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Episode 7 – Playing EM Pinball in Tournaments with John Lee

EM Pinball Journeys·podcast_episode·1h 7m·analyzed·Feb 23, 2025
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.027

TL;DR

Tournament director John Lee discusses pinball passion, Project Pinball charity work, and EM tournament formats.

Summary

John Lee, an American Pinball enthusiast, tournament director, and Project Pinball volunteer, discusses his journey into pinball through homebrewing culture, his involvement with the charity, and tournament organization in upstate New York. The episode covers Project Pinball's mission to place machines in children's hospitals, various tournament formats (strikes, matchplay, pin golf, amazing race), and the appeal of electromechanical pinball machines for both nostalgia and competitive play.

Key Claims

  • Project Pinball was founded when Dan Spolar discovered a broken Spider-Man machine in a children's hospital that had 20,000+ plays in two years

    high confidence · John Lee describing Project Pinball's origin story

  • Project Pinball has a platinum transparency rating and is a verified 501(c)(3) charity

    high confidence · Host and John Lee discussing charity transparency and verification

  • John Lee currently owns 25 pinball games across various eras, including EMs and modern titles

    high confidence · John Lee describing his collection progression

  • Rochester Pinball Collective initially held at 49 games, with Zach Fry owning most of the EM machines in their collection

    high confidence · John Lee discussing his visit to Rochester Pinball Collective and conversation with Zach Fry

  • Attack from Mars (Williams/Chicago Gaming remake) represents the pinnacle of pinball for John Lee's generation

    high confidence · John Lee's personal opinion about Attack from Mars as foundational game

  • John Lee started running a league at WOW Arcade in Wilton Mall before organizing tournaments

    high confidence · John Lee describing his tournament organization progression

Notable Quotes

  • “When you close your eyes, all the bells and the chimes and the buzzers and everything that were going off, it was cathartic. Taking you to a whole other world, away from everything else.”

    Host (David) @ Opening segment — Sets the emotional tone for why people are drawn to pinball, emphasizing therapeutic and escapist appeal

  • “To see a kid right who is just suffering in that way and they can just be a kid for a minute right—that's what Project Pinball does.”

    Host (David) @ Project Pinball discussion — Articulates the core mission and emotional impact of Project Pinball on hospitalized children

  • “The fact that I feel lucky that I know somebody like that, right? That's the cool thing about this hobby is it spans every kind of person.”

    John Lee @ Discussion of Chris and hobby diversity — Highlights the community-building aspect of the pinball hobby across different backgrounds and expertise levels

  • “For me, I'm old enough where pinball machines were only EMs when I was little. There weren't solid-state games yet. So every time I hear the bells and chimes in an EM pinball machine, I still have the nostalgia feeling.”

    Host (David) @ EM nostalgia discussion — Explains the emotional draw of EM machines and their role in preserving pinball history

  • “That game, in my vintage of life, is like the pinnacle of pinball. Anybody you put it in front of, people still stand in line to play that game. From pros to novices.”

    John Lee @ Attack from Mars discussion — Emphasizes Attack from Mars as universally accessible and beloved across skill levels

  • “He's a younger guy, 30-ish, a world-class pinballer, and he's got EMs. He likes EMs. He plays EMs. His house has EMs in it.”

    John Lee @ Discussing Zach Fry and EM collecting — Demonstrates that EM appreciation extends to younger, skilled players, suggesting genre longevity

Entities

John LeepersonProject PinballorganizationDan SpolarpersonChrispersonHoward LevinepersonZach FrypersonLonniepersonMelindapersonPastime Pinballvenue

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: John Lee organizing multiple tournament formats (strikes, matchplay, pin golf, amazing race) at local venues and his home to foster inclusive community participation rather than elite competition

    high · John Lee describes starting leagues and tournaments, developing inclusive formats with 'caboose' award system for new/struggling players

  • ?

    community_signal: Strong indication that younger players (like 30-year-old Zach Fry) are collecting and playing EMs, suggesting the genre appeals beyond nostalgia-driven older players

    high · John Lee notes Zach Fry is 'world-class pinballer' with EMs in his house, contrasts with assumption that EM interest is primarily older demographic

  • ?

    operational_signal: Expansion of organized pinball tournament activity in upstate New York region with multiple venues now hosting structured play (Excelsior Pub, WOW Arcade, private homes)

    high · John Lee describes starting with one league at Excelsior Pub, then expanding to WOW Arcade and running tournaments from his home

  • ?

    venue_signal: Multiple specialty pinball venues thriving: Pastime Pinball (Manchester, VT) with 60+ games, Rochester Pinball Collective (expanding from 49 to 70-80 games), Vintage Game Revival Arcade, demonstrating sustained interest in accessible public play

    high · Detailed descriptions of venue visits, game counts, and the appeal of these locations to collectors and casual players

  • ?

    design_innovation: Novel tournament formats being developed and popularized (strikes/knockouts with variable strike allocation, pin golf objectives, amazing race format) suggesting active experimentation in competitive pinball structure

