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Episode 158 – Good Times Bad Times

Slam Tilt Podcast·podcast_episode·analyzed·Jan 12, 2021
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.036

TL;DR

Industry negativity: TPF canceled, American Pinball drama, Alien repriced higher with fewer features, Stern EULA restricts modding.

Summary

Slam Tilt Podcast episode 158 covers negative industry news including Texas Pinball Festival's cancellation due to COVID, drama surrounding American Pinball's new leadership (Dave Fix) and Dennis Nordman, concerns about Pinball Brothers' Alien relaunch with reduced features and higher pricing, Deep Root's Raza production challenges, Jersey Jack's inability to keep up with demand for Guns N' Roses, and Stern's controversial new EULA that restricts modding, streaming, and reverse engineering—with hosts noting the irony given Stern's own history of reverse-engineering competitor systems.

Key Claims

  • Texas Pinball Festival was canceled and rescheduled for 2022 due to COVID-19

    high confidence · Ron Hallett and Bruce Nightingale discussing TPF cancellation

  • Spooky had a manufacturing defect four months ago with machine legs of the wrong pitch that damaged machines when tightened

    high confidence · Bruce Nightingale describing his personal experience with Rick and Morty pinball

  • Dennis Nordman left Highway because they took pre-orders for Alien at Expo claiming spring release knowing it wouldn't happen

    high confidence · Ron Hallett citing Dennis Nordman's appearance on Super Awesome Pinball Show

  • Dennis Nordman left Deep Root after designing three playfields with no engineer assigned to advance the project

    high confidence · Ron Hallett citing Dennis Nordman interview on Super Awesome Pinball Show

  • American Pinball's Dave Fix claims to have fixed the supply chain and aims for two games per year

    high confidence · Ron and Bruce discussing Dave Fix's interview on Super Awesome Pinball Show

  • Pinball Brothers' Alien relaunch removed the screen, changed to Williams-style cabinet, eliminated swappability, and increased price to $7,777 (vs original $6,500)

    high confidence · Ron and Bruce discussing Pinball Brothers interview on Super Awesome Pinball Show

  • Deep Root's Raza was available for purchase for only three weeks at the end of the year after two years of development

    high confidence · Ron and Bruce discussing production decisions

  • Jersey Jack stopped taking Standard Edition orders; Collector's Edition production runs January-February with ~500 games, causing 2-month wait

    high confidence · Ron and Bruce discussing Jersey Jack production constraints

  • Deep Root's Pin Pod crate is too wide to fit through standard doors, limiting portability to shows

Notable Quotes

  • “So he had the conscience, which is good. So he left there.”

    Ron Hallett @ ~3:45 — Characterizing Dennis Nordman's ethical decision to leave Highway due to unrealistic promises

  • “I'm going to fix everything. I've already fixed the supply chain, baby. We're going to make two or three games a year, baby.”

    Ron Hallett (imitating Dave Fix as Dusty Rhodes) @ ~7:30 — Satirizing Dave Fix's ambitious claims during American Pinball leadership announcement

  • “They're going to change the cabinet, so basically it's like a Williams cabinet. What else did they take out? No more swappability.”

    Bruce Nightingale @ ~14:20 — Key features removed from Pinball Brothers' Alien relaunch

  • “You put all the money in, and it's the same company... But the group of guys were the original investors.”

    Ron Hallett @ ~15:45 — Discussing hesitation around backing Pinball Brothers again despite new ownership

  • “I'd be stupified. I mean, maybe they listened to the other things we said about just the John Papadiuk taint that that game has at this point.”

    Bruce Nightingale @ ~17:30 — Reacting to Raza's three-week sales window, suggesting company abandoned game due to negative associations

  • “They never sold out of a CE as far as I know. No. Now they have. Now they have. Now they've got to make them.”

    Ron Hallett and Bruce Nightingale @ ~21:00 — Jersey Jack experiencing unprecedented demand/supply constraint on Guns N' Roses

  • “You will not copy, reproduce, alter, replace, distribute, reverse engineer... In other words, you will not use Pinball Browser.”

    Ron Hallett (reading Stern EULA) @ ~25:30 — Clarifying Stern's prohibition on modding tools and software modifications

  • “Gary Stern, told them to... basically, they ripped off Bally. They got sued by Bally. And they had to pay Bally for every game that they made.”

Entities

Ron HallettpersonBruce NightingalepersonDennis NordmanpersonDave FixpersonJoe BalzerpersonGary SternpersonOliverpersonRoger SharppersonJerry

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Texas Pinball Festival canceled and rescheduled to 2022 due to COVID-19 surge in upstate New York

    high · Ron: 'TPF was canceled.' Bruce: 'Yeah, that is bad. It's very sad. To the surprise of no one.' Rescheduled for 2022 per hotel coordination.

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Dennis Nordman left Highway, Multimorphic, and Deep Root due to unfulfilled promises and lack of follow-through on designs

    high · Ron citing Dennis's appearance on Super Awesome Pinball Show detailing reasons for departures from multiple manufacturers

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Dave Fix appointed to leadership position at American Pinball with mandate to fix supply chain and increase production to 2+ games per year

    high · Ron and Bruce discussing Dave Fix interview on Super Awesome Pinball Show and his stated goals

  • ?

    product_concern: Spooky Pinball experienced defect with incorrectly-pitched machine legs that damaged customer machines when installed

    high · Bruce: 'Spooky had a problem about four months ago where they bought legs that were the wrong pitch. So when you tightened it to the machine, it would put grooves in your machine.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Pinball Brothers Alien relaunch increased price from $6,500 to $7,777 while removing screen and eliminating swappability feature

    high · Ron: 'The LE have a screen? Who knows?' Bruce: 'They're going to change the cabinet, so basically it's like a Williams cabinet.' Ron: '$7,777. Yes. Christ. Okay. The old one was $6,500 and has less in it.'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.371

0:00
This is stupid. Bunch of dumbasses going around in circles. Yeah, yeah, yeah, stupid. It's like, just a bunch of dumbasses going around in circles. Yeah.
0:16
This is the coolest show in the history of television. Yes! Coming to you from beautiful upstate New York, this is the Slam Tilt Podcast, the show about all things pinball. I'm your host, Ron Hallett, here with my co-host, Bruce Nightingale. Hello.
0:44
Hello. And we're back for episode 158. We're starting the new year. Yes, Ron is recharged. I'm recharged. Batteries have been fully recharged. And Bruce sounds tired. I'm exhausted. I brought Rick and Morty back to the house, though, so. So lots of swearing. And dealing with issues. Oh, issues with the game? Yeah, of course. Of course. I mean, okay. Spooky had a problem about four months ago where they bought legs that were the wrong pitch. So when you tightened it to the machine, it would put grooves in your machine. Ah, and you have those legs. I didn't know it.
1:33
When I moved it, I have those legs. So I had to send the thing off to Spooky. Maybe they should have, do they have like service bulletins or anything on their site? No, of course not. Oh, okay.
1:45
We're starting off positive already. Yes, we are. But we're not alone. Well, actually, we are right now. But we're going to have guests later. Yeah. But we have so many things to talk about, I figured we'd record that part first. Yes, I agree. Plus, I miss Ron. Oh, plus a couple of these things involve Stern, and it'll just be awkward.

high confidence · Ron and Bruce discussing Deep Root production logistics

  • Stern's new EULA prohibits use of Pinball Browser and restricts streaming gameplay without prior consent

    high confidence · Ron and Bruce reading and discussing Stern's December code release EULA

    • Bruce Nightingale @ ~31:00 — Historical irony: Stern built its business through reverse engineering Bally systems, now prohibiting same

  • “It's all about the noogie. Yeah, the noogie, yes. Keep it on the down-low, man.”

    Bruce Nightingale and Ron Hallett @ ~34:15 — Advising community to keep custom mods hidden rather than publicly streaming them

  • “Just don't bring it to a show and blast it at full volume for everyone to hear including all the Stern employees. Just don't do that.”

    Ron Hallett @ ~34:45 — Practical guidance on avoiding Stern enforcement by not publicly displaying heavily modded games

    • person
    American Pinballcompany
    Pinball Brotherscompany
    Deep Root Gamescompany
    Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Multimorphiccompany
    Spooky Pinballcompany
    Texas Pinball Festivalevent
    Super Awesome Pinball Showorganization
    Pinsideorganization
    Flip N Out Pinballcompany
    Aliengame
    Razagame
    Guns N' Rosesgame
    Pinball Browserproduct
    Rick and Mortygame
  • ?

    product_concern: Pinball Brothers taking new deposits for Alien relaunch despite prior customer losses on original failed release

    high · Bruce: 'They're taking deposit money again. Yeah, and the thing is, I know at least one person who got screwed on the first one, and he has already sent his deposit money in for this one.'

  • ?

    machine_intel: Deep Root Raza only available for purchase for three weeks after two years of development; company moving on to next project

    high · Ron: 'So for three weeks... What, two years?' Bruce: 'Yep. You worked on all this stuff.'

  • $

    market_signal: Jersey Jack sold out Collector's Edition runs; Standard Edition orders stopped; facing 2-month production delays with ~500 games in queue

    high · Ron: 'Now they have sold so many games they cannot keep up with the demand... Now they've got to make them. Yeah. Another interesting thing...'

  • ?

    regulatory_signal: Stern released December code update with controversial EULA prohibiting modding (Pinball Browser), custom content streaming, and reverse engineering

    high · Ron reading EULA: 'You agree that you will not copy, reproduce, alter, replace, distribute, reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble... In other words, you will not use Pinball Browser.'

  • ?

    industry_signal: Stern's current EULA prohibits reverse engineering of systems, yet Stern itself built its business in 1980s-1990s by reverse-engineering Bally and Williams board systems

    high · Bruce: 'When Stern Electronics... When they bought Chicago Coin... So what did they do, Bruce? They bought a company... they reverse engineered. Reverse engineered. The entire Bally system... Now he's telling you not to reverse-engineer.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Community consensus (from hosts' discussion) is to keep modded machines hidden ('on the down-low') to avoid Stern enforcement

    medium · Ron: 'Just don't bring it to a show and blast it at full volume for everyone to hear including all the Stern employees. Just don't do that.'

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Deep Root's Pin Pod crate too wide to fit through standard doors, limiting portability and show delivery logistics

    high · Ron: 'the Pin Pod... it's too wide to fit through, like, a standard door... if you're trying to bring it to a show, I guess you've got to bring it only to the dock?'

