Episode 88 - Pinball on Location

Wedgehead Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·41m 26s·analyzed·Jun 23, 2025

Buzzsprout-17331651

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.027

TL;DR

Location pinball is pinball's natural habitat and the only path to sustainable industry growth.

Summary

Alan and Papa Duke discuss pinball on location as the industry's foundation, arguing that location play is essential for player acquisition, affordability, variety, social connection, and long-term hobby growth. They contrast location play with home collecting, emphasizing that operators—not collectors—drive game sales and innovation, and warn against the industry becoming a wealth-gated collecting hobby disconnected from public exposure.

Key Claims

Gary Stern said Stern Pinball now sells 70% of their games to the home market
high confidence · Alan, citing Stern's official statement about market segmentation
Other manufacturers (non-Stern) sell approximately 90% of their games to home collectors
medium confidence · Alan, making an industry estimate based on observation of market trends
Pinball's stock market performance directly impacts how critically collectors evaluate new releases
medium confidence · Alan, observing cyclical consumer behavior tied to economic conditions
Getting into pinball requires repeated exposure over time—no one falls in love on first play
high confidence · Alan, describing universal player onboarding experience
Operators make purchasing decisions based on earning potential, not theme preference or personal taste
high confidence · Alan and Papa Duke, describing operator business logic
Playing pinball on location costs a few dollars; buying home machines costs $6,000-$15,000
high confidence · Alan, citing current retail pricing tiers
Rob Burke has attempted to buy every pinball machine and 'is getting damn close'
medium confidence · Alan, discussing famous collector in the community

Notable Quotes

“Pinball on location is pinball's natural habitat, and that's because it is.”
Alan @ ~06:45 — Core thesis statement defining location play as foundational to the industry
“The game was invented to be put out on location...you'll often hear me refer to pinball on location as pinball's natural habitat.”
Alan @ ~06:30 — Historical and philosophical framing of location play's primacy
“There's no way you're ever going to have the collection where you get to play truly everything you ever wanted...you need the locations around just so you have a chance to play a lot of these games.”
Alan @ ~27:30 — Addresses variety advantage of location play over home ownership
“Before I had pinball in my life, it's like I would just go to bars and then once I found pinball and found the people in this hobby, that completely changed...it's such a different good thing in my life.”
Papa Duke @ ~35:15 — Personal testimony on social impact of location pinball
“If you don't have any friends, I want that one [PS1 with Gran Turismo 2]...pinball without the people kind of sucks.”
Papa Duke @ ~38:00 — Highlights the social necessity of location play to pinball enjoyment
“You can still fucking go out and pay ten bucks and play pinball for eight hours at Wedgehead...you can still enjoy pinball even if you're broke.”
Alan @ ~52:30 — Emphasizes accessibility of location play during economic downturns
“Operators as long as they're still making money they don't care...Rhodes actually cared quite a bit about this one...and he was so upset that he went and bought like two or three or whatever anyway.”
Alan @ ~55:00 — Illustrates operator purchasing logic overriding personal preferences
“We're building Harley Davidson motorcycles to guys that have ridden Harley Davidson motorcycles since they were teenagers and then those guys are going to die and then there's going to be no new teenagers that'll play pinball.”

Entities

AlanpersonPapa DukepersonWedgehead Pinball PodcastorganizationGary SternpersonKeith ElwynpersonRob BurkepersonStern PinballcompanyHarley DavidsoncompanyKo-fiproduct

Signals

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industry_signal: Stern sells 70% to home market; other manufacturers ~90% to home market—dramatic shift toward home collecting over location operators
high · Gary Stern statement cited by Alan; pattern observation across industry
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business_signal: Fewer operators exist now than in the past; location market is contracting relative to collector market
medium · Alan: 'There's less of us now than there used to be but hopefully it is growing a little bit more'
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market_signal: Collector sentiment on new releases correlates directly with stock market performance and economic conditions
medium · Alan observes pattern: 'the fucking like stock market and how well it's doing directly impacts how critical people are of new pinball releases'
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sentiment_shift: Growing disconnect between home collectors (who judge games by theme, aesthetics, and personal taste) and operators (who judge by revenue potential)
high · Alan/Papa Duke contrast collecting mindset (theme-driven) vs. operator mindset (money-driven); Dungeons & Dragons example
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community_signal: Wedgehead Podcast and location operators emphasizing need for location-based growth to sustain industry long-term
high · Core thesis of entire episode; recurring framing as industry necessity
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Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.124

