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#102 Keith Elwin - The Classic Pinball Podcast

The Classic Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 18m·analyzed·Apr 19, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Keith Elwin traces his pinball journey from childhood arcades through repair work, operations, and competitive play.

Summary

Keith Elwin discusses his path from childhood arcade player to pinball technician, operator, and competitive player, spanning from age 8 through the early 2000s tournament scene. The conversation covers his early arcade experiences, transition into repair work and operation, tournament history starting in 1993, and his evolution as a player before joining Stern around 2016.

Key Claims

  • Keith Elwin started playing pinball at age 8 after his older brother (10 years senior) took him to arcades as cheap babysitting.

    high confidence · Keith Elwin, directly stated early in podcast

  • Keith attended trade school for electronics after high school, then worked for an electronics firm for 4-5 years before returning to pinball/amusement repair.

    high confidence · Keith Elwin describing his educational and early career path

  • Keith worked for Area Amusements, a large San Diego operator, where he learned electromechanical repair and worked on a wide variety of amusement equipment including pinball, gun games, slot machines, and novelty games.

    high confidence · Keith Elwin describing his operator experience

  • Keith's first tournament was in 1993 in Arizona, attended with friends Jim Belcedo and Neil Schatz.

    high confidence · Keith Elwin stating 'My first tournament was in 1993 in Arizona'

  • Keith transitioned from being primarily a competitive player to reducing tournament participation around 2016, largely due to Papa and Pinburgh tournaments closing.

    high confidence · Keith Elwin discussing why tournament play declined: 'no George was like yeah go to tournaments obviously Raymond goes to everything still it was my decision it just I enjoyed those two tournaments so much and when they went away'

  • Keith started operating pinball machines after a friend with a bar in San Diego approached him, eventually leading to operating machines at The High Dive and later at 82 in LA.

    high confidence · Keith Elwin describing his operator origin story

  • Early tournament formats (1990s) were simple high-score-on-one-game formats, with complex multi-stage formats emerging in early 2000s, significantly expanding when IFPA formed.

    high confidence · Keith Elwin: 'pretty much. I mean, you play just the one game, high score wins the tournament'

  • Keith owns or has owned classic Stern games including Skateball, Frontier, Flash Gordon, Beat the Clock, and games like Sea Witch and Meteor acquired later in life.

Notable Quotes

  • “I've been playing pinball since I was like eight years old. And then out of high school, yeah, I became a technician.”

    Keith Elwin @ early in podcast — Establishes his foundational connection to pinball from childhood and early career direction into technical work.

  • “It was cheap babysitting because, you know, my mom and my parents were divorced. And my mom would have him, you know, watch me. He didn't want to sit around and watch me. So he was like, hey, let's go to the arcade.”

    Keith Elwin @ early section — Humanizes his entry into pinball; reveals circumstantial rather than deliberate family introduction to the hobby.

  • “My first tournament was in 1993 in Arizona... It was actually a friend of mine that I worked with at the arcade who he would actually go to this show, not to compete, but just to buy and sell stuff.”

    Keith Elwin @ mid-section discussing tournament history — Documents a key milestone in competitive pinball history and the informal nature of early tournament discovery.

  • “I enjoyed those two tournaments so much and when they went away it just I don't know part of me died”

    Keith Elwin @ discussing Papa/Pinburgh closure around 2016 — Reveals deep emotional investment in specific tournament formats and explains his withdrawal from competitive play.

  • “My days of trying to learn rule sets I think are at an end. I know so many. There's no more room for new ones.”

    Keith Elwin @ late section discussing modern Stern games — Candid statement about cognitive limits and shift away from competitive rule mastery.

  • “I never saw Sea Witch on location when I was a kid. Bought one of those. I have a Lightning that I bought that I'd never seen.”

    Keith Elwin @ discussing classic game collecting — Illustrates how his later-life collecting fills gaps from his childhood arcade experience.

  • “These guys would have a, they'd get all the brand-new games from Stern, and they'd be like the test location... and say, okay, you want to buy that game now? Well, I'm not going to pay retail. The game's used.”

Entities

Keith ElwinpersonGeorgepersonDr. DavepersonJim BelcedopersonNeil SchatzpersonMarkpersonGreg FerrispersonArea Amusements

Signals

  • ?

    historical_signal: Discussion of 1990s/2000s operator practice where games at end of earnings life were destroyed rather than sold, often by sledgehammer, contrasted with modern collector preservation culture.

    high · Keith and Dave discuss how operators would intentionally destroy games like Quicksilver and other titles to prevent competition, 'he actually take them out back and take his sledgehammer and freaking trash them up'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Keith Elwin currently collaborates with Greg Ferris (classic pinball artist) to understand design intent and creative decisions on classic 1980s games.

    high · Keith states 'I work with Greg Ferris, who did all these, you know, art packages back in the early 80s. And so I'll pick his brains like, what were you doing here?'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Tournament formats evolved from simple single-game high-score competitions (1990s) to complex multi-stage formats in early 2000s, with major expansion after IFPA formation.

