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Virtual Pinball For Real, or VPCabs Interview.

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·54m 22s·held·May 23, 2016
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

VB Cabs founder Brad Baker discusses Shark Tank deal, cabinet design, Zen licensing, and virtual pinball market expansion.

Summary

Brad Baker, founder of VB Cabs virtual pinball cabinet manufacturer, discusses his journey from retrofitting old pinball machines to appearing on Shark Tank, securing investment from Damon John, and expanding his product line. The conversation covers VB Cabs' design philosophy emphasizing build quality and tactile feedback, licensing deals with Zen Studios, the new Vertigo vertical cabinet format, and aspirations to return pinball to commercial venues like Dave & Buster's and Chuck E. Cheese through virtual solutions.

Key Claims

  • VB Cabs secured investment from Damon John on Shark Tank after appearing on the show

    high confidence · Brad Baker stated: 'We did close our deal... And, man, he's been phenomenal. He has made some introductions to some pretty big license deals for us'

  • Robert Herjavec, a pinball machine owner with 10 machines, said the VB Cabs machine 'felt as good or better than any of my pinball machines that I own'

    high confidence · Brad Baker direct quote from his Shark Tank experience

  • VB Cabs' Wizard model includes eight solenoids, a shaker motor, real replay knocker, RGB LED lights, working plunger, and accelerometer nudge sensor

    high confidence · Brad Baker detailed product specifications

  • Vertigo Pinball vertical cabinet was designed and prototyped within two weeks in February/early March and sold out at Texas Pinball Festival

    high confidence · Brad Baker: 'I drew that on a David Hankin about 10 weeks ago... took the first batch of them to the Texas Pinball Festival back into February, early March... we sold more than we took'

  • VB Cabs began approaching Zen Studios in 2013 about licensing their games

    high confidence · Brad Baker: 'we started bugging Zen back in 2013 when it was still just kind of an idea in my garage'

  • Zen Studios' Aliens table pack costs $10 for three tables

    high confidence · Discussion about Aliens licensing costs

  • VB Cabs does not include the NoX mod with cabinets but end users can freely obtain it

    high confidence · Brad Baker: 'We don't include the NoX mod. We don't have a license for that, but the NoX mod is a free mod anyway'

  • VB Cabs' initial Zen license includes all currently available Zen tables, with future tables requiring separate $3 or $10 purchases by end users

    high confidence · Brad Baker on licensing model: 'whatever tables are currently available out there through Zen, we include all those tables'

Notable Quotes

  • “Robert was actually really intrigued, really interested. You know, it was funny as he played the machine for a while, just like Mark Cuban. They actually had to tell him to sit down because he was like he wouldn't stop.”

    Brad Baker @ mid-interview — Demonstrates the tactile appeal and engagement factor of VB Cabs' machines, even to skeptical pinball collectors

  • “I own 10 pinball machines and literally my stomach just sank because I thought for sure the next thing was this isn't real pinball... but then the next words out of his mouth made me feel really good he said that felt as good or better than any of my pinball machines that i own”

    Brad Baker @ Shark Tank segment discussion — Critical endorsement from experienced pinball owner, addressing the legitimacy concern about virtual vs. physical machines

  • “I don't know what we're going to do with this company. But I know that, you know, I'm going to help you and we'll come up with some cool stuff.”

    Damon John @ post-Shark Tank deal — Shows investor confidence despite uncertainty, emphasizing people-based investment philosophy

  • “nothing really beats the feel of real plywood cabinets. It gives you a nice solid cabinet.”

    Brad Baker @ mid-interview — Explains design philosophy prioritizing build quality and authentic feel over cost-cutting

  • “We would just love to, you know, to be able to we'd love to get pinball back into Dave and Buster's and Chuck E. Cheese. You know, they took pinball away because the maintenance was so high.”

    Brad Baker @ licensing discussion — Reveals VB Cabs' strategic target for commercial deployment, addressing maintenance barriers to physical pinball

  • “the biggest hurdle with virtual pinball is on the legal side of things. You really can't include the ROMs for all the visual pinball stuff and the future pinball stuff.”

    Brad Baker @ licensing explanation — Articulates core technical and legal constraint driving VB Cabs' strategy toward licensed content

  • “You get invited to Comic-Con, you don't ask questions. You just say, yes, thank you.”

Entities

Brad BakerpersonVB CabscompanyZen StudioscompanyDamon JohnpersonMark CubanpersonRobert HerjavecpersonGreg ButcherpersonChris FriebuspersonJared MorganpersonMasonpersonGalen Hurdperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Brad Baker's VB Cabs secured investment and partnership with Damon John on Shark Tank with deal closure, indicating validation and capital injection for expansion

    high · Brad Baker: 'We did close our deal... he's been phenomenal. He has made some introductions to some pretty big license deals for us that are in the works'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: VB Cabs established official Zen Studios licensing agreement for cabinet support, DMD integration, and backglass graphics, with goal of securing coin-op license for commercial venues

    high · Brad Baker: 'we worked out, you know, a license agreement to where we could officially have all the cabinet support with the DMD screen and, you know, the back glass screens'

  • ?

    product_strategy: VB Cabs pursuing dual strategy: premium home consumer market (Wizard model) and commercial venue market (Vertigo for ticket redemption in Dave & Buster's/Chuck E. Cheese)

    high · Brad Baker discussing Vertigo design: 'if you go to like Chuck E. Cheese or Dave and Buster's these days, you see a lot of vertical oriented games... we could take that Vertigo... and turn it into a ticket redemption sort of pinball game'

  • ?

    product_launch: VB Cabs introduced Vertigo vertical cabinet format in February/early March at Texas Pinball Festival, designed specifically for vertical arcade games and pinball hybrid play, sold out initial inventory

    high · Brad Baker: 'took the first batch of them to the Texas Pinball Festival back into February, early March... and we sold more than we took, and it was a great show'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.163