0:00

Yeah! Boo-bah, boo-boo-beh-hoo-bah, boo-boo-beh-hoo-bah, boo-boo-beh-hoo-bah. Well, she sneaks around the world from New York to Carolina. She's a sticky-fingered filcher from Berlin down to Belize. So take me for a ride on a low-fossil China town. Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Alan, once again alone in my own house. and the water boy my normal co-host is in his house we are separated once again but staring at the same moon right yeah that's right that's right we're looking at the same starry night looking at the same moon how you doing alex i'm doing great how about y'all yeah pretty good okay good good well before we get into things you know it's my turn as as always it's my turn to plug the hobby fundraiser it's ever your turn the way we write the outlines it's Always your turn. But if you're a fan of the show and want to support us, you can go to ko-fi.com slash Wedgehead Podcast. It's the link in the show notes always. You can throw us a few bucks to help fund an upcoming trip we have planned to Colorado. While we're out there, we're going to visit some iconic spots and hopefully get some inspiration for future episodes of the show. Any donation to the Ko-fi account will also get you an invite to our Discord server where you can come chat with us and other fans of the show about all kinds of stuff that we don't get into in the episodes. It's been pretty fun. I spend way too much time in that Discord server. It's starting to get distracting, but it is impacting. Yeah, it is impacting my work.

