of the 90s-era games had. Kind of adding to what you said, it's, yeah, different things to do. But also maybe nostalgia plays a part of why people might want the 90s games, just because they remember playing them in the arcades and certain things about them. I was going to say, you guys have done more hits than Gottlieb did in the 80s and 90s combined. Oh poor Gottlieb They were so good in their EM games Yeah You know what Gottlieb is like the you know it like Sears Sears had like such a run for like 80 years And then in the 90s and 2000s they like I think we done How has life been moving from Washington, which was your home state, you're born and raised, right? And moving to almost halfway across the nation? uh yeah i mean that was a fun uh road trip uh in the middle of you know may right when covid was uh breaking out um but uh you know i'm situated here now uh working at home basically only going to the factory to get uh playfields and and uh things like that but it's kind of just i'm on my own here in my apartment and uh you know nothing really different um other than i do miss some of my friends back in Washington. But luckily with how cheap plane flights are right now, we've actually been able to just kind of head over there on a weekend and come back and it, you know, justifies the cost for the time. And so I can still hang out with people and it's, yeah, I kind of wish, you know, this whole COVID thing wasn't happening and that I'd be able actually go out to like Logan Arcade and play in pinball things here and actually kind of start to develop my Chicago life. But right now it's like nothing has really changed. I've just sort of physically moved, but my actual life hasn't changed too much. Okay. I know Seattle has an amazing competitive scene. However, I would argue that I don't think there's a tougher scene of competitive pinball than the amount of high quality talent that you guys have right around you oh man and you show up and you're like okay so i'm in a foursome and you know i i have a tim sexton i got you i got keith ellen and i have lyman okay uh who's gonna win yeah i know i um you know in the washington state champs i had to go against Kaylee George in the finals. Okay, yeah, yeah. That was so tough. And the round before that was tough. The round before that was tough. I just can't imagine basically that amount of difficulty, but even more for Illinois. On a weekend tournament at Josh Sharpe's house. Yeah, exactly. Moving around, you know, you've been pinball most of your life and whatnot. Is there someone that you just, it's awesome now to be working side by side with at Stern that you're just like, I can't believe I, you know, I played, I don't know, like Steve Ritchie's games growing up and now I get to work with the dude or is there anyone that you kind of starstruck with or is it just kind of business as usual? Uh, it's, uh, it's pretty cool. Um, working with Keith directly cause, uh, I get to see kind of how the, how it's made. Uh, you know, I get to see every little like thought that he has, you know, that he runs by me or or you know ideas as he's coming up with them i get to see kind of the process of how he flushes out a game and and uh it's just really cool to be uh you know working with the goat have you thought of designing something yourself or tried with that oh i don't know that's uh now that i see all the stuff that designers you know like keith has to deal with i i don't know if i'd be up for it there's so much like um i mean maybe keith is an exception because he also does the rules and the gameplay and like all that stuff but aside from from that there's also just the physical nature of pinball of knowing like you can have a guide rail here and how that's going to affect the shot and versus a post versus a a metal thing you know there's just so so much going on when it comes to designing a game like sure i could draw a layout in pencil but if you told me to okay go build it go build that you know it would it would look nothing like a real pinball machine it's being held together with duct tape and wood glue it'd be awesome you know do you like working on games like getting under there and doing little tweaks and uh you know changing flippers and all that first not particularly um it's more like I'll do it when I have to but I don't really find joy in tweaking things I'm pretty much like can I play it? Yes? Do all the switches work? Yes? Okay, I'm good to go but I will say there was some satisfaction in like dialing in the telekinesis lock on Stranger Things and you know, once you actually finish the task it always feels great no matter what it is but motivating myself to you know because i know what goes into it i know i'm gonna have to like figure out how this thing you know how to get this off safely without breaking things and how to not lose the little washer and and and how to put it back together and i know all the troubles and stuff so if i can avoid doing any of that i will but once it's done if you end up doing it i'm always very happy you know that i did it so it's kind of just the way it is that's kind of how i was i was with my jurassic park as soon as i got the pro a couple weeks ago and the problem was is every time you auto launch or whatever the ball would uh like halfway clunk up the the 180 ramp yeah whatever happened to that you brought that up before and uh i actually so i found i talked to someone they said if you put a small just a small washer underneath the left fork of the shooter lane solves that whole problem and i think i've had it clunk maybe once since i've done that and i don't know it's funny how just little stuff like that you know you don't want it's like really do i have to take the glass off