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Episode 15 :: The Electric Bat Cast

Electric Bat Cast·podcast_episode·55m 2s·analyzed·May 5, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Electric Bat Cast earnings report with operations insights and John Wick preview.

Summary

Kale and Rachel from Electric Bat Arcade discuss arcade operations, location management decisions, seasonal pinball performance, and their top-10 earnings report. They address questions about game selection criteria (reliability, cost, software maturity), reveal their location strategy (avoiding LEs, preferring Sterns for reliability), and preview upcoming John Wick pinball by Stern with speculation about a new designer. The episode includes community shout-outs and discussion of Insider Connected integration into location management.

Key Claims

  • Spooky games require constant on-location attention due to frequent glass removal and software issues like stuck ball handling

    high confidence · Hosts discuss Looney Tunes/Texas Chainsaw Massacre operational challenges; no automatic chase ball compensation like Stern

  • Electric Bat owns four of five John Borg games and must travel to complete Insider Connected Borg badge requirements

    high confidence · Direct discussion of owning Maiden, Rush, Aerosmith in Tempe and another in Flagstaff, needing Guardian's or Munsters elsewhere

  • Starfighters is expanding to over 100 pinball machines via taking over adjacent karate dojo, planning to reach 165 capacity

    high confidence · Kale and Rachel confirm public announcement of expansion from ~110-120 to potentially 165+ machines for January Starfighters Festival

  • John Wick pinball will arrive at Electric Bat within approximately two weeks

    medium confidence · Kale states 'I'm hearing we'll have it within two weeks' and 'rumored to be at the arcade in about two weeks'

  • Texas Chainsaw Massacre has better software and rules than Looney Tunes (same hardware configuration)

    medium confidence · Community feedback that 'people who have played both' indicate Texas Chainsaw software is superior; hosts regret choosing Looney Tunes retrospectively

  • Electric Bat sees significant seasonal uptake in March due to MLB spring training tourism in Phoenix

    high confidence · Direct observation: 'we see a big uptick in March because we get the spring training bump'

  • There is no meaningful earnings difference between Pro and Premium tier games at Electric Bat

    high confidence · Rachel reports 'we haven't seen a huge difference in pro and premium' earnings performance

  • LEs are not cost-effective on location due to inability to recoup premium cost and poor resale value when heavily played

    high confidence · Strategic decision: 'gameplay is a premium' and 'you're going to end up selling at like a premium price' when LE has 'thousands of plays'

Notable Quotes

  • “If I'm paying Jersey Jack prices, or LE prices, they have to make their money back.”

    Rachel @ ~13:00 — Explains operator cost-benefit analysis when selecting tier levels for location machines

  • “I would never, ever, ever put a homemade machine on location... the wiring was backwards and you almost died.”

    Rachel @ ~14:30 — Safety and reliability concerns with homebrew pinball on commercial location

  • “We try to have our bigger tournaments a few months back... in February and November.”

    Kale @ ~22:00 — Reveals seasonal tournament scheduling strategy to optimize attendance in temperate weather

  • “If there is a new designer, we're excited about that. Every designer has sort of a feel to them.”

    Kale @ ~42:00 — Community anticipation about potential new Stern designer on John Wick; design philosophy variation

  • “We keep the games how we think that they're fun to play day to day... no extra balls [during tournament].”

    Rachel @ ~31:00 — Approach to game difficulty tuning: consistency over tournament-specific configuration

Entities

Electric Bat ArcadeorganizationKalepersonRachelpersonMark PearsonpersonSpooky PinballcompanyStern PinballcompanyJohn Wick PinballgameLooney Tunesgame

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Starfighters Arcade expansion doubling capacity from ~110-120 to 165+ machines via karate dojo acquisition

    high · Rachel confirms public announcement; Kale notes excitement about 'huge tournament' venue expansion

  • ?

    community_signal: Insider Connected app creates new operational logistics complexity for location operators; badges require multi-venue play coordination

    high · Rachel describes needing to travel between Tempe and Flagstaff locations plus external venues to complete Borg badge requirement

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Seasonal tournament scheduling optimization: Electric Bat targets February/November for major events to avoid July heat and winter travel barriers

    high · Kale: 'we try to have our bigger tournaments a few months back... February and November'; notes cold climate operators avoid winter

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Electric Bat maintains consistent game difficulty for day-to-day play rather than tournament-specific settings; prioritizes accessibility and fun factor

    high · Rachel: 'we keep the games how we think that they're fun to play day to day... if it's too hard, that's just not that fun'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: John Wick pinball development involved outreach from Lionsgate for promotional coordination; strategic movie marketing tie-in with arcade venues

    high · Kale: 'whenever the most recent john wick movie came out lionsgate contacted me... asked to do a pinball promotion'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.165

0:00
thing right off you need to put your stuff on focus mode on your ios device oh okay hey guys welcome to another episode of the batcast my name is kale i'm rachel and today's show is brought to you by glasses i have them i have glasses now rachel got her first pair of glasses Yes. And you're getting used to them. Slowly. I've had glasses for so long, I forgot, you know, when you're getting used to the progressives. Yeah, these are progressives. It's a big deal. So I went from never wearing glasses in the last 44 years to two days ago, I have progressives, and the world looks like, it looks like I'm walking on waves. And it's fun.
0:49
It's slightly nauseating, but getting better every day. It's great. Now I can read better. I'm learning to love it. Yeah, good deal. Welcome to sunny Arizona. The weather's beautiful right now. If you come to Arizona, this is the time to come. Yeah. Wouldn't you say? Well, or maybe like in October. And we're going to talk about seasons. No, we're not. Oh, we are?
1:13
All right. We're going to skip that segment. I had some notes for it. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. No? I thought you were making fun of me. No, no. Somebody had a question about seasons and pinball and what have you. But if you don't think that's a viable topic, I'll let you run this show. I'm going to sit here and listen to you.
1:36
Okay, what's happening, people? This is an exciting episode because we have the fan favorite, the earnings report. Yes. Earnings report. We want to see what's going on because we got a lot of new games in the mix and a lot of old ones that are still up there. Yes. They're still up there.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
game
Starfighters Arcadeorganization
Insider Connectedproduct
Quarter Drop Arcadeperson/content_creator
Forever the Flipbrand
Maidengame
Batman 66game
Scooby-Doogame
World Cup Soccergame
Stranger Thingsgame
George Gomezperson
District 82organization
$