2:00

But but enough about that. What's this week's episode about, Alan? All right. This week's episode topic is location pinball, which is kind of the nucleus of the show. As it's not like every episode, it could be said that it is every episode. but I wanted to do a whole episode devoted on what makes pinball on location special. Now, if you're listening to the show, you already know that I own a location here in Portland, Oregon, the world's capital for location pinball, and we interview fellow passionate pinball operators for the show. At the end of each and every episode of the show, no matter the topic, I encourage all the listeners to go out there and play some pinball on location. You will notice I always say on location and not in your house. and I am only into pinball because I got a chance to play it on location. And that, of course, is the story for the vast majority of players out there. The game was invented to be put out on location, and as such, you'll often hear me refer to pinball on location as pinball's natural habitat, and that's because it is. So this week, let's talk about my favorite subject of all time, pinball on location. That's why we're closing in on 100 episodes of talking about pinball on location right right right here's why pinball on location matters in 2025 and beyond first thing is exposure like i said access to playing pinball is essential for getting the next generation of players introduced to the game the long-term viability of the entire industry depends on getting enough new players to replace the current players as they die out this is like one thing that seems so brain dead simple and some guys just don't i guess you get into a mindset of people just don't care there's some people that don't grasp this and then some old guys don't care they're like oh pinball dies with me that's like you know i don't care i'll be dead and that's just like a crazy like that's that's just like such like a depressing mindset i mean it's just like very much the like ah fuck anything that happens after me kind of mindset like just destroy the world who cares i'm dead anyway well the boomers are famous for that mindset. I mean, that's why I don't like lumping all together. But yes, very much a mindset of one generation in particular, it seems. That's just kind of crazy. I mean, but even in the short term, we've seen boomer centric companies. And I mean that in like the literal sense, like baby boomer companies like Harley Davidson was their bread and butter was the baby boomer customer base. And as boomers kind of outgrew their motorcycle needs or desires or ability to balance on them, like Harley Davidson massively started struggling because they hadn't done anything to appeal to anyone other than baby boomers. I bring this up all the time. Harley Davidson is just such an easy example to point to. And I think I brought this exactly up in the theme episode and how we need to start seeing themes that appeal to younger people. but the themes that appeal to younger people only matter if they're on location where younger people will actually see them they're not going to go into their grandpa's garage and be like oh there is a taylor swift game maybe i should buy one of those for myself like no they need to see that taylor swift game in a bar yeah they need to be out and be exposed to it because the amount of people that even just in a bar or a coffee shop or a pizza shop or whatever or laundromat like that one location will see hundreds or thousands of people walk by that pinball machine in a way that I don't care if you have 20 games at your house in a garage and once a month you throw a tournament those same 15 people that come over for that tournament are not they're not changing anything exactly they're already in the hobby that's cool I mean like I like that's it's good to like share your games in any capacity or whatever but it's like that's it's not the same at all the other thing is you know cost pinball and location matters because the introduction to pinball on location is cheap. You know, with a few bucks, you can walk up to a machine and experience playing increasingly more and more expensive machines with no strings attached. Buying pinball machines is expensive. Playing on location is cheap, especially as your skills develop. It gets cheaper and cheaper. There's many different ways to enjoy the pinball hobby, but buying games for yourself makes it, you know, one of the most expensive hobbies that you can get into you know no i mean there's so there's so many expensive hobbies this is a very expensive hobby to get into if you're buying games for yourself whereas going and playing on location makes it like one of the cheapest hobbies you can get into such a crazy difference between the two right i could have a couple bucks in my pocket and go play pinball on location or i need ten thousand dollars you know to buy exactly it's like it's it's like a completely different ballpark that's why it really does start feeling like two different hobbies when you're talking about actually playing pinball versus like owning and collecting pinball which i don't like the collecting mindset it is definitely important to keep him on location just because it keeps the cost of entry into the hobby so much more reasonable and i think it's just like it's one of those things where it's like man you can't even if somebody you know does go over to somebody's house right like you invite someone over and you have your games in your house and they're your family members cousin comes over and they're like you know what i've never been that into pinball i don't but they have fun playing your game they need to go out and be able to go and play it because they might be like you like this godzilla okay yeah you can i can set you up with a distributor you know that's a that's basically a ten thousand dollar game and they're like what and you're like