    • 2:07
    Awkward for the people we're going to have on. Clue, clue, clue. All right, what to talk about first? There's so much stuff. Well, let's get totally negative first. TPF was canceled. Yeah, that is bad. It's very sad. To the surprise of no one. No, unfortunately, you know, COVID is running rampant even now in upstate New York. Define upstate. So you're going to say upstate, meaning anywhere not New York City. Yes. You're going to be one of the enemy. Yeah, because our numbers in, I don't live in Monroe County. I work in Monroe County.
    2:41
    And yesterday was 1,100 people, which I know for probably some of the country is like, oh, that's nothing. But for us, it's the most ever. Yeah, that's a lot of people. Yeah, so not good. They're talking we're going to go to another color besides red. I'm like, what? What? Plaid? We've gone to Plaid. So we have, but they said it's rescheduled for. Next year. Yeah, 2022.
    3:11
    So there you go. Mm-hmm. And I guess they're the hotel's biggest, like, event that happens. So the hotel is just, whatever you want. Sure. We're willing to work with you. Let's see. What else do we got here?
    3:26
    Dennis Norman? Dennis. Okay, okay. We'll talk about American Pinball. Yes. Because we had the Super Awesome Pinball Show. Hi, guys. They had Dennis Nordman and mostly Dave Fixx on about talking about American Pinball. Yep. The things I found interesting is Dennis was going over, like, why he left all the other people he's left so far. It was kind of like a bash fest. Well, what did he say? Didn't he sound like Bruce a little bit? Everyone's, Bruce. So he said, let's see, he left. Well, he left Highway because they took pre-order money at Expo for Alien and said it was going to be out in the spring, and he knew there was no way in hell that was happening. So he had the conscience, which is good. So he left there.
    4:16
    Multimorphic, he was there until Jerry couldn't pay him anymore. Which is weird. I had this comment with a couple people, and Jerry has a lot of money from P3 sales. He does? Well, the board sets. That's true, because Spooky uses them, and pretty much any homebrew seems to use them. Exactly.
    4:35
    So there's a little, like, hmm, you know. All right. We'll get into that, but yeah. Okay. Bruce always goes there, of course. Well, I go there because people don't think that way. Bruce thinks in a unique fashion, that's for sure. Oh, we know that.
    4:54
    Then he said, this is the one that scared me. So he said he left Deep Root because basically he did three play fields for them, and at no point was he even assigned an engineer to go to the next step. So he did three play fields and nothing else happened. So either those were going to be later games, like maybe number four, five, and six, who knows, or they had the engineer.
    5:20
    I guess the thing is, I'm designing all these games, I want to actually see some games happen. Yeah. I can't keep designing games and not seeing any games. No, you can't. They talked about Elvira. I guess I didn't realize that was costed down. It was a ramp removed or changed or something. Ramps because he had more flowing ramps. And then I think what happened was they made him like a direct return ramp, you know, just back down to the flippers.
    5:49
    Also, some mechanisms were removed. So, you know, how much of it was his design at the end? I think probably most of the maybe most of the play field but maybe not that was the other interesting thing Alien the narrative at least recently has been that Dennis started working on that but most of the play field was done by the other guy whose name I can't remember and even he's been this other guy's been in interviews as like the main Alien designer and Dennis basically said no he said he did a majority of the play field they redesigned where the flipper is they moved the flipper over a lane but he said basically it was always a wide body and most of that they were ready to cut the first white wood when he left I found that interesting because that's always been the narrative forever that he just kind of had a minimal involvement but now he's basically saying no most of the play field is mine is that good or bad?
    6:51
    for the people who like the game. I know. But we'll be getting an alien later. Yeah, and then Mr. Fix is... Oh, God, Dave Fix, I think he is going to be our Robert Mueller Jr. Mm-hmm. He's not full Robert Mueller. Like, he didn't say anything like, we're going to reinvent the way pinball is manufactured and change the game and all that stuff. No. But he's bringing in energy. He's bringing in energy, Rob. He's bringing in energy. but I'm trying to think what wrestler I could use for him.
    7:24
    Yeah, I already used Hogan, which would have been perfect. Dusty Rhodes. You know, Hogan is a real name. Dusty Rhodes. Dusty Rhodes because he's the American dream, baby. That's right. I'm going to fix everything. Yeah, that's right, baby. I'm going to fix everything. I've already fixed the supply chain, baby. That definitely, Ric Flair, he was screwing up the supply chain, so I fixed that, baby. Yeah, it's going to be no more hard times here at American Pinball. We're doing it all, baby. We're going to make two or three games a year, baby. That's what I'm talking about. I brought in some junior designers, baby. They're going to work with Dennis Norman. He's going to mentor them, baby. It's going to be incredible. We're going to the stratosphere pinball. Hey, did you get insulted, though? I didn't get insulted by him. I wasn't insulted. Oh, yeah.
    8:05
    Dave basically did this thing where, well, you can't judge a game unless you played it. Which, okay, to a point.
    8:17
    You could still say the art sucks. you can still say, like, I watched this stream, and man, it looked like it had issues. Like, if you're watching a new game on a stream, and the ball gets stuck ten times, and no one can make a shot and stuff, you might say, hmm, there might be some problems with this game. But he also said, basically, bash podcasters that have only been in the game like five years. You know, they haven't been around since the 90s, since the dark days, since Williams went out of business, blah, blah, blah. So I guess by that criteria, you are the only qualified podcaster, Bruce. Yes, and you. And even I can't say that. Oh, that's right. Yes, I wasn't around when Williams went out of business. I haven't been around since the 90s. You've been around since the 80s. So, Bruce, you are the only qualified podcaster. Well, you're going to run much. Yep. But, yeah, if he was going for one person, though, we know who he was going at. Oh, he was going. Okay. All right. If you listen to the interview, he was going for one person who says he only has one game, he listens for it, and he's got all these followers. Oh, okay. There you go. But still. Oh, yeah. No, everyone took it very personally. He went, like, Joe Balzer. They asked him about Joe Balzer. Yeah. And he basically said, yeah, Joe Balzer doesn't get along with people. It's basically what he said. So it's, like, interesting. Okay. So I'm guessing he's probably not doing games for American anymore. Well, he's supposedly still under contract, and I'm not going to say he isn't. No, no, well, he's a contracted designer, yeah. Yeah. So the thing is, and I guess now that it's out, I can kind of say this now. I had some other information from source that he was, if not gone, he was looking to leave. Oh, I knew that, too. Yeah. He was looking to leave. We're not going to say anything, but it was. Yeah, it's not our place. As I do this. We're not some other place. Oh, God. I'm going to keep going. But the thing is, I heard multiple interviews with other people in American referring to Joe like he was still working there. So it's like, oh, okay, well, maybe my source isn't correct. But I think my source was correct looking back. Yeah, I think mine was too. Very interesting. It was very interesting, yeah. I don't think American Pinball Dave Fix is going to be getting much interviews from any other podcast. Oh, no. Well, he pretty much said Super Awesome Pinball is exclusive. Like, when new stuff comes out, you'll be the first to know. You're the podcast I'm going on. So, yeah. There you go. But how can he go on that podcast if both those guys haven't been in over 20 years? The thing is. I'm just stating. I thought Dave spoke well. I thought he spoke very well, but I think he promised the moon. Oh, well. And plus he bashed it a little bit, too. He bashed the American now. The artwork for Oktoberfest was supposed to be like Mad Magazine-like artwork, and it kept changing, and that sucks. Basically, I was saying their supply chain had issues, and he came in there and fixed it all, and et cetera, et cetera. But they're still selling those games, so why would you bash those games? Well, the thing is, they actually manufacture games. We'll give them that. So they proved they can build games.
    11:34
    So, I mean, to be honest, as much as he talked, I was kind of excited. Like, hey. Oh, I was too. They can do two games a year? That was the thing. They want to do at least two games a year. I don't see that. I don't see that happening yet. You don't see that happening? Jersey Jack can't even do that. And they've been around 10 years.
    11:52
    Was it six games in eight years? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But if you're going by how long they've been around, it's really 10. Mm-hmm. So six games in ten years. That's not even one every two years. What did they start? Jersey Jack was, what, the beginning of 2011? Yes. And I think in 2012 they started making the first. Yeah, late 2012. No, no, because we were there in the spring or before the spring for that tour. Oh, that's right. They were just starting. Yeah, they just started the lines, and they had those Wizard of Oz's. And those cabinets looked incredible. Oh. They'll never make those again. Silk screen, clear-coated cabinets. Like, insane. I remember looking at those like, man, the cabinets look like they cost a ton. They probably did. That's why they stopped doing that.
    12:46
    So, I mean, I highly recommend the interview. Yeah, so do I. And the guys asked some hard-hitting questions. Yeah, I was surprised the amount of bashing that went on. I was like, man, he's not making any friends. But he said, interestingly, like the licenses, like we have Roger Sharp. He's going to get us the licenses. We're not going to do licenses if we don't get everything. Yeah, not half-assed. Not half-assed. Yeah, that's what he said, which is kind of a dig, I think. It is for a lot of companies. And then he said that like Stern hasn't been calling me lately. Oh, yeah.
    13:23
    So, yeah. Yeah. But congratulations on getting Dennis Norman. and I think that will be a plus for that company. That's right, baby. I talked a lot of shit, baby. We're going to back it up, though. We're going to be the American dream of manufacturers, baby. American pinball dream. American pinball dreams.
    13:40
    So for now on JFix, you are the American dream Dusty Rhodes. Nice. I'd love to be Dusty Rhodes. Except I would get beat, like, by Ric Flair all the time. I know. That's the thing. I would get beat up at the gas station by the Four Horsemen. I'd get my leg broken by the Four Horsemen. So do I really want to be Dusty Rhodes? They would love me. That's right, baby. You know what the funny thing is? During that whole time, I was the book-a-baby. I was the one making the book-baby. So I was telling everyone to beat me up.
    14:11
    All right. Well, we'll stick with the Super Awesome Pinball Show because they also had Pinball Brothers on. God. To talk about Alien.
    14:21
    Did you hear that interview? Did you take away anything? Oh, I did. I'll let you go first. What were your impressions?
    14:30
    I just didn't get a warm and fuzzy feeling. Guess what? They're going to be selling Alien again. But you took out a lot of stuff.
    14:37
    It's more money, literally, for taking into account of... Well, they took out the screen. They took out the screen. They're going to change the cabinet, so basically it's like a Williams cabinet. Yes, exactly. What else did they take out? No more swappability. They have not even brought that up. Oh, yeah, okay. So, what's the point now, really, besides having this game? And they're taking deposit money again. Yeah, and the thing is, I know at least one person who got screwed on the first one, and he has already sent his deposit money in for this one. He really wants Alien.
    15:12
    And we know somebody personally who's sent in money, also ourselves, who's a mutual friend. I'm going to his house today to work on EMs. The thing that worried me is, okay, where are they building these? Exactly. Well, they're building them in Italy. Yeah, some company in Italy that does parts and makes jukeboxes. Yes. So they're going to take a couple months to get up to speed, they said. Yeah. April. They're talking April. No way in hell. The thing is, though, I'm like Deep Root. They actually have a distributor here. They do. Going to be a breaker. Actually, too, I think Flippin' Out is going to do it, too. Flippin' Out is taking deposits now. Yeah.
    15:54
    I just, they have to, you know, sure, if they start making games and they start cranking them out, like, okay. I swear to God, I don't think people remember history. I just, I don't see how you could, even if you wanted it, even if it was like Beavis and Butthead, if I got burned, I'm not giving them money again. No.
    16:13
    The problem is, and then they said in their statement that, you know, hey, if you get certain money back, but you don't get all your money back, that was them still. Yeah, well, they lost millions of dollars first, they said. I don't give a shit. Yeah, basically, if you got screwed over, and you can prove you got screwed over on the original run, you can get 50% off. Which is bullshit, because guess what? You put all the money in, and it's the same company. And it's, okay, the new one is, what, $7,777? $7,777. Yes. Christ. Okay. The old one was $6,500 and has less in it. But then there's the LE. I know. Which we haven't even seen yet. I know. Like, what the hell is going to be on the LE? Will the LE have a screen? Who knows? I agree with the short memory. Does anyone remember this happened and then another group of guys come in like, okay, we got this under control and everyone's like, hey, take my money! I want my alien! But the group of guys were the original investors. Yeah. I mean, I do believe that when they bought this, they probably went in there and went, holy shit. They're way worse shit than we thought. You still took money. They used loopholes and shit in the system to get out of as much as possible and retain the rights, which is smart. From a business perspective, it's very smart. But I don't know. You got screwed once before. How could you like, oh, this new group of guys. Yeah. when you put your deposit down, you've got to put your address in, and they'll mail you a bottle of KY jelly while you're waiting. So you can take it in the ass? Yeah.
    17:49
    Because God Almighty's people have no fucking... How many people have gotten burned or have waited years for their pinball machine? We still have people waiting for Big Lebowski's.
    18:01
    Dave Fix from American Pinball said, when he was talking about licensing, we wouldn't get Alien without Sigourney Weaver. Yeah. Actually, that might have been Dennis Nordman who said that now that I'm thinking about it. Yeah, but guess who did the licensing for that agreement? Was that Roger Sharp? Yes, it was. For that agreement? Yes, it was, and then he had to go back and try to get it. Oh, that's right, because he could have got Sigourney Weaver, but they didn't want to pay for it. Exactly. And I think Roger even said he didn't think it was that much more. It wasn't that much more. He was surprised, like, why wouldn't you go for it? For as much more, you could have gotten it. Yeah. So don't forget, it's not just the person you have. It's the company behind it, how much they want to spend. And we probably see that more than anybody else is with Stern.
    18:47
    I'm just surprised they were able to renew the license after everything that happens. Oh, God. You know, just the production company like, oh, yeah, okay, sure. Fox, well, don't forget now, Fox is now Disney. Is everything Disney? Yes, their movies are. Everything is. We're just on Disney Plus next week. Family Guy is coming on. You're going to be Stewie. You're going to be on for, on Disney Plus. Oh, that's wonderful. I'm going to be on Disney. This Family Guy screams Disney. Yes, it does. Okay, so that's Aliens. That's what we're talking about, all these manufacturers here. Boy, we're really negative starting this new year, aren't we? We're. That's just the way we are. We'll try to get more positive later on.