market_signal: Spring training tourism creates predictable March revenue uptick for Phoenix-area pinball locations

high · Rachel: 'we see a big uptick in March because we get the spring training bump... a lot of those folks like to be at electric bat'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Speculation about new/different designer on John Wick pinball; hosts express excitement about fresh creative direction while George Gomez maintains oversight

    medium · Kale: 'we're going to get a new feel... it's still going to have that stern feel because we have Gomez piloting the ship'

  • $

    market_signal: LE tier machines not cost-effective for location operators; unable to recoup premium cost and resale value degrades with heavy play

    high · Rachel: 'there's no point in having an LE on location'; 'you're going to end up selling at like a premium price' when heavily routed

  • ?

    announcement: John Wick pinball officially announced by Stern; conference call preview scheduled for Tuesday; expected arrival at Electric Bat within 2 weeks

    high · Kale: 'stern announced john wick pinball has been heavily rumored'; 'we are going to join a conference call and learn about the game'

  • ?

    product_strategy: No meaningful earnings difference between Pro and Premium tier games at Electric Bat location; suggests tier differentiation may be over-segmented

    high · Rachel: 'we haven't seen a huge difference in pro and premium... earnings go... that has really helped me be more confident'

  • ?

    supply_chain_signal: Looney Tunes and Texas Chainsaw Massacre utilize separate Spooky software teams; Texas Chainsaw reportedly has superior rules/software

    medium · Hosts confirm 'separate software teams'; community feedback indicates Texas Chainsaw superiority; hosts express retrospective regret about Looney Tunes selection

  • ?

    technology_signal: Spooky Pinball games require intensive on-location technical support due to glass removal needs and software issues (stuck ball handling without automatic compensation)

    high · Hosts describe needing to be 'around it 100% of the time'; no Stern-like chase ball compensation feature in Looney Tunes