yeah that's what they cost yeah that's actually like a pretty good a pretty good very pointed example because it's Like, I have, you know, multiple siblings that have, like, come over and they enjoy playing my pinball machines. And that might be enough, like, coming over to your family member or friend's house and playing their games might be enough to kind of, like, get the, like, initial taste. And then they go back to both of them happen to live in a small town where the closest game is, you know, like, whatever, a 30-minute drive from their house and they've both got little kids. So you're like, eh, that's probably not going to happen too often. Yeah. And that kind of kills it. Whereas if I knew there was a place in town, I'd be like, hey, you got to go check this out. There's games here or whatever. And that could completely turn it into an actual passion of theirs instead of something they just kind of have a passive interest in. The thing about getting into pinball is, and all you listeners out there, if you're honest with yourselves, I have yet to hear the story of the first time you were around a pinball machine in your life. You plunge ball one, and by the time ball one's over, or even ball three, you play your whole game. And you're like, man, I love pinball. I can't wait to think about this every day of my life. That's not how anyone's story happens, right? Like, you need exposure. You need repeated exposure. It needs to be the right game at the right time in the right place. And then you need to be able, you need to play games over and over again for the sickness until it digs its fucking hooks into you. And then it never lets go. We're all in the sickness part. We've already been infected, right? We don't realize that there's people out there that haven't been infected yet. you need to be contagious and like that's what pinball location is it's contagion right like the price point is easy it's cheap somebody can be like i got a dollar in my pocket you know they can put it in they can play they can see a movie that they like oh shit i like ghostbusters put a dollar into it and you're like oh that slime removed around i hit him with the ball that was cool you know maybe i like this is kind of fun you're like oh it feels like i did something For a couple bucks, you can just go out and, no strings attached, like, enjoy pinball and get deeper and deeper into it. You know, and you need locations to do that. Because we're buying the games and they're putting them out and we're subsidizing them to you per play for a very, very cheap price point. Because, again, the alternative is, you know, you're spending, what, $6,000 to $10,000 to $15,000 on a really nice modern game, depending on what title you want. Like, that's a lot of money, dude. that's a lot of times playing that game on location yep and that's to play yeah that that kind of gets to the next point because that's to play if you buy a game you know spend 10 grand in the game you get to play one game whereas if you go out to location you get to play many games the next point is variety even if you don care about even if you wealthy even if you don care if the hobby dies when you die there no way you going to ever have the collection with like two exceptions in the world there no way you ever going to have the collection where you get to play truly everything you ever wanted and so it's like you need the locations around just so you have a chance to play a lot of these games like alex said like even as the super wealthy individual with room in your house and disposable income to buy 5, 10, or even 20 of these expensive games. It's just hard to beat the variety and polyamorous lifestyle that playing machines on location allows. If you get to swing, you can just buzz around like a happy little bee, pollinating so many more flowers, right? Rudy's being too mean to you that day? Go over and play a couple games of Jaws instead. Play a super long game of Lord of the Rings, walk over to Flash Gordon, and get humbled. Do you like all those insider-connected achievements? Well, the easiest way to complete all those badges for all those dozens of games is simply to go out and play them on location not to buy every fucking one of them he has to say if you're trying to buy every stern to get all your achievements you're like oh my god it's just like an endless you know you're gonna burn through so much money you're gonna lose so much money on like depreciation on the games it's not worth it so you're like yeah go out and actually try stuff see the whole the whole world of pinball instead of the tiny slice that you can bring into your home. That's my favorite part about playing on location, you know, and why I got rid of my games in my house when we opened is like, I love being able to play a game, a game that I love, right? Like I love Whitewater, but if I had my Whitewater at a house, you know, how often am I going to play it? I'm going to play it for a while when I first bring it in and tune it up. And then I'm going to set, you know, the high score list. I'm going to get all of them. And then I'm, cause I'm not competing against anybody. And then every day I'm going to turn it on and play the same game. and that's why these guys buy one game turns into two turns into three turns into four turns into five because they're all seeking variety the easiest way to get variety though is just to go fucking to out on location and play at different locations it's like there's so so many games that i do really enjoy but for uh one reason or another i would not buy for myself because i know it's they're going to be like and like i really it's like i really enjoy playing ems but i really am like intimidated of working on em so like i i will always go out play ems when i get like the opportunity on location or whatever stuff like that like new games that it's like i don't like this theme at all so i would