0:00
This is the Blockade Podcast with your hosts, Chris and Jared. You are listening to the Blockade Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Frebus, aka Shut Your Trap. Joining me as always, my co-host from down under, Jared Morgan. G'day, Chris. How are things today? Things are rather interesting. I got up early in the morning and went and bought a car. Oh, nice. So the issue of the car is resolved. It is now resolved, yes.
0:54
You bought a Tesla, didn't you? Yeah, because that happens. Yeah. Before I talk about that, we have a special guest who, you know, he got the bug and therefore wants to contribute again. Hold on one second. This is my son, Mason. Hey, Mason. How you going, mate?
1:15
I'm good. That's good. So did you have something particular you wanted to talk about today, buddy? Because you were like, can I be on the podcast? So, what are we talking about today? Well, one of the things we're going to be talking about today is we're going to be talking with Brad Baker, who was on this show called The Shark Tank a couple weeks ago, and he was pitching his virtual pinball cabinet, and it got picked up by them, and now it's for sale.
1:48
Don't sneeze into the mic. oh man on me instead anyways so well that's kind of cool i mean you still have that pinball machine in your garage this is what he wanted to come on to he wants to shame me because i still haven't fixed my pinball machine that's been sitting in the garage the only thing that needs to happen with it is that we just need to get free gold watch to release that vector art that they did for the playfield and get that as a playfield overlay. And then all of Chris's problems with all the playfield, that will be instantly vanished and it will look pretty awesome. Yeah, you think that's what it is? That's all the problem is, yeah. I think I need to first put down that spraying of clear coat before anything can be attached to it. Well, that's the idea with the deck or the playfield overlay. You just sand the playfield back to wood. Oh, straight to wood? Yep, and you put this thing straight over the top and everything works. so that's the beauty of it and then you clear coat the top of the um uh the decal okay mylar or something like that to seal it off and do you understand that when he's saying decal he means decal decal yeah i don't even know what that is it's a big glorified sticker basically that you put over the whole play field so yeah it's like you yeah so you'd just be putting a big sticker on his pinball machine, basically, is what he'd be doing. Oh, yeah. Well, the pinball machine that my dad has is called Firepower. It is. Yeah. That's what it's called. Yes. It's a fun game to play, but at the moment it's a bit of a mess. Is it actually in pieces at the moment, Mason, or is it actually playable? Can you play it? Nope. It's in pieces. that's why I want my dad to fix it and like kind of clean it and repair it. I at least just want to play it. Yeah, that's fair enough. That's sort of what people machines are there for. Yeah, you know, the back box is on the ground and the play field itself is completely pulled out of the machine and is sitting there. It's been like that for a year. Something like that. More like a year and three-fourths. Yeah. It does tend to... It's funny. When you start to actually try and fix a pinball machine, you just realize how hard it actually is to do it. Particularly when there's stuff like playfield repairs you need to do, because they're pretty tricky to do. So I think what you should do is just... Yes, they are pretty tricky to do.

  • Zen Studios is approximately at game 65 in their library

    medium confidence · Brad Baker: 'they're on like game 65 or so'

  • Mark Cuban and Robert Herjavec both played the VB Cabs machine on Shark Tank and had to be told to stop playing

    high confidence · Brad Baker: 'he was like he wouldn't stop... uh he loved it'

    • Brad Baker @ Comic-Con 2013 story — Illustrates early opportunity and quick decision-making that helped establish VB Cabs' credibility

  • “It's a legitimate business proposition meeting. It's 100% unscripted. other than my initial little pitch that I kind of stumbled on a little bit.”

    Brad Baker @ Shark Tank process discussion — Reveals the unscripted nature and pressure of the Shark Tank experience

    • Robert Kirkmanperson
    Shark Tankevent
    Texas Pinball Festivalevent
    Comic-Con 2013event
    Firepowergame
    Pinball FX 2game
    Aliens (Zen table pack)game
    Walking Dead (Zen game)game
    Dave & Buster'svenue
    Chuck E. Cheesevenue
    Visual Pinballproduct
    Future Pinballproduct
    Pinball Arcadeproduct

    design_innovation: VB Cabs developed custom-designed cabinet head that is wider than traditional Williams/Stern specifications to accommodate full 32-inch edge-to-edge display without bezels

    high · Brad Baker: 'we actually had Greg design a head just a hair wider than a traditional head that we could slot a 32 inch in, which resulted in a like perfect edge to edge display'

  • ?

    technology_signal: VB Cabs' Wizard model integrates multiple haptic feedback systems including eight solenoids, shaker motor, real replay knocker, and accelerometer nudge sensor to replicate physical pinball tactile experience

    high · Brad Baker: 'There's eight solenoids. There's a shaker motor. There's a real replay knocker in the head... accelerometer in the cabinet that is a nudge sensor'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Experienced pinball machine collectors (Robert Herjavec with 10 machines) publicly endorsed VB Cabs machines as equal or superior to physical machines, addressing skepticism about virtual pinball legitimacy

    high · Brad Baker: 'Robert... he said that felt as good or better than any of my pinball machines that i own... made me feel good because you know those guys uh with millions of people watching is kind of make or break you'

  • $

    market_signal: VB Cabs identifies maintenance costs as primary reason commercial venues (Dave & Buster's, Chuck E. Cheese) removed physical pinball machines, positioning virtual machines as solution

    high · Brad Baker: 'we'd love to get pinball back into Dave and Buster's and Chuck E. Cheese. You know, they took pinball away because the maintenance was so high'

  • ?

    content_signal: VB Cabs received significant media exposure through Shark Tank appearance and subsequent investment deal with FUBU founder, amplifying brand visibility and credibility in entrepreneur community

    high · Brad Baker's Shark Tank appearance and deal closure with Damon John

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Virtual pinball manufacturers face legal barriers to including ROM-based simulators (Visual Pinball, Future Pinball); VB Cabs circumvents this through exclusive licensed Zen content and free community mods

    high · Brad Baker: 'the biggest hurdle with virtual pinball is on the legal side of things. You really can't include the ROMs for all the visual pinball stuff and the future pinball stuff'

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: VB Cabs reports strong demand exceeding production capacity for Vertigo model and other cabinets; company operating at capacity with rapid prototyping and iteration cycles

    medium · Brad Baker: 'we can't build those fast enough' and 'I drew that on a David Hankin about 10 weeks ago... by the end of the day, we had the guys in the shop'

  • ?

    business_signal: VB Cabs' Zen Studios licensing deal includes all current tables in initial purchase price with future updates available to consumers at standard pricing ($3 per table, $10 per 3-pack), creating recurring revenue model for end users

    high · Brad Baker: 'whatever tables are currently available out there through Zen, we include all those tables... when a new table comes out, the end user just, they pay the three bucks or the $10 for the three pack'