    • 2:00
    We got a bunch of good stuff going on. First of all, I want to give a shout out. Man, somebody who's just killing it on social media. Yeah. I showed you his stuff. Quarter Drop Arcade. Yes. That guy's stuff is cool. Man. Blowing it up, his videos on TikTok. If you're on TikTok, follow him on TikTok. He's getting a lot of engagement there and teaching people about arcades.
    2:30
    He is going through his whole mission and taking you along the ride of buying arcade games, whether they be like, you know, claw machine type stuff, token machines, why he decided to go with tokens instead of a card system. That's a topic near and dear to me. And there's an absolute great video about that where he explains the feel of playing a game, you know, and having to put tokens in a machine as opposed to like a free play arcade where, you know, We've played free play games at conventions, especially video games. I remember it was me and Dirty Donnie, and I think you were there. We got tired of playing Rampage because there was no challenge. Because it was free. You keep continuing and continuing. Having to add a token to continue a game, really, it has an element of stress that we want to see. It incentivizes good play. It makes you want to try hard. If it's just free to indefinitely continue, meh. Yeah, 100%. So go check out Quarter Drop Arcade. I know he's on Instagram and TikTok, probably Facebook, too. I don't really mess around with Facebook too much. I mean, on my personal account, of course, I do with Electric Bat Arcade. He has some really good stuff there, and he has a very interesting video. If you go to his YouTube page, he's setting up a mock arcade in his garage or like a workshop.
    4:09
    And it's really cool. He takes you on a tour, and you can see what's going on there. So shout out to Quarter Drop Arcade, teaching people all about the world of running an arcade. Yeah. It kind of fits with what we do. Mm-hmm. I'm digging it. And let's get straight into some of the – no, no, let's not get into the questions yet. I want you to show off this hoodie. Oh, this is an – this is the story of the week, isn't it? Yes, it is. So, Cale and I – Our friend Neil. Got an exciting package at the arcade, and it's hoodies, two hoodies, one for me, one for him. Yep. and we did a collab with Forever the Flip, and this is the limited edition hoodie. We had it. We wore it around the arcade, shot some photos. You shot some great pictures and videos of us in it. Yeah, almost too good because they sold out in 10 hours.
    5:16
    I've never, I mean, I can't even believe it. Yeah, I was telling people at the arcade, like, you better jump on this because, you know, it's limited edition. I didn't think that that meant like literally that minute. I thought they had time to, you know, think about it for a second. You had to jump on that. So these are really cool, but you can't get them if you don't have them already. Super cool electric bat, limited edition hoodies, all sold out. All sold out, but there's other cool hoodies. So head over to 4, the number 4 ever, theflip.com, and we'll put a link in the show notes. Yeah. And go over there and buy some of his other stuff. Really, really cool pinball-centric apparel.
    5:57
    Very unique style. And thank you for letting us collaborate with you on a very cool hoodie. Yes. Yeah. Good deal. Maybe we'll do another one in the future. I would think we should. Another design.
    6:11
    Let's get into viewers, listeners, and arcade attendee questions. Okay. I have a good one right here from Adam Horton.
    6:23
    Great player. Yes. From Arizona. This is about the spooky game Looney Tunes and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. For those of you who don't know, Looney Tunes and Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the latest game from Spooky Pinball. and it's the same they kind of did it like they did with Ultraman and Halloween same layout, different games I mean you could choose Looney Tunes if you have some kids and then Texas Chainsaw Massacre if you have kids that are like me if you have creepy kids this game's cool I think it's the best thing Spooky has done that's not I got into his question That's not his question. I'm going to get to that. I'm prefacing it with the whole deal with Spooky and how they set up these games.
    7:25
    If you try to operate one of these things, there is a learning curve with a lot of blood, sweat, and tears.
    7:35
    Because when you get the game, you have to be around it 100% of the time to make sure it's actually operating. because you have to take the glass off a lot. A lot. But it's fun to have in the arcade, and this is a fun game. It's making some money when it's actually running. Right. It's a fun game with a lot of ball traps and currently no software to handle stuck balls. Like with a stern, it'll send out a chase ball and then eventually compensate for that. With this, it'll send out a chase ball, but if you don't knock your ball loose, no more games. But we're specifically speaking about Looney Tunes. We ended up getting Looney Tunes instead of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Separate software teams. So Texas Chainsaw Massacre may have the whole chase ball feature. But Adam Horton's question is, why Looney Tunes over Texas Chainsaw Massacre? That's easy. That's just what Mark wanted. Yeah, Mark has always wanted a Looney Tunes. That's been a dream theme for him for a while. So whenever they announced it, that was a very easy pick for him. And we were actually A-OK with that because you and I both grew up with Looney Tunes. Renting those tapes on the weekends. 100%. So Mark is Mark Pearson. He purchases like, I think he has purchased every single Spooky Game. Since the beginning. He's their number two, their second customer of all time. And he is cool enough to let everybody enjoy his spooky games. He puts them in the electric bat, and we are very appreciative of that. So the reason for Looney Tunes over Texas Chainsaw Massacre is purely Mark's choice. Would you have made a different decision?
    9:23
    Boy, if I knew that I was going to get one or the other, I honestly didn't even look at Texas Chainsaw that much. And after our experience with Halloween and just the way the feel of that game, I think I would have done Looney Tunes, too. Okay. What about you? I mean, I know our theme, arcade-wise, Texas Chainsaw seems like a very obvious choice for us. Right, right.
    9:51
    These themes, I'm more partial to Looney Tunes. I don't think I've ever even sat down and watched the whole Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie, any of them.
    10:04
    But I am well-versed in Looney Tunes, and I love Looney Tunes. But hindsight is 20-20. If I knew what I knew now... Just about the software, you mean? Yeah. From what I understand from people who have played both, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre software and rules are just so much better than Looney Tunes. So I think I would pick that, but we don't have time machines yet to change that.
    10:35
    Excuse me. So let's go on to a question from DJ Defrag. All right. That's our buddy Defrag comes to the arcade every once in a while and competes in tournaments. This is a question from Discord. What things do you consider when it comes to putting a pinball machine on location?
    10:58
    And there's so much. Wow. I guess this would be like, well, I mean, if it's a stern, we know the general reliability. We buy every stern that comes off the assembly line as quick as possible. Well, we buy one of each. We don't buy every single one. Yeah. Or two.
    11:24