    19:28
    Raza. God. Here's the part I didn't understand. So, it was available for purchase. Until the end of the year. So for three weeks. Yes. Three weeks. So what, two years? Yep. You worked on all this stuff. So if I had worked on the game, say, for two years, put everything into this game, and then I'm told by the owner, yeah, it'll be available for sale for three weeks, and then we're moving on to the next game. Mm-hmm. I'd be kind of pissed. I'd be stuplified. I mean, maybe they listened to the other things we said about just the John Papaduke taint that that game has at this point. Maybe you should just move on. Yeah. I think you even said that. Maybe they're taking, it's like, okay, we're just going to move on to the next game. But how much wasted money? You first wasted money a year ago when you made it without the pin bar and programmed it with it. You're taking out the pin bar. You wasted all the money getting Pompadour by paying off all the Zidware people. Yep. How do you think they sold in the three weeks?
    20:29
    Not as many as Alien. Yeah, no, I agree. That would be my guess. I'd say there's no way they sold as many as Alien. So, what does that tell you? Meanwhile, people are still waiting for their Guns N' Roses. Where's my Guns N' Roses? I know. And they stopped sales now on the SE, I found out. The SE? The base model. Oh, oh. I keep forgetting they have, okay. Yeah, the standard edition. Yep. They have all these names. So, they've now stopped taking orders. They might bring back later on, but they stopped taking orders. They've always said with Jersey Jack, the standard edition is the true LE. Yes, it is. But you're going to start losing sales on the LE.
    21:11
    Oh, if New York comes out. Next two months, they're running CEs. Mm-hmm. So now you know if you don't get your LE by this week being shipped to you, you are down waiting another two months.
    21:27
    Wow. I didn't realize it was that long. They said it. January to February. It's 500 games. How many can they put out? Maybe 20, 25 a day? It's interesting. We're always talking about how long it takes in between games and all this, and now they literally have sold so many games they cannot keep up with the demand. They were never used to it. They never were used to it. That's true. They're absolutely never used to this amount of volume. Which is great. Which is great for that. They never sold out of a CE as far as I know. No. Now they have. Now they've got to make them. Yeah. Another interesting thing is, you know that crate thing that Deep Root has? Oh, the pin pod. The pin pod. I guess one of the things I was reading, it's too wide to fit through, like, a standard door. Yes, it is. Oh. Because it's a production thing from another company. All he's doing is putting his label on it. That just seems like that would be a problem if I couldn't get it through a door. Yeah. And wait a sec, if you're trying to bring it to a show, I guess you've got to bring it only to the doc? To the show.
    22:35
    So when do you think we'll see Raza's out? Oh, no. Not at all? I don't know about that, but I'm thinking at least. They still don't have manufacturing. That's what the special six said. Yeah, the deep six, that was one of the things they signed the NDA for, the fact that they, I guess they saw some manufacturing, but there was nothing, it was like nothing going on. No, there was just parts. No line. Yeah, that's the one problem. I mean, that's the thing that worries me about Alien, because they actually have to build them. And the thing that worries me way less about American, because they've already built games. And they really haven't shown any issues. Have you heard issues with American games having physical problems? No, I think they're built pretty well, actually. From what I've seen, they look like they're built pretty well. The only complaints have been just, you know, the game stocks are... It's not fun. It's not fun, or the flippers are weak, which seems to be... Any more negative? Let's see. Oh, we got plenty. Well, let's get right into this here. Right before Christmas, Stern released a bunch of code. Yes.
    23:43
    They released code for Stranger Things, Avengers, Iron Maiden. Iron Maiden, baby. Probably the final release for that. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Star Wars. Oh, yeah. P.A.P.S., Cancrusher, and Primus. So you're thinking, wow, what a great Christmas present from Stern. But when you went to download them, and actually, I didn't have this issue because I think they already pulled it by this time. But when you went to download this new code. You had to click an extra P. You had to accept a new end user license agreement, which, holy shit, caused all kinds of consternation on Pinside.
    24:17
    So I got it in front of me here. And I'm just going to read some highlights. But it said things like, you agree that you will not copy, reproduce, alter, replace, distribute, reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, display, perform, create derivative works based on or otherwise modify the Stern Pinball hardware or Stern Pinball software or any authorized update in whole or in part. In other words, you will not use Pinball browser. That is literally what that says. You will not change scenes. You will not change the code. You will not change video. you will not change scenes in your game. You will not use or install any unauthorized content or unauthorized software. In other words, you will not use Pin Browser. You cannot use. I don't even know if they can use that pulling the scores. What was that program? I think that went into the board itself. I know what I'm saying. Is that a modification?
    25:10
    It's a mod. It reads the stuff. Guess what? Software may result in your stern pinball machine ceasing to work permanently and or losing access to Stern Pinball's online game network. And everyone's like, they're going to brick our – I read that more like if you put unauthorized software on the game. Not going to be able to update. Yeah, I meant more if you put unauthorized software on your game, you could brick it. Yes. And if you put unauthorized software on there, then when Stern starts their online game network, whenever that is, you won't be able to join it because you're using modified software. Well, duh. I mean, to me, that's just, that's like, you know, my hacked version of Call of Duty won't let me join the network to play with other people. What the hell? My God, I have unlimited life. Yes. I'm God mode. No one can kill me.
    25:58
    You know. And 90% of it was, don't screw with the software. And that's all Pinball Browser. And, like, you will not try to defeat our anti-piracy stuff. In other words, like, all that new code that came out, none of it worked in Pinball Browser. Nope. So Oliver, who does Pinball Browser, had to do his magic, and now it all works. It'll use the cat and mouse over and over. I didn't realize it was – I'm assuming it's the same Oliver that our own Scott talked about. Yes. Who used to do modifications. I think he's in France. Yes. And I think I'm actually running his code on my Stargate.
    26:32
    Yes. But here's the part that caught a lot of people. In view of the rights held by third-party owners of authorized content, e.g. music and video clips, You will not stream your gameplay of your Stern Pinball machine without Stern Pinball's prior consent.
    26:46
    And this is why I think it got pulled. This is very poor wording. Yes, it is. And I understand what they're going for. The main thing, they don't want you streaming your Tron with all your custom music in it, or your Jurassic Park with all your clips from the movie and all the stuff that Stern didn't pay for, and that all of a sudden is in your game. and license our C and go with that. License our C and like, what the hell? We didn't give you, you didn't pay for any of this. Well, you see, it's this thing where people are hacking our shit. You let them do that? Looks like we're not working with you anymore, Stern. Yeah. This is all CYA shit. Yep. That's all it is. Stern is not going to shut down your freaking stream. Nope.
    27:30
    But mods, again, if you're doing a mod that you're plugging into something in the game and it fries it. It's your fault. It was never covered. it's not covered under anything. And the warranty, which their warranty isn't that long to begin with, but you do that shit, if you put non-stern authorized crap in your game and it bricks it, too bad. And here's the funny thing. Most of these modders that I see making up this stuff are using alligator clips that are monstrous that could just wiggle a little bit because it's a pinball machine that has vibration, short out, and blows something up. Like, if you're doing, like, a custom shooter knob, and you put, like, R2-D2 on it or something, and you don't have the rights to that stuff, that's a problem. Yes. I mean, I'm not saying... It's not. Again, like we said in the past, for those who have tons of custom software on their machines, it's all about... It's all about the noogie. Yeah, the noogie, yes. Keep it on the down-low, man. You can't be like, look at my custom shit. Now I'm going to stream it and show everybody.
    28:36
    It's just, it's all CYA. Yeah. I know people are having issues with this. Okay, I will say, the irony of this is not lost upon me, this one line. And I'm going to ask, since you've been in pinball since the 80s, Bruce, you can obviously answer this one. It says, you will not copy, reproduce, alter, replace, distribute, reverse engineer. So, Bruce, when Stern Electronics, you know, which Gary Stern worked for, with his dad. When they bought Chicago Coin and they made EM games. And then when Solid State came around, they needed to get with the times and make Solid State pinball. So what did they do, Bruce? They bought the company. Well, they bought a company. They bought a company that was making the board sets for Bally and designed the board sets for Bally. And they reverse engineered. Reverse engineered. The entire Bally system. And I believe Gary Stern actually owned that company. Yes, he did. Yes. So Gary Stern, the company Gary Stern, told them to... Then they made their another system when it came to Data East. Well, I was going to... Bruce, you've got to let the story flow better. I can't flow. I've just got to go... But, yeah, yeah. Basically, they ripped off Bally. They got sued by Bally. And they had to pay Bally for every game that they made, like a licensing fee for using their system. And then when Gary Stern started Data East in 1986, gee, we need a whole new system. Let's just use System 11, Williams System, which they got in trouble for that. Now, eventually they did kind of come up with their own thing. Yeah, they went away from that, and Williams eventually went to WPC. But still, that's two occasions he basically reverse-engineered systems. Now he's telling you not to reverse-engineer. which I just the irony of that is quite funny you know because come on Gary get off the vodka and come on the real side so uh any more on that no I mean I don't think anyone's I don't think people are going to get taken down but you know we talked about this already if you have your heavily custom game you have your you have your Iron Man playing disco music don bring it to a show and blast it at full volume for everyone to hear including all the Stern employees Just don't do that. And don't expect your hacked version to be able to connect to the Stern network, whatever the hell that is. I think people are worried, too, if Stern does things like you can only get updates via the Internet, that if you have a hacked version, somehow it's going to say, you have a hacked version, and then break your game.
    31:15
    Yeah. My advice would be if you have a hacked version, you should be able to hack it in a way where it doesn't try to go out and get updates. Yeah. Or turn it off. Just turn off the updates. And any kind of hacked software I've ever seen, it's not going to phone home to update itself because I kind of – It's going to defeat the purpose.
    31:34
    Not that I know anything about hacked software. Yeah, not at all. Not at all. Okay. Check that off the list. Hey, we got some good news, though. Good news? Well, we'll still do bad. Twippies? We made them? Yeah, no. No? Why not? Because too many fucking other new podcasts. We didn't make the Twippies. We didn't make the top ten. We didn't send out letters to everyone saying vote for us on e-mails. Oh, man. Silverball Chronicles, I can't believe, didn't make it, though. I don't believe. I think you split the vote. I split the vote between. No, it's a totally different type of podcast. You split the vote. It was between me and Dennis. Oh, Jesus Christ. Okay. Yes, folks, we didn't make the trophies. I knew when I heard Loser Kid didn't make it, it was like, we're fucked. There's no way we're making it. Yeah. And the new podcasts that are on there are terrible, some of these. Wow. Okay. First, we're in it. Some are Canadian juniors. I'm not going to say it. We're going to just tell you. Yeah, if you want to make it, either stream your podcast. Lie. That seems to be, that gets you in. Because there's only two podcasts I think that do that, and they were both in. Or you're even meaner than we are. Yeah. You're not mean enough, Bruce. You need to fast. Oh, I just picked up an argument. I wanted to. Oh, Bruce is just going to start calling people out by name. Yeah. No, please don't. Well, he did. Please don't do that. Kind of, yeah. Please don't do that. I love it. You do love it. This is why, folks, we can't do a streamed podcast. Could you imagine that? No. I could not edit Bruce at all. Oh, man. We would. Oh, that would not be. The anarchy. Anarchy. But it would get more laughs, I bet you. But the Twippies. Then we have the Pinball Industry Awards. Yep, which I voted in. That is a thing that the Pinball Network is doing. I like it because it is more like a, not a people's choice. It's not a people's choice award, yeah. It's an industry award. And the good thing about the industry award is I could not vote in my own sections. Yes. Which I liked. That's the way it should be. I didn't have to have a mailing list where all my sponsors were mailing out saying, I should vote for this person. And it wasn't just one or two people. I seen three different ones in the top ten that did that. Okay. Holy dick sucking. for a piece of fucking plastic you have to do this for.
    34:10
    The Baseball Industry Awards, the thing about them, I was thinking of the Major League Baseball All-Star Game. People don't remember. There was a long period where it was the people were voted in by the sports writers. Yes, they were. And actually it happened because originally it was the fans, And then there was a year where they did some kind of nefarious things in Cincinnati, and they had, like, all of the starters of the National League team except one were all Cincinnati Reds players. They all called in, and they all mailed in. Yeah, like a newspaper just sent ballots to everyone, and they just stuffed the ballot box. So they took it away from the fans after that for a good 10 years, 15 years, whatever it was. And it's not Jeff's fault either. you know but if you're worried about a little piece of plastic and you're gonna hammer this home i wouldn't mind it though i'd like that and if we if we ever won one who would get it that's a good question do we do we get two do we get two or just one and who would get it oh who would get it we'd have to fight over it i wouldn't give a shit about it oh i'll take it I do this for fun. I do this because I get to hang out with my best friend and talk about a hobby I love. And I know he loves it the same way. And we don't give you bullshit stories. We don't give you made-up shit. We don't give you high inflammatory shit. I don't know about that. Everything we talked about today has been the truth. Okay. It's been stated facts. Stated facts. I don't know about this rumor that somebody else is making. Who cares? 50% of your rumors are wrong.
    35:53