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.204

0:00
this is the EM journeys pinball podcast this whole hobby is fun I mean you know everything this is the best distraction from the day-to-day life that we all live, right? When you can, like the whole pinball wizard analogy or, you know, yesterday when we were playing in the tournament, when everybody was practicing and just standing there, if you close your eyes, all the bells and the chimes and the buzzers and everything that were going off, it was cathartic, right? Oh, sure. Just taking you to a whole other world, world away from everything else that we were doing.
0:54
That's what this is about. Yep. I agree. I'm so glad to be joined today by John Lee. John is a pinball enthusiast and pinball tournament director and a frequent volunteer for the Project Pinball Charity. He's also been known to do some homebrewing, not homebrew pinball, I mean beer. Thank you so much for coming on to my podcast, John. How are you doing today? I'm well, David. Thank you for having me. Today, I'm talking to John about playing pinball in tournaments in general, but also spend some time specifically talking about playing EMs in tournaments. But I want to start off way back when we first met at the Saratoga Pinball and Arcade Show in the summer of 2023. I remember that you were manning the Project Pinball booth at the Saratoga Show. It was at the Saratoga Springs, New York YMCA. You were my introduction to this wonderful and impactful charity called Project Pinball. Please tell the listeners about Project Pinball and your involvement.
1:52
So this is on topic, right? But we jumped into the hobby, and I like being able to give back to the community. So we found Project Pinball, and I found it online at first before I decided to participate with them. Project Pinball does a raffle for a new game, whether it's a Stern game or another of the other manufacturers, but they'll do a Stern Pro and a Premium Raffle. So I was like, wow, this is a cool way to get the opportunity to come across a new game for whatever the price of the raffle entry is. And the more I went down the rabbit hole of what this charity did, the more I became enamored with what they do and subsequently met people who were involved in it. I did some research. You can go to projectpinball.org. They have a great origin story. Dan Spolar, the person who founded the charity, I don't know exactly what he did prior to this, but I know he was in a children's hospital and saw that they had a Spider-Man pinball machine, and it was broken. And when he researched it, they had 20-some-odd thousand plays on this Spider-Man machine in like two years' time. so he took it upon himself to fix the machine and it kind of blossomed from there where he just ran with this full-time being able to take a little spark of joy and put it in the children's lives who are who aren't feeling well who are sick if you could see the way sick kids who are in really perilous positions in life they smile right they're in pain but brings them joy when I saw that, that's kind of like, I was like, you know what, if I can take my hobby and donate back into this community, raise a little bit of money, whether it's nationwide, locally, it's impactful, right? It takes two things that I'm really passionate about, pinball and helping out in the community and blends the two of them together. I think it's a great charity. I love the idea that the pinball machines are a distraction from the pain for these kids. And I've watched a few videos where you see the joy on the kids faces and you know that it's impactful in a very profound way it's incredible just a momentary relief from the realities of what they're dealing with and and that for me you know it we all deal with different things but to see a kid right who is just suffering in that way and and they can just be a kid for a minute right and their families with them and you see the mom and dad with the kid, they're all there. It gives it whatever that normalized life for a minute that takes all that what they're dealing with away. So my understanding that it started off, they put pinball machines in hospitals in Florida and then it spread nationwide and then even to Ronald McDonald houses. We've crossed paths with them and speaking with Dan, who's the lead and the liaison that I'm familiar with Howard Levine, we were able to just jump on board and donate our time. We're going to be at an event when we cross paths at the Saratoga Pinball and Arcade Show. We brought our Iron Maiden pinball machine there, and we put it on free play. We actually were asking people for donations to it. We put it on one ball play, and you got three balls for $5, and those $5 all went to Project Pinball. We set it up as a 50-50. So the high score you contributed and the people who contributed, if they hit the high score, they would have got 50% of the whole take. And the guy who won ended up donating it all back. So all the money we raised there went to Project Pinball. That's awesome.
Rochester Pinball Collective
venue
Vintage Game Revival Arcadevenue
WOW Arcadevenue
Saratoga Silver Ballvenue
Saratoga Pinball and Arcade Showevent
New England Pinball Leagueorganization
Attack from Mars (Chicago Gaming remake)game
Iron Maidengame
Labyrinthgame
Barrels of Funcompany
The Last Arcade Pintasticevent
Texas Pinball Festivalevent

medium · John Lee describes multiple formats with flexible rules that can be adapted to different game types (EM vs. modern)

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: EM pinball requires distinct mechanical skills (nudging, tilt avoidance, reading complex linkage logic) that differentiate from modern solid-state play; skill development pathway differs

    high · John Lee discusses nudging, tilt management, flipper sizes, linkage logic ('A does B') as essential EM skills separate from flipper-focused solid-state approach

  • ?

    historical_signal: Community appreciation for pinball design evolution from woodrails through flipper-era EMs to solid-state; learning this progression viewed as important for hobby depth

    high · Discussion of visiting Vintage Game Revival Arcade to see pre-flipper games, flipperless nudging games, progression of flipper sizes and mechanics

  • ?

    collector_signal: EM collecting appears to be growing among younger enthusiasts; multiple mentions of EM acquisitions and appreciation by sub-40 players suggests countertrend to solid-state-only focus

    medium · Zach Fry (age 30) owns most EMs at Rochester Collective; John Lee notes younger people are discovering and collecting EMs; multiple EM titles discussed favorably

  • ?

    business_signal: Attack from Mars remake remains highly sought and accessible entry point for new collectors; remakes may be driving hobby growth by offering modern reliability with classic appeal

    medium · John Lee found Attack from Mars remake brand new in box online, purchased it as entry machine, describes universal appeal and continued demand