    • 4:29
    Which this brings us into... I'm going to kick you out, buddy, because we're going to do our interview. But, you know, considering how much fun it is to actually try and deal with a pinball machine that is in pieces, let's bring in Brad Baker. Brad is the creator of VB Cabs. He was just seen on Shark Tank two weeks ago pitching and having it picked up. Virtual pinball cab where you don't have to worry about any maintenance whatsoever. Sounds awesome.
    4:59
    How are you guys doing? Yeah, real good. We're doing good. Can you hear me okay? Yeah, it sounds great. Absolutely.
    5:07
    So I'm curious to know, how long ago did you actually start building one of these cabinets for the first time? So kind of what happened is I've owned an audio-video company for about the past 15 years or so, and my brother owns a couple arcades here in Cincinnati, Ohio.
    5:22
    And he kind of caught the bug about some random people throwing displays in old pinball cabinets. And he said, hey, will you make one for me? I think it'd be cool just to sit one up front at the arcade, let people try it, mess around with it. And so I thought it sounded like a great idea. And we put one together out of an old Gottlieb Spider-Man, I believe it was. It was an old wide-body Spider-Man. That was totally gutted out. There was nothing in it. So it was a great candidate for the project. It was a very rude, rough prototype for sure. But it played really nice, and people liked it. And then people started asking me if I could do it for them. So for you know it, I'm on Craigslist scouring for old abandoned pinball cabinets to make these for people. My home theater business was pretty slow at the time. The recession was still kind of in full effect and people weren't buying those toys. But surprisingly, they wanted to buy pinball machine toys. Not sure why one was better than the other, but it just kind of snowballed and took off from there. And but that was kind of the beginning of it. in cincinnati are we talking about a lot of homes where it's the typical you know there's the basement that's the game room slash home theater kind of situation it's always our target customer in the home theater business uh it's a lot of uh home audio video uh we do a lot of commercial work too uh you know where we do stuff for uh businesses and offices but mainly the home theater where we'd put a projector and 120 inch screen and a nice surround sound and all that and a lot of fun uh we do we still do a lot of that it's a separate business but i still have that company and uh Still do a lot of that here in town. The economy here has picked up a lot, and there's a lot of new home building going on. So that business is doing well again also. That's really good.
    7:06
    Yeah, it is, especially since I'm kind of a home theater nut myself, although I don't have a giant. I wish that I had the monster room that was nothing but a home theater.
    7:16
    I always, each year, there's a, I'm in a pinball league, and we go to this one guy's house that lives down right off the beach. And he's got a dedicated home theater. And this thing probably has a, I'm guessing, probably about a 20-foot diagonal screen. He's got full D-box seats. Oh, nice. And it is just nuts. Just crazy. I would never leave. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that stuff, that's getting real serious there. You know, in the trade show industry, there's Cedia, the consumer electronic design installation show, just for the installers and the business owners. And that's usually in Indianapolis. And they have like the latest and greatest everything. You know, the first OLED screens came out there, you know, by Sony and all those guys. And you get to see those screens that are like a millimeter thick and, you know, pretty nuts, stuff like that. Really cool stuff coming down the pipe.
    8:06
    So you started building these and selling them. What got you the idea of doing different size cabinets? Well, you know, when we started, we were kind of going with whatever we could find. And after we started realizing that it was going to turn into what looked like a pretty good business, we got with a guy up in Michigan named Greg Butcher. He does a lot of MAME and pinball cabinet designs, and he has a CNC machine, and he cuts them. So we actually got a hold of him and said, hey, man, we're starting to sell these. Will you design and build a custom-sized cabinet for us around our displays? One thing we didn't like about retrofitting was you kind of had to make trim rings and different things to make the displays fit in the cabinets. Or you had to decase the displays. And all that stuff just didn't feel like OEM quality to me. So we kind of got together with Greg and we said, hey, let's build something that fits around the display specifically so that the displays slot in there. And from edge to edge, it looks like a pinball machine. And that's what we did. And since then, we have our own CNC machine now. We do everything in-house. But Greg stayed on board with us and does all of our design work. And that's kind of how we got into doing different size machines. You know, we have four different skewed numbers now in our inventory, down to a mini, which is a two-thirds scale machine. And then our full-size wizard is basically the size of your traditional Bally Williams or Stern machine. It's 22 inches wide at the lock bar and has a full-size head with a 32-inch display up in the head, which also is kind of custom. A normal Williams size head or stern head is not quite wide enough to fit a 32 inch. So in the past, you're forced to drop down to like a 27 or 28 inch and then put a bezel around it, which is okay, but it just didn't look as the fit and finish wasn't as good. So we actually had Greg design a head just a hair wider than a traditional head that we could slot a 32 inch in, which resulted in a like perfect edge to edge display. It just, you know, one of the things that we put some extra effort and all of our profits go back into the company to help grow it and design new things. And so far, that's worked really good for us. And is it a true DMD or is it also a third monitor or how do you work that out? We'll do either option. We, right now, we really like using a monitor because it's full color. All of the Zen games can run in color or different colors. You know, in Zen game, if you play a multiplayer, each player is a different color DMD. And the same with a lot of the new color stuff coming down the pipe. Now, that being said, there is a couple of new technologies where there are some full color actual DMD displays that are being coded now to work in color with Zen and Pinball Arcade and lots of things. So, you know, being that we're running a high-end Windows computer like just about any other virtual pinball machine, the options are pretty unlimited. You know, we work directly hand-in-hand with our customers most of the time and do just about anything they ask request-wise for custom stuff.
    11:09
    So you've made a few of these machines and everything. You realize you want to expand the business, get it known a little bit more. You've been going to trade shows and selling them that way. How did you hear about getting onto Shark Tank, or where did that idea come? Well, you know, my family, you know, we've been in business for ourselves for a lot of years, so we've kind of had an entrepreneurial spirit. And I think anybody that, you know, is an aspiring entrepreneur, an entrepreneur loves the show because they are kind of always rooting for the underdog, which is usually the case of, you know, it's kind of it feels like the entrepreneur against the world when you're in front of all those sharks, you know. And so we're big fans of the show and we watch it religiously since the beginning. And so two years ago, you know, as we were gaining a little bit of momentum, we applied to be on the show through the Internet, which is apparently the toughest way. They have open auditions, which we didn't realize. But we actually just sent an application on the Internet with a little like I think a little video snippet or something of what we do. And we actually got a call back like a month later and we made it through a month or so of interviews. And then they they kind of cut us loose and said, sorry, not not really what we're looking for this year. So we kind of went on, didn't think anything of it. Well, this past summer, we got a call from the from the Shark Tank people and they asked us if we'd be interested in applying again. And they'd been following us and they thought that we might be a good fit for the show. And but it was once again going through the entire process all over again, which which, by the way, is I think that alone will test the resolve of most people that feel like they have a good idea. Because I was going to say, is that worse than actually being there in front of them? It's a process, you know, and I think they kind of do that on purpose to make sure you're not messing around. Yeah, you know, right. We get everybody. Everybody thinks they have a great idea for something. but are you willing to give your blood, sweat, and tears for many months to see it go to fruition? So it's a lot of work. I'll give that advice to anybody. It's worth it totally, but it is a lot of work. How was it? I mean, you were obviously pretty nervous up there when you were giving your presentation.