    Bruce is on fire. Oh, I don't give a shit. Or, you know, you come on and, hey, I'm going to be flashy. I'm going to put all this stuff. Guess what? That's your thing. If you want simple, basic, fun, enjoyable stuff, go to Silver Ball Chronicles. I mean, go to the Slamtail Podcast. Wow. You cocksucker Did you hear David from Silver Ball Chronicles Basically say you were his first choice I know That was very nice He didn't tell me that First time I heard that I was like really Damn it I'm just not as charismatic as Bruce I think we're going to say 2021 The year Bruce doesn't give a shit He's going to bash everyone Wait until you hear the Pinball Network I was on a show, the Pinball Show The Pinball Show? Oh god By the time I get this out it probably will already be out It'll be on tomorrow But I was on there and you might have a new member of the TPN I'm going to be in that Discord finally Oh no, oh dear god So yes the Pinball Industry Awards Something that the Pinball Network started. Yep. And I like it because it's not. I liked it. It's just, yeah. I mean. Using is necessary. Is it necessary? None of these award shows are necessary. None of these are. They're just fun. They're supposed to be fun. Yeah, I know. Fun. Like the year they had at the Texas Pinball Festival with the actual ceremony. That was awesome. Yep. Now, if you were offered like a spot, like to give away an award, would you do it? What do you mean give away an award? Like when they do their, they're going to be doing, both shows are going to be doing. Oh, like if they ask me? Yes, the presenter. Sure. I don't think I would. I might if I was asked. Maybe if it was Stu.
    37:50
    Yes, I am going to give this to my greatest pinball player, my favorite pinball player. Stu, get off the mic. I got to get him out of this room. I know. He loves it in there. I just shut the door. There you go. But, you know, maybe I would. I might if it was you and me. If it was you and me, I would do it because it would be more fun.
    38:11
    You are my – Ron is my rock. He actually is the person. He's me now. He keeps me weighted down on the ground. This show would be probably off the air and censored. Oh, yeah. He's the only person to get the – it has the – what's it called? Explicit tag on it, but somehow still gets censored for being too explicit. Yeah, exactly. Oh, man. Okay. But we did get some good news from Pinside. Well, yeah. This threw me for a loop. I was taken aback by this. This is right after we found out we weren't really going to be in the Twippy. Yeah. There was a post on Pinside that was basically, other than a certain podcaster not to be named, what podcast do you recommend? And it's like, oh, God. This is a typical shit show, like, question in Pinside land. It's like, oh, man, it's going to degrade into just total shit. But to my surprise, it was basically people just answering the question. Like, well, I recommend this. Well, I recommend this. And reason why, too. Yeah, and I'm going through the first page, and the one podcast name that came up more than any other was us. It was the San Rafael podcast. Like, what the fuck? And wait a sec. But we bashed Pinside more than probably anyone else? I don't get it. Here's the funny thing, because they know what the shit show it is. That's the problem. They know. But here's the funny thing. Most of those top ten shows on the TWIP awards for best podcast were not even mentioned. So either A, they're assuming that everyone's listening to them, which I don't think they are. It's B, what the fuck? Or C, there's more people in pinball than are actually on pin side. That's also possible. Yeah, true, but most people do use pin side. But most of the people who were mentioned were not even, I think, four of the ten were on there. But, I mean, we've had, I was looking at. Because we are the senior statesmen. We've been almost doing this five years. I was looking at the page on Pennside where I say when a new podcast is available. There were some nice comments there, too. Yeah. I was being taken aback by a lot of the. Yeah.
    40:27
    I've actually had a lot of people message me, literally, and say, I don't know why you're not on the top ten. I said, I don't know why either. We didn't push it. We never do every year. One year we actually told people, do not vote for us. But I will say, thanks to everybody, and I will say, we ain't going nowhere, as far as I know. No, we're not. As long as Ron's willing to edit, I'm willing to talk. That's pretty much it. But I could not think of any person in this world I'd rather do this with is than with Tom. Oh, nice. And that's the truth. You know what I have, Bruce? I have a public service announcement. Oh, here we go. You ready for the public service announcement? Yes. I heard someone say this on a show, but the second time I've heard this said wrong, and I think it's time to have a public service announcement. For those out there in pinball land, from your friendly podcast, Slamtail Podcast, I want to advise you that it's pronounced Bally, not Bally. What? No one pronounces it Bally. No one in the industry pronounces it Bally. Which podcast or which place? I'm not going to say. No, you have to. It's pronounced Bally. Because, Bruce, do you know where that name comes from? Ballyhoo. Not Ballyhoo. And it sold like, what, 50,000? It's some ridiculous, like a tabletop pinball machine. So they took the who off, and it's Bally. No one, ask Dennis Nordman how he says it. I guarantee he's going to say Bally. Even when they split up and had like, remember the health clubs? They were called Bally Fitness. They weren't called Bally Fitness. Okay, Ron. Bruce wants me to go offline here and edit. Well, right after I just say, just from your friendly podcast, please, it's pronounced Bally. Thank you. This concludes our public service announcement.
    42:29
    Well, ten minutes before we get our guests on, so it's the perfect time to empty the ball bag. Oh, yeah. That way we're completely empty and ready to receive the awesomeness that is our guest. I want to do a special shout-out. Oh, special shout-out. Okay. Yes. Okay. Give me two seconds, but you can start the ball bag. I will finish it.
    42:47
    Okay. Loaded gun, huh? Okay. First one from Scott, our own Scott. Sent an email to remind us that Cliffy makes nine-ball extended spinner brackets. Yeah, but not the spinner. I need the spinner. Okay. But it is nice to have brackets.
    43:05
    Email from Siron. That's Soren. But I'm going to say it correctly now because he put right on here how to say it. Siron. This is in reference to the speed sports we talked about in the last show. Say, hi, guys. A buddy had a Flight 2000 missing speech and approached me for help earlier this year. I analyzed the board and concluded that the TSI was bad. Which is a special chip. Yep, and they're hard to get. So I figured out that the chip was used, and I don't know why I didn't think of this. It probably was used in certain types of calculators and chess computers from way back. You know, probably like a talking calculator. And pursued the idea of obtaining one of these to scalp it. The calculator was a no-go, as they are all very collectible in their own right. I would assume like a talking calculator would be. The chess computers too, but a better bet. Looking for these, I realized that the company also made other highly exotic devices, and I was able to source a bridge card game computer and rob the TSI from that. Felt kind of bad about it as the unit is so cool and crazily complex. Barcode on playing cards. Awesome stuff. And he sent us an image and a video.
    44:13
    And let's see, story number two. In my search, I found a guy who was a vintage chess computer geek and collector, but he's very protective of the culture he loved and would only help with spare parts if it was used to repair a chess computer, not a pinball machine. Zoinks. And he wants to remind us that the sales tax where Suron is is 25%. There you go. There's your free health care. You're paying for it in other ways. Thank you, Suron. We're going to say your name right from now on, damn it. Thank you, sir. Email from Greg.
    44:44
    Ah, I sent an email about an audio software that might help me edit you. Oh, that's going to be impossible. This is PS. After listening to your reviewers bagging tournaments and tech, I want to put in a vote for both of these. I enjoy your tournament discussions and your tech commentaries, the highlight of the show for me. I learn a lot about how to look after my own collection. Cheers, Greg from Australia. That's Oz, right? Yes, it is. Okay, I got that right. Thank you, Greg. And one more, and this one confuses me. Because I got a couple of emails, a couple of notifications on this. This is from Parnell. It says, hey, guys, I saw Mantis, this is Mantis Amusements, posted, that's Terry Stare, posted a new Stern Electronics part. And it was a receiver, a lockdown bar receiver. I have it, yes. I have this. It says, man, Mantis is really bending some metal. I was talking in the Pinside Thread and trying to get Mantis to make some kicker arms because they are on a table as well. The thing is, keep up on all the great episodes, Parnell. Thank you, Parnell. Thank you for now. I actually have the lockdown bar, and it's great. It's beautiful. There's a receiver. Yeah, but we mentioned that months ago. Yeah, a long time ago. Months ago. So he must have not had it on the site, or he didn't start promoting it until later. No, I got it. When I ordered it, it was on the site. That's what I bought. Yeah. Everyone was saying, you know, Ron, he just put these out there. And it's like, I could have swore we already talked about this like a month ago. And Bruce bought one. I've had it in my garage for three months. It was a big game, or was it a cheetah? One of those, I thought. I won it for cheetah. Yeah. The cheetah one is really rusty. That's so weird. He must have just started advertising it again. Unless he ran out of them, and when he does, he takes it off the site. Maybe. Okay. Probably because we told people that it was there. That's what it is. And it ran out instantly.
    46:31
    We have spoke to the guys of people, and we have told them where to buy this stuff. All right. You had a shout-out? Yes, I did. Go for it. Unfortunately, we cause injury now. We cause injuries, okay? Yes, we do. Warren Leggis from Australia. I'm going to read the message completely to you. Hi, Bruce. I'm a longtime fan of the show. I'm an Aussie and love ELO. So write that in there. Two of my favorite things, an Aussie and ELO. I love the way you guys go about your podcasting. While walking on November 29th, I was listening to your podcast number 155, released that day. I was so into your podcast, I fell and broke my leg. I am slowly recovering. I've only made it 15 minutes into the podcast, but while listening, in recovery to catch up. I'm sorry, Harry Byte Bar. Bloody COVID sucks. Merry Christmas. And then he sends plenty of pictures of his recovery, of his leg up in traction and trying to relearn how to walk. Damn. So, Warren, this shout out is for you, mate. That's right. It's so good it hurts. That's right. I haven't done my terrible Australian accent in a while. No, you have not. Do Aussies want to hear more of my terrible Australian accent? Well, Ryan and Marty still talk to us, so I'm assuming yes. That's right. Yeah, but they might not. It's like, yeah, we listen to you because you don't do that terrible Australian accent anymore. And speaking of those two, it was nice to hear another new head-to-head. Oh, that was so good. It was so good. Oh, it just made me miss it even more. It did. It was like, oh, man, come on. It's like a little child of ours we helped create. It's like, what's the problem? I know. They were the best. They are the best. They are the kings. I'll say that right out. That one year they had where they interviewed everyone under the sun, and every episode was hilarity. Almost caused me to get into car accidents. It was laughing so hard. Oh, God. Yeah, I miss it. We miss you guys. It was good to hear you again together. We hear you separate. It was like they never left. That was the thing. Exactly. The chemistry is there. And I'm hoping for a reach around award. A reach around? Yeah. You didn't hear about that?
    48:52
    Well, we have one minute until our guests arrive. I know. The final round, the reach around awards? The reach around awards. Yes, you can pay to win them. Yes. But I'm expecting since we are so well known, we should get a free reach around. A free reach around?
    49:06
    I love those two. Marty and Jeff. Jeff, we love you, man. Yes, we're going to be talking about your game. Yeah. So, Bruce. Yes, sir. Our guests are on. All right. I love it. So, who do we have, Bruce? You do the intros. Oh, we have the dream team who is now doing the rules for Led Zeppelin. We have the lead programmer, Tim Sexton. Hello. It's me, Tim Sexton. We also have Raymond Davidson.
    49:41
    Yo, hey, how's it going? All righty, how are you doing, Raymond? Good. And we have Dean Grover. Hi, guys. Good morning, guys.
    49:52
    Thanks for joining us. Thank you for joining us, some people earlier than others. Yes. We're in three different time zones on this call. Three different time zones. So we're here to talk about the new exciting release from Stern. Led Zeppelin. So you guys have played it already? You know all the rules and everything? No, we don't. That's why we have the three of you on here to tell us all about it. I did read the rule sheet, though, that you just put out. A little less pages than the Avengers rule sheet. Yeah. I think there were 11 pages, something like that. Yeah, that's still a lot, I guess. I mean, it doesn't fit on the rule card. Does anything fit on the rule card? since probably not since like 1981. Yeah. Harlem Globetrotters. That's it. Plunge ball. Hit drop targets. Hit spinner. Go.
    50:45
    So this title's been rumored for quite some time. And from a previous interview, I think it was on Marco's specialty stream, Steve Ritchie said how this is a long time coming for him, like this is a theme he always wanted to do since, I guess he said, 1968, when he first saw the album in a store. You want to talk about how why that took so long?
    51:09
    So I don't know when exactly he asked for it or anything else or if it took so long. So why don't you tell us, did it take a while to get this? Yeah, I think this was, well, this was a license that the world has been seeking for a really long time to do a licensed product. I think, you know, your history of licensing goes from, like, you know, it's not that long ago, but you still have, like, your – was Captain Fantastic the first licensed game up to now? You sort of have that huge explosion of licensed products. And I think that entire time people wanted to do Led Zeppelin and it just wasn't possible. And somehow our licensing director, Jody Dankberg, was able to secure it finally. He said he'd been working on it for a long time, and we got the deal done, and we were able to make the game, and we were all excited. Like, yeah, the only Led Zeppelin pinball machine ever. This is awesome. And this comes through just on, like, the heels of another breakthrough license we got with the Beatles a couple years ago. So, yeah, it's been good for CERN. I think we have a reputation as a company, and we have a good licensing director that makes that happen. That's all beyond what we do, pretty much. We just work on the games. So since we have all three of you on here, what is each of yours involvement in the game? What do each of you do on this game? I guess I'll start. So my title on the game was Lead Software Developer. Pretty much means I was the first one on the project, and from there I had to start it off, work with Steve, and kind of come up with the game plan. and when I started working on this game, Dean was working on other projects and Raymond wasn't even employed at the company. Oh, wow. So when they joined the project, they both joined as support software engineers and then kind of wherever I have the project at that point, we decide, hey, here's what I think the rest of the game needs, so I would hop on this and then I try to also, after people have some time on the project, Like, say, like, and if you guys have any suggestions of what you want to do or anything that you think needs some stuff, you know, put it on the list and then we'll take care of it. So Dean joined, and I don't know what Dean was working on before. I was working on Turtles. Okay. So, yeah, you joined about August or so? Yeah, I was trying to think about that. I think that's about right. Yeah, so you were working on Turtles up until maybe July or so in that game, like a month after that game was released. and then jumped on board, led it up, and started working on it with me. And then it kind of happens where right now, like, I'll be working on it for a little while, and then I'll get all the art team people working on it as well. So that was, like, Chuck Ernst and I, Kadeef Athana, and then that whole team came on. And then Raymond was working on Avengers, so that was an even closer release. And then he came on in maybe, like, September, I think, if that's right. Yeah, that sounds right. So should I jump into what I was doing, basically, and what I'm doing? Sure. So like Tim said, he kind of provided the framework and foundation, got everything up and running, and then basically would delegate tasks like work on song modes. Use this one as an example. He had one of the songs kind of done, and so I just used that as an example and then came up with my own rules for the nine other song modes. When the songs should change, which shots should be lit, at what times. My favorite is the center ramp guitar solo on Whole Lotta Love and Communication Breakdown. That was like an epiphany moment when I came up with that idea. I was like, oh man, that's perfect. Right when the guitar solo starts, just start slamming that center ramp. So, yeah, basically, you know, he'd want me to do the song modes or, oh, can you do this multiball, come up with a system for the tour multiballs. Like, this is how they're qualified, this is how they start, but I don't really know what they should all do or how they should all interact. So I came up with the four different tour multiballs that all kind of tie vaguely to the tasks that they are required to do, like ramps, targets, that sort of thing. Zeppelin multiball, just any sort of task that hadn't been fleshed out yet. And so I was doing quite a bit on just like the actual rules integrations. Yeah, so I kind of basically just come up with the part of the game, like there's the multiball gear. This is how you start modes. This is how modes function. This is how many there are. This is the content they're related to. And then the details of them, I'm like, oh, I'll just get to those later because I try to make sure the big picture is correct first before the details of actually what shots are lit are filled in. So then it's great when you have pinball people on your project because Dean and Raymond are both big-time pinball players who are like, oh, I've always wanted to do a mode like this or something. So then you're like, great, here's a chance to do a mode like this. Yeah, definitely.