    • 5:56
    We took the money. My employer doubled it. Because they're a verified 501c3 charity. So everything we got went back to Project Pinball. They kind of keep track of where the money comes from. So the money we raised there stayed in this 518 area that we live in. Oh, okay. So that's great. So they're based on region somewhat? Regionality, yes. But that was kind of, they broached that. Like, hey, the money that we're going to raise is going to stay in this area. We know how much came out of here. we kind of keep track and it goes back and you can see that if you follow them on any of their social medias whatever they do places will like pinball halls or arcades or whatever that'll do donations and and stuff will take a machine or raffle it off or whatever and it'll be in that area so randomly like indiana will have a pinball spot and it'll go into a children's hospital in Indiana. And that's kind of cool because it's not just an isolated thing. These children's hospitals are everywhere because we as people are everywhere. But it gives that little spark of joy for me was the most fun thing. Yeah. So at the last Pintastic, you brought a pinball machine, you brought your labyrinth and let people play that. So the, some of the money that people donated to play your labyrinth. So similarly to the Iron Maiden. Yeah. My wife and I have a labyrinth machine from Barrels of Fun. It was one of the first hundred or so, and we reached out to Dan and Howard subsequently, and a few of the other people, Sierra and Taj, who were involved in the charity, and said, hey, we're going to bring our labyrinth, and we did a couple other things on top of that. So we did the labyrinth, which was really cool as a pinball experience, because Barrels of Fun was there. They used that machine for their demonstration at Pintastic, which was like, oh my God, this is amazing. And the owner of the company, David was there and we, but we had it in the project pinball booth. And with all of that at the same time, we were doing different competitions and all the money we raised went back to them, right? We had a split flipper competition later at night, which was really cool format, really loose and fun. And anybody could play in it. Like you got a partner and you just went and played a game and let me know who win. we had trophies made and but all all the money we collected on this project pinball that was the intention of what we do because it's you know it's a good time yeah that's awesome yeah we had a lot of fun with it yeah how can listeners contribute to this charity and get involved you did mention the website but what are all the ways that you encourage people to get involved the project pinball thing it's really going to be what you want to do with it you can just go through their website see where they are the raffles help it also gives you an opportunity to win a new game like i mentioned um but they promote people who are promoting their stuff too so if you're in a certain area and they're going to do a dedication or something of a machine you can find all that stuff through projectpinball.org through their social medias you know they do tournaments and things there's a subsection on there that will promote like oh there's a project pinball tournament or there's uh at this event they're doing you know dollar games or something and all the proceeds go to project pinball thing that's awesome yeah and it's so nice to see the charity grow nationwide and i know they're on their website they have a list of all the different games so you can see what they're doing it seems like they're very transparent so you can see what games are in what hospitals there's somebody who rates the charities on their transparency and they have a platinum rating. So everything they do is out in the open. They're not hiding anything. They say, this is all the money we got. It's really good in that way where whatever charity you donate to, these guys are truly doing it to be generous and give back. So that for me, again, you can see all the stuff that they do. It's right in front of your face. There's no question that they're doing the greatest things for the greatest reasons, right? Because of all the different hospitals and all the awareness that they've brought, it seems like it's really grown.
    10:08
    So, John, I know that you've been in the hobby for a number of years. How did you get into the hobby? Well, you referenced the homebrewing thing, and that's kind of the journey into this, right? It's seemingly like a life progression. It's funny. People homebrew in their late 20s into their 40s, right? You make beer, you want to be able to be mechanical, and I made this thing. I've always brewed beer. It was a fun thing to do when we were younger. Not a lot, but one of my friends brought me a beer one day, probably 15 years ago now, and said, I made this. And I was like, wow, I can make that too. So I started going down that journey, kind of hardcore, took the full dive into that hobby. Ended up doing a lot in the beer community, ran homebrew clubs, ran homebrew contests, made a lot of good beer, made a lot of good friends. And the process thereof, as the breweries were starting to take off and rise in prominence, everybody who was a home brewer opened a brewery. It seemed like it was overnight almost. Like that, right? Like just instant. There was 100 breweries where there was none before. There was three, right? And they were all big, yellow, fizzy, watered beer. Vaughan Mower beers, whatever you want to call them. things that I didn't want to drink. That's why I made my own beer, right? And then things that are made now are still why I make my own beer because the styles I enjoy the most are not things that are of prominence. But the people who were opening breweries were people that I knew through homebrewing in one capacity or another. And that introduced me to a friend who we started enjoying beers outside of this. We'd go to people's houses. We would do bottle shares where somebody would bring either something they made or something they were able to purchase that wasn't readily available in their direct market or whatever. People started developing beer cellars akin to somebody having a wine cellar. It's a social instrument, beer is, so you share it. So we'd go to people's houses. Well, my friend, Chris, invited us to his house one night for a bottle share. and at the same time he had an arcade in his basement a burgeoning arcade right just starting out a lot of ems a lot of electromechanical things that weren't pinball but still electromechanical he had some obscure games like a ballet truck stop which just has a weird size ball in it um and shooter games shuffle alley shuffle bowlers things like that and while we down there one day, he had a 10-cent shuffle bowler, six-player, and it had a multiplier on it. So, again, you could play terribly until the last frame or two, and then come back and just grind your opponents into the dirt with some weird multiplier thing that you got, and I immediately was hooked. At the same time where we live, over in Manchester, Vermont, there's a place called Pastime Pinball. Not Pastimes in Ohio, Manchester has pastime, one word, pinball, and they have 60-plus games of all vintages, from Humpty Dumpty up until now, I think they even have a labyrinth. Godzilla, early mid-2000s Stern games, Attack from Mars, but all of their electromechanical stuff, kind of everything, every era of pinball, you can do like a wandering yellow brick road of progression up through the building, twist and turn, and follow the guides that they have on the wall and learn about all the games. And as you play through them, you're like, this one's cool. You see their collection is, bar none, one of the nicest that's readily available for free play. It's a very special collection. I love it. They talk about having seven decades of pinball. It's set up as an arcade and a museum.
    14:13
    It's a very special place. It is. It's an hour from where we're located. When we first journeyed into this hobby, that was something we visited a lot, you know, learning about different vintages and stuff, the games that we wanted to be able to collect. And we ended up, because of them, that was really our jump off point. But I blame Chris first, right? He's the catalyst in this whole thing. He's a great friend and asset to have in this. Any of the games that we have, you know, he's subsequently going on now to do his own thing where he repairs games. Vintage Game Revival is a huge asset for anybody in our community because he's the guy now, with how hyper-focused he is on what he does, that he can fix pretty much anything, right? His collection is insane. You want to talk museum quality stuff, that collection is things that you'll really never see. They look like they just came out of the box. 60, 70-year-old games that shine like they're brand new, right? Something you could picture walking into a post-World War II gin mill like your grandpa dressed out with a coat and a suit and a tie and a hat. And there's somebody dumping nickels into a game over in the corner. That's kind of somewhat of the vibe. I feel like a kid in a candy store when I visit his collection. Yeah, yeah. It's insane, right? The fact that I feel lucky that I know somebody like that, right? That's the cool thing about this hobby is it spans every kind of person, right? Like Chris is amazing at what he does, but then there's people that you'll meet and like, hey, my grandpa used to have this game, and you'll go, they