    13:11
    When they opened that door for you to walk through, is it just like, you know, pit of your stomach just roiling? I mean. You don't even know. I mean.
    13:20
    So first off, you know, you're waiting for everything to get set. So you're waiting behind the door for them to let you go in. Then you go in the door. And the craziest part is when you in there the first thing you do is you stand on your mark and they make you stand there for a few minutes You can move and you can say a word And what they doing is you know they getting all the cameras in place making sure the mics are working you know just getting everything ready to make sure they don miss anything So that three minutes felt like an eternity. And then, you know, we were in the tank for about an hour or so. The remaining hour felt like about three minutes. I mean, wow. So that's how heavily edited it is. Yeah, you know, I think the average person, the longer you're in there, the better it is, I think, because that means they're interested. They're engaging with you. If you get in there, give them your pitch, and all of them say they're out in five minutes, you know, then most likely you're not going to probably make it on TV because they really want you to engage with them. You are in a legitimate business proposition meeting. It's 100% unscripted. other than my initial little pitch that I kind of stumbled on a little bit. That's the only thing that you really try to plan in advance. I think they don't want you to go in there and just totally just draw a blank. So they want you to have some preparation in what you say to pitch to the Sharks. But after that, it is totally unscripted and it's back and forth. And it's 5 million and billionaires shouting questions at you all at the same time.
    14:50
    Yes. And no pressure at all. Oh no, not at all. No, only the most important people that you've ever looked up to in your whole life. Right. So when you said, hey, do you want to try the machines? I noticed immediately Cuban jumped straight up and was like beelining for it. I think he knocked people over to get there. What?
    15:10
    And honestly, he's the only, I personally, that was the first episode I ever watched. I was like, what? Somebody pinball is on some show I'm watching. So I don't know anybody's name other than Mark Cuban. Gotcha. So I refer to him as an old guy, the other pinball guy, the lady, and the guy that wound up buying your or partnering up with you. One thing I learned about Mark Cuban is don't call him the Cubes.
    15:34
    I didn't call him that. But, you know, if you remember the movie Step Brothers with Will Ferrell, you know, at the dinner table, they're talking about going bonita fishing with the Cubes and Super Chef Bobby Flay, you know. So one person one time went in the tank and called him the cubes, and he just straight went out because they called him that. He didn't like it. So I learned, call him the cubes. You can call him Mark. You can call him a lot of things, but not that. Apparently, that's a soft spot for him. But it was a lot of fun, though. So the one guy, you can fill me in on the name, but the guy that said he owned 10 pinball machines. Yeah, Robert Herjavec is his name. Okay. So Robert seemed to really be grilling you about this because he didn't. And in a lot of respects, I find this with guys that are owners of pinball machines. They really have a disdain for those that are into digital pinball. Well, if you remember, did that come across in person? No, not really. You know, it's all about the editing, of course. Robert was actually really intrigued, really interested. You know, it was funny as he played the machine for a while, just like Mark Cuban. They actually had to tell him to sit down because he was like he wouldn't stop. uh he loved it um but um but robert actually he was a pinball owner he sat down and so the words came out of his mouth so i own 10 pinball machines and literally my stomach just sank because i thought for sure the next thing was this isn't real pinball um everybody knows it's not we're not trying to replace pinball um but uh you know but then the next words out of his mouth made me feel really good he said that felt as good or better than any of my pinball machines that i own um and that was left in the show it was kind of you know a few people were talking but that made me feel good because you know those guys uh with millions of people watching is kind of make or break you you know i mean if all of them said that's horrible it doesn't feel right it doesn't play right that would have been that could have been the demise of you know of my business so fortunately him and mark cuban both uh had the same kind of feedback where they said man that's phenomenal it plays great the feel is good it you know feels great so that felt good the rest of the pitch uh that was at the very beginning the rest of it went a lot smoother for me because at least I felt like I had the endorsement that I was looking for, whether or not I got a deal was yet to be seen. But I settled down a little bit after that and kind of got a little more comfortable. That kind of speaks to your build quality then that, you know, just on the touch of it, that it feels like a real cabinet rather than something, you know, flimsy and, you know, particle board-ish. Yeah. You know, and we use, we use real hardwood plywood for all of our cabinets. Even our standup Vertigo cabinet, we decided not to use the press wood, even though that's what arcades are usually made out of. We decided to go against it. We get a pre-laminated black part or not part pre-laminated black plywood through a distributor. And it's just a really nice finish. We cut it on our CNC machine and it just nothing really beats the feel of real plywood cabinets. It gives you a nice solid cabinet. We put a big subwoofer in our pinball machines and having the solid cabinet definitely helps add to that, too. Just helps reinforce the sound and all that, which is good. Now, you also have, if I'm not mistaken, solenoids in the cabinet so that it actually, you know, when pop bumpers are supposedly happening, you feel that vibration coming through. Yeah, we have the force feedback kit in our wizard model, which is our top of the line model. It also is our best seller by far. And so there's eight solenoids. There's a shaker motor. There's a real replay knocker in the head. There's RGB LED lights above the play field that flash when they're supposed to flash in the original game, which is cool. So it does kind of really suck you in. We've got a working plunger, and we've got a really cool accelerometer in the cabinet that is a nudge sensor that instead of having to hit buttons for nudge, you can actually shake and tilt the machine, and you can see the ball move around, and you can get the tilt action, the nudge, which is nice.
    19:17
    I was looking at the Vertigo because it's a very interesting form factor in the design and also quite versatile in the fact you can run standard MAME as well as pin MAME and other pinball systems in it. Is it actually, because of its height and everything, is it actually rather hard to tilt that? Or is that actually not one with an accelerometer in it? Yeah, so because of how tall it is, it doesn't share the same feel physics-wise of a traditional pinball machine, of course. And we knew that going in. We weren't sure how it would be received. But so far, it's pretty phenomenal. We can't build those fast enough. I think to our knowledge, it's the first vertical machine that will do pinball and classic vertical arcade games. There's tons of really cool main cabinets out there. I'm friends with some of the builders of those. And it seems like there's dozens of guys that build the horizontal main cabinets and, you know, play 40,000 games, have 18 joysticks and four track balls and spinners. And I mean, they're amazing. They're amazing machines. But when you go to play your classic vertical, they're squashed in to the little center part of the screen. And so, you know, we thought this would be cool for all the really cool classic vertical games that kind of are coming back. Nostalgic wise, people are loving the Donkey Kongs, the Pac-Man's, Galaga's, Frogger, Q-Bert and all that cool stuff. So having the combo of those two so far, you know, that machine is only about eight weeks old. I drew that on a napkin about 10 weeks ago. I called I called I called Greg. That's why you didn't see it on Shark Tank. Otherwise, it would have been a really big hit. I think it was on the show, but yeah, put it on a napkin 10 weeks ago. I took a picture and sent it to him and he's in Michigan. I'm in Ohio. And I said, Hey, draw this for me. I want to cut it. It's been in my head for a few months and I just want to see how it looks and how it works. And he actually drove down that Friday to Cincinnati. We sat in the office and we, we drew and we cut two prototypes, put them together the same day. And by the end of the day, we had the guys in the shop messing with them, playing around with them. and we knew we had something pretty cool on our hands. So we took the first batch of them to the Texas Pinball Festival back into February, early March, I think. And we sold more than we took, and it was a great show. So we knew we had something cool on our hands. And so far, the Vertigo may turn out to be our best seller here shortly. It's really catching some steam.