    56:24
    And then there's other parts of the project. Like, we have, I guess it goes from, like, your switches and your lamps and your devices and stuff to rules to light shows to sounds to speech and shaker motor and all that sort of stuff. So there's a lot of pieces of every single thing you put in the game. I think we delegate it pretty well. I don't put someone to be like, okay, you're just light shows for the whole project. I think we each had our own share of rules and lights and speech and sound for the most part. I know Dean did a lot of, like, the record rules, which tied to the whole game. I'll let you talk about that, Dean. Okay, well, yeah, I did some of that, and, yeah, a lot of the display integration and that kind of stuff. Also, a lot of the tour qualification rules. Tim had laid a lot of stuff out pretty well as far as, like, just the framework to go from. And so, yeah, I just kind of plugged stuff in and said, okay, if I have to shoot orbits, what's a good level of doing that? and, you know, how many spinner spins should I need and things like that. I really liked the way he did the songs initially, and, you know, Raymond picked up and ran those out.
    57:38
    But it's kind of a different thing, and, of course, Tim can talk about that. But certainly, yeah, a few rules, lots of little light shows. I'll kind of go through and say, oh, you know, this doesn't look very exciting, so let's make some more flashy lights and things like that. And the thing is, you have a lot of experience with those music pins, too, because you did Beatles. Right, that's true. Most people, you know, they know Tim, they know Raymond, but your name comes up every once in a while, and you've done a lot of games there. Like, haven't you done most of the pin games? Yeah, I started my first project was actually doing the Spider-Man home game with George. And, yeah, from there we went to some offshoots. You know, I did Supreme next, which was kind of interesting because, you know, the license with that is like, you know, okay, we can use Supreme. What do they tie themselves with? Everything or nothing, depending on your point of view. Yeah, then Beatles. Then I came back and did the Star Wars home game as well. Obviously kind of, you know, very similar to Spider-Man, but not too many people saw Spider-Man. So, you know, a lot more exposure to Star Wars. And then I did a few, I did a little bit of work on Stranger Things. Then I did quite a bit of work on Turtles. But for me, that started probably right before COVID in February, I think, or before it was, you know, a big deal. So, yeah, I mean, a lot of different things. And, you know, I've touched a couple other games as well. I did just a little bit of stuff on Jurassic Park way back when, and even Iron Maiden. But that's common with a lot of the guys at Stern is that, you know, You have the well-known names or whatever, but, yeah, people like Wason and Mike Kisbet, they work on a lot of things as well. It's kind of a, you know, we fill in the blanks and just make last-minute, you know, we're last-minute support for some of the stuff too, which, you know, it's fine with me. It's pinball, so it's fun. And you're in Colorado, so did you actually get a game? Do you get games there? Do they send you any games to work on, or is it just all remote? Yeah, they actually send a cabinet out. So I have an Aerosmith cabinet, and that's been used for almost everything. And we just plug in with the Spike 2 system, you know, we just plug in a play field. So, you know, I've gotten, I'll get a white wood, and then sometimes I'll get an arid play field towards the end, depending on, you know, what it is. Or, like, you know, we'll start with what I think I had a Pro first for Led Zeppelin. And then, you know, once the premiums started rolling out, you know, there's only two or three of us to do the stuff first. So it's like, well, everybody needs to be able to, you know, there's a lot of things to do on, especially with premiums on the devices and stuff. So, you know, Tim kept busy on that. But, yeah, I was able to help there. So, yeah, I've got a Supreme cabinet that does my Spike 1 work. and an Aerosmith cabinet does my Spike 2 work. And I've done that. I've actually got a Spider-Man prototype that was just kind of thrown together as well that I started with. But it's really not that hard to send a play field compared to an entire game. I mean, at least, you know, it doesn't take a big, you know, semi-deliberate. Yeah, I picture now all these Whitewoods across the country under blankets if you use SSC2 software. Nothing to see here, people. This room is closed off to everyone else.
    61:16
    We actually have to email his playfields back. Oh. Sometimes. I did kind of destroy one, so that was one of the Spider-Mans. Did they make you pay for postage for that? Yeah.
    61:29
    No, they don't do that. Okay. Now, you guys are talking about a difficult thing we've now had to deal with for the past year is making manufacturing with COVID. Can you tell us a little bit how you guys have overcome this and actually have made some of the best games that have been coming out of Stern this past year How you guys have all worked together and made this happen Well, on the manufacturing side, when the state shut down the facility, that was bad. Obviously, no one could come in and make any games. But we did – our company quickly did everything they could on the manufacturing side to get back up to speed. And I know that's like – that department is kind of separate from product development. Product development, where we work, Raymond and Dean and myself, we all kind of just got our stuff, went home, and kept working remotely through this. So our workflow didn't change too much except we lost the in-person stuff and we replaced it with technology like Slack and Zoom and all those other communication tools that everyone's been using now. And everyone had to upgrade their own personal stuff. Manufacturing was tough because now you have to do your distancing on the line and you have to make sure everyone has masks and temperature checks. And they completely reconfigured the factory and made everything totally different. I think we have posted a few pictures of that on Facebook of how it looks in some videos. And you can see there's, like, shower curtains between every single station on the line. And everyone's wearing masks and safety glasses. And even the microwaves are spaced apart, the famous microwave. Oh, my God. That whole lunch area has got to be totally different now because all those tables, they were right next to each other. Yeah, they constructed these big barriers between them. So there's a big plastic sheet with a wood frame between every single thing. So it looks totally different. I think they even changed the way lunch shifts work so more people can eat at different times so it's not as crowded at the tables and everything. I think the biggest loss for the factory and the saddest part to me is the roped-off arcade that is basically closed for playing.
    63:46
    So even the arcade at Stern is closed. No, that's depressing. Yeah, I think the CDC or someone did provide guidelines on operating arcade games considering the pandemic, and you have to, like, wipe them down every single game or something. I don't know. It's what they recommend, and they have a big warning there to say, this is how you could run an arcade during the pandemic. And I know various businesses have still, you know, all around the country and the world have tried to consider how do we run an arcade during the pandemic, and I've seen a lot of ways to do it. And I've tried to help places out. I mean, this is kind of aside from what's happening at CERN, but it's all been affected, and some have been more affected than others, for sure.
    64:31
    It's exciting seeing Led Zeppelins arrive at the arcades that are still open. Yes, it is. And people get their hands on it. Yeah, that just started happening over this past week or so, where people have actually been like, oh, I played three games on it. It's pretty cool. You know, that sort of thing. So there are some places where it's still open, some places where, you know, there's capacity restrictions and there's health guidelines and people can still have a chance to play or even play outside too where it's still warm, which is funny to see people, like, on the porch playing pinball. Well, did you know Rock Fantasy, they got a pro, Led Zeppelin? I know. Also a premium and also an LE? No.
    65:11
    That's reserved for Iron Maiden only, I believe. Okay. So you get the license. Why don't you go through the development process? Like the songs, I'm assuming they just told you what songs or what songs you could use or what songs you couldn't use. Well, yeah, so we got the license. Well, it was kind of like a fingers crossed we think we're going to get the license. So Steve was working, like after Black Knight, Steve has to go on to his next game. And then they were like, we think we're going to get Led Zeppelin here. and then, I mean, I don't know what happens over there. They're just like, okay, we got Led Zeppelin, and as part of getting Led Zeppelin, we had pre-sent a collaborative song list that a lot of people had a hand in. I think Steve had a hand in it too, as well as some other people, just to see like, okay, these are the songs we want. There was no Stairway to Heaven. That was just off the table from the get-go, so I've seen a lot of people speculating that Stairway to Heaven may appear in the game. Sorry, guys. I just want to put the kibosh on that. Stairway's not coming. I've heard of like wizard mode or a topper mode that'll play it or other, I've heard all kinds of crazy stuff. Yeah, the rumors have been wild on that. I think if it was in the game, it would be announced as one of the songs. Yeah, exactly. We would not be shutting up if we had Stairway to Heaven. But no, it's not really available for reasons I don't even know, but no one's ever going to be satisfied by that answer. Like, why couldn't you get it? It's like, we just couldn't. It's just not in the game. But we have ten great songs. Like, we knew we weren't going to have Stairway, but we were like, okay, we still have these great songs. I mean, they're pretty much all their most played songs for the most part, and they cover a huge span of their albums. I think we have six of their studio albums covered. Yeah, I have no issues with that. They're all well-known songs. I mean, you'll hear them all on Classic Rock Radio. Yes. yeah definitely and they jam they jam pretty dang good when you're when you're flipping to it i gotta say they it was pretty fun yeah so right so pretty much when steve got the project and then it was like okay tim are you okay to work with steve again i'm like yeah sure like okay you're working on leds up with steve and he has to take some time to draw the playfield first it's hard to do software when it's just a blank piece of wood. But after he kind of has the layout set up, and then I was talking to him more every day, this is in 2019, before we went home, you know, we got pretty far on the first whitewood and the layout and everything. And then we had been talking every day in the factory before we had masks and Steve couldn't hear me anymore. So by the time we went home in March, I had like a full printout diagram of what the playfield looked like, plus an actual whitewood with, I think it was like partially wired. It had no lamps, but it had all the devices or something. And with the limited staff at the factory, when we built new whitewoods and we got new parts, and all of our vendors were affected too. So things were a little bit delayed, but I was kind of working away with what I had at first in like March, April, May, don't know how long it took exactly, but we had planned it out pretty well. And we had talked about just going through the music and everything. Like the novel thing of the game was the song modes were going to be dynamic based on the music that their song shots would change. So you have kind of like multiple modes in one song, which we thought was pretty cool. And we talked about the lighting and everything. So we knew we had that plan going forward already. We talked about having a pop-up device on the premium play field, and then we solidified that design later and added it to the Whitewood. So all that stuff was pretty much there in place way back. When did the expression lights come to being? Oh, that was from the very beginning. I actually had expression lights before I had other lights. that's true yeah i had just like strips of the lights before they were in the cabinet i just had them kind of like loose like cable mock-up and i could work on them and i would just tape them up to the sides of the cabinets so i could kind of mock them up to see where they were we only went through a couple iterations on that because at first we were going to do really bright lights but then they had no color and then we were checking out like how much current that draws what our power supply can handle, blah, blah, blah. And then when we figured out we could get all those lights with the RGBs, we went with that direction. And, yeah, it looks pretty cool in the game. So whose idea was it? Was it just a group effort? Because I know Steve used those on something similar. He had the lasers on the Star Trek LE. Yeah, it was Steve, I guess it was Steve.
    70:12
    I definitely pushed really hard to do RGB, and he didn't want to do it at first. He wanted to do like bright lights, but then that was like we got him so bright and then we did the current draw. And then he didn't realize how cheap the prices of the RGB LEDs had come down. And he didn't realize how bright they could be too. So he was just worried that it wouldn't be enough. And I thought they would be. So then when we finally got the products from like the prototypes, then we were like, oh, yeah, this is definitely the way to go. And I was like, yes, I wanted RGB.
    70:48