be you know i don't want to spend ten thousand dollars have this massive toy in my house about a a property that i have no attachment to but the game's fun and so it's like stuff like that i i mean those are opportunities that it's like i just i would never have that in the house even if i really truly love the game because there's some kind of catch or whatever but like i'll gladly go dump you know dollars into it on location do you have a an example for that game that you love but you don't like the theme so you wouldn't buy it i really do like john wick i don't care about the theme at all but that one i'm like i could see myself owning a john wick down the line yeah i love that game there are like like there's some that sometimes the arts just like like i'm like i wouldn't i wouldn't want that in my house i'm blanking on anything off of the top of my head but there would be some that would be like hard to explain to like the family but like even like i i'm i don't want to say anything like too insulting it's just there's a lot of properties it's like like even like comic book stuff if i had like a comic any any comic book like game in my house like any avengers marvel property anything like that my family would come over and they'd be like whoa you're like really into spider man huh you're like no it's a really good game no i just like the game i just like the game and they'd be like okay spider-man like they would turn into a fucking thing and it's like shit like that you're like that's a you know because that's an example it's like i like that game quite a bit i don't think it looks very good and i don't like i don't i mean i don't even mind spider-man but i don't want to be like oh yeah i'm a fucking spider-man guy i got a 10 you know whatever a six thousand dollar spider-man toy in my house like it starts getting weird yeah so that's like for me it's like i very i buy all my games or a lot of the games anyway i own are very much purchased with like theme being a big part of them yeah like no fear yeah like i only own cool games like no fear and uh and so it's like you when you're playing on location that completely is removed from the thought at all like i would never try to knock a new game leave a poor review because like i don't care about the theme i might say that often when a game comes out i'll be like sure like i'm not excited about it because i don't care about it like like avatar or whatever you're like well actually i'm you know i'm a pretty big avatar guy anybody that knows me well the way of water you really like the sequel because yeah the water you know yeah i'm a water boy but but like that game coming out it's like i don't care about avatar so i'm going to judge this objectively so you might hear me say something like that but that's not to say like I'm negative on it because I don't like it or don't care about Avatar. Yeah. It's such a different approach to looking at games than if they're coming into the house for me. It's a very, very different thing. It also goes back to like our original themes versus licensed themes, right? It's like back in the day, they used to be able to make fishtails, right? Because you could be like, yeah, you know what? Like it'll be goofy. It'll be fun. There'll be cool mechs. It'll catch people's attention or whatever. They're not worried about like if we have to sell this game for $10,000, are enough people going to think that this unlicensed fishing game is good enough to buy day one without playing it? Right. Versus that's a hard, a hard sell to get people enthused enough. You would need to like pull out all the stops to get people to buy a fishing game now. Yeah, exactly. But it's like I love that game. And you know what? Like, I don't fish. I don't really think it's like a super. I love the way it's executed, but I'm like, you know, like on paper, I'm like, is this a great theme? But I was like, oh, yeah, it's a cool game. It's about lying. Yeah, it's about lying, which I think is really cool. I like all the like the little twist on those 90s games. You're like, yeah, it's about fishing. Yeah, kind of. I mean, it's about lying about fishing, which is what makes it awesome. The other aspect of playing on location, I think the obvious one is the social outlet, because let's face it, like playing alone in the basement of your McMansion isn't really social at all. Play on location, meet other people, make some friends. That's a big part of pinball. That's the single biggest reason I got into pinball, and that's what keeps me going out on location, regardless of how many games I manage to squeeze into my basement. I will always go out and continue playing pinball on location because it is a social outlet. And it's the kind of thing, it's like before I had pinball in my life, not to get too deep here, but before I had pinball in my life, it's like I would just go to bars and then once I found pinball and found the people in this hobby that completely changed and it's like no now I'm going out to play pinball and I'll see friends and you know like I'll get to like meet people I'll get to actually interact and have that it's such a different like good thing in my life and I think that's the biggest reason that it's like no you need location pinball because pinball without the people kind of sucks like i i play it by myself but it's like i play it by myself and then i like talk to people about it it's like if you were moved to other people if i was just on a desert island with pinball i'd be like yeah i'll go back to playing video games yeah yeah you know what i mean like if you if you told me i was going to be stranded somewhere for five years and i could have any pinball machine in the world or I could have a fucking PS1 with Gran Turismo 2, I would take Gran Turismo 2 without even a second's hesitation. You'd be like, yeah, well, that's better. If I don't have any friends, I want that one.