    So, I mean, bottom line, it comes to reliability and also known unreliability. I think that's why we put spookies in the arcade, because we know they're going to be unreliable, but we're prepared. We're prepared for the unreliability. Right. And we certainly wouldn't put them up in Flagstaff that's two and a half hours away. Right. We need to put the game somewhere we're going to be close by, whereas if it's a stern, we can just put it two hours away and be fine. We know it's going to be reliable.
    12:00
    So, like, we're not familiar with P3. So I don't think we would gamble on spending, I mean, what are those things now, $10,000, $11,000? Yeah, and yes, something like that. And just from talking to other operators, they do have some questionable reliability issues. So that's something we think about. Yeah, if I'm paying Jersey Jack prices, I need to have, or LE prices, they have to make their money back. Certainly. So, I mean, as much as I put games in there that I love that are not necessarily going to be high earners, They may not be expensive games like the classic Bally's. They pay for themselves relatively quickly. For sure. Especially when you spend $500 on a Knight Rider. Certainly. Yes. That one. Well, that one's been paid for.
    12:56
    Another thing, I guess a situation we didn't think about until now, I would never put a homemade machine on location. Yes. And by homemade, you're referring to the Stargazer. that somebody, it is a stargazer built from scratch, just composite parts. I would never, ever, ever do that again. Right. The wiring was backwards and you almost died. Yeah. I got, man, am I experienced in electrical mishaps. Yeah. Just from trusting that, you know, a ground says it's a ground or, you know, wow. Wow. Now it's live. Yeah. So those are some of the things we think about. Shocking also we uh one thing and and i know different companies call le different things um for the most part we stay away from putting le's on location because and i know people think like oh oh my god it's so awesome that you know there's an le on location i would just get a premium because there's really no point in having an LE on location other than... It's cool. Right, right. Financially, there's no reason to do it. You're not going to make your money back between an LE and a premium. People aren't going to pay more or be more excited. It might be like a one-time thing. People might go, it's like, oh, cool, it's an LE. But gameplay is a premium. Plus your resale, there's not a huge market for routed LEs. Right.
    14:37
    You're going to end up selling at like a premium price. You know, when you have an LE with thousands of plays on it, it's got road hard. Yeah. So that's one thing we consider. And surprisingly enough, we haven't seen a huge difference in pro and premium. That has been really interesting to me. As far as like earnings go. Yeah, and that has really helped me be more confident in the decisions about which games we get pros, which games we get premium. And we base that just on, does this look like it's going to be reliable? Does this mech look like it's going to make me work an extra hour or two every week to keep it working as it should? Or do these premium features provide substantially cooler gameplay? You know, we just game to game. But we didn't see really any difference at all between pro and premium. For sure. So those are just some of the things we consider when purchasing a new machine for a pinball location.
    15:42
    Yeah, we like to get the new ones as much as possible across the board, and then we like to get the old ones that we like. Very good. uh this is from jacob or jacob jacob or jacob this is on this is from discord thank you for your question jacob uh this question about tournament seasons and i'm actually going to open up discord and and read what he said here and we're talking about seasons not like like we're at league season 11 12 or whatever we're talking about winter spring summer fall this is regarding the seasonality of pinball um this was a discussion we had in the tournament director's channel on the electric bat discord if you want to join the discord head over to the podcast tab on electricbatarcade.com and join the discussion there ask us some questions there's a bunch of fine folks here that like to talk about pinball uh jacob he's curious now to see data regarding seasonal pinball performance at arcades in different climates. Obviously, a colder climate will likely do better in colder months, not always true, as people seek outdoor recreation in the warmer times, but warmer, dry climates don't seem so obvious. How is pinball performance affected seasonally in the Phoenix, Tempe area? Okay. Yep. And there's a bunch of other stuff, but that's the gist of it. But first I want to talk about the colder climates because this is an interesting thing.
    17:21
    For example, with District 82, hugely popular, massive place for like incredible tournaments where the top players in the world meet up. But we've heard from a lot of the players, they don't like going there when it's cold. Yeah, I wouldn't go from where it's 80 degrees to where it's 30 degrees. Yeah. That doesn't make sense to me at all. Right. So they can get dinged on that. So there's a season they have to watch out for. Likewise, I wouldn't fly out to Phoenix in July. Right. We try to have our bigger tournaments a few months back. Yeah. We try to do it in, like, February and November. It's the kind of stuff that people will. And we see a big uptick, like, in March because we get the spring training bump. Everybody likes to fly down to Phoenix to see all the spring training games. And when they're not at baseball games, a lot of those folks like to be at electric bat. Right, right. And you know what's interesting? And the, you know, besides like the tournament series, there's a part season. When I used to sell parts, there was a season and it was like clockwork. Once it started getting cold up north, you would start to get tons of orders in because people would start heading inside and making sure their machines were running properly. So you would always get a parts order. Yeah. And then, of course, that would go through all the way through to Christmas, right, when people are buying machines and upgrading their machines and what have you. So that's kind of interesting.
    18:56
    Cool. Thank you for the question, Jacob, on Discord. Now we're going to move on to Mr. Bauer on Discord. Well, Mr. Bauer always runs our stall ball tournaments. Yeah, we're grateful to him. He does an awesome job. He was gone for a little bit, and Nate took it over, and then Michael is back, and he has a great question. I don't know if you saw this thing. If an electric bat-themed pinball machine were made, what features would you like to see in it? Modes, multiballs, mechs, call-outs, Easter eggs, art, et cetera. Cool. Well, I guess before you even start the machine, or maybe I guess you drop in some credits, you start the machine, and before you get to a mode, you have to go through a shady parking lot.
    19:43
    No, our parking lot's not that bad. We've got lines painted in it now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not as bad as the mall. The Tilt League, they have to deal with stolen cars. One of their players got the car stolen. The mall's shadier than electric bat. Electric Bat for a while looked shadier, but now that we've got those parking lights. Last night it was all full of really cool old hot rods. There was like a hot rod show. Yeah, yeah, that was super cool. There was a, what would you call that, Rockabilly? Yeah. It was a Rockabilly show. So I think like modes would be like, you'd have like your live show modes in the Electric Bat machine. I would want a stall ball mode. Oh, a stall ball mode. Like you have to hit X number of scoops or saucers before you drain. You just blew my mind. I'm known to do that. It's the glasses. Or how about, you know how in Jurassic Park you can start out, you can do a team mode? Mm-hmm. You know? How about that? There's stall ball software in our game. There would have to be. Yeah. There would have to be that.