    So for those who don't know what we're talking about, which is possible, the expression lighting itself, they're like lights in the cabinet, like along the side wall. Right. So they're mounted inside the cabinet. And they're part of, like, the art blade. It has art around it to frame it. So then you see the lights poke through. And there's actually 48 times 3, because RGB, 48 lights on each side. in two rows of 24, and they shine down kind of across the play field and illuminate it, but we're also able to completely control it in the game code and be perfectly in sync with the game. So what we do in Led Zeppelin is we have every song has like a background light show like you would see at a concert, if you're watching a concert right now, and they have those crazy light shows, and it's perfectly synced to everything in the game. So you'll hear like the cashmere, like the da-da-da-da-da-da, and then there'll be like the big sweeps of lights coming down the sides in the different colors. So it just provides the overall enhanced concert gameplay experience that we wanted to go for. Because there's no Led Zeppelin concerts. There's been one in 2007 and hasn't been any since. Now, the good thing about those lights is it comes standard on the Premium and LE, but you can add them to the Pro also, the cabinets. That's the best thing I think about it. Yeah, so people getting their Pros will see that there's a plug covering the routing on the side of the cabinet. So eventually, we're going to release a kit that you can upgrade your Pro with those expression lights. That is actually the nicest option I've seen in a long time. If you can't afford the premium or you wanted the Pro because of the artwork or the shots, you can still make it premium-like. Plus, I would think from a code standpoint, you have the expression lighting code. It's the same across the LE Premium and Pro. You don't have to change anything. Yeah, pretty much. We just detect if the expression lights exist. Actually, Dean put that in. If the expression lights aren't plugged in, as in the node board's not detected, then it won't execute that stuff. But as soon as you get the node board, it'll recognize, oh, it's there. It'll play it the same. So there's nothing you have to do once you plug it in on the Pro. It'll just work. the art blades is it le only or le and premium there's art blades because i've seen some premiums that have they had or at least it said it was a premium but it had the art blades which was weird because normally i thought you guys only put them in the le's standard right so now there's just one art blade because it is with the expression lights have a blade aspect to it so it's both the le and the premium have those same arc blades, I guess, but now they have the lights mounted in them. So it's kind of different because it's two different pieces. It's the piece that actually physically goes inside the cabinet and holds it there structurally and holds all the cabling and everything, and then there's the rest of the arc blade piece. That was the only part that confused me. I noticed it was shown, like, in premiums, and I thought that was, that's different. Yeah, we typically do the LE-only arc blades and then the arc blades you could buy for the pro or the premium, but this one is just the one model because of the lights. So you can, like, if you had to get the lights out, you could. If you had to remove them? Just say a bulb went bad.
    74:16
    Well, they're mounted on strips, they're not bulbs. I'm just saying, say the whole thing went bad and you had to replace it. If you had to remove the whole thing, you could remove the whole thing. Yes. That's what I was worried because when I saw it, I was like, if that's like a typical art plate sticker over it and it's behind the sticker, how would you actually get the thing out if it had to be repaired or replaced?
    74:37
    Pull it out the back. That's what our engineers are for. That's why they get paid the big bucks to figure out questions like those. Yeah. Now, so there's one cabinet model, and there's just that. The Pro has that filler on it, the plug, and then it's the same cabinet. Once you take that out, super easy, and then you put your ArtBlades or your expression lights in. One of the same, and then you've got it there. And they look really nice. Oh, they're beautiful. I mean, well, I guess you don't have to answer this, but are there any plans to do this in future titles, or is this just a one-and-done type thing? Or maybe. Or are you going to confirm or deny?
    75:15
    That's not a question I know the answer to even, so. Well, I'm going to say it. I like to see it in other games because it could make – it's not going to fall off. That's what I like about them the most. It's not going to fall off when you raise your play field. It's made for the optimal view and angle and everything else. That's what I like about them. I'm also thinking from a manufacturing point of view, it would be easier just to make the same cabinets with the same routing and not have like, well, these are the Zeppelin cabinets and these are the Stranger Things cabinets and they're different, you know, that kind of thing. I think there's a lot of potential, I hope. So you were talking about the rule set and the different stages of the songs. And I saw an interview recently where you basically said You were looking at different gaming trends and trying to associate some of those trends into the pinball machine. Maybe you can go into that. I also heard things about crazy multipliers like 1.1x or 2.1x or other things. That's not crazy. Crazy is the 18.4 or 25.7x. Oh, my God. You've just melted wrong. Yeah, I'm already lost. Well, the song thing was just, I was looking at how to do something different for a pinball machine. I guess when I say I look at gaming trends, like, Keith and I do this. We, like, play other video games, like single-player, multiplayer video games, and we're like, I like how they did this in this game. I wonder if you could adapt that to pinball or something. And I was, like, thinking about how, this was a long time ago, I was just thinking about how, when you play, like, a MOBA game, so like your League of Legends or Dota or something, your upgrades are like plus 12% hit damage or something like that. You know, you get just like these little bits of things, and then somehow the top players know exactly what the math is going to be, and they know exactly what to do or whatever. But just instead of everything being this whole number like double damage, triple damage, quadruple damage, it's like you just get a little piece of it. And I was like, I'd like to do that for scoring in some way in a game, because for pinball, you're doing something twice is like hitting a shot twice, which is tough. So I was like, if you can only do like a 1.3 multiplier, it's still a little bit more, but it's not like, you know, once you get up to four times hitting something, that's like hitting a shot four times in a row, which is really hard to do. I was just thinking about the equivalent between the shot making and the multiplier value. I think there's also some of that that's bled over into the song awards themselves, because they kind of get built up from various things that on their own are very small, but accumulate. So like your gold records, the number of shots you made in the game, that sort of thing. They just every little bit adds up. And so, like you said, the people who really want to know can dive in and do the math. But for the average player, it's like, oh, this is just going up, you know, it's getting higher and higher. Same with the multipliers. It's like, oh, you can figure out how to get the .7x, but you don't really need to know. You just need to know when it says 1.7x, you're getting more points than if it said 1.2x. Yeah. So I don't know. It's all just kind of like basic upgrade systems. But really what matters when you're communicating the rules to someone is how this translates to gameplay. And I think the best way to explain it to someone is, hey, focus on the song mode shots. and then use your multi-balls to kind of continue you going in the game, but you really want to focus on the song mode shots. And then when you see your multipliers are all ready, decide if you want to start it or you want to try to build it up more.
    78:48
    So, yeah, you don't have to do all the crazy math in your head. It's just kind of like you'll see stuff just getting better and better as you get more and more into the game. So if you get in the flow of the game, you'll just be having a good ball with good multipliers and good song scoring.
    79:05
    So, yeah, all you got to do, so here's the thing. As people get these games, I don't want to just have people think like, oh, my God, this is some crazy complex thing. It's like, no, just play it. Just shoot the shots, and then you'll just get it. Agree. Yeah. It's always harder to explain it in English because no one can see the play field in front of them while I'm saying these words and understand what I'm saying. Yeah, it is. For someone like me who probably after page one of the 11-page rule set is already lost, it's like, okay, what am I supposed to do on this game? Please help me. Now, the game is being shipped right now at what, .91 or 9? What did I hear? I heard... Yeah, .91 is the current code version. Yep, which is great. That means you've got a lot into it so far, which is great for all the people who are going to be buying the game, and that there's room for improvement, of course, because we always try to go for the magical 1.0. It seems like. So great job, guys, all of you, for really getting this done. Yeah, I mean, we're constantly iterating on it. I know I play mine, you know, pretty much every day, and then just as I'm playing it, write notes of like, oh, that was weird, or this could be better, or, oh, I should totally do this. And, you know, Dean, I'm sure you play yours because I get notes from you being like, hey, this is kind of weird. You know, Tim, probably you play it. So we're all just trying to make it better and better so that each code update is better than the one before it. Yeah, sometimes I'll be having a really good game, and then I, like, stop to write something down, and then I train my next ball at Instagram.
    80:40
    Yeah, that's annoying. Now I'm going to go for a personal note here, guys. I'm going for a personal note here. Some other podcasts in this world have flipper codes. Wink, wink, Tim. How long have we known you? Send us a video of the 768 by whatever magic resolution, and then, yeah, I don't know who knows. Hey, I like that. See, Ron? You just got to ask. Why do you do such things? Because I've known Timmy for so long. Timmy hates playing against me in tournaments. Right, Tim? That's true. The last Pinberg we were playing together in, I thought Timmy was going to come over and actually hit me over the head. How do you play this, Bruce? You just flip. He just looks and dances. Yeah. It's the perfect game for Bruce.
    81:29
    I see Bruce when things aren't going his way, and then I see Bruce when things are going his way, and it's a pretty – he wears your emotion very obviously. Yeah, he does. Your body language, what you play. And then I do too. Oh, we all do. We all do. I think the only one we don't see it on is Keith. Yeah. I really do admit that. He's just very, okay, go up there and just play. And then you have, and then you have. He mutters to himself, but he's super quiet. I've seen Keith pissed off, so. Oh, yeah, we all have, but he doesn't try to show it. Oh, when you kick high deal, he showed it, yes. But I would kick high deal also, so. Gosh, yelling and screaming at the machine.
    82:15
    So, that spinner toy. Yeah. That spinner sound is awesome. I love that spinner sound. It is awesome.
    82:26
    So how did that come about? That has a name. Was it the magic? Yeah, the electric magic. The electric magic.
    82:34
    Yeah, so that was what I was saying. Like, Steve, when he was doing the premium, he's like, I want something to come out of the game, but not just be, like, it comes up as a bash toy. I want it to have, like, different states. You know, so he wanted something to come up and not be the same every single time. And what we wound up being able to do was, it's like, okay, it's a device that comes up, and it is one shot, right? It has, like, just a spinner through it, but then it also has that magnet, then the backstop there to catch it. So it could go down, it could actually lock the ball below the play field, come back up. You could bash the ball off the magnet, so then when you have the ball held on the magnet, then it becomes a bash toy. So it was like, what was the way we could get a bunch of states into one up-down device? And that was what it wound up being. The electric magic device. So it's something he's like, I've wanted to do something like this in a pinball machine for a long time. He showed me some crazy thing he had prototyped at one time, and like for some game in the 2000s, I don't even remember which one, and never made it on the game. But he's like, I've had like this idea to do like this raising device thing with some, You could shoot through it or shoot and hit it, something like that. So, yeah, that was all Steve. And then he took it over to Elliot Eisman, our mechanical engineer, one of our mechanical engineers, who kind of made it a reality. So Elliot and I worked on just a couple, like, how are the switches going to sense? How are you going to prevent it from getting jammed? Switches like the opto-spinner? Oh, yeah, there's a bunch of switches on it. There's the opto-spinner, there's the entrance switch, the magnet switch, and then there's the up-down position switches, which are based on the device position and the motor's not actually attached. So I showed it on the Marco stream how you can't actually get a ball jammed in it. So if the device comes down and it crunch, lands on a ball, you would think, oh, no, the motor's going to, like, get jammed, but it's actually not physically attached. It just relies on gravity to, like, keep the device down. So it just continues moving and it comes back up and it frees the ball. So that's Elliot there to, like, make sure, like, okay, Yeah, this is the device that's not going to get broken by something that happens. And then you don't need the Doctor Who warning of fingers getting sliced off.
    84:50
    Yeah, exactly. I actually put my fingers in there all the time. I don't recommend it, but, like, it's not going to – it's just the weight of the device is going to fall on your finger. It's not anything else. There's no motor that's going to pull that down.
    85:02
    And, yeah, the OptoSpinner is awesome. Everyone loves the OptoSpinners. Love it. Dina worked with two of them on the Beatles, And I think that one on the left side, like, you can hit it as a backhand, and it just keeps spinning. It's really fun. Oh, yes.
    85:19
    Let's talk about the art. Very popular subject. I actually like the pro art. It's definitely grown on me. It came out, and all I heard was the Bugs Bunny birthday ball, like, God bless. Which, actually, I don't mind the art on Bugs Bunny birthday ball. It's more the gameplay of that game that's the problem. Yeah. But, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think people expected it to be like Metallica or something. I don't know. They expect to have that kind of artwork as opposed to just, it's the album. It's the albums. I mean, it's iconic imagery. I mean, it makes sense. Yeah, I think it's just some of the pinball people talking about that, because everyone I've seen on the Led Zeppelin stuff thinks it looks great. And then in addition, everyone I've seen who sees it in real life, thinks it looks nice. And as they started going on location, if you look at the pictures people take, like, when it's in the arcade, and it's next to the games, they look great or they stand out. It blends in nicely, but it doesn't, you know, it's not offensive. It blends in and stands out at the same time somehow. Yes.
    86:25
    So who's doing the animations? Oh, that's the giant. The giant art team? Yeah, so, well, there's a lot of pieces of it. So we have, I'll start with the video. So every song has that background video using the real footage. And there are two guys who did all those. That was Eric Drucker and Larry Wattman, who did all those videos. And then we have all the animation and stuff on top of it, like spinners and everything. So let me try to go through the list here of everyone. I'm going to name everyone, actually. I'm not going to not do it because our team is huge now. All right, alphabetical order. I've got Alex Borey, Chuck Ernst, David Liskevik, Mark Renises, Mark Galvez, Mimi Ernst, Olivia Jensen, Danai Kenevithana, and Tom Kizavat. All worked on the art stuff. So we have a really big team now that's been growing to support basically all the LCD games we have. It's a lot more work than the dots. Oh, yeah. I think we went from, what, like eight colors and, I don't know, some finite number of pixels. to like full 3D and all this crazy stuff. It's a huge leap in technology. So yeah, that team has really grown to support the game. I always feel bad when they list art by or whatever, and they list like one name, but it's like, you know, there's so many people working on it. On the display, yeah.
    87:53
    And then there's a huge, I mean, so you had Stefan who did the art, Stefan Jensen did the art for the whole game, but that team also is Greg Ferrer, Stephen Martin and Justin Freight are working on that static art, I guess, the non-display art. So that entire art team is huge. I was surprised, actually, a little bit about the LE choice with not being an album, but being the symbol for all their record company. That was the only thing I was a little surprised about. It would have been nice to have another album. I think it's just so colorful and iconic that they wanted the limited edition to really pop in a collection. I agree with that. I was just surprised. Most rock albums, rock things, they're going after albums. And look at the past history. ACDC, you had the two LEs. With Metallica, you had the Master of Puppets. You know, so I was expecting the pattern to continue in some ways, you know, and it, you know, not a big deal. I like what they did with Beatles with the with the gold, you know, platinum and diamond. That's that was another way of looking at it also. So, Bruce, if you were you were in charge, you're going to do the L.E. What album are you using?