21:40

Situationship that we find ourselves in currently at the time of this recording. The thing is, is like everyone tightens their belt, right? Like all these people that are in the position where they own their house, they got the room, they're pinball fans, they're pinball buyers. All of a sudden, like they're used the games that they could sell to buy a new game. They're they're selling for less and less. which means like do i really need that new game because i'm going to take a bath on selling this one and so they just hold on and then they don't buy them right yeah they they start getting i've noticed that the the fucking like stock market and how well it's doing directly impacts how critical people are of new pinball releases and like as soon as the economy slows down everyone's for the first time in their fucking lives starts being like i don't know about this new keith ellen game guys yeah i'm like bullshit dude if you had yeah if you could easily afford this shit we wouldn't be hearing any of these fucking gripes but the moment that they start being like oh i gotta quit spending money uh yeah this game looks like garbage to me right yeah everybody we all agree this one's shit and you're like what the fuck are you talking about it's the same shit different day like it's you know you shouldn't say shit it's the same game different day it's like how are you gonna tell me you love godzilla and you're like oh no king kong this one's no good you're fucking crazy dude it's insane like all of a sudden all these guys are like they're like yeah you know what um that godzilla game best game of all time it's not even we all agree yeah unanimously we all we all agree they're all looking at each other we all agree godzilla yep yep all hail king elwynn zombie yeti just the best art package we really crushed it nailed that Godzilla green color that everyone knows he is just perfect and then King Kong comes out and like he's not purple what the fuck is this guy a hack why does he do all the games now you know like who is this Keith Elwynn guy I don't know about this one King Kong nobody even knows what that is yeah we don't even know you know who doesn't start nitpicking this shit is operators as long as they're still making money yes and that's like the beauty of it that's why we keep even like as we go into our uh uncertain economic future here i just really hope people remember like you can still enjoy pinball even if you're pretty broke you should probably quit buying ten thousand dollar toys if you if you lose your job but you can still fucking go out and pay ten bucks and play pinball for eight hours at wedgehead yeah so it's like you can or you know go support whatever your local location situation is that's the nice part about it the thing is in economic times right like operators will buy games there's less of us now than there used to be but hopefully it's it is growing a little bit more and the thing about an economic downturn we've had a resurgence since like the early 2000s yeah a long ways from like the 70s 80s yeah it's it's still way off but there's so much room to grow which is what we're talking about with growth potential and it's good for operators because it's like here's the thing stern's like hey it's king kong it's this is the art packages whatever roads doesn't care he was like yeah sign me up buy i'm buying it it like none of the riffraff and the argument Rhodes actually cared quite a bit about this one because he apparently really likes the old King Kong movies he really likes the 70s Jeff Bridges movie yeah and so he was upset about that and he was so upset that he went and bought like two or three or whatever anyway yeah like that's that's what I'm saying like operators as long as it's making money they don't care which kind of brings us to our next point right yeah because It's like if you're one of those folks out there that are screaming for more modern licenses and better themes, more representative of like current culture and not just boomer culture, then location play needs to rise again in prominence because operators don't care about the nostalgia from their youth. They care about the money in the fucking coin box. Yeah, man, that's it. That's how we make decisions. Like when people ask, how do you decide what games to buy? And you're like, well, I mean, Rozi's going to buy a game that he thinks is a good value for the price, that he can put on location, is going to be reliable, and most importantly, is going to earn money. That's it. That's why he's going to just keep buying Dungeons and Dragons regardless of what the internet tells him. Yeah. And he hates that game personally, but it's earning fucking great for him. So it's like he gets to scoop up another one. he'll be happy to be like some home collector who put fucking 80 plays on it wants to sell it to him for a fucking wash like he wants to get you know hung out to dry rose like cool and then i'll go put it in a location that same afternoon and make a bunch of money off of it you know what i mean like that's the operator mindset and you need that and like the manufacturers need that and like you as a player need that you know because again like alex said no matter how wealthy you are no matter how wealthy you are you can't buy every game you know so it's still helpful one man has tried one man has tried his name is rob burke and he's getting damn close but short of that you know i don't think you've got a long ways to go to catch up with him i found this quote and i saved it it's from our private discord channel that you could join if you donate to our coffee account you get a link automatically but i thought as i was writing this outline i was like this quote would be perfect and it's from someone called gm spd or game speed i think maybe he says you know