    21:37
    Now, the shark that you paired with was who? Damon John, who was most famous for being the founder of FUBU, the clothing line, urban clothing line, back in the 90s. Since then, he's owned a lot of other clothing businesses. He started getting into some tech businesses, not a lot. But if you watch the show regularly, Damon, a lot of times he says he invests in people more than he does their product. And, you know, he said something to the effect of he appreciated my candor and, you know, just the fact that I, you know, I wasn't afraid to, you know, share my story. And, you know, after the fact, when we started to get to know each other, you know, he just, you know, he told me, he's like, you know, I don't know what we're going to do with this company. But I know that, you know, I'm going to help you and we'll come up with some cool stuff. And he's done exactly that. We did close our deal, which doesn't happen every time. A lot of times you don't close the deal because it doesn't work out one way or another. You shake hands in the tank. We did close our deal. And, man, he's been phenomenal. He has made some introductions to some pretty big license deals for us that are in the works and some neat stuff that we're really hoping will come together because of his connections. So let's talk about a little bit about the licensing, because I know that on our pinball fans forum, we were all very surprised that you had Zen licensed into the table, prebuilt into it. Yeah. Then we were also surprised at the cost of the license. We were like, wow, that's expensive. um i'm curious twofold actually with it uh one was you licensing zen in order to be able to market it as something different than other virtual pinball cabinet makers out there or two is it because we also noticed that you're going to be putting out coin op uh pinball machines and obviously if you have zen licensed then earning money on it would be acceptable, I'd imagine. Yeah. I mean, so, you know, we started bugging Zen back in 2013 when it was still just kind of an idea in my garage. You know, the biggest hurdle with virtual pinball is on the legal side of things. You really can't include the ROMs for all the visual pinball stuff and the future pinball stuff. So we wanted something where we could say, hey, you know, we're building this high quality product. We'd like some really awesome high quality games. and if you've played Zen, the Zen games, their graphics are second to none. I mean, they're phenomenal. And their physics engine is refined more and more every year. It's pretty awesome as well. So we started bugging them and it took a while to get through to them. But finally, Comic-Con 2013 was coming up and we got a call from them and they said, hey, Microsoft called us and they want us to be in their main booth area to show off Pinball FX 2. And we thought, man, your machines would be way cooler than putting them on a TV screen. Right. So I said, I'm down. How many do you want? When can I send them? Where can I send them? You get invited to Comic-Con, you don't ask questions. You just say, yes, thank you.
    24:38
    So we built a machine. It debuted at Comic-Con with their product on it, with the Pinball FX2. It was in Microsoft's gaming. They rented a whole hotel area off-site. It was right next to the convention center. And that was the same year they were launching and introducing the new Xbox. And we literally had lines 20 and 30 people deep to try this game out. And it really helped us. And from then, we just started establishing a good working relationship with Zen. We sent machines to 2014 Comic-Con that were Walking Dead branded for the Walking Dead game.
    25:14
    We sent machines. The producer of the Walking Dead, Galen Hurd, has one of our machines in her house. Robert Kirkman Studios there has a machine. So we've just made some great connections through Zen. And finally, we worked out, you know, a license agreement to where we could officially have all the cabinet support with the DMD screen and, you know, the back glass screens and all that with the hopes and goal of trying to get a coin op license. Now, that is a whole different license, of course.
    25:41
    But that's our goal. We would just love to, you know, to be able to we'd love to get pinball back into Dave and Buster's and Chuck E. Cheese. You know, they took pinball away because the maintenance was so high. Yeah. Yeah. So and that's one of the reasons we built the Vertigo as well, because if you go to if you go to like Chuck E. Cheese or Dave and Buster's these days, you see a lot of vertical oriented games, tons of them. They don't take up a lot of floor space and the kids love them and the adults love them and their ticket redemption. And we feel that we could take that Vertigo in some shape or form and turn it into a ticket redemption sort of pinball game that you can still hit the ball, flip on the flippers, win some tickets and and try to sneak our way back into these establishments. where they normally kind of reject pinball these days. One of the questions that a lot of people were having in regards to the machines already being preloaded with Zen is, okay, so you buy the machine. It's got all these Zen tables. Now a new Zen table comes out. Is it now you're on your own for purchasing whatever further tables come out, or is that part of the initial purchase price? I'm assuming because since you have a PC in and it's Wi-Fi compatible, it's just a matter of downloading Steam and boom, away you go. So we've set it all up for them with the initial, like basically our agreement is whatever tables are currently available out there through, you know, through Zen, we include all those tables. Okay. And then when a new table comes out, the end user just, they pay the three bucks or the $10 for the three pack or whatever it ends up being. Right. For the tables like Aliens just came out like the week four last and I think it 10 bucks for the three pack Those are pretty phenomenal tables They my favorite They my favorite of all of them tables I love them Very good They incredible The fact that they are used in Sigourney Weaver's real voice and clips from the movie. You know, I'm 40 years old, so I was a kid when the first Alien movie came out, but I just remember growing up, me and my brother would sneak and watch it, you know, because I don't think mom and dad really want us to watch it as kids. But it was just such a great movie, and it's just really cool. Xen has this incredible ability to license these amazing titles, and they make them pretty darn quick too. You know, I mean, they're on like game 65 or so. I mean, that's pretty nuts. It is.
    27:47