picked it up because grandpa has left this ethereal plane and he inherited it. And they got a game and they just remember playing it as a kid. Now they have one. And they go through and they fix it, tune it up a little bit, learn enough about it where, you know, they usually have two now or three. It's never one anymore. It's like the potato chip. You can't just eat one. But, yeah, that's where I started, right? It's just seemingly like a natural progression of life. Because as you get a little older, you can't drink beer. with the ferocity you do when you're a young man, right? No. The tenacity, I guess. I mean, it's still an enjoyable thing to have a beer every now and then, but just to, like, taste the flavors and things that are in a well-crafted beverage, like a really good beer, and just relax with friends to have one or two. Also, to be able to sit and play a pinball game, you know, a Friday night, go to a friend house and like I said that bottle mentality now turns into having a beer or two and playing a pinball machine throwing a dollar on a game and seeing who can get a high score That type of interaction now Or go to somebody's house, have a barbecue, and they got a couple pinball machines. And, you know, as it gets later or whatever, the kids go in the house and play pinball. And it's just, to hear that, right? All these different little potential avenues that, memories, right? A lot of us do the pinball thing because of the memory of it. Oh, yeah. For me, I'm old enough where pinball machines were only EMs when I was little. There weren't solid-state games yet. So I played at the local roller skating rink. Every time I hear the bells and chimes in an EM pinball machine, I still have the nostalgia feeling that I had playing those games as a kid. Yeah.
    17:44
    So Chris introduced you to pinball, but where did it start? What was that first machine that you said, oh, I've got to get that machine? Yeah. After going to pastime in Manchester a few times, I convinced my wife to, let's get one. Let's stay home. Let's not take the hour drive. Let's get one. That never works with just one. So she was like, I don't want you to buy a project. I've seen Chris's house. He works on these all the time. I'm like, okay, okay, I got enough little money and a little nest egg. I went online and I looked for games. And it was right at the same time that Chicago Gaming was doing the remakes. of Medieval Madness and Attack from Mars, and I happened to find one, brand new in the box, Attack from Mars remake, and I bought it. And that was the proverbial downward spiral. Because now I have 25 games, various eras. I have EMs. I really enjoy two-player Williams games, right? Because it's me playing against you. It's head-to-head, right? You could use those to do multiple things. Who's doing dishes?
    18:52
    Or we're just playing for prestige or whatever. They're fun like that, though. I enjoy head-to-head play. The whole tournament structure, millions of different venues and avenues and paths you can drip down as far as that goes. But in the end, it's you playing against someone else. Or you playing against three or four other people. You're trying to beat someone else, on the older games especially. It's cool to be able to do those things, but EMs in the earlier games, when they started going to four players, you're playing not only against the machine, but you're playing against somebody else, which it adds that connection to it. Like with my kids, because they play pinball now. I'll catch one of them playing a game, they'll just turn it on and start playing. But me playing against you, it's not me against the game at that point in time. It's me playing against you. So two-player EMs, we have a Valiant, which is a 1964 Williams two-player. We have 8-Ball, which was like the first 8-Ball game, right? Two players. It looks like Schultz and Dooley characters from Utica Club on the cover of the game. That vintage art in that regard, where you're playing against the game. It's like playing pool. You're playing the game against somebody else. And then we obviously have some single players. We have the Spanish Eyes. I have some projects in that regard. The EM single players, which, again, we've talked single player, two player EMs, right on. More than that, it's like, oh my God, there's so much going on here. It takes a specific engineering skill to work through these things. Yeah, the four player, there's a lot more that can go wrong because there's that many more parts. Yes, and all those parts interact. So it's really like you need to see like coded string theory to be able to say this does A, but A does A1, A2, A3, A4, A5. Which one of these things is actually working or going wrong or bad or whatever. But Attack from Mars, that was the game. It's such an approachable, fun game that anybody can play it. Anybody can walk away from that game and feel that they did something. It's satisfying. Yeah. And it's got a great multiball in there. It felt so approachable to me. That game, in my vintage of life, is like the pinnacle of pinball. Right? The newer games are cool, but I think that my timeline of life pinball peaked right there. Yep. At that game. Because anybody you put it in front of, people still stand in line to play that game. From pros to novices, etc. You know, even the most jaded pinball person has some sort of affinity or attachment to Attack from Mars, right? And the EMs, right, in that regard, they have all something unique about them that draws you back in that you can play with them, right? The little tiny two-inch flippers, stuff like that, you get into doing things like, I like Ted Zale games, too, with the zipper flippers and the mushroom bumpers. And one of the games that we played recently was Rockmakers, which is a weird, obscure four-player Ted Zale game from God knows when, but then, from then, in that timeline. Right. And it had, you know, or something along the lines of like a Dixieland, right, or an Astro or one of those Jupiter games, something, you know, with the little button rollovers and zipper flippers and things like that. It's like, wow, this thing has a multi-ball. It's something BC. Yeah, the dinosaur. It has a multi-ball you can make on that game. You see these at people's houses, and they're younger people too, right? One of the guys that I've come across and I'm friendly with now is Zach Fry, who's part of the Rochester Pinball Collective. He's a younger guy. He's 30-ish. And, you know, in the scope of things, the EMs that he has are like, wow, This is a guy who is a world-class pinballer, and he's got EMs. He likes EMs. He plays EMs. His house, he has EMs in his house. The day I met you was the day I met him as well at the Saratoga show at the YMCA. Eventually, I went to the Rochester Pinball Collective, and then I saw him again. He wasn't at the Rochester Pinball Collective when I was there, but I told him that I played all the games. I was there long enough to play all the games, and there were a lot. I think they have 70 or 80 games now, but there were 50. 49.
    23:36
    49. Yes, I remember that statistic. They were specific to holding at 49. Bruce-specific. 49, and it was like a fight if you listened to the Slamtail podcast. That was the thing that Bruce kept. 49 pinballs, right? And he was always pushing for more. I told Zach that I played them, and I was really pleased with all the EMs and how well they played. And he told me that almost all the EMs that are there are his. Yeah. And for a young guy, like I said, somebody 30, it means that this specific genre inside the genre of pinball is going to continue. People see the value of these games. People see the nostalgia that works.
    24:20
    It's a lot easier to work on a solid-state game if you're computer-oriented. But again, the electromechanical stuff, it takes a specific skill set to be able to figure out, right? You need more of an older logic style. A does B, you know, follow this row over to column A. But it's a great jump off point for people looking to go into pinball and learn about newer stuff too, right? A lot of it applies to solid state. Absolutely. It's kind of like a computer coding language, right? Whatever they are. I don't know that stuff. But you need to know history, where things come from in this regard, so you can be able to progress in a way and have a uniform knowledge of things. Because this hobby is still relevant and people like the nostalgia of things. We referenced Chris at Vintage Game Revival. If you ever have the ability to go to his spot, he's got everything from the first, not flippered game, but he's got nudging flipperless games. He's got a lot of the early wood rails that he's either working on or he owns. It's a great way to see the progression through them. Little flippers, huge gaps, and then learning how to play them is another skill in itself. it's not all flipper skills you need to learn how to nudge and nudge in a way you're not going to tilt that's a huge thing that people need to learn if you plan on being able to excel not even excel just not jump up to a game and plunge the ball and two seconds later it's gone to progress through a game even an older game the older ems man they play so fast but just to have a little uh something in your, you know, a little trick up your sleeve, a little skill in your bag of knowledge to say, oh, I see it does this, and if I can nudge this, it'll push the ball over here. Things like that, like a novice person should learn how to do if you're really passionate about pinball, other