    20:42
    You know, you have your live music mode. I would need some glow-in-the-dark stuff. Yeah, your carnitas tacos mode. Yes, that's right. All the stuff around electric bat.
    20:52
    This seems like a very disjointed pen. and then and then there has to be the chewy's world famous bounty knockout mode where you know you win some money to progress in other modes um and then you like multi-balls there should be a multi-ball in there a couple of them like three three different we're gonna do something crazy we're gonna put a multi-ball in there and uh i think we'll take some ramps I like ramps. And then spinners. Spinners are super important. It's got to have like a bat cave, like a bat multi-ball, like all the bats. Yeah, I like that.
    21:31
    Man, that would be a fun machine. It would be dark. It would be mostly black with like a lime green or glow-in-the-dark. Yeah, glow-in-the-dark. It would look black and white until you hit it with some UV light. And then it was glow-in-the-dark. Man, that would be fascinating. I think we should do that. Like a mode in Creature from the Black Lagoon where you have to find the girl. But it would be like, find where that dank weed smell is coming from. Yes. Yes, 100%. We played that last night. We're like, who is that? Damn. Right, right? Welcome to Arizona. It was kind of loud last night, wasn't it? I'll tell you what. What a good time. Yeah. Oh, well, thank you, Mr. Bauer, for that. And hopefully we'll actually get a game made at some point. That would be a lot of fun.
    22:22
    Hooper Triplet on Discord. We're moving on to the next question. Do you track or consider average play time when deciding which game to rotate out or include in tournaments? 100%. And Rachel is here to explain that because she's the one who deals with all that. If it's logistics, it's a Rachel question. Yes, we do. We have our tournament games and banks of slower playing games and faster playing games. And we alternate banks each round. And so if I pull out a bunch of longer playing games for repair or just general cycling, then I put in the equivalent longer playing games because we have to have about 30 of each type to keep the tournament running smoothly with the number of, you know, 100, 120 players.
    23:15
    So, yeah, we definitely do. And yes. Yes. And I think longtime listeners know this, but you do not make your games, for example, with Godzilla, notorious long ball times unless you set it up in this style, right? But you don't do it because you like to keep your games friendly. Yeah, I like it because I'm not going to change the games every Tuesday and then change them back again for tournaments and stuff. So we keep the games how we think that they're fun to play day to day. If it's too hard, that's just not that fun. And so we keep them playing fun, and that's how they are all the time. So no extra balls. I mean, there's extra balls, but you don't play them during tournaments. That's really the only thing that we do to shorten them during tournament time. Another thing we consider when rotating, especially if we take games up north to our second location in Flagstaff, Arizona, Insider Connected. Yes. We consider which Insider Connected games we want at home base and which ones we want in Flagstaff. Now we've found ourselves in a little bit of a pickle. because this month with Insider Connected, there are a bunch of super cool badges you can get. Check out your Insider Connected app and check out the new badges. There's a ton for Jaws. Yes. And there are a ton for May. One of them is, is it May? We're in May. We're in May, okay.
    24:57
    The Borg badge where you have to play, you have to log in to three different Borg games and we're kind of in a pickle right now. Because there's five. We own four of them. Right. And we only have, how many, two? We have two in Flagstaff and two in Tempe. Right. So we have to get three.
    25:19
    We're going to have to travel up to Flagstaff or go to a different arcade. We can log in to Aerosmith in Tempe. And also, what's the other board? Rush. And then we'll have to go to Flagstaff to get our Guardian's badge. Or Munster's. Yep. So now with Insider Connected, there's a whole other thing we have to think about when deciding where to place our games.
    25:44
    Which is cool. It's fun. It's a great problem to have. Also, it's kind of fun because you might have to travel to another arcade to get your badge. And that's what it's all about. We want you to play as many pinball machines as you can. There's plenty of quarters to go around. Everybody. Speaking of other arcades, shout out to Starfighters. Oh, yeah. This was mentioned, but I know they made it public. so it's okay to talk about it. They are expanding into the, there was a dojo. Karate. There was like a karate dojo next door. They're taking that thing over, and they're going to be able to have over 100 pinball machines. Is that correct? This is what I've heard. I think they're going to, like, I don't think it's going to be 100 as soon as they open up. I think they'll gradually expand. But, yeah, they're going to have, they're going to double their capacity. It's going to be huge. and the Starfighters Pinball Festival, which is in like January, I believe. Yes. This year, this upcoming year, is just going to be huge and fun. That's what I am excited about. Yeah. So they can have, you know, they were capping it, I think, around 110 or 120. I think 128 was the cap. 128? Or 132, because they wanted to be, you know, certified plus. And now I'm hearing they'll be able to get up to like 165. Oh, I think we can push it way further. That's a lot of work. That is so exciting. Congratulations to them. Yeah, that is so exciting for Arizona Pinball. Arizona Pinball keeps blowing up. Yeah. And we're very happy to be a part of this. Congratulations to Starfighters. And we're looking forward to all the new machines and having a huge venue to throw big tournaments in. Yeah, super cool.
    27:27
    I especially excited because they big tournaments that I not running i really enjoy it this is a huge gift to me i can remember who who asked this question oh it's me aj um on discord thoughts on john wick if you haven't heard yet if you've been living under a rock stern announced john wick pinball has been heavily rumored yeah um what do we think about it i don't know we don't know anything about it so this was weird to me i mean neither you and i have seen a john wick movie right you know we just haven't not any reason why but was it a whenever the most recent john wick movie came out lionsgate contacted me and asked me it asked to do a pinball promotion do tournaments for john wick and i thought like well this is kind of weird because mortal combat did the same thing whenever the last mortal combat movie but that made sense It's like, yeah, let's throw a party in an arcade. But John Wick, I was like, why does John Wick want to have a party at Electric Bat? Now we know. By all means, let's do it. So we had a John Wick party. People got John Wick shirts and the coin, and it was very fun. And now this all makes a lot more sense. Yep. We were ahead of the, what would you say, the movement. We were ahead of the full movement. the complete yeah so cool uh i we don't know what to think about this game because we we don't know we haven't seen it we've we've heard some things but we don't know if they're true from people who have uh went to some private party and played the game i don't know why we didn't get invited yeah