    You, in your frequently asked questions, I know people have asked, obviously you're able to run visual pinball, future pinball, and then somebody asked specifically about the pinball arcade, and you mentioned that you're using the Noax mod, I believe, to run the cabinet mode. We don't include the NoX mod. We don't have a license for that, but the NoX mod is a free mod anyway, so the end user can easily go grab it. It will auto position and rotate the DMD and all that good stuff. And it's a shame that Pinball Arcade wasn't able to kind of nail down a cabinet deal. They were working with Virtupin, one of our competitors, on a cabinet deal, and I was rooting for that to work. You know, I mean, I think that's good for the whole community just to have more options. And, you know, I'm not sure all the details on why that didn't happen. You know, I tried to reach out. Our theory is the new Stern app. Yeah. Stern doesn't want a virtual pinball cabinet. I wasn't sure if we wanted to get into that or not, but that's probably my theory too. You know, so, and that's fine. I mean, I think for the betterment of the virtual pinball games, it's awesome that there's going to be some new Stern games out there. You know, and, you know, it also gives Stern the ability if they ever wanted to get into the space, I'm sure they could. You know, I mean, we try to we try to stay as close as we can with with some we have some friends there. And I think you're right. I think their main thing is they just don't want them to easily get out to where they could be sold in cabinets where they're currently still selling a brand new off the floor game. You know, you know, they're not wanting to see those floating around in cabinets like ours. That's for sure. Well, and who knows, depending on the success that you guys are able to show, especially with having all the Zen tables, it might just be one of those things where, you know, a year or two down the line, they're like, hey, you know what? It does make sense. It's not hurting us to have these, you know, out and available in digital form. It's only helping. I hope so because my honest opinion about it is, and if you talk to pinball guys, I think they feel the same way. I don't think anybody in the pinball community feels like threatened, like virtual pinball is going to be some competition with traditional pinball. I think what it does though, I have a lot of customers that have bought a machine from me and they'll say, man, I downloaded and tried out this certain, certain game and it made me go buy it because I love it so much. And I feel, I feel like if people could try some of the newer Stern games, it's not going to stop them from going and buying it. If it does, then they probably weren't traditional pinball customers anyways. so you know I mean I think it would be good honestly if that was ever a possibility I think if they ever realized that I think it'd be a great partnership yeah yeah I think so too Jared I'm sure you have some technical questions why don't you lob any of those out to Brad that you want to let me get a drink and get ready here yeah I think a lot of them have actually been covered I think overall I think the discussion sort of flowed into some of the stuff I was thinking of. But I noticed that if you do want to emulate pinball machines rather than using the included Zen pinballs, you do need to upgrade the PC because there's a bit of extra cost with emulation. Now that is only on the Vertigo model. All the other pinball cabinet style models are ready to, they have enough computer and graphics power. When we launched the Vertigo, it originally was designed as a FX2 and classic MAME only, which neither are very much of a graphics hauler. So we can run those on, we run those on a GT 730 video card, which is pretty good in its own right, but it's not quite enough. You know, if you're running visual pinball, you kind of want to run like a 960, 970-ish card from NVIDIA. So what we did is with the Vertigo, we just gave an option for the folks that did want to emulate the classic pinball stuff on the Vertigo. We just have a PC upgrade. We wanted to keep the initial cost down for people that just love the, you know, the Zen games, but also give the option for folks that wanted to just have it all in there. So that's the only one that really needs the upgrade. You really can't argue with the price of the Vertigo because, you know, as an end consumer, if I just wanted this for my games room or something like that, you know, three, three and a half grand or thereabouts, even with a few upgrades thrown in is a very, very reasonable entry point for the cabinet. So the other thing I was thinking with the Vertigo 2, as I was looking at the design you got up on the website, the marquee where you would traditionally have the DMD, does that actually support? Yeah, yeah. Like, say you've got like a game mylar that you could download. Would that actually support displaying that, you know, like the sort of things you typically see on the top of games, advertising what they are? Oh, yeah. Is that what that's for? Absolutely. It is. If you look, there's a couple videos on the Vertigo sales page. If you look, you'll see I've got one that features FX2. And, of course, during FX2 games, it shows the DMD up there, which was our initial reason to have that. And then just as a byproduct, when we started trying out some of the classic main stuff on there, we realized that there's already tons of digital marquees available. So we tried a couple of the marquees. And sure enough, I mean, it's really cool byproduct to see the marquee of the game that you're playing up above on that top screen. That's pretty awesome. That is pretty sweet. I love that sort of integration. You really have thought of all the details with these cabinets. It's really impressive. I also like the fact that when you were talking about, like, the design challenges you were having with trying to retrofit this technology into standard cabinets, I really like the approach you took of going, well, instead of trying to do that, why don't we actually look at the technology and fit the technology to the design? And I think that's really, really nice. We got a little flack from the pinball community at first because we took a standard pinball width just for the simple fact of there's readily available lock bars and the coin doors and all that, pretty standard size. So, you know, we decided to shorten the machine by about three and a half inches from a traditional length of a traditional pin. And the reason for that is we didn't want to see any big like gaps at the front or the back of the of the display, you know, because a standard pin cab, if you squeeze a 40 inch display in it, which is what we use, 40 inches, the closest to actual size of a real pinball play field that you can get. It is the closest to replicating a traditional size play field. So when you shove that in there, you either are stuck with making some, you know, goofy little light blocking space up front and putting some artwork on it or shoving it against the back. And we didn't like either of those options. So we redesigned the machine to shorten it a little bit. And it is so if you sit an extra traditional pin, it's a few inches shorter, but it really kind of embodies what we're all about. And that, like you said, Jared, is to take the technology and wrap it around, wrap the machine around it, because we're not really trying to replace the pinball machine. we're trying to put our own new spin on it. So, yeah, I totally agree. It's the right way to go. So with the back box, I know with all the actual pinball form factor machines, you've actually got two video card heads, one for the back box and one for the actual monitor in the cabinet itself.
    35:01
    So with the back box screen and everything, is it – I notice it looks like a polycarbonate sort of shield where the speakers and the DMD would sit.
    35:16
    So behind all that, you've actually got the monitor sort of doing the DMD component basically from the monitor itself. So basically that's all masked behind the speaker panel, and you're seeing like a little cutout of the video screen where it should be.
    35:34
    Yeah, and, you know, that's not a technology that we invented. You know, that's kind of been floating around. What we did is we took a 15.6-inch display, and we basically cut out the dimensions of a traditional DMD display, and the rest of the display is hidden. And the nice thing about pretty much all the virtual pinball platforms now is you get the ability to size your DMD to fit your display.
    35:56
    So we kind of did it that way, and it works really good, and the customers like it a lot because they get the full-color options. Plus, it makes it a lot easier. You know, DMD displays are kind of pricey, you know. And they tend to have problems with the LED panels and stuff going out on them. So, you know, a traditional LCD display, you know, that's designed for a laptop or whatever it would be, those things are pretty bulletproof and are designed to last forever.
    36:23
    And we really, yeah, and they're inexpensive. And what we do is our new cabinets, we decided to angle the DMD panel similar to what the newer Sterns are doing. We do it a little bit differently, but we angle the panel to where, you know, it gives you the best possible contrast and view of that display. So it really gives you a great contrast, a great view of the display, and, you know, it angles the sound directly to the listener. We put a pretty rocking sound system in our pin caps. It sounds pretty beefy. I was looking at the stick. Well, our upgraded sound package is probably the loudest pinball machine on the planet. It's a 1,000-watt amplifier with an 8-inch sub and two 6.5-inch coaxial head speakers. And we have a lot of customers that use it as a jukebox because you can run MP3s on it. Just because you want to remind people of what your other business is.
    37:16