    high · Keith: 'you play just the one game, high score wins' vs. modern formats that are 'complex, you know, multi-stage process'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Bar locations with mixed classic and modern games show that casual players gravitate toward licensed IP and newer titles rather than older machines, despite employee preference for classics.

    high · Keith's observation at The High Dive and 82: employees loved Sea Witch, but casual players dumped quarters into 'Iron Man' and other licensed titles, forcing him to favor newer games

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Keith Elwin joined Stern Pinball around 2016, coinciding with his withdrawal from active competitive tournament play.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.234

0:30
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast. My name is George, and I'm joined by Dr. Dave. Hello, Dave. Hello, George. That was a long one this time.
1:13
Dave, about two and a half months ago, I reached out to Stern to see if I could get an interview with Keith Elwin. and believe it or not i got an answer back within like 24 hours sweet we've been going back and forth since early february trying to schedule this either he's well he was a little busy with the release of the uh james bond and you know doing all the promotion and whatever else so that kind of took him away from getting back to us finally we've agreed at a time and a date crossed fingers everything lines up zoom call goes well everybody's happy and we have some good questions so i'm excited about it i'm hoping to do a little bit different take than most people will yeah i think we will be talking about i think we have a great way we're going to uh roll with this i think it's going to be uh a lot different it's going to be our our style within it and it's going to be uh it's going to be great to hear his story and that kind of thing well i've heard bits and pieces of his story but i'd really like to frame it all at one time and get the chronology down. Because if I'm asking the question, I'm sure there's others wondering the same thing. So stay tuned. I have no idea how long it's going to go. I have no idea, other than some of the prepared questions I have, where it's going to lead. So stay tuned.
2:42
A little bit different in the classic pinball podcast variety show. Yes. Cue the variety music. I'd like to welcome a person with decades of background in pinball. Some of the words used to describe this person are talented, seasoned, and experienced.
3:34
He is well on his way to being the best and most decorated designer in pinball, if not already. Please welcome to the Classic Pinball Podcast, Keith Elwin. Welcome, Keith. Thank you. I think you're just describing I'm getting older.

high confidence · Keith Elwin discussing his collection preferences and purchases

  • Keith works with Greg Ferris (the artist who did art packages in the early 1980s) and picks his brain about design decisions on classic games.

    high confidence · Keith Elwin: 'I work with Greg Ferris, who did all these, you know, art packages back in the early 80s'

  • Keith currently does not actively learn new rule sets for modern Stern games and states 'My days of trying to learn rule sets I think are at an end.'

    high confidence · Keith Elwin in response to questions about new Stern games

    • Dr. Dave (guest/co-host) @ operator history discussion — Provides historical context on operator-manufacturer relationships and practices that led to games being destroyed rather than sold.

  • “Isn't that crazy to think that now every single pinball machine made, unless it's burned in a fire it's going to be here forever people just don't do that to their games anymore”

    Keith Elwin @ discussing game preservation — Reflects on how collector and preservation culture has fundamentally changed the lifespan and fate of pinball machines.

  • “You're about to find out”

    Keith Elwin (recalled anecdote) @ discussing 2004 California Stream tournament encounter — Captures a memorable competitive moment and reveals his confidence/attitude during peak tournament years.

  • “I think now with modern rule sets and, like you said, YouTube and all these really good players coming up, you see all kinds of different strategies now, which is actually pretty cool.”

    Keith Elwin @ discussing evolution of competitive play — Shows appreciation for democratization of pinball knowledge and evolution of competitive strategy across generations.

    • company
    The High Divevenue
    82venue
    Sterncompany
    Papaevent
    Pinburghevent
    IFPAorganization
    California Streamevent
    Skateball Deluxegame
    Frontiergame
    Sea Witchgame
    Flash Gordongame
    Beat the Clockgame
    Meteorgame
    Galaxygame
    X-Mengame
    Game of Thronesgame

    high · George asks 'around 2016, things came to a halt. Something happened then, didn't it?' Keith responds 'Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But they have nothing to do with my...No? That had mostly to do with Papa going away'

  • ?

    collector_signal: Keith Elwin acquires classic games in adulthood that he never encountered on location as a child (Sea Witch, Lightning, Quicksilver), filling experiential gaps decades later.

    high · Keith: 'I never saw Sea Witch on location when I was a kid. Bought one of those. I have a Lightning that I bought that I'd never seen.'

  • ?

    content_signal: George and Dave position this podcast episode as a comprehensive chronological biography interview, attempting to provide context and full story of Keith Elwin's path through pinball that hasn't been fully compiled in one place.

    high · George: 'i'd really like to frame it all at one time and get the chronology down. Because if I'm asking the question, I'm sure there's others wondering the same thing'

  • ?

    community_signal: Dr. Dave notes his career path parallels Keith Elwin's (college dissatisfaction → tech school → electronics work → pinball passion), suggesting a common pattern in pinball community entry.

    high · Dave: 'interestingly you were going through within your early life and your path through and it's like, yep, I was checking the same box we were kind of like parallel a little bit'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Modern competitive players have significant advantage through YouTube rule tutorials versus 1990s players who learned rules on-the-fly during tournaments with brand new games.

    medium · Keith discusses how modern players can look up YouTube tutorials while early players had to learn games like Independence Day 'on the fly' with no advance study

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Keith Elwin states he no longer actively learns new rule sets for modern Stern games, indicating cognitive limit to rule complexity mastery from decades of play.

    high · Keith: 'My days of trying to learn rule sets I think are at an end. I know so many. There's no more room for new ones.'