this was just out of the blue he posted one of our channels like you know location pinball just it's different after having a few machines in the house for a year so it's just not the same even if the machines are on location are a bit ugly or have a misaligned flipper or weak pop bumper it's still nice to say well damn i guess i just gotta adapt and my response to that was agree one thousand percent that's why we do the show and why we focus on location pinball playing on location is like seeing a bald eagle in real life flying over a lake versus seeing one in a small caged enclosure at a zoo pinball's natural habitat is on route and on location and that's where it should always be that's where it'll always be best you can appreciate the beauty of pinball and how fun it is in your house i'm not saying you can't nobody's saying that but like it's different it does hit different it is different when you like i it's weird just like removing everything and being like this is now mine instead of being like this is like it's like trying to like own the game of basketball instead of playing basketball yeah that doesn't make any sense yeah and so when you do that it is like it just it feels notably different and it's also like it really does feel like a different it's a very very different side of the hobby once you get into owning things versus just playing on location it is just like you're like you're focusing on little things that you know you're gonna have to fix or that you should tweak or something instead of just playing the game it's a very very different experience and so i have a question for you alex because as the listeners know alex has a basement full of many great games at home and i want to ask you this question since we're doing this location pinball and why you agreed to join me you know whatever a year and a half almost two years ago to start this podcast and talk about pinball and largely location pinball every week you have so many great games at home why do you still play so much pinball on location well first of all you're saying you're saying so many a lot i have like three great games and then like five okay games but i do i do have i do have a lineup of games many you know from all spectrum of the pin side a rating rating list and you know and i probably still spend even at my most pinball obsessed i still spend more time playing pinball on location than at my house it's something i bring up often i think people are always kind of like don't believe me i doubt i doubt they believe me but it's just i like getting out of the house i'm kind of an extrovert i i at least i would say i'm an extrovert anyway and so it's like i just want to get out of the house so going to play pinball is a perfect excuse for that. It's also just easier meeting friends at a mutual location versus having them over at your house. So even if I make plans beforehand and I could just as easily be like, hey, you come over. I mean, that's great. But like we could also just head to a bar that splits the difference in location or whatever. And sure, you have to pay, you know, eight bucks for a couple of beers and pay, you know, $4 in pinball quarters or whatever while you're hanging out for a couple hours. but that's like you know negligible cost compared to fucking anything these days so it's like it's just like an easier thing to do with friends it's a fun excuse to leave the house the variety is also i mean even if i didn't know anybody even if that was completely removed the social side the variety would drive me out of the house often because i get sick of games really quick i have to just kind of like hop around. There's just like, it's basically everything we talked about other than like the moral responsibility of like helping grow it just like from my, but like everything that affects me, like personally, it's like, ah, yeah, I like going out there. I like not having to worry about if the game's going to break or not. I like going and playing King Kong without having to plunk down the money. Like, it's like, yeah, I could have ordered, I could order a King Kong or whatever I haven dropped off to my house And then what if I end up not liking it I going to have pretend i gonna have to lie to myself convince myself i like it i not gonna do that again alan i not going through that again going through that pain again in the owner thread on actually it's pretty sick guys not shitty at all so it's like just the ability to try all these different things running into people meeting friends you know you have fucking like like actually competing for high scores there's just a lot of reasons to go out and play pinball on location even if you have games at your house i would do the same i mean i'm very very spoiled living in portland and having so many awesome places to play but i think even if i had somewhere if i was in a small town and there was a bar with just two shitty games in it or whatever i would still go there and play because i'd want to be like oh well i'm the pinball guy i need these gcs Yeah, I need this whole board. As long as there is any pinball around me, I would go seek out that pinball because odds are I wouldn't buy those games. That also, I will say, with the exception of Stern's Godzilla or whatever, I do make my home pinball purchases with location games in mind. That's why I don't own any other Stern's. I bought Godzilla just because it's, you know, it's a theme I care about a lot. Your ultimate dream theme. The 70th looks fucking sick and everything. So I was like, okay. I just felt kind of compelled to have it. Well, they finally made an art package where he was in grayscale. And like you always say, Godzilla's gray. He's not green, right? When the original came out, that was my biggest gripe, was they made Godzilla fucking neon green.