    89:15
    Oh, yeah. Yeah, I know. Don't say Coda or I'll hit you. No, no, Coda. God, no. I don't know. See? I think you answered your own question. You could do four. Four with the guy holding the whatever. Yeah, like the Grim Reaper. Is that what he's supposed to be? I think he is a little bit. Does anyone know what that's supposed to be on four? No. It's like a guy carrying hay? What is he carrying? He's carrying some sticks. Yeah, he's carrying sticks. I never understood that one. And you sure as hell can't use Houses of the Holy? No. No way. We did put the hermit from the gatefold on four all over the play field. It's on the every single shot arrow is a hermit shot. Nice. With the lanterns, though.
    90:02
    But, you know, it's just, you know, I was surprised. But it does come out very nicely. And it did need an explanation in the beginning because people were like, why is that on there, you know? And once I heard the explanation, I was like, okay, very easy, very simple. And your point behind it, you know, saying what album would you use?
    90:20
    Oh, I didn't say that, but... Well, I did. Tim has a habit of people saying things that he said that he didn't say. You don't say. Yeah, I don't know what happened, because you're trying to listen to what I said on the Wizard Mode, and compared to what people have been hyping it up about, and I said nothing about it. I said, I'm not going to say what it is, you have to earn it. And that's literally all you said was that one sentence. Yeah, people are like, so you said it was going to be something amazing and spectacular. I'm like, I did?
    90:53
    That doesn't sound like a word I'd use. And then we listened back, and like, yeah, that wasn't said. No.
    91:03
    Well, let's talk about, we had the reveal, which was on Facebook this time. Yeah. Was the thought that it would have a less chance of getting a ding or getting pulled or having an issue than Twitch or YouTube?
    91:19
    That's one of those there are reasons answers I could give. Okay. Because for those who don't know this, it was revealed on Facebook.
    91:28
    Was it Stern's Facebook? Yeah, Stern Pinball's Facebook. And I guess after the first 30 minutes? Yeah, the chat told us to turn up the game volume Yeah, well, the weird thing is I didn't get booted And the two people I was watching it with That we were messaging They didn't get booted either So we were I think as long as you didn't refresh or close it Well, we were confused Because you guys started talking about Because during the stream they started talking about like Oh, you'll be able to watch this later If you get, you know, if you're getting booted And I'm like, getting booted? Like, what are they talking about? And I think I watched the whole stream It was really weird because I had no idea if people, because we couldn't see the chat. We couldn't see anything. And then people started telling us that it was gone, and then some people were saying, no, it's still up. After that, it was all very confusing at the time. But then we just kept going, and then the whole thing is now available on SternPinball.com if you sign up for the free insider account. Yep, which is great. It's free, folks. Yeah, exactly. And, man, I got to say, that video looks pretty nice. It's that view that Jack had set up, and you get to see the expression lighting, and you get to see me hitting a few super jackpots which is pretty cool too Do you ever have concern that you showing a game and maybe you don want people to see the wizard mode yet and then you have someone like Raymond playing it Is it a concern that this might be a problem? Like, do you tell him at some point, like, yeah, tone it down, stop,
    92:55
    or step away from the machine because you don't want people to look at it? Well, yeah, when I try not to play, like, well, I'm always talking, so I can't even play that well anyhow. But, yeah, you don't want to give away everything, I guess, to the first stream. No, no. Also, usually we're kind of, like, crunching at the last minute to, like, oh, I want to show this thing in there, too. So you want to make sure everything looks as best as it can. So, I don't know, it just gets a little scary sometimes when you've got, like, untested code in there. Like, you're going to do something on the stream that you never did at home that's always going to happen because it's, like, a day away from the game. Yeah, do you ever worry about that? Or some weird bug comes up? It happens. It happened to Keith. Yeah. Well, the bug was not plugging in the death star or something like that.
    93:43
    Yeah, sometimes it's just, like, we have, we're kind of, like, putting something together because we're not in production yet with, like, the parts we have at the factory, and maybe something changed before we went to, we released something for production, but it's not on that game yet. Like, there's all sorts of crazy things to get there. This is all, like, behind the scenes, sort of, when they show the Simpsons joke, and, like, the newscaster, like, clips his skin back behind his head. That's what we're talking about, right? It's how we dress it up. But, yeah, it's a bit nerve-wracking, but usually we're at that point where we're so excited to just, like, stop talking about the game and just show it being played because everyone has their opinions and they start talking about this stuff, and it's like, yeah, it's always a pinball machine, so, like, is it fun? That's the next question. And we're like, hey, look, look, it's fun.
    94:33
    Play it. You'll see it's fun. Well, Steve Ritchie said, you know, it's going to shoot good. Yes. Regardless of anything else. And the reveal was pretty complete. Like, it had all the videos. Yep. You had the pro, and then you had the LE Premium, and then you also had the accessory video. Yeah, we had all that stuff. And I got to point out that even before we did the stream, Led Zeppelin themselves put the announcement trailer and teaser up on their social media, which is great because that exposes, like, a whole group of people who may have just been fans of the band to, hey, there's pinball machines and stuff too because... Another collectible item they can buy. If I remember, it got muted on their own Facebook.
    95:11
    No, they fixed that in like 10 minutes. It still was funny. It has like 400,000 views too. You know, those aren't all just people on the pinball forums and Facebook accounts and stuff. This is like people are like, wow, there's new... People haven't seen a pinball machine in a long time, which there still are a lot of those people. The class question, they still make those?
    95:36
    So, yeah. Did you get to work with any of the members of the band at all? Or was it all just done? Like, am I going to have Robert Plant doing voice call-outs, like, popping up at some point in the game, or... probably not. Well, I think you had to get Robert Plant's blessing, probably, but... Yeah, they all have, you know, influence on the game, and they've taken approval and stuff, but, um, no, they're not doing any voice acting on the game. Brendan Small does the voices on the game, and he provides that character that they have to approve and everything. I mean, they have to approve everything. That's basically what the licenses are.
    96:13
    And I was thinking, before I saw the game, I was thinking, well, they probably won't have the band's voices in the game, so if they're going to have a narrator, they'll probably do a British guy. Yeah, you have to. Yeah, because I was thinking of Rolling Stones, and it's like, you almost have to do a British guy. And sure enough, when I saw the stream, like, hey, British guy. Actually, with the Beatles, they were able to use an American guy because of Cousin Bruce. Cousin Bruce, yeah. With the Beatlemania theme was all about them coming to America. Oh, yeah. So are they getting theirs? Are they just getting a game?
    96:46
    I don't know. I don't know what the deal is. Oh, man. I don't care about that. Well, I guess it's cool if that stuff happens, but, like, there's not a question I want to, like, spend time on. I just want to make the game fun. And they probably don't care because they probably would never open it. They'd probably end up selling it years later. They never update their code. Yeah.
    97:07
    No, sometimes people who get their games, like, there was just an Iron Maiden video where, I can't remember the band member's name. He was just, like, playing his Iron Maiden game. Bruce Dickinson had it. Yeah. Yes. Bruce Dickinson. I saw that. I can send you that. Dickerson. So sometimes you're like, oh, they're never going to play it. And he's like, oh, this game's awesome. I'll put it on my YouTube channel. I think there's two videos out there of Carl Urban actually playing Star Trek LE. Oh, that's awesome. And I think, wasn't Paul Stanley playing his Kiss? Yes, and it was in his background of one of the other videos also, yes.
    97:42
    So, it sounds like this has been in pre-production and set up since 2019, so we're talking almost the full 18 months. Conception to production? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, even before I worked there, Tim would be like, yeah, I'm working on Steve's game. I'm like, oh. Yeah, because Raymond was kind of, he interviewed in, like, February. He had, like, a weird, because of COVID, like, a weird start system. So Raymond was, like, going to come on board, and then it kept getting pushed out. Yeah, it kept getting pushed back, thinking it would go away. And then once I realized it wasn't going away, I just was like, well, I got to just go now. Yeah, you got to drive across the country yourself. Yeah. So has Raymond been in the factory at all at this point? Yeah, well, to pick up stuff. Actually, Raymond moved, like, right by Stern. Yes. So you could just waltz in there, like, five-minute drive to go in. But we have to go in there to pick up, like, we're supposed to pick up our own equipment, like Whitewoods and, you know, the latest whatever they've come up with. Sometimes Steve will be like, can you guys come in and test out this outlaying post? I left a bunch on Tib's desk or something. You know, just stuff like that. So we go into the factory to do that. You kind of have to with the physical equipment and the prototypes and stuff. And then Dean will mail stuff to him if he needs it. Yeah, that's how it always worked because Dean's always been in Colorado. Yeah. How many, how many remote programmers do you have? Only three. We don't try to do it because it's just a pain. Yeah. We've done it for like senior people. Well, like Dean used to work at Williams, so he had pinball development experience. Did you guys know that? Yeah, Dean, you worked on Congo, right? Yep, Congo and Sleep Cracker. Ah. And you have like a proto-Congo or something like that. Yes. Like a sample combo. Yeah. Yeah, I have a proto-combo and actually a combo, yeah, Congo, and actually a road show as well because that was actually my first assignment was working on doing some bug fixes to the last release of Roadshow. So they let me buy that one when I was done with it, so that was cool. That's cool. Let's rip some road.
    100:03
    But we definitely at Spirin, like, since we have manufacturing and sales and development all in one building, which is sort of always how pinball has worked, I think they wanted me out here to move out here to Chicago and not just do it remotely in New York because you get to see how the games get put together. You get to see who works on the games. You get to learn everyone's names, what they do, that sort of thing. So, you know, assuming we go back into the factory at some point, we get the pandemic under control, then I'm sure Raven will be like, oh, I've never put this face to a name and this sort of thing. You get to know, like, these people, what they do, what their day-to-day is like, because it always, a lot of disciplines, very different. and, you know, just seeing, like, how the artists work. I used to just go into the art room all the time and be like, hey, real quick, can you guys, like, open this file or something? And now we're doing it on Slack or something like that. But sometimes with the electronics guys, they're, like, making a prototype and, like, physically mocking it up on the bench, and I don't get to see that anymore. I don't get to see the process and what they're going through and what they need and that sort of thing. Yeah, so the people, like the engineers, are still in the office, but, you know, they'll probably come in one at a time and try to do their things. And they're spaced out. Yeah, it just depends on what you can do from home and what you can't. Yeah. I was working at the office because I had moved recently, had an emergency move, and then I just didn't have internet for, like, a week. So I just kind of lugged my stuff back to the office, worked there for a week, and then came back. So that's unfortunate, but it looks like it's all been moving pretty smoothly. I think our organization has been doing really well with George. He's always showing off the number of people we have on our Zoom calls and stuff, like crushing it.
    101:52
    Oh, yeah, the Zoom calls. He does the screenshots where you see all the people. Yeah, and it's huge. Yeah, it is. The funny thing about Zoom, I guess I kind of saw that Zeppelin before it came out because I was on at least one Zoom call with Timmy. and he'd have, like, the blanket over it in the background. And it's just like, oh, I wonder what's under the blanket.
    102:14
    Yeah, that was my old setup in my old apartment. I had the game behind me, so anytime someone wanted to video call, throw a blanket over it so they couldn't see it. I saw, like, a middle finger, like, hey, you can't see what it is.
    102:28
    So now the pros are on the line. They're being manufactured. And then we're going to LEs next, and then premium, and then pro again. That's a usual thing. Yeah, we do the pros, LEs, and then we fill the rest of the orders.
    102:44
    Which has been a lot for Stern. That's the incredible part for you guys. Yeah, the business has been doing well despite everything. A lot of people are renting games now, which has kept a lot of the operators going with the rental business. Yeah, I know people in Seattle that bought new sterns just to rent out to people, yeah. Right, so normally you might put it on a location. Yeah, now you can rent it. You kind of get the guaranteed, like, this much a month instead of whatever's in the coin box, which that might become a permanent part of the pinball ecosystem even after this. And, yeah, so the rentals, and then people have been buying games for their home just because they're spending so much time at home, they're not going on vacation. Yeah. So it's a big plus.
    103:35
    Now, I don't know if you guys, I haven't said really much to anybody, but I'll let you guys in on a secret. We're starting to do a co-op out here. Oh, nice. So it will be in Rochester.
    103:48
    And it will be at least five, maybe six people doing a co-op. The Pilgrim Ball Sanctum? No, no, no. No, it's going to be something named differently and everything like that. But here's the funny thing. The location we're looking at is literally two minutes from the old bar. Oh, wow.
    104:05
    So it's going to be pretty much the same area, hopefully get the same amount of people, no alcohol, nothing like that. It's going to be like the same. So, Bruce, if it's a secret, am I supposed to edit that part out? No, no, no. You don't have to. It's in the planning stages right now. We're actually talking with a landlord. So hopefully, eventually, we'll be able to do this and put more games in. But right now we're talking, I think the location can fit 35 games. Yeah, we have a co-op out here, ORD Pinball. A couple of guys have their games. And it's actually pretty close to where we work in Elk Grove Village in the suburbs.
    104:42
    But, yeah, it's kind of like the Sanctum had that huge thing, and they upgraded their space, and that place has been awesome. The 24-hour battle is a lot of fun.
    104:52
    Are you going to do a Rochester 24-hour or a 48-hour thing? I'd love to do that. Yes, you know that. I'd love to do that. 96 hours. I want to do 25 hours. I want to be one better. One better, okay.
    105:06