    I think it's fantastic because it could actually quite be like a centerpiece to your games room where you could actually put it into juke mode and it would just work fine. I think that's great. If you're having a party, throw the jukebox mode on and throw Pandora on or throw your Spotify on or something. And let it – I mean you bought the machine to be multipurpose and multifaceted, so why not get as much out of it as you can? That's kind of our theory. I mean so far people have been willing to pay a little extra to be able to do more cool stuff with their machine. Yeah, absolutely. Are you looking at exploiting any of the new, like, going 4K or using OLED screens, anything of that nature? Do you feel that that's going to wind up being a component in your future, or is that kind of not necessary for what you're doing? Well, you know, being in the industry, you know, 4K has definitely slowly taken over. It's getting faster now. But there's not really any games right now that benefit from the 4K in the pinball world. You know, the second thing is right now, and to be completely honest, the 4Ks that we've played around with, they really, they're kind of slow. You know, there's so much going on that in order for it to downscale the 4K to 1080p or 720p, whatever the game is native playing at, the processor in there, it slows down to the point where you get some lag and some delay. And that's the biggest, like, when we started this whole thing, the hardest part was getting the delay in the leg out of the system. And the last thing we want to do is reintroduce that. So, you know, the 1080p stuff is as good as it needs to be for the pinball platform now. Now, you know, as 4K develops and those processors get faster and faster, I'm sure there'll be a demand for that someday. And I'm sure that Zen, they're always ahead of the game. I mean, I'm sure there's going to be a time where they make some ridiculously cool 4K game or something. And if that ever happens, then, of course, we would look into that. But, you know, right now the enemy of virtual pinball machines are smart TVs and slow processors because they just slow everything down a lot. Have you guys thought about, obviously with VR coming in, and especially Zen having just put out their version of VR pinball, Farsight's working on theirs. um i'd seen somebody had built a full-size you know four-legged cabinet basically to be able to do pinball is that something that you guys might approach where you actually make it so that the computer is all in there and all you're doing is just plugging in your headset and boom away you go uh we actually have a pretty cool little prototype that we've been working on uh we did see uh zen first shared that post uh right after they launched the vr stuff and there was a um a guy a company, not a company, I think it was just an individual, like a blogger or a writer. And he took some like cardboard and then fashioned it with a board leg.
    40:09
    And I was pretty blown away by it. And so again, I called Greg and I said, hey, Greg, check this out. I think this could be something cool to be able to, you know, for a few reasons. One, you could use it for VR. Yeah. Two, for someone that just is really tight on space or budget, you could literally vertically hang a display on the wall and you could stand there and you could play games. And with the ability to have a joystick and buttons on the top, it could be similar to our Vertigo where you can play Vertigo arcade games at the same time. You could even have that display if you really creative swivel and you could turn it horizontal to play your horizontal main stuff if you really wanted to as well So you know there definitely I think there a market for it You know the VR market is still super niche
    40:53
    If pinball is niche, that makes VR exceedingly niche. Super niche. So, fortunately, we already have all the components to make that. The development costs are really low because we literally just redesigned the front foot and a half or two feet of a pinball cabinet, put four legs on it. And you can do one of two ways. You can either jam a really high end computer in it, which to run VR, you really need some beefy horsepower or to even cost less. There's if you're into VR, that means you have the rig already to run it. So why not just have a few USBs coming out of that sucker so you can plug it into your existing rig? And then and then you're talking a really inexpensive product that has some cool graphics on it, a fake coin door on it, all the buttons you want, a plunger maybe and all that stuff. I think it's cool. You know, with the Shark Tank exposure right now, we're just trying to keep our heads above water. The orders have been coming in like crazy. And then not to mention emails. We've I can't hundreds and hundreds of emails that we are still responding to, which is phenomenal. I mean, a lot of it's turning into new customers and good business. So we're grateful for it. But right now we're focusing on producing product and then some more R&D will come here probably in a few weeks when we slow down a little. Well, I'm glad to hear that, though. I'm glad that you guys are thinking beyond what is available because that's certainly exciting. I know that we, being Pinball Arcade fans, we've been begging for a true, just even controller that we could put in front of our desktops or plug your phone into and be able to actually slap it. And it's like nobody has anything of that that's even remotely affordable. so I'm kind of got a keen eye on you guys and seeing where you go from here you mentioned that you were so far basically only on the east coast that you were trying to work your way west coast is that when terms of the trade shows yeah we do have customers towards the west coast but we have done a really good job of infiltrating as many shows as we can we do 12 to 15 pinball and arcade trade shows a year you know we we go as far we're in Cincinnati we go as far as the Texas Pinball Festival, which is probably one of the best in the industry. If you're into pinball, that is the show to go to, in our opinion. We've seen most all of them, and they put on an amazing show. And then, you know, we do all the big shows, you know, Chicago, two in Pennsylvania, a couple in Ohio. There's Louisville. Man, we do a couple Comic-Con-type conventions. We've done E3 a couple times. Out West, actually, our only saturation at shows out West is, I say only, they're probably the biggest ones ever as Comic-Con and E3, which is great.
    43:27
    But, you know, we really do want to try to get more exposure and get our faces out west. Now that we've been on the show, a lot of west coasters have seen us and they've been calling us, where can I go play one? And it stinks to say we don't have any distributors quite that far out west yet, but it's all part of the growing process. You know, if I all of a sudden in one day had 100 distributors, I wouldn't be able to supply them with what they needed anyway. So we kind of got to just build it up as we go. But we'd love to get to some of the big pinball shows out in the West Coast. There's a ton of pinballers out there and just a ton of retro arcade gamers out there, too. I just love to get out there. That was probably the next question I had. What happens if someone down under would like one of these? But I'd imagine that's not even remotely on your horizon yet because I'm from Australia.
    44:13
    No, no, I couldn't tell at all, by the way. We've actually shipped machines to – I haven't – we've got inquiries about Australia. I think your import taxes are kind of high. But we've shipped machines to the Netherlands, to Europe, to New Zealand, I believe. So we have done some international freight. I can – I'm gladly and able to send a machine to Australia. The trickiest part is just the freight's not too terrible. I mean, if we do air freight, it's probably $1,200 US or so. But the import taxes, from what I hear, is where you'll get hit pretty hard. Yeah, they're not very good. This is why we pay so much for actual pinball machines like Stern's down here. I think they're retailing at the moment for about $13,000 Australian for a limited edition or just a premium. Right, right. Premium. What's the exchange? So how much is $13,000 versus US dollars? Well, you guys, what's the MSRP on a premium at the moment, Chris? It's about $8,000. Yep. So you're getting gouged pretty bad. I mean, it's mostly exchange rate down here at the moment. Wow. But, yeah, it's pretty brutal.
    45:29
    I can easily, for $13,000, I can easily get you a machine over there. That's no problem. With a lot of more games on it than just a standalone stand table.
    45:37
    Put whatever you want on it, yeah. That's right. I was wondering how long does it actually take you to turn around one of the cabinets? Like say you've got a wizard, how long would it take to actually assemble and get that ready to ship?