and do this but once you do it you're so much happier with the end result yeah you really yeah it's it definitely is uh nice once once you once you get it working the way you want it yeah the the auto launcher on jurassic park at least mine it just feels automatic it's just like Actually, I will say the auto launcher on – and I know there's a whole bunch of different super duper secret skill shots. But with Avengers, when you just hit the auto launcher, it just goes flying around that giant wire ramp. It just feels so cool. Like that ball travels all over the place, and then you just hit it right in the tower. I still love that. That's fun. Yeah, that's my favorite. yeah super skill shot and just full plunge i i love keith's uh not all all three of his games have unique uh plungers that can help you get the ball to different places based on on how you know how you plunge it yeah well and i love that he's starting to reutilize an actual skill shot right like i have turtles and it's it's fun but like i don't actually use the plunger i just hit the you hold the left flipper and hit the auto launch button and wait for it to come all the way around. Right. Yeah. No, on, um, on Avengers, that secret skill shot is so tough, but if you go for it and hit it, it's so big and it feels so satisfying. You get that portal lock and you're like, I earned that. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Joshua and I drove, uh, drew a Sharpie on my game. Okay. Pull it to this point. Here it is. Well, it's funny too, is you're like, I don't know how I get soul jam. And I'm like, dude, you just collect all the Avengers. You're like, Oh, Josh, I told you, I don't read rules. I need to read rules. That that's what I've learned from tonight. So now you got to get your GC back. I know. I have, Hey, I will say, even with you knowing the rules, you only beat me by 500. So yeah, 500,000. Okay. Same diff. Yeah. That's like one Hulk shot. So it depends. Are we, are we talking wizard of Oz scoring? or are we talking Attack from Mars scoring? Yeah, what percentage delta are we talking about? Yeah, okay, actually, I will say on mine, I didn't even put it in the tilt bob yet because I actually, I really don't shake games that much. And so I'm just like, I just got bored and I didn't put it in. Yeah, I mean, if you're not shaking it anyway, then it probably doesn't matter too much. Makes it easier to get safe. If you want to practice your nudging, then you need to put it in there so you know exactly how much you can get away with like in a tournament. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I have noticed that. There's a couple of games that – like my attack from Mars for some odd reason, the tilt was just weird in that game. I don't know if it was the shaker mode or what it was. But I ended up just taking it out. Yeah, I've noticed you really have to put the tilt bob low or else it will just like bobble and tilt you like crazy. I don't know if it has to do with the ring position or something, But on my games, I basically pull the bob all the way down until the tip of the cone is just barely in the ring. So it's almost like I don't have a tilt bob, but it adds just enough so that it puts that edge where, yes, you can tilt. Do you ever use the earplug tip where you put that in? Oh, yeah, yeah. So if you have the earplug, you can set it a little tighter then. Then you can actually move the plumb up a little bit. and then that's a much more predictable uh nice nice tilt mechanism i don't know how games like in the wild like in the 90s how are people not cursing their mouths off with uh with tilts like i play a random bally williams game and if if you just put the tilt bob in without thinking about it it's like feather tight because it just bop bop bop tilt tilt tilt and like it just blows my mind Like maybe operators just didn't put in tilt bobs. Maybe that's why. Like operators, especially in the wild. I think that was one of the challenges and still actually to some degree is a challenge with having pinball in the wild is you have to have an operator who is invested in maintenance. They can't just throw something in a 7-Eleven or whatever it is and just leave it because the game will just get destroyed. Like flippers will be gone or just shots will not be available or there will be some random ball lock. You actually have to maintain the game. So otherwise it just gets thrashed and then no one plays it. Yeah, I mean, luckily people have started – their passion has just shown through of, you know, I love pinball. I want other people to play pinball, so I'm going to operate pinball. And that's just been able to allow more people to play. It's a shame a lot of places are closing down. And hopefully they can open back up or new places can open again once things get back to normal. Yeah. Just like Bruce Nightingale and whatnot, man. I hope when all this stuff finally goes away that they can open up the Silver Ball Saloon again. Because it's sad to see, especially a veteran like Bruce. It sucks. It really does. Get out there. Play some pinball at your local place. you know, glove up, mask up, grab all the extra hand sanitizer you can. If you don't feel safe, then don't do it. But seriously, there's a lot of people that are suffering right now. If you listen to Jeff Teelis on Pinball Profile on 284, he talks about cabin fever. And man, it's just, it's sad. It's sad that places like that that are amazing, that are staples to communities are having a really hard time because they're not nowhere near even like half capacity and so just just support local pinball we got you know like roger sharp said the only way we're going to grow pinball is by the local scene by having it out on location