but um you know you know they told us uh well you know they they sign ndas but you know what does the NDA really mean? People love to talk about things. We've heard some things about the game, but we don't know whether they're true or not, so no point in talking about them. We are excited to see the video on Tuesday. We're going to join a conference call and learn about the game, and I guess we'll talk more about it then. Yeah, we should have the game in a few weeks. That's the exciting part. I'm hearing we'll have it within two weeks. I mean, I don't want to say it until we have it in hand, but it is rumored to be at the arcade in about two weeks. And we're excited for a new designer because this is going to be. Now, people are saying that. We don't know that for a fact. Oh, okay. Well. Right. Okay. If there is a new designer, we're excited about that. Yeah. If that's true and this is a completely new designer, supposedly somebody has been at Stern for a while. So I'm excited. I think people are excited about fresh new things and just psychologically. Right. You think about Foo Fighters and how that game just felt different than all the other games. Every designer has sort of a feel to them. And now we're going to get a new feel. But it's still going to have that stern feel because we have Gomez piloting the ship there, keeping everybody in line. So all we can say about John Wick is we are very excited and we will have it. uh within a couple of weeks so uh so come on out um i'm not sure where aj lives but if you if you're close to us come visit us if not there we're we have an airport there's an airport very close to the arcade there's airports super close you see lots of places to store your bags under the machines i would like to get into everybody's favorite thing the um the uh the earnings report Oh, I have it. Everybody loves the earnings report. You know, we were just recently on the wormhole, and they did their earnings report. They did like a top three. Yeah. And I didn't realize everybody gets excited about the earnings report. This is good. I like it. It's data. I think data nerds love other people's data. Yeah. So check us out on the wormhole podcast. We had a great time with those guys. Super fun. And we even talked about doing it again, doing some more roundtable pinball discussions. Yeah, I love those guys. I'd love to do it again, and I can't wait to go and visit them in Texas. Yeah, go check out all of their podcasts. They do some really great work. Okay, we're going to do top ten. Would you like to start at ten or at one? We will start at ten, and all of these are going to be a surprise to me. Okay. Yeah, I haven't talked to you about any of it. Yeah, right. So let's go. Give me ten. What's number ten? Number ten is Maiden. Is that new to the top ten? I believe it is. It usually hovers around 10 to 15-ish. I think it's a good performing game, especially for one that has been out as long as it has. What has it been out like six years or so? It's been a long time. That was the first new in-box turn at the Electric Bat. It was. That was the game that started it all. Congratulations, Iron Maiden. For new games. Number nine, Batman. Batman 66. Another Stern, a banger, a fantastic game. If you can get your hands on one of these, it is totally worth it. Lyman Sheets blew it up. Gomez. And Gomez.
    32:54
    What a fantastic package that is. And it's still earning very well. Yeah, however many years later. Scooby-Doo. Scooby-Doo has all the kinks worked out of it, as best we can tell. It seems to be running very reliably, and I've had a number of people tell me it's their favorite game. They come in there to play it. There aren't very many Scooby-Doos on location. I don't know of any other ones in Arizona.
    33:19
    So if you want to play it, come to the bat. Cool. Congratulations, Scooby-Doo and the spooky team. Yeah.
    33:29
    Dog soccer. That's number eight? Number eight is, oh, sorry, that's number. these numbers get all off. That's number seven. Okay, so World Cup Soccer, the first Papaduke game in the electric bat. Yeah. If it was up to me, I would have all of them. But you... I like dog soccer.
    33:53
    World Cup Soccer is a good game for me. You know, since I met you, I've told you how much I wanted a Circus Voltaire and you've kept me away from it. Every time I save up enough money to buy it, you sneak in. I buy a new roof instead. Buy something else. All right.
    34:11
    Good. I love World Cup soccer. It's so fun. It's a great game. I was playing it last night while I was supposed to be doing some work. Yeah.
    34:21
    Yes. So I'm glad that we have that in there. That is our friend Jeff, Jeff and John's. Good deal. He's making a little money splitting that coin drop. That's right. um stranger things is next so in the number six space we've got stranger things now with with stranger things has that gone up or down it it i can't remember what happened last month it is pretty consistent well last month it was the game of the month so it was going to be higher right people were winning cash on that right right um but now that it's just a you know normal play. It's still doing very well.
    35:01
    Sixth place is not a bad spot to be. And what you mean by game of the month, that's the Tops game. Isn't that what they call it? I don't know what that stands for. It's the Stern tournament game where you have to install the tournament button. Cash game. You win money. Yeah, you win money and the game ends up earning more. So it's great for operators and It's great for the players. And if you want to get one of those tournament buttons, get in touch with Marco Specialties, a great sponsor of the show. They can hook you up with one of those tournament buttons. And they are very inexpensive and incredibly easy to install. This is a very good investment. It will take you less than five minutes to install. Your earnings on the game will go way up because, as it turns out, people like to win money. This is like real money. It's not like bat bucks or some tokens or whatever. was uh you know Andrew Jackson's right and um if you head over to our Instagram or I think I even put it on TikTok you me explain how to do it because uh on this month it's on uh Foo Fighters yes and very excited to see how that goes because I think this is the first time we've done the cash tournament on Foo Fighters yeah and there's some games where we kind of know there's certain regulars to the arcade that are just very good at that particular game. So you know it's going to be likely a battle between like four or five people for the top spot. Foo Fighters, off the top of my head, I can't think of any single person that has that game like they're the people to beat on Foo Fighters. So I'm really excited to see this is just going to be a big toss up. I love Foo Fighters. I wish I had one at home. Well, luckily you have one at the place that you spend more waking hours at. Maybe we should get a premium at the arcade and I can bring the pro home or whatever. They're both great layouts. Yeah. And I can't wait to see what Jack does next. Yeah. That's going to be coming up kind of soon, right? It's about his turn. Yeah. In fifth place is Jurassic Park, which was April's cash game of the month. Jurassic Park is going to go down as one of the greatest games of all time. Everybody loves that game. Yeah. Experts, casuals. It is, man, it hits all of the cylinders, doesn't it? Yes. It punches those cylinders.
    37:25
    Oh, man. Fires on all your bases. It fires at all of our bases, belong to us. And so you're thinking it being the Tops game, the tournament game for last month, it gave it a little bump, right? Gave it a little bump. That always happens, right? Otherwise, I still think it would have been top 10, but just lower down. Good deal.