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If they make one where he's the right color, I'll buy it. And so I did. I always try to put my money where my mouth is. And that was my one big complaint about the game. So when they rectified it, I felt compelled to buy it a little bit. I also was a little sick of like having friends and family that casually know pinball come into the house and be like, so like, do you not have like any good games? And so it's nice to be like, well, technically this is the best game. This is the best game. If anyone says that there's a better pinball machine than this, they're wrong. They can look at Pinside. Unless they were talking about Evil Dead for one week, they're wrong. But yeah, all that being said, even with the best game of all time at my house, it's just like, I still like, I just, I want to get out of here, man. That's my, that's my reasoning. I think that's why anybody that buys pinball, it's kind of, it's rare to find guys. You do see it occasionally where guys buy a bunch of games and like, that's kind of it. And I'm like, to me, that speaks to their interest in the hobby as much more as a collector, which I don't really, I, I like collecting shit, but I like using shit more. Yeah. And when it comes to pinball, I like playing pinball a lot more than I like collecting pinball. So I think when you see guys that don't go out, they're collectors. They're not pinball players. Yeah, and they are kind of two separate hobbies, aren't they? Because there really is guys that are just like, they like having stuff. They like having the game room. They like buying the enamel gasoline pumps for thousands of dollars to put next to their pinball machines. They're buying the replica 1950s gas pumps for their garage. once you get into that kind of mindset you've like reached a different demographic a different demographic than myself i will say and they're all afraid to like play their games because they don't want the play counts to get too high because take off those rings buddy i don't want you uh slapping that's a yeah you're playing a transformers le right now i don't want you scuffing the powder coat yeah man i mean that's like this leads me to like my final thoughts of like location pinball and what it means to me i mean obviously like i wouldn't own a location without location pinball getting me into it i wouldn't have met you who's now one of my great friends we wouldn't have met each other if we won't weren't into pinball that we got into while playing on location there's so much going for it but it's like for me a big part of it like me as a pinball player it's like i love chasing high scores you know and i've said this on social media but like high scores are like graffiti that shit only counts if you go out and do that shit in public a private wall that you paint in your backyard ain't shit that doesn't mean anything like you don't get no respect for that no and i would say online leaderboards i mean we've talked about it before but there's a there's a reason that hasn't even been implemented widespread by stern other than like special events because even they know in online leaderboards corny it's corn ball shit dude it's like bragging about the game that you can pull the glass off and do whatever you're with and you go oh well check it out that's stupid dude the leader the real leaderboard the real high scores are stored on the game dude they're stored on the game at that at that location too because even like one spider-man plays different from the spider-man across town dude the only thing that matters is what's the score on that exact game in that location and that's fun to me that's like that's a big part of like why i love location pinball i love coming in and like seeing your high score still there you know you come in a week or two later and you're like yeah that's just still there i'm still the king or it comes in you're like what the fuck eric lee beat my high score hell no you know like now i gotta go beat that score right and that's what's fun about it dude i think that's so much fun and a big part of why i like it you know and i also think that like pinball machines are kind of like pokemon like you want to play them all you know chasing i've chased games and still do for years you know and now i'm at the point where like we're talking about decades before i even get the chance to even play it one time like pinball has had flippers for 80 years and there are thousands of unique pinball machines out there and playing them on location is by far the best way to try them all you know and really won't get another like you can't otherwise yeah dude it's great i mean like you said unless you're rob burke or you're you know like that's kind of your it's like it's such an insane task otherwise and luckily rob burke opened up his own location where he puts all these insanely rare games like when we went to pastimes we were like what the hell i've been into pinball for you know going on 20 years and i was like holy shit i didn't even not only have i never played these games I didn't even know they existed, like some of these European games. I was like, this is crazy. And that's what I love about location pinball. I was like, man, and then just playing all those Gottliebs and all their EMs and playing old Harry Williams wood rails, and you're just like, fuck, this is rad, dude. It's so much fun. And then just blowing up my camera roll with hundreds of photos that I took over the course of two days. That's the fun part about pinball. Playing pinball on location will get you out of the house, like Alex said. It'll allow you to see places and meet people that you would have never gotten to see or meet. Buying a single game to unbox and then playing it in your house by yourself or with your board and patronizing children who would rather be doing literally anything else instead. And you're forcing this pinball purchase on them. Like, just go out and meet other people like you, you dingus. Like, that's what it's fucking for. you don't have to force it you can just go find other people that are already into this there's plenty of us out there just wanted to do this as like a love letter to location pinball because obviously like this we joked about at the top of the episode like this is the location pinball podcast like we talk about location pinball more than any other podcast because that's the only thing i care about and you know as you can tell like with alex like it's a big part of his life too even though he's got a bunch of games at home it's like he's a location player first and foremost and that's what we care about we care about the future growth of the hobby and playing pinball on location and we make road trips you know we're raising funds for the show to go to colorado just to play location pinball in a different state you know we're we travel to go play pinball on location you know what i mean we're not raising funds to buy a fucking machine like we want to go just play other people's machines and meet new people i mean that would be funny maybe that should be our next fundraiser is just to buy a game well we talked about it on one of the shows a game it's gonna go in alan's house and then we're never gonna talk about it ever again we did talk about doing the thing right where we're gonna go to allentown next year and then like buy a game with whatever money we could raise and then drive it back i don't know that'd be that'd be a pretty funny idea that would be a fun idea road tripping back all the way from Allentown yeah and then the best part would be like stopping at different pinball locations on the way home setting up the game at those different locations it would feel like a fucking like crusade going out there and bringing an EM back to the west coast dude that'd be rad we got one yeah dude we should do it man I mean that that might be fun next year we should plan on it for the end of this episode I just want to thank everyone for listening to another episode of the Wedget Pinball Podcast. As always, every episode, like I always do, which is a plea to go out and play some pinball on location, find the joys of it out and about in the wild, in its natural habitat, meet some friends, play with other people, chase a high score, get some of your coworkers involved, buy them a couple beers, buy them a couple games of pinball. Who knows? It might be their new obsession too. But until next time, good luck. Don't suck. Capital! We'll be right back. Denver, Raleigh, Austin, Boston. Capital. Just one city in every state. Where the governor and legislators stay of the way. Got the name, got the fame, the political way. Hey! Oh, oh, oh, oh. Capital!