and it's it's very true that's how a lot of us find it so so raymond how many games are you working on simultaneously um i mean usually just one but uh sometimes i can't help myself um like on the weekends and middle of the night uh just you know punching up a few lines of code in the avengers how far is it away from 1.0 uh i don't know it's what is it 9.3 so 0.7 away wow that was an awesome answer okay that's true ask a stupid answer you get a stupid answer well cool um we're kind of getting close to our wrap-up time is there anything else you want to talk about, Raymond, that we haven't really discussed or whatnot? I don't know. We talked about Avengers and pinball. Okay, well, we'll definitely get you out a hat. Just so anybody knows, I do have some people who have asked for hats, and they are on the queue to get sent out. I have been super busy and have not been able to get to them. We'll definitely get one out to you, Raymond. Always check out Raymond's Twitch, Raid A Pinball and he will give you the news on exactly how to play those games like they should be played and check out the archive stuff on YouTube. Raven, if they want to reach out to you, how can they get a hold of you? You can always just message me on Facebook even if you're not added as a friend, I still see those messages or I have a website, technically raidapinball.com and I think there might be an email buried in the do or die podcast link, which we'll see if that ever happens again. But yeah, you can just Facebook message me. It's probably the easiest. All right. Well, thanks again. We really appreciate you taking the time out and talking pinball, which is something we all have a passion for. Yeah, thanks for having me on, guys. For sure. We love having you on, man. You're welcome back anytime. It's pretty cool to have you on. Awesome. Before we wrap this up, though, I want to do two things. The first thing is I want to give a quick shout out to poor man's pinball podcast, along with Tim Lee and Glenn Waechter. If you did not listen to their last episode, which was just yesterday, it was live. And so it usually takes a couple of days to get up on, on the pod catcher. We were nominated as, as one of the podcasts of genius. Did you hear this, Scott? I did not know I was genius category, but no, no, I want to hurry and play this for you guys. Do you mind setting through this, Raymond? It's just a minute long. Sure. Poor Man's Tribe presents Podcasts of Genius. Podcasts of Genius. Today we salute you, nicest pinball podcast in the universe. It's the Lusiticate Pinball Podcast. You could be like other podcasters and rip other shows, dropping F-bombs trying to be cool, but you stinkers know your swag is better than theirs. Only champions wear their beanies. Sometimes you want to give the middle finger, but you just give them that pointy finger because you're from Utah. Just don't bring up deep root. Sure, you might not win a Twippy by being nice, but you can lay your heads on that comfy pillow at night knowing your logo is on a pinball machine. So get in and drool. So mix yourselves a couple of Shirley Temple's Loser Kids, because you'll always be winners with us. These guys always get the best interviews. I'm sorry. I absolutely loved it. Okay, that was awesome, because I loved those Miller Lite commercials. Wasn't it like Miller Lite or Bud Lite or something like that? One of the two. Yeah. Oh, no, they were so funny. Yeah. so thank you guys for that it was awesome yeah no i was smiling over here that's pretty awesome and then one last thing this is episode 48 we are coming up on episode 50 which it's a little bit before our two-year anniversary but holy crap we're hitting the big 5-0 right and so if you want to be on the podcast please send us a clip at loser kid pinball podcast at gmail.com. We'd love to have you put you at the end of the episode or whatever it is. We're going to gather a bunch of these up. Say whatever you want to say. Just forewarn, if you do swear, we will probably edit it out. We are family friendly, just like the Miller Lite commercial said. But we would love to hear from you. And so thank you for listening to us for two years now. Holy crap. And we want to thank people like Raymond davidson and Keith Elwin and Eric Meunier and jack danger i mean all those people that have come on our show jeff teal it's martin robbins i mean just we've had a slew of people that have come on just come to bs with us keep pinball positive and just have fun with it man and i think that's what we really i think after these two years that's what we figured out is let's have fun and let's play pinball, right? Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, that's my two spills. So send us a clip. We hope to hear from you soon. You want to send us off there, Scott, and tell them where they can find us? Yeah. So check us out. We usually record roughly about every two to three weeks, depending on the news, at Razor Kid Pinball Podcast. Also, you can reach out to us on Facebook. It seems to be the most consistent place that we are. and you can email us at what's our email address Josh? LizardKidPinballPodcast at gmail.com and we're also on Instagram or Instaface or the Twitterverse or all those other things Josh does all that fun stuff and we would love to hear from you if you guys have anything that you want us to talk about or suggestions for the show go ahead and send those in and we will catch you in about two to three weeks again check out Raymond Davidson on his Twitch. And when he gets back to competitive pinball, we'll certainly look forward to the Do or Die podcast. Thanks again, Raymond. Yeah, thanks again for having me on. Shut up and sit down. The Joshfight track is on It's Nosy.