    37:49
    In the number four spot, we've got Elton John. Still killing it. This was one that I, in particular, was very curious to see. Unlike other Jersey Jacks, which seem to peak for like two months and then just drop off. Right. The shape of the earnings curve for most Jersey Jacks that we've had, and we don't have a huge base of experience but our our limited experience with jersey jacks is shown in the first month they they make a ton of money the second month they make um almost a ton of money and then in the third or fourth month they make like regular money like it just it is like you said a fairly sharp drop off to like just that plateau where it stays at this is so weird because when you first heard that Jersey Jack and Steve, Richie, he's designing Elton John, you threw up a little bit in your mouth.
    38:47
    This is true. I am blown away at his performance. So am I. Because everybody... Everybody loves it. I mean, you see punks and all kind of rockabilly folks all jamming out to Elton John just because the game is fun. And it's showy. It's really showy. Because sometimes you sit there and you look at somebody and you're like, I wonder why they chose that game. I mean, not necessarily Elton John, but just whenever you see new people and you're always wondering, like, what draws that person to that game? And with Elton John, we just see just everybody plays it. And I did not expect, I am fully admitting that I was, my hunch was incorrect on this one. And Elton John way outperformed what I thought it would do. Everybody loves it. As soon as we played it, though, as soon as we saw it, I immediately changed my tune. I was like, I cannot wait to get this in the arcade. It's so good. Oh, yeah, when we played it at Expo. Yeah. So the part where I was doubting it was between the announcement and the seeing it. But once I saw it and played it, we knew that it was a hit. 100%. And it is still just crushing it in fourth place. Yep. Third place? Here we go. This is important. This is the top three. Top three. This is what everybody's been waiting for. We're in the metals now. And then you can change the channel.
    40:17
    So three. Here we go. Drum roll. Godzilla Premium. No surprise. This is another game where it has plateaued, but it's plateaued at just an insane amount of earnings compared to the other games. godzilla i mean it's just this is just a no-brainer if you have an arcade you have to have a godzilla uh we have the premium and tempe and then we have the pro in uh flagstaff and that thing earns a bunch it earns very well and it is actually your preference right between the pro and the premium you prefer the pro i like the pro yeah i do like the pro um and the the real the the only reason is because you can see that shot come around the left orbit, where on the premium, it's blocked by the bridge. The premium is fantastic, too. And the whole experience of the building falling and the multiball is great For you it a difference between an A and an A It a coin foot
    41:22
    What you're saying is you can't go wrong with the Godzilla Pro if that's where your budget is still just a great game. Get it. Get it connected and have some fun with that. Make some money. Are we on to number two? We're on to number two and it is Dun-Dun-Dun-Dun Jaws. Jaws is number two. Jaws is number two, which leaves number one still the BMF. Hold on. Can we talk about Jaws for a second? Oh, yes.
    41:51
    I'm killing myself trying to get these badges. These insider connected badges. You've got to play better. Like, I hurt my wrist. You remember? I was like, I hurt myself. I'm playing so hard trying to get these damn insider connected badges for Jaws. It's because my friend Ty at the arcade, he has all of them, almost. He has almost all of them. He doesn't have the 20 billion cumulative one yet. Right, right, right. But, you know, I'm trying to catch up with him, and I was getting him to help me out. And, man. We need some coaching, too. It's a lot of fun. Ty has this weird ability to be able to look at a game, and within, like, 15 minutes, a brand new game, he can tell you the best strategy. Yeah. I don't have that skill. And the code is maturing. Mm-hmm. I love, there have been a lot of updates to Jaws recently, and all of the updates are absolute fire. Now, you know, there's a timer on the skill shot. I appreciate that very much. Because so you don't have people in tournaments, like, trying to plunge, like, all day long, trying to hit the pop bumper. Yeah. I mean, it's, I think it's like, it's just a few seconds now you have to nail that.
    43:03
    So there's that. and uh good job stern on all the cool jaw stuff i am ready finally you're ready got a little tickle in my throat i gotta take some take some water well number one no surprise pulp fiction i think the surprise part is how much of a number one it is because jaws is a very new game Pulp Fiction earned 60% more than Jaws. Holy shit. So that is a very large percentage to the number two game, which is already, again, no shade on Jaws. Jaws made plenty of money. All of these games in the top ten are absolutely amazing games. And it just goes to show you where we are right now. We're so lucky to be in Pinball right now. This is the best time to be alive if you love Pinball because there are just a shlode of games out there ready to buy. And if you want to buy them, buy them from the guys we get them from. Game Room Goodies. GameRoomGoodies.com. They are going to bring us a John Wick in just a couple of weeks. very excited about that man I can't believe it's coming that quickly I mean it just seems like we're just buying a new game buying a new game buying a new game there is for the past eight months I feel like there's been at least one brand new game at the bat every month in some of the months we've had two new games because all these different manufacturers like just everything's exploding in a good way very exciting yeah we had to move some games across the parking lot to the cue and brew we really did because we ran out of storage space yeah in the back so if you are local um just across the parking lot is a uh what would you call the billiards hall i would call it a yes a billiards hall we put three games over there we have the same shady parking lot yeah yeah they say you just walk across the shady parking lot over to cue and brew and buddy yeah yeah bring a buddy in a flashlight and you can play you'll be fine yep You can play Whodunit, Cleopatra, classic Gottlieb, and Godfather. Yeah, we wanted to have a nice mix of arrows. And they're having fun over there playing that in between pool matches. They do serious competitive pool tournaments over there. Yes. Same time we're having our pinball league, they're having their pool league. And from what I understand, it may be the only pool league still going in the Valley. there's not a lot of pool halls that right are able to handle that many pool players there you go so if you're super into pool um you can i like oh and they have the the like regulation size they're not the small like bar size i think they have a couple of both right like they have some of the i don't know the most of the ones i've seen are the the big ones the big ones yeah which are harder because there's more uh real estate there's more real estate you got to be more accurate the ratio of actually i'm gonna stop talking because i don't know anything about pool but um what i do know about we did play a few games of pool at the company christmas party that was fun yeah we we suck we are uh i really ran the table on you do you remember when i tried to uh what's it called crack them what do you do at the beginning break you break break shot and i missed every single ball and the cue ball went flying across the room and you have an incredible amount of power and a very small amount of aim i'm packing punch let me tell you what uh so we gotta get back to pinball before people change the channel uh congratulations to uh pulp fiction uh play mechanics yes mark ritchie uh josh yeah josh sharp man we really want them to make another game and i would like to to talk to i don't i I don't know who's got the power there, Josh or Mark.