    But we do miss you, Tim, out here with us. You were very dedicated to the pinball area. First, when you lived up here, because most people don't know, Tim lived in New York. I lived in Binghamton for six years. Oh, I forgot about that. Yes, so he was actually at the Syracuse function when we had Syracuse stuff. and then he moved out to Poughkeepsie for another company, we'll say, and he was there for a while, and then he chose, you know, to move out with you guys out to Chicago. It hasn't been the same since. No, that was the same job. I just had six months of training in Binghamton, and then it was a Poughkeepsie full-time thing. Oh, okay. What I think is funny, you used to stream all the time, Tim, like pinball. All this involvement, and when you started at Stern, it was like that all ended. Yes. And then Raymond did the opposite. You know exactly where I'm going. It's like, well, what happened with Raymond? He did, like, because normally they say once you start working in the pinball, you're not going to do it as much outside because you're doing it all the time. Raymond is not taking that path at all. Well, I mean, I respect what Raymond's doing. I mean, I worry about it. With the lack of tournaments, you know, it's filling that void. Yeah, I think that's the thing. Like, I don't envy Raymond's situation to move to a brand-new city in the middle of a pandemic and not really be able to meet anyone except for, like, at least we know his coworkers, like myself and Keith and Zach and other people. Like, he's known us from tournaments and stuff at Dean. But, yeah, when I moved out to Chicago, I was like, great, but I kind of want to have, like, a social base of friends and stuff who aren't pinball people. And now I can't even hang out with those people anymore. Yeah.
    106:54
    Or, yeah, across the room. Like, you know, you're eight feet, six feet away. Like, hey, how you doing? Yeah. No, it looks incredible, though. The game looks like you have a winner. It's going to sell like hotcakes. We all know that because you have such a fan base to go with Led Zeppelin. And with the combination of Tim and Steve making a good game again. Well, and Jeff DeOles is going to buy like 100 of them just himself. You got that summer now? I swear he keeps hinting that he's going to buy a Pro as well. That's because he loves the art so much.
    107:31
    I bust on Mr. T all the spot. Full disclosure here, I do actually own all the Led Zeppelin albums, as much as I make fun of them. Are you thinking of getting one, Ron, eventually maybe?
    107:45
    I guess you've got to play it first. That's Ron's rule. Well, yes, I have to play it first. And then it's got to evaluate through the tears of Ron. The tiers, yes, the different levels. And you're going to have to play the pro and the premium, too. I don't know. I see that premium with that device, and I just have a little interest in the pro, to be honest.
    108:04
    He likes the spinner. And the upper flipper shot, that's an actual ramp. I just, that kind of, the only thing is, I wish that spinner thing was a little further to the left, maybe, so you could hit it and then go up the ramp. Oh, but then it might drain down the middle. Center post. Okay. Come on. That should be a trick shot Yeah, threw the spinner up the left ramp I've done it a few times, but Yeah, we could cut something like that in That'd be kind of cool Yeah, like, um, mystery combo I don't know what you call it Electric magic combo Electric magic bank shot Or something, I don't know If that's when I saw that, that would be the sweetest thing ever You could crush the spinner and go Because I just think of other games with the spinner on the ramp Which I always think of Kingpin the Capcom game because it had the, what, Fishtails ramp thing, but with spinners in front of both of them. So awesome.
    109:00
    So, anything else you want to say about Led Zeppelin? Well, you have to play it. Yeah, we hope that this is going to be a game that people can get now and play, and then when we're back to our tournaments and stuff, people play it there, they get a chance to play it if they haven't had the opportunity to play it, and we hope it has a nice long life as a pinball machine, basically. It's going to be so weird going back to tournaments and having to play, like, Ninja Turtles, Avengers, Led Zeppelin in a tournament, and you're like, wait, what's the strat? Well, nobody's competent yet, sir. Oh.
    109:38
    It'll be fun. I hope we get to do, like, a huge, like, stern all-the-new-games tournament. Well, we still have that pro circuit do that they owe me some prize money for, so that better happen still. Oh, yeah. So we all know about Pinnberg, of course, you know, demising. What are your thoughts? We haven't heard anything from you guys really publicly, so what are your thoughts about that? Oh, it stinks. It's awful. Yeah, I was always, whenever I lost in Pinnberg, I was like, well, at least I have the next 20 years to figure out how to play in this tournament.
    110:12
    And I was wrong, I guess, which is upsetting. I'm happy. I had some cool accomplishments at Pidberg for the four or so I played. I made it to the B finals, and I made it to the stage for A finals by, like, a crazy tiebreaker one year, and then I lost my first round to Jason Zeller.
    110:31
    But, yeah, I just was like I really wanted to get better at that tournament. Took a bunch of notes last year. I was going to study a lot of the games a lot more, take it more seriously.
    110:40
    Yeah, my least favorite part of that was the tournament was the location of having to take multiple flights from Seattle. But then just like the last year, they came up with a direct flight from Seattle. And I was like, sweet, this is going to be awesome. And now I'm in Chicago, and I'm like, oh, I could drive there if I wanted to. And then it's gone. Yeah. My other least favorite part of Pinberg was losing to Zach Sharp and Keith Owen over and over again.
    111:09
    Dean, anything from you? Pinberg? Yeah. Yeah, well, that was always like an endurance thing for me and just so much fun to meet everybody. I mean, I went to, I think 2011, I think, was my first one. And, yeah, there were like, what, 100 people or 150, I think. Me and Rob. And, yeah, that was so much fun. And just the mass, you know, seeing that convention center full of games is just like incredible. I'm definitely going to miss that. And, you know, hopefully, you know, something starts up that's close or at least maybe builds to that. That would be good. As me and Ron have said in the past, we think it's going to be in-disc. If they do something, which would be good for you. You're pretty close to, you're much closer to there than you are to Pittsburgh. Right. Yeah, well, there are direct flights, you know, from Denver to Pittsburgh. So, yeah, it's not a big deal. But, yeah, I went to in-disc a few years, but I haven't gone since they moved to, was it Banning or somewhere? It's incredible. It's really good. I know. I've got all the in-disc memories popping up on my Facebook like after getting... After having like 300 billion ball won on Batman 66 at the Project Pinball charity booth popped up.
    112:27
    Raymond, publicly I want to thank you again for the slam tilt. Reach out in Avengers for the high score thing. That was really cool. Publicly, I want to say thank you. The initials? Yes. I always love to do shout-outs as long as, you know, everyone who actually worked on the game gets in there first. That's the first priority. Oh, yes. We were very grateful. Thank you.
    112:48
    Well, the last note I have here is, and I don't know if Timmy can say anything about this, any updates on the New York City Pinball Championships that you can divulge or is just kind of, I'm assuming it probably isn't happening this year, unless it would be later, in which case it would be really cold, and I don't know if people want to go to New York City in the winter. Yeah, no, it's hard to – it's really hard to plan anything right now. Like you hope that this vaccine rollout happens really quick and the cases go way down and we're close to normal, but you just don't know the timeframe yet. So normally we would be in May, and May doesn't really look like something we can plan for yet. So we're on hold right now. We're still looking to do it again, and we think we have some opportunities to do it again. Losing – actually losing Papa was a big problem for us because we were getting your games.
    113:39
    Well, Tim, I'm going to offer up also, since now we don't have the bar, I'm going to offer up my services and the game if you need to for New York City pinball. I'm going to go off publicly saying right now. So any one of my games you need, like especially the older Ferns, I'll be happy to bring it down and even help repair. A good 20 of them will be fine. Yeah, you have a truck driver's license, Chris? Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Just one game? Easy. I have driven to New York City. I can bring two or three easy. But I would be offering because you guys have always done a great job down there, and I know with the loss of Papa, it's going to be even harder. Yeah, that's one of our many hurdles. Venue is going to be a big hurdle, we'll see. And then actually getting, like, we had a lot of international people would come to that event, too, and, you know, we want them to be able to participate as well. And that's been crazy this whole year. It really hurt. too, because it was so good last year. Well, I was going to say last year. Jesus, two years ago. Two years ago. Damn. Oh, yeah. It was going way up. Just because you got the games from Papa, and they brought them. So it's one less thing you had to worry about. So it was more like the stage with the whole band thing, which that was insane.
    114:55
    Multiple streams going on. I liked how you had, there was like the vulgar stream, the regular one, and then there was one if you wanted alternate commentary. That was that vulgar. You could pick that one. There's a radio stream. Yeah, a radio stream. So you could sync that up if you didn't want to hear tons of F-bombs.
    115:12
    And then if you announced you got to wear the blazer. You had to wear the blazer. I love that. That was my favorite part. I want to wear the blazer again. That was my highlight of the show.
    115:24
    Because I sure as hell didn't play good. So as long as you think it's still going to happen. Yeah, it's still going to happen. I mean, we actually took some steps before the 2021 that didn't happen to, you know, move to, like, limited liability and, you know, make sure we were all set up and had the stake in it so we could keep it going for a bit longer and not just run it out of, like, my accounts and stuff like that. So it was a little more like. You knew it wasn't going to happen early enough, I think, that you didn't really get pounded with lost money, should I say. Right. We were in an unfortunate situation like Texas. Pinball Festival was where the week before they were going to go there, then the state shut things down. And also New York was heading in a bad direction, so they were like the earliest to kind of shut down in the U.S. Yep, yep. And then it was going to be 30 days, but it got so bad that we kind of, we got the heads up from the news that like, oh yeah, it's not going to happen in May. I hadn't even booked my flight yet. That was how soon it was basically. When the travel ban started from Europe, that's when we kind of... Yeah. Actually, how is it looking in Colorado right now with COVID?
    116:36
    Comparatively speaking, pretty well. But, I mean, we're not at the most severe level. I think like a lot of places, I think, what, December was pretty bad. I live out in the middle of nowhere, so it's not really a concern for me, and I really don't go out. I kind of have some health issues anyway. So the rest of the family goes out and does all the errands and stuff. But now the, what's it, we had, I think a couple of one-up arcades just reopened this week, I think, which would be good.
    117:10
    And what, Blizzard Mountain Pinball up in the mountains, they've just been authorized to reopen. And I think Lions, if I remember right, has been running kind of a club the whole time. and I was up there once, just three of us kind of went and, you know, three people I see a lot anyway, or I have. But, yeah, I miss coming to Chicago, actually. That's, you know, when I worked on certainly Beatles, you know, I spent a lot of time there because, like Tim said, you know, you get to see everything come together and you get to talk to everybody and all the brainstorming and stuff. You know, even though we're doing that on Zoom, it's still, for me, it was always a joy to kind of just walk through the factory at night and just kind of look around and see everything. So I certainly miss that. Like in my position, I'm one of the few that actually go into the office just because certain things need to get done. So I have coworkers I haven't seen in a year. Yeah. What do we think the first show is going to be that actually happens? Do we think it's going to be Expo? I think Expo is my best. if I had to wager money on it. I'm thinking Expo or maybe even Houston in November, because it just announced. Oh, yeah. I'm hoping we see a downturn in the summer, and then it just never goes back up. Yeah, that's what I'm hoping.
    118:31
    Yeah, I mean, the other thing is, how wild would it be if the first event was, like, if the world's in Florida or whatever?
    118:41
    We've had our highest numbers up here, though, unfortunately, in upstate New York. But like Expo, I mean, my father would have to be vaccinated and I would have to be vaccinated for me to even consider it. And the thing is, I mean, he'll probably get, because of his age, he'll get vaccinated for me. Yeah. So it's just going to be. Your dad just followed Albany Pinhead Dad. I just saw followed my Twitch channel. I thought that was amusing. So that was me. I'm creating a Twitch account for dad because, you know, I do things like that for dad. So he can actually watch Twitch streams. I created a YouTube thing for him, too, because he's been using mine.
    119:20
    So I'll be streaming, and you'll see, like, Albany Pinhead commenting on the stream because it's him. It's just bizarre. Yeah. It's one of those dad things, you know, because he doesn't really use computers, et cetera. I get to see everyone at my work, unfortunately, now. Everyone's in. Oh, yeah, you're essential. So if you're essential, that means you're going to get a vaccine soon? Actually, I get it because of my impassive cancer. I'm level three. My doctor's already talked to me about it. So, yeah, even though it's been 20-plus years, you know, my immune system is compromised, they say, which it really isn't. I've done knock on wood really good.
    120:04
    Let's get off the COVID stuff. We're dating ourselves. Stop dating ourselves. Well, no. Let's upland. Yes. Go out, play some Led Zeppelin wherever you can or when you can safely. And good luck on your next adventures, boys, because I know you're probably thinking about your next games. We're not asking what they are, but good luck on them. Thanks. Yes, they're just going to continue making new pinball machines. Oh, yeah, and they're going to be the fastest one to do it. They're going to be the ones that produce the most, and that's the nicest thing to see about Stern. Don't be a shill, Bruce. We'll be accused of being shill. I'm being a shill? No, you're being a shill. Wait a second. What percentage did they have? of the market. Yeah, exactly. A lot. More than anyone else. Done. Okay. Not being a show when it's the truth. I just got my book in the mail. Oh, you got the book? Yes. It looks great. Congrats. What is that? Four years? Wait. Four years. Four or five? No, four. I'll give them four. It was 2016. It was supposed to be the 30 years of Stern. All right. Well, thanks, everybody, for joining us. Thank you very much, guys. Yeah, thanks for having us. Thanks. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, everybody. This has been Episode 158 of the Slam Tilt Podcast. Thank you to all our supporters out there. Thank you to everybody. And, actually, I'm going to stop saying everybody because it takes too long. You know who you are. You've been mad. Thank you. Well, we'll see. If you want us to mention you and you're getting pissed that we didn't mention you, let us know. We'll mention you. Otherwise, thanks, everybody. Zach. Until next time, say goodbye, Bruce. Goodbye, Steve Ritchie.
    122:08
    Oh, my. Hold on, I'm tangled up in my heating pad and shit, and I was muted trying to get it off. Hold on. Man, I am... What the fuck? All right. Hold on.
    123:02
    How do we even get this out of here? It's stuck. Ron's adjusting himself. Oh. Yeah, I'm stuck in my heating pad, folks, for some reason.
    123:13
    All right. He's getting a little blanky. He's wrapped himself. All right, let me, hold on, let me get the.
    123:22
    I can't get it out. Let me get the strap all set. Strap on. Strap off. The strap on. All right.