than just the lights and the bells and stuff. Yeah, so let's talk more about that. You're very involved with directing tournaments, so let's talk about pinball skills and playing in tournaments. How did you get involved with directing tournaments? Well, I guess for me, the natural progression of things is there wasn't a lot of tournaments in this area. And I live in Lake Georgia area of New York. We started out learning about what was going on around here in Albany area. There was one league at the time and it was in Excelsior Pub, four games, Sundays. We went, Melinda, my wife and I went to their league. And it's all modern games. At the time, I think it was Demoman, Twilight Zone, Iron Maiden, Guardians of the Galaxy, maybe. And it was fun just to see the league structure. I like that stuff. I used to run the homebrew clubs and things, so I like the organizational part of life, being able to say, hey, I'm passionate about this. Let's do things. And then filter it out to the masses. So it happened pretty quickly? Yeah, actually it did. I went to that, learned the league. Found a guy who, in Saratoga, was part of one of the arcades, the other Saratoga Pinball Show, which is Saratoga Silver Ball. He had the WOW Arcade in Wilton Mall. Name's Lonnie, you know, younger guy. And I'm like, well, that's closer to me. Let's see if we can get a league going there. I started running a league first before I started doing tournaments. And then realized that I have games at my house. Let's run a tournament out of here. I don't know, two or three years ago now, I did a strikes tournament for my birthday. Now, mind you, this is all while we're traveling all over the place because I immersed myself in this hobby because it was the thing I needed to do for myself at the time, right? I got latched on, new hobby, here we go. Did a tournament here. First tournament was the birthday strikes. That was cool. That was fun. What other formats can we do? So we did strikes. We did pin golf. And each one of these is a unique format. So strikes, you can play, they're called knockouts, right? So strike knockout tournaments. You play head-to-head, you can play as a group. There's different ways you can allot strikes to people.
    28:56
    Matchplay.com has the ways the strikes are laid out, the specific names for them. You and I play head-to-head, loser gets a strike. You and I play with two other people, you can give the last person a strike. You can give third and fourth a strike. You can give third one strike. You can give fourth two strikes, etc. All the way up to, you know, second gets a strike. Third gets two strikes. Four gets three strikes. And you can do all sorts of crazy different formats. At the end of the doldrums last night, we ran a four strikes head-to-head knockout tournament. It was everybody who wasn't in the finals of that tournament format had the ability to play in a strikes tournament. Which I participated in. How'd you do? I was kind of in the middle, I think. The objective sometimes is not to be last. I mean, everybody at some point in time is the caboose. We came up with that term. Actually, my friend came up with that term because he kept being last. He's like, I'm so sick of being the caboose, which is always the last car in the train. And we adopted that, right, to where now when you play in one of our tournaments, if you're the caboose, you usually get a tchotchke of some sort that says I'm not good at pinball. But if you bring it back the next time, you get to play in the tournament for free. right so it's kind of like hey we realize that everybody is either a beginner or you didn't have a good day but you know you paid six bucks or whatever to get in the tournament and here's a little thing that if you you need to bring it back though right it's if you don't you gotta pay because you know but hopefully they have fun yeah right right but that's the intention it's like hey man not everybody has a good day but especially if you're a beginner and it's like, you know what, come back and play again. That all morphs out of one thing, and it's my desire to have fun and be slightly competitive, right? Not intensely competitive. There's venues and stuff for that. There's other tournaments. They just had InDisc in California, which is like super intensive, best players in the world. Around here, we're just trying to foster a community of people to come. let's play a game let's you know let's play match play let's play which group match play is three or four people in a group playing the same game and you get points based on how you finish right you can play a pin golf thing which is an objective based it's either points based or you have to complete an objective like start a multi-ball or and that they work somewhat in or in an em you'd have to hit all the rollovers, A, B, C, D, or get a wow, or knock down this bank of drop targets, something like that. Or you can do flip frenzies. There's a lot of different tournament formats that you can do. Every one of them has an advantage. Amazing Race is another one. 10 people are playing. There's five or six games that you're playing on. And it's a race. It's First person goes, they set a score. If the second person behind them goes and they beat the first person's score, the second person goes and plays another game, while the third person plays the first game, trying to beat the first score that was set. If the third person doesn't beat the score, the first person moves on, the third person stays on game one. That's the low end. You either have to beat that score or go below it. it's a little harder to explain. You just kind of got to play. I had to play one of those to understand what I was doing at first. That sounds complicated at first. It is, and we've run them, right? Where we've gotten weird with them, where we did blind draw ones, where blind draw split flipper, amazing race. You can get as crazy as you want, go down the road, but split flipper is another thing where you get a partner, and you're playing a game and you're playing against other teams. Now, this is not an IFPA, which is a governing body of pinball, recognized format. You're like a team event, right? But the split flipper thing is fun. They can play on ODMs. They can play on new games, right? You get one flipper. Your partner gets the other. You hit your side. They hit their side. It's kind of an interesting format to play. But just the tournament stuff, right? And you can be as serious or as goofy as you want. There's a tournament format in Buffalo called The Beast, and that comes up in August or so. And they have a I believe it called Herb Style where you buy entries and you play games and you set your score based on that And it really more of a professional tournament where the best players are going to come in and they going to play one game and they going to set their score And the top X combined scores move forward to the finals. So to say there's 10 games, you have to play six of them, a minimum of six. your best scores in those six games goes towards your overall score. Gotcha. And that is rated against X amount of other people. So just say there's 100 people. That's a lot of people. It is. But these are money, big money tournaments at the same time. Top 20 of these people move to the finals, right? So they all have to play a minimum of six games. Every one of these, you buy entries, you know, $20. you can always rebuy, buy more entries and just keep going. So they're known as like a pump and dump kind of tournament because it's a little heavy to kind of understand that. It's not something that I recommend for beginners, novices. You need to know pinball before you entertain playing in one of these things or else you might as well just go up to whoever the best player there is and cut them a check. right but they're fun events if you're you know in the community oriented wise they're very serious right they're not something that like the guy off the street who's really never played before is going to play in it's a tournament format style that exists in the world of pinball but the run tournaments the progression of things to see where everything goes and to fit in what is going to work for the community that you're trying to play in right i'm curious what's the most common type of format for a tournament or does it vary if i remember correctly the most common at the moment is group match play okay so yesterday when we did our doldrums tournament we did group match play and again groups of three or four primarily four there's a whole point structure associated with different amounts of people and things when you start getting into more competitive pinball, you get an IFPA number. After five tournaments, you contribute a half a point to the tournament points base. And then there's efficiency and ratings points. It gets complicated. Basically, group match play. You played in two tournaments now, actually three, because yesterday was two different tournaments. So now you have three tournaments under your belt, Two more, and you'll contribute to the point structure. We played group match play, and we played 10 rounds of group match play. So you played 10 games with three other people, so four people per game. And that contributes to, again, the point structure. But that's the most predominant tournament structure at the moment because in the end it's worth points the way the IFPA structures the points. I've been on the IFPA website before, learned a little bit about how it goes, and it's interesting to see some of the statistics of the high players. And from the website, I know you can learn about some of the different events that are going on that are IFPA-specific. Yeah, if you're going to conduct an IFPA tournament, you need to register it on their website. Our tournament we held yesterday was registered. It has to be registered at least a month prior to the event. And usually, like, I'm going to register next year's doldrums in the next couple days. Oh, okay. Because we're doing it again. If you go into your zip code, your town, wherever, it automatically defaults to, like, Chicago, within 50 miles of Chicago. Oh, okay. And it'll give you, like, tournaments happening this week, all the way down and as far out as they've been registered. Oh. Right? And so it'll also give you leagues and other things that you can enter in on. And it's all on their website, things that you can check into.