    45:47
    The wizard's got a lot going on in it because of all the solenoids and we've got dedicated control boards that do, you know, do all the force feedback. So, you know, it's taken a while for us to get a great assembly process down for the wizard. But now we're making custom pre-made wiring harnesses that drop in, which is great. We're making user serviceable parts that swap out. So, you know, we can get multiple machines out the door at any given day. But the wizard from start to finish is from the time the cabinets cut to the time it goes out the door.
    46:17
    You know, if we had nothing else at all going on with a staff of, you know, four or five guys, it's still a few days worth of man hours of labor to get a wizard out the door. It's hard to pinpoint exactly because we do it in an assembly process now where we'll build a batch of 20 cabinets and they'll go to graphics and graphics and they'll go to electronics, get electronics.
    46:37
    So, you know, we try to stay ahead of it that way. But if I had to guess, you know, there's probably 40 to 50 man hours, individual man hours of labor just to get a wizard put together.
    46:48
    Whereas it is a lot. And that's part of the reason the machine is kind of expensive. I mean, it's, you know, American labor isn't cheap. But we, I mean, we're really proud that we build our machines here in the U.S. You know, I'm proud that we hire, you know, that we employ seven guys and are able to give them jobs. And they really love working with us. Uh, so that's, uh, as a business owner, um, you know, that's one of the things that I'm most proud of is, uh, that, uh, I've been able to give some guys jobs, have some fun while we're doing it. Uh, and, uh, you know, it is time consuming, but our vertigo has a potential where there's so much less going on with the manufacturing of it. Um, you know, uh, the, I think the other day, for example, one of my guys was pretty proud. Uh, he, uh, he by himself, uh, was able to, uh, get five vertigos standing up, stickered graphic with computers and everything in just waiting for programming. So they have, yeah, they, I mean, they have the ability to, now that was, that was probably, if I'm giving credit, it was probably really two guys because one guy was actually assembling the cabinets and the other guy was doing the finished work and getting them ready for, to the final programming stages. But I came down from my office and saw that, and I was like, man, this is exciting. We're finally getting in a good rhythm. It's a brand-new product for us, so it's taken a while to get a good assembly rhythm together with the Vertigo. But we see some great potential for it to be able to be more mass-produced and easier to start to finish out the door for customers. That's very good. So, Brad, if people want to purchase one of these, tell us how they can go ahead and do that. Cool. Well, so the easiest way is just go to virtualpinball.com. We scored that URL a couple months ago. I've been trying to get that sucker for a few years, and we finally were able. Whoever secretly owned it, we were able to acquire that domain before Shark Tank because I knew if they saw Shark Tank, the price on that sucker was going to go through the roof.
    48:41
    So virtualpinball.com is our web address. You can order straight from the site. You can also, of course, just send us an email or contact us through the site. We are here all the time. Most people have questions about these. Most people don't drop four to eight grand without asking a few questions. We understand that.
    48:59
    We're probably one of the few guys doing this that has a toll-free tech support line that's pretty much from morning to night. Our tech guy answers and helps people with any problems they're having. So we do our best to make sure once you get your game, you tell your friends about it because word of mouth is the best form of advertising anyway. Absolutely. Well, fantastic. We wish you nothing but the best of luck. really, you spent way more time than I ever expected that you would. You've been a fantastic guest for us. I don't have to talk about anything else for the rest of the podcast, Jerry. You don't have to hear about my car. I love talking about pinball. I love talking about virtual pinball. And, you know, I appreciate you guys having me on. It's great. Hey, anytime you want to come back, if you've got any other kind of cabinet you want to pitch, just feel free. We'd be more than happy to talk to you. Maybe when we get the new coin op stuff rolling, we'll come back on and chat about that. Oh, yeah, that'd be great. Absolutely.
    49:45
    Awesome. Thanks, guys. All right. Thank you, Brad. See you later, Brad. Take care. all right bye-bye well like i said now adam or now jared you don't have to hear about uh my my car buying experience i think we that pretty much filled up an entire podcast to brad yeah that was incredibly interesting i'm very interesting i'm very excited for the fact that uh they there's thought processes of going for even other approaches to this i think there's obviously a lot of good ideas rolling around there and be exciting to see where it goes absolutely i think this is the beginning of many great things for VP cabs because I think virtual pinball is just going to keep on growing. I think it's going to grow with this resurgence of regular pinball.
    50:30
    And I'm really hopeful that the Stern app winds up being a good thing for Stern so that, like Brad was saying, that then maybe they'd be more open to a virtual cabinet experience. Because, yeah, if you bought a virtual cabinet and you had it in your house, odds are you're going to be so bitten by the bug that you're like i can't stand it i need a real totally yeah so it's like if you put it this way if you're going to drop in my case you know 12 or 13 grand on something like this like you would be going well why stop there you know really it's great well because now you would have now you'd have a cabinet that has yeah 60 plus games if you're just using the Zen machines.
    51:13
    Well, right. So you've got your variety there, but now you've gotten the taste. You want to feel what the real thing, you know, and have that sitting next to it. So yeah, it's a gateway drug. Yeah, totally. It totally is.
    51:27
    And I don't have a problem with that whatsoever. Yeah. Okay. So, hey, let's wrap this up as we normally do. Would you like a t-shirt? Of course you would. you can go ahead to represent.com forward slash blockade dash shirt. You may buy a t-shirt of the blockade, show your support for our podcast. If you would like to talk to us on Twitter, hit Jared up at Jared Morgz, hit myself up at shut your traps. Most importantly, though, follow the show at blockade beyond that. If you have any questions that you would like us to address, if you have ideas for shows that you would like us to, to talk about, drop us a line at blahblahblockade at gmail.com Yes. I think that's the first time I've gotten through all that, Jared, without stumbling. Yeah, we should just script it.
    52:19
    We should just have it running a script and you read that. Alright, now it's time to read the social medias and the t-shirts. So we're going to do that.
    52:29
    That or I should just record it for once and just let you drop it as a bumper. Yeah. I was actually thinking of mixing things up a bit as far as how we actually do ads and stuff as well which could sort of add a bit of variety in between the middle of the podcast so we did get feedback we got some feedback about how things going and what the podcast is doing for people and it's kind of nice to actually hear that it actually lifts people up we like the interaction people it's really good keep it coming, tell us what you think And be sure to stop by every Saturday, 3 p.m. Pacific time.
    53:08
    If you're in Australia, it's 8 a.m. In the future. And, yeah, then you can watch the podcast happen live. You can go ahead and interact with us with questions. And then you can go ahead and download us on Tuesdays when the actual podcast drops. All right. With that, we are out of here. We will see you all again next week. Thanks for listening. See you later. wizard amusement.com the west coast leader classic pinball makers of custom pinball shooter rods buyer specifications swap out your standard ball plunger with something themed to your specific table installs in less than five minutes with no custom tools even if you don't own the table looks great as a pinball memento to admire prices start at 39 but mention blockade podcast receive 10% off your order. WizardAmusement.com. Sales, restoration, customization.
    54:03
    Don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that YK is delivered to. We can't approve unless you tell us how. Now stop listening and place it in board.