    47:14
    Can we stick with the Tarantino licenses? I think, you know, hopefully you already have a good rapport with them.
    47:21
    Let's let's do from dusk till dawn next. I'm telling you, this is a moneymaker. Yeah. Stick. You have a cornucopia.
    47:32
    Cornucopia. Of absolutely amazing IPs. Let's just let's just stick with it. This could be your niche. You know, it's all the Tarantino IPs. And I have one request. I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it. Whoa. Can you see that? Your whole body. Your legs even. Yeah. Wow.
    47:51
    My request is to get rid of the weird pigtail need for the power inside the game. Like, why can I not just plug my – I mean, I understand why, right? If you're shipping internationally, then you just have a different adapter. For the service power. The service outlet. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I want to be able to just plug my soldering iron into a game. I don't like having to grab my adapter. Wouldn't it be cool if the game came with a soldering iron? Because you know you're going to have to use it. And it was like on a retractable. You lift the play field and you hit a button. It warms up your soldering iron. And then like one of those key chains that the janitors have, you just roll out the power cord with the soldering iron. That's true, because that's all you ever use the service outlet for is the soldering iron. Right. That's it. Yeah. Wow. What's up? You just attack on an extra 20 bucks for the games and put a little old weller in there. Yeah, boy, I tell you, I'm an ideas man. I give you the ideas. You manufacturers run with it. You don't have to give me any money.
    48:55
    What's going on at the bat? Any cool stuff coming up? There's always cool stuff coming up every day. That's what I like to hear. I mean, last night we were working a little bit late, just catching up on some things.
    49:08
    And it was just a huge party in there. Wasn't it great? It's just so much fun. And, I mean. And the mix of people. Yes. Both, you know, he, she, they, them, all that going on. Yeah. We have all of that. Lots of people playing. What was really cool to see, co-op pinball stuff. Yeah. Like playing the machines that had co-op modes, like TNA or Jurassic Park. What else do we have? We have some other games. Does Avengers do that? I don't know. Oh, you know, Mando. Mando does? Has that cool thing where you can team up against Roland or Mark Pearson. So it can be like three people versus Roland, three people versus Mark. Not them specifically. And John Chappell. Yeah.
    49:54
    Cool. Tournaments every Tuesday, 6.30. Please come on out. We have a blast. Super fun. You don't even have to know what you're doing. This is how you learn to play pinball, and I promise you, you're going to fall in love with it. We have top 10 players and bottom 100,000 players all playing together. We have tops and bottoms going at it. Oh, my gosh. We are truly all-inclusive. Yep, yep.
    50:19
    Now, do you have anything else for us before we go to the party? I think that that is it. And keep your eyes out for some new merch. There's going to be some new merch dropping in a couple of weeks. Yep, we're going to have something in a couple of weeks. I like the sound of that. And then we may be retiring some merch, too. So if there's some merch on the website, we haven't decided for sure. Buy it up. But we'll let you know. Some of that stuff we may not print again. Cool. And now we're heading to a very cool party. Our friend Alex Morris is throwing this. And the reason I'm bringing it up is because he is really pushing pinball. He's a huge pinball fan. He has a couple of machines in the arcade. And he's doing a cool thing. He's bringing his pickleball league over to his house for a party. And he invited a bunch of pinball players. Some really good ones and us. Right. Very good. some top 100, some top 50 players over to his house. We're going to do split flipper. We're going to teach people how to play pinball. He really wants to get people into pinball. This is exciting. This is what this community is all about. Yes, and he's even hired our bartender to bartend our weekday bartender, Brandon. Shout out, Brandon. We love Brandon. And he's going to be bartending the party, so it's going to feel like just satellite bat. But it's so much fun. The last party I went to at his house, it was like this. He has a very lovely home with a lot of room for pinball and people. There was like 100 pickleball players there. And it's so wonderful because you see how much of a kick pickleball is right now. So many people are playing it.
    52:16
    Yeah, for sure. Let's bring them to something that's even more fun. I am excited about throwing some dough. Because he has an outdoor brick oven pizza. Yes. Is that what you call a brick oven pizza?
    52:30
    Wood-fired. Wood-fired brick oven. And I used to throw dough. Yes, you used to have a pizza restaurant on the pier in San Diego. Yep. And I'm going to throw some dough. We'll get some videos of that. I'm going to make you a fantastic pizza. I can't wait. And maybe Dave Portnoy will drop by and rate it. Yeah. The best pizza in Phoenix.
    52:53
    Fantastic. Okay. That's all I have for everybody. Thank you for joining us on the Electric Batcast. If you want to shout out to us and ask us some questions, you can join our Discord by going to electricbatarcade.com and clicking the podcast tab. And there's a Discord link in there, and you can make an account. If you already have an account, just join the server. You can also reach out to us at electricbatarcade at gmail.com. Thank you to the sponsors of the show, Marco Specialties. That's where we get all our parts from, and that's where you should too. Stern, Insider Connected. Keep it connected. Try to get all these badges like we are. It's super fun to collect these things, and they have a bunch of cool stuff going on for this month. And also Game Room Goodies, gameroomgoodies.com. That's where we get all our machines from. and not only pinball machines, they have a bunch of arcade machines, jukeboxes. I think they even have skee-ball.
    53:51
    All kinds of stuff. Just anything fun they've got. And they'll find, you know, if you're looking for a classic game, reach out to them because they do. They have their ears to the ground. Yep, they have their ears to the ground. Also, happy Star Wars Day. Oh, today's May the 4th. May the 4th be with you. I celebrate it as Star Trek Day because I prefer Star Trek to Star Wars. Is there a Star Trek day? No, that's why. I bet there is. I bet if we look into it. There probably is, but I celebrate Star Trek day on Star Wars Day. We'll ask Siri later on. Thank you for joining us. We're going to get ready for the party. We're going to shower up and all that good stuff because I want to smell good for these folks.
    54:30
    And you should, too. Electric bat tip over and out. All right, now. Get out to your local pinball place and drop some quarter support. all of these operators that are operating these fantastic machines we will see you somewhere we might we might see you at the electric bat arcade we might see you at atomic age we might see you at star fighters who knows but we're going to see you guys and we love you guys thank you for listening the bats are out that's out