    38:04
    So just say, for example, you lived in Albany, New York. You can go on IFPA and go to tournaments, and you can find leagues that are starting in that area. So you'd find, like, the Saratoga-Wilton League. You could find the Excelsior Pub League or the Troy League. or you can find tournaments that are going to happen. There's a couple tournaments that happen something out of like Me, Max, and Troy on Tuesday nights or a Friday tournament or, you know, they do like where you would have found how to register for our doldrums tournament. And you can expand out from that geography and punch in 75, 100, whatever you're comfortable driving to learn or to play pinball. Our doldrums tournament, we had people come from as far as New Hampshire and Rochester, New York, and the Hudson Valley. You guys came down two and a half hours away to play with us. It's worth it, by the way. Thank you. But you see those things, right? You see people travel to play pinball, especially if there's not a lot in your area. And you want to learn about tournament structures and tournament formats and playing with other people who are into pinball because it's a hugely weird cross-section of society. that you're going to run into. There's a lot of computer people, engineering, doctors, but there are also people who are lay people in that world who know nothing about how to service the games. They just want to play them. Yes. Right? And anybody can do that, right? You don't have to be an expert. No. You just have to enjoy it. Yeah. Like something like we did yesterday. We had a whole afternoon of just electromechanical games. And that was, again, thanks to my friend Chris at Vintage Game Revival. for allowing us to play at his house. His games, which he had like 20 just EMs that we played of amazing vintage and quality, is something that we came up with because you don't see those in tournaments anymore. Yeah, but you mentioned the Beast. I think that one's at Pocketeer Billiards, is that right? That's correct. Yeah, so they don't have EMs there. So there are a lot of those large tournaments that don't have EMs. No. There are tournaments at pinball shows like Pentastic New England that do have some EMs, but it's not the majority. Pocketeer specifically itself doesn't have electromechanicals, EMs on the floor, but people bring in games for a classics bank. Oh, okay. Oh, that's great. Classics bank will be EMs and early solid states. We went a few years ago. I don't remember the specific games that were there, but I know that there was a bunch of EMs in that bank. So if that's your forte, where you like that type of thing, you want to look for a type of tournament structure that's just classics.
    41:00
    And earlier in our conversation, I mentioned Indisc, which is like this massive tournament in Southern California somewhere. but they have a classics bank, right? They have a classics tournament, and I believe they have multiple. It's out of my geography range, but if that's your geography, that's like a huge tournament, especially for the higher-ranking players to attend.
    41:27
    So how did the doldrums start? So this year, yesterday, was the second annual doldrums. You've talked about running different tournaments, but the doldrums is your thing. You and Chris, how did that come about? Well, that kind of fell in from us having a few beers and trying to figure out a wacky but fun tournament structure. And again, you go to a lot of tournaments in places. You'll see them, the league I referenced, that was all newer games from the 90s up. And don't get me wrong, that's fun. But there are tournament structures that are called sternaments because they feature all modern stern games, which are great games in their own right.
    42:12
    But they play forever. Long ball times. Yeah, and I'll go off for a second. But last night, our finals bank was a group of games we never played on. And the top four ended up playing Deadpool. and the guy who won had over a billion points on Deadpool. And that game went on forever.
    42:35
    And meanwhile, we had the strikes tournament going on, so it was still fine. And they ended close proximity to the same time of each other. But if it was just all modern sterns, it would have been like, oh my God, can this ever end? So Chris and I are both passionate about older games. That's where he started. like a lot of single player goblins stuff you'd never see in a tournament nowadays and i'd like a lot of the like i said attack from mars vintage late nine mid 90s going backwards not to say that i don't have new games but they play forever they're great games for your house they're mechanical video games and you know what like my age grouping used to sit in our room and play super mario brothers all day long and you could play through the whole thing if you knew what you were doing or Legend of Zelda or whatever. And while that stuff is fun, I want to play a lot of pinball. I want it to be over and done with. And that's kind of where that came from. We played 10 rounds of EMs last night in like three hours. So all of them were four-player groups. I want it to be fast. Also, in our area, there isn't like a big tournament structure. Where we are, it's like this big blip of nothing on the pinball maps. there might be a game or two here there might be a game or two there so the people that you find where I live are private collections and because I was already opening my house up to have tournaments to people, Chris and I talked about it, let's do a tournament there is a bigger tournament in New England called 24 Hours at the Sanctum and that's in Connecticut right? Yes so that's another venue where you can go play pinball. It's a cool spot. They have a lot of different games too. People go there for 24 hours. That's a long time. Exactly.
    44:32
    You're there overnight, which is cool. That's one of those things if you're on the pinball checklist, like your bucket list, you've got to throw on there with Pinball Olympics. Did 24 hours at the Sanctum, did the Pinball Olympics. I'm sure there's a couple other things you can do.
    44:48
    Not for nothing, I've got time for that. So we did an event. It started at 9 a.m., like 12 hours. 12 hours in the Adirondacks is pretty much the way that we posited that. And it was right about 10 o'clock. It went a little later, but that's life. It's the most and least serious elements of a pinball tournament that we could incorporate and have a great day about doing it. Because, again, it's called the doldrums. It's the first Saturday in February. We woke up February 2nd. It was 11 degrees below zero this morning. Very cold. It was flipping cold. I don't think my heat in my house where recording has stopped running since I was up at, you know, 7 o'clock. So it's usually people are pent up in their house, right?
    45:40
    Historically, the weather has been cooperative this time of year. You know, I just come up with this stuff off the top of my head, too. So Chris and I were just BSing one night playing pinball, having a beer, and we're just like, let's do this. And he's like, okay.
    45:57
    So we did. And last year we started with electromechanicals and moved into solid states and moderns, right? So LCDs, DMDs, things like that. We did the EMs, which is Chris's forte. And then we played the second half, which was modern solid states and the modern games. and then we had a finals bank that was a blend of them that was things we didn't play at all during the day you could look at them don't touch them right they were all dark yeah they were all off and then we we flipped it this year so first thing in the morning we came to my house we had some food little brunch action going on some snacks fruit nuts whatever then we played 10 rounds of solid states and moderns and then we took a break we went to chris's house and played all the m's and he had a separate tournament finals bank that you didn't play at all until the finals they were all dark it's just making a day of what goes on in like the worst time of year in the northeast at least it was not three feet of snow that's what i mean about the weather cooperating. We definitely had to sacrifice a few chickens to the weather gods to get them to play along, but they did remind us they're still here because, again, it was 11 degrees below zero this morning. The passion behind it, I love to see people enjoying the hobbies that I like and being successful doing it. Everybody who I've met doing this hobby has a passion about it in one way, shape or form. A lot of the people that were there last night were new people, experienced people. We had an amazing cross-section of the pinball community in a relatively larger area around here. Some of the best players in the world were here, top couple hundred people. We had people come from far, near, whatever. But everybody had a great time. For me as a mediocre player, it's really great to play with some expert players that have played in really world-class top tournaments. And I learned a lot yesterday. The Alien Star game, I watched Ron Hallett play that game and he whomped the other three people that were on that round. And I went and played it on my own afterward and I got a score that wasn't too far off for Ron because I watched him play and I learned what shots you need to hit yeah you know and I gotta say to have people of Ron's caliber and quality players come here I mean they all won right obviously the the people that showed up from out of the area that are really good players we knew who was gonna win walking in hands down you know but it was still amazing one that he came and two that he just interacted with us all and you know you got to see how these people played right i set the tournament up so everybody played against everybody else so it was people who are very casual pinball players who never had played in a tournament i think your your wife first tournament we had a couple people there who were their second tournament. You know, this was your second tournament. We had people now who were crossing that threshold to contribute into the point structure of tournaments. And then we had people who played hundreds of tournaments in their lifetimes. It was just fun. It was relaxing. Again, I like that word cathartic. It's a word that I've learned recently and I like to use it because it's like... It's appropriate. Yeah. It's like doing something that just puts you at ease and relaxes you, and it's like you just flow. Like you're floating in the ether and one of those kind of things. When you're playing pinball, you're not thinking about work and whatever's going on in your life. Yeah, and you know what? If just happenstance shows up, you know this guy is an amazing pinballer, and if you can beat him at a game, holy mackerel. you know but that's the coolest part about this is you can do the proverbial thing you did the thing it might not happen all the time but the next time you just get squashed like a bug under a thumb but you did it once and it just shows that you have the potential to do it again you have that experience yesterday i won a couple against some great players i had a good game They didn't, and vice versa. I got squashed like a bug quite a few times, but that's okay, it was fun, and I learned a lot from the process and had a good time doing it. There's nobody putting you down or saying, ah, you're terrible. Right, that's the kind of environment that I want to foster and just show everybody like hey man this is cool let go do this And I know it a bit of a travel but you going to come and you going to see people and nobody really here like taking it mega serious You're going to win. You're going to lose or you're just going to play pinball. And that's what it's all about. It's just pinball after all. But it creates an environment where you're like, oh, my God, I'm not attached to the chains of society, right? I'm just kind of doing my thing. I'm just chilling, having a good time, relaxed, and I'm not at work, taking a little bit of time away from the reality of the realities.
    51:29
    When we're playing in tournaments like the doldrums, because we're playing some of the games on EM machines, there are different strategies that you need to take with EM. So it's not quite the same, and there's a lot of similarities between solid state and EM games. So what are some strategies that you would recommend for people who are playing EMs in tournaments? How is it different? Well, I guess my focus when I play EMs is just trying to keep the ball alive. It's not going to play like a modern, right? I mean, some of them play more like a modern where you can trap up or catch the ball, right? Slow the game down. They're simplistic to a point, right? Usually EMs are like roll the A, B lanes, complete all them. Knock this bank of drop targets down. They're easier to understand what you've got to do. Their progression leads into understanding more modern games. But when I play EMs, especially the early ones with the little flippers and stuff, it's very different. I don't flip. I just let that ball do what it's going to do and try to nudge a little bit. Play it like it's flipperless. But that's not something you learn initially. I had to teach myself that. I've watched a billion videos that say don't flip well until you can turn your brain off and not flip it's going to be not fun there's going to be some really like mistakes made and errors and stuff and again I'm not like a major player I'm just kind of coming into this zen of reality with playing them the best piece of advice I ever got about playing pinball all the way around don't flip right let the ball bounce see what it does learn like some of the physics behind it and especially on the older games you have to be reactive but you need to know when to react right so it's just let the ball do what the ball's gonna do and try to influence the ball in a way that it's it has a positive outcome but you gotta learn how to do that too right right it's so when you say don't flip so i'm uh on a two inch game you trapping up is not really an option because the flipper it's a when it's going on the flipper paddles are going up you can't catch the ball right it's ridiculously hard to catch the ball on a two inch game that's where i use the flipperless analogy it's almost like they're not even there right right you know you gotta be able to use nudging like yesterday at Chris's house he's got a couple games that have weird flipper configurations yeah right for me majorettes was a game where I'm not one to nudge the game a lot but with majorettes because of some of the kickout holes I found myself really wanting to make sure that ball lands in that kickout hole because it's right between the flippers yeah on the bottom and then there's another one up top if you can nudge the ball just to get that in that kickout hole it's going to kick it back up and your game's going to be a lot longer you're going to get a higher score so i found myself like i need to nudge right more than any other game i've ever played skills that you can convince yourself to do in that regard translate well as you play other pinball games right because as they get to be the more modern layouts the modern layouts are kind of the same they all have the same bottom of the game where if you start to get into the slings your ball is 90% of the time going to leave. It's going to go home. You want your ball to stay and hang out, party. And a lot of what you said with majorettes is that little bit of nudging skills to manipulate the reality that you're dealing with and just be able to move the ball left, right, wherever, and get it to go where you want to be. You didn't flip to do that. that's a huge skill that you learn while you're playing but it's not again something that most people would think of because most people the exposure that people have are to a lot of solid states and stuff and you know the little flipperless ones they're hard if you don't know that one thing about them and it's something that i've learned over the course of playing it's when to flip on that. It's not like, and that's all pinball, but especially on these older ones is when to flip. Because there's a lot of stuff where it's going to hit and it's going right down the middle whether you like it or not. I mean, because the flipper gap is like three miles wide. Right? And no matter what you do and the older games, if you push them hard enough, they're going to tilt and then your game's over. Right. I think that's a lot, for a lot of people, they're afraid to tilt. Well,
    56:27
    when a lot of people, are first playing pinball, they're afraid to tilt. Oh, especially on EM because if they know that it's going to be a game over. Yeah. Well, but then you go from that and then all of a sudden you put too much into it and you tilt. Right. And then it's just kind of figuring out like the boundaries of it. I notice when I go to tournaments and people are playing, they don't play balls. They don't play the whole game. They'll just go up and plunge it and see how the plunger works and see what they can do, Manipulate the game, you know, oh, I remember if I did this a little too hard. The tilt's tighter, the tilt's loose, that kind of thing. So it's kind of an experimental game. Like, you know, maybe play two balls on it and walk away, you know. When you're going to play, that's something to be able to learn to experiment with. Again, it's a learned behavior. Very few people are that human cyborg that can just step up and do the things without thinking about it, right? Right. Everybody else kind of has to teach themselves how to do things, right? It's like learning to tie your shoes or learning to, you know, whatever. Learning to run a tournament.
    57:35
    Right. In summary, it seems like learning, even though you're saying not to flip, it is still learning flipper skills is still important with the EMs. Yeah. But learning not to flip is a huge flipper skill. You know what I mean? Yeah, I catch it. When you put a kid in front of a game and you show them there's flippers there, they do the chip flip thing where they just bang on the flipper buttons right don't flip yeah you know watch dead flip uh on youtube videos of flipper skills because even though he's doing it on more modern games when they start to get to be the larger flipper bats a lot of those skills translate to the older games right oh yeah once they get to be the more modern flipper sizes you have a lot more ability to manipulate the game because that then the flippers are bigger the gaps are smaller and that's where playing but when you're playing the older games with the little two inch flippers it's like holy mackerel you know those are a lot of luck and a little bit of skill yep mostly like yes and also for listeners dead flip is a guy named jack danger he used to do a lot of twitch channel videos where he would show like demonstrate how to play pinball he's one of the first he's like the forefather of pinball twitch streaming one of the guys who first did like tutorial videos uh played these gameplay videos things like that so as we get into like the modern stuff that was where he was but he now is a game designer for sure right foo fighters to be very successful he did foo fighters and he did x-men and i love foo fighters i haven't played enough x-men to have an opinion but i know just from the layout It's got a throwback to an early Gottlieb game, Gold Wings. Not an EM game, but still. I really wish somebody would do EM games now. Oh, I agree. I think about that all the time. A question you asked me was homebrewing. If I was going to homebrew, I would do those. I would have EM layouts with solid-state computer ring in the back box. Do a hybrid kind of thing. Gotcha. Because I think that the switches and stuff like that, it would be off-putting for a lot of people. but I think also expensive yes very expensive nowadays right I mean it would be really cool to have like an old EM layout you see a lot of people if you go to the pinball shows that I've referenced the expo and even pintastic there's a homebrew area oh it's fun to go in there they're super cool right some guy last year had a joust looking game where you like once I played that yeah I did too so it's a two-player head-to-head yeah where one person stands on one side and one person stands on the other, and it's more like a table model, and there are flippers on each side, so you're batting the ball, batting it forth toward each other. Yeah, like knock their targets down, go over the hill, shoot this thing. I would love to see more stuff like that. I like two-player games. I can play against you. I think those are cool. I think that's more engaging if you and I are playing head-to-head on things. Whether we're playing the game at the same time or separately, I'm playing just against you. You're my target. Like most things like tennis or whatever, I'm playing against you specifically. But I would love to see home-brewed EM, even if they're hybridized ones. Right? I want to see a game now that's got zipper flippers. I want to see a game that's got mushroom bumpers. I want to see a game with chimes. Yeah, yeah. Right? Yeah, have them chimes. That's so great. Right. I have a bagatelle thing like Dixieland, right, where you light the, you hit the street lamp or whatever, like the street lamp, and it goes up and around into a bag of tell, and it scores like that. They tried to do that with like, Whoa Nelly. Oh, yeah. I've never played that. So it's basically an EM in terms of the design. Yep. Thematically, I wasn't really like that. That game doesn't do anything for me. It's not very family oriented. No. Well, that's not why it doesn't do anything for me, but it's just like, I get it. I mean, that's kind of like that kitsy 80s, you know, B-rated movies where, you know, somebody walks in and there's a lady in the shower or whatever. That kind of USA Up All Night, Rhonda Shearer, Gilbert Gottfried-esque kind of thing. That was every movie back in, like, the 80s. There was always some buxom woman that was topless.
    61:56
    I don't care about that. I want to see something cool, like, I like Space Invaders. That was a cool ballet game, big wide body, but it had tiny little flippers on it, right? I played that, yes. Paragon had that on there too like that little flipper but I think that would be cool where you craft a game and it would have EM-esque attributes to it could have scissor flippers or something like a Paragon but it's not a big wide body it's a little tiny even if you did a wood rail like one of those beer belly games with the shelf you know what I'm saying and just throw a cigarette holder that nobody smokes anymore on Something weird, nostalgia-looking thing, but make it affordable. If that's a thing, which I don't know because I don't design pinballs. I know what parts cost, but pinball machines now are like $8,000. Who's got $8,000? I want like a $3,500 pinball machine. Who knows what the future holds as 3D printers get cheaper, and who knows where it will go. That's the sculpts and the mechs, but that's referenced like what I was talking about. You go into these homebrew rooms and everything is modern. I want to see something like Prohibition Ends Pinball or something like that, right? Where at a bar, instead of winning like a replay game where you win beer tokens, go into a bar and you can play this game that spits out like a wooden nickel. That would be cool. Something goofy, right? I mean, you know, that idea is free for the world to have, right? Okay. You heard it here.
    63:36
    If I walk into a bar somewhere, I just want a free beer. You know. But I think something like that would be cool. Especially with the technology we have nowadays. These homebrew guys are amazing. It's stuff they can do. One guy you see in like all the shows, he gets those pinball 2000 cabinets. Like the revenge bars thing. I've played those. Yeah. They're simplistic to a point. Like some of the shots he has on there. You know. They're basic. layouts. Yeah, but that's like the mechanical video game thing that I reference a lot. That's what that is. You've got to hit this shot to make the guy go down the road.
    64:12
    It's like one of those games where you just push the button on a bunch of times and you've got to pay a billion dollars to get the upgrade that you see on all the Google stores on your phone. Some company out of Hong Kong has this fighting game and to progress through there you've got to buy all these packs that are like $50 a piece and all you do is push a button and waste your time. Like that. But that's the same kind of principle thing on there. You put the quarter in or the dollar in or whatever and you play through this rudimentary video game but you have to mechanically play through it. It would be cool to have that as an EM. Something like that. You've got a lot of great ideas. I just wish I had I'm the idea man of the company.
    65:00
    Was there anything that we didn't cover that you think we should talk about? I think I was just going off your questions you asked me. I mean, primarily it was just to keep me on topic. Yeah, because some of the other questions that I had here, I feel like we covered. You can't cradle the ball with older two-inch flippers. You can. It's just very difficult. You almost need to, like, get that little flipper shutter, right, that you can get, like, by just kind of edging on the button. Yeah. Right, and just trapped into the corner there. But, man, if you can do that, God bless you. It's hard.
    65:33
    Because it hits those slings. It's super sensitive. It just wants to bounce everywhere, which is, again, why I don't flip. Uh-huh. Right. Yep, yep. Because what are you going to do? You've got a little two-inch thing, and it's like you're not trying to shoot at the specific thing. You just want it to go back up. Right? Right, right. It's the ball in play. Yeah, it's not like you're trying to put the ball up a ramp like on a Godzilla thing. It's like that. And it's not like you're going to, you might be able to backhand a little bit, but the targets on the older EMs are like, you know, oh, hit this pop bumper in order. Right? Like you were talking about majorettes, one, two, three, four, five. Right? And then you might get an extra ball if, you know, Goodwill and then the creek don't rise or whatever. You can keep it up there. That's the right thing. Right.
    66:17
    John, I want to thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I hope you enjoyed being here with me today. Thank you so much. for having me. I appreciate the fact that you guys came down to the doldrums. This was how I would want to spend my Sunday morning. Especially if it's below zero. Who wants to be outside today? Thanks so much for inviting me and my wife to come down to the doldrums. We had such a great time. I know Tracy was a little nervous at first about it. She kicked your butt. In the strikes tournament, she won me. She was doing so well. That was awesome. That's the same way my wife does well. I cheer her on.
    66:56
    But yeah, Doldrums, 3rd Doldrums, February 7th, 2026. We'll look forward to it. Thanks so much. And that concludes today's episode. I want to thank you for joining me and John today on the EM Pinball Journeys podcast. Please look out for upcoming interviews. If you want to contact me, I can be reached at empinballjourneyspodcast at gmail.com. you can also follow me on Facebook or Instagram at Adirondack Pinball that's A-D-I-R-O-N-D-A-C-K please let me know if you have any questions comments corrections or suggestions of future EM pinball topics I'd love to hear about your journey so far thanks for listening I'll be back again in two weeks
    67:50
    you