  • ?

    venue_signal: Newer machines with strong IP licensing significantly outperform classic games at bar locations despite employee preference for classics, driving operator inventory decisions.

    high · Keith: 'they didn't get the return of investment for the bar that they wanted' for classics, forcing him to focus on newer games to keep bar operators happy

  • ?

    historical_signal: Early 1990s tournaments were discovered through informal word-of-mouth and arcade posters rather than organized promotion, with low participation and simple formats.

    high · Keith's first tournament in 1993 was discovered through a friend's casual suggestion; tournaments advertised via 'poster inside an arcade' rather than formal channels

    • 3:53
    And wiser, right? You do have a lot of time in the pinball industry. Man, God, I've been playing pinball since I was like eight years old. And then out of high school, yeah, I became a technician. So, yeah, one way or the other, I've been in the industry.
    4:15
    You're jumping ahead on me, but that's really good. So I want to ask the question. I heard in another podcast that you started playing at around seven or eight years old. Is your brother responsible for that?
    4:28
    Yeah, it was, you know, cheap babysitting because, you know, my mom and my parents were divorced. And my mom would have him, you know, watch me. He didn't want to sit around and watch me. So he was like, hey, let's go to the arcade.
    4:43
    So he's like 10 years older than you are? Yeah, yeah. And he, you know, we didn't have a lot of money, so we had to make it last, so we would play pinball. And that's kind of how it started.
    4:57
    Where did you get your start in playing pinball? We all remember our first arcade. We used to, well, there was two places we used to go. One, I have no idea what the name is, but it was this tiny little arcade that had a Stern Galaxy. and the other was uh family fun center which is a massive arcade they must have had like 80 pinball machines but they were all pretty broken it was so uh if you actually wanted to play something at work we'd go to the smaller arcade and uh i know i played i think it was a stern stampede that's my earliest memory of playing pinball there was a little thrifty ice cream store down the street and they had one of those and i always wanted to play it and my parents just like, no, no, waste of money, kiddie gambling, whatever. But I think they finally let me play it once. That was my earliest memory of which game I actually played.
    5:54
    So you continued to play pinball through your youth. I'm guessing you were a regular at one of the arcades during your teenage years.
    6:04
    Yeah, pretty much. I think I was like 11 or 12. the Sears by me opened an arcade and it was it was amazing because you know my mom used to love shopping at Sears and I hated it and all of a sudden they opened an arcade and then I was like cool yeah I'll come with you and right she plopped me in the arcade and I remember they had a Frontier which really started my uh my love of pinball they had Firepower they had Hot Tip they They had a Captain Fantastic, they had a Grand Prix, and I'm sure they had one or two others. But it was great, and the games worked great. And, yeah, that's what really started it was these shopping trips I'd go on. It was fun independence because I was 11 or 12, and my mom would just leave me there while she was doing her thing.
    6:58
    You know, just made friends, and we played a lot of pinball. now did you ever during your teenage years work for an arcade or did you just spend money there uh yeah i i in um high school uh i had a friend who was actually uh an arcade technician and he they expanded he needed help and i was like wow i don't really know you know anything about working on game and he said oh that's fine I'll teach you and so uh I he showed me the ropes and then uh after high school uh I took a couple years of college and I really kind of missed you know working with my hands and so I decided to go to trade school for electronics and to get back into um not necessarily pinball repair but just you know any kind of work on my hands with electronics or any kind of troubleshooting. I really enjoyed that. And I did that through pretty much my late teens, early 20s. I'm curious, did you have a defined goal or major when you were in college or were you trying to figure out life? No, yeah, I was trying to figure out life. I mean, I wasn't bad at school, but I didn't really have the most fun. My mind's always wandering everywhere. And I always, that's one thing I was able to focus on was electronic technician work that I was doing at my job. And for whatever reason, I just really enjoyed it. And so, yeah, I decided to go to school for that. And, of course, at the time, I didn't really, after I was done with school, I didn't really pay the bills. Because it's not like it is now where they're so hard to find that you can actually make a decent living doing it. Back then, all these guys that used to work in electromechanical era were still active. There were plenty of people, not that many jobs. So I took a job at an electronics firm for four or five years. And then after that, I got back into it. After things had changed, everyone had retired and could have much more of a living. So when you left your job in electronics, is that when you went to work for someone else's arcade or is that when you had the epiphany and said, I can do this? No, I went to I worked for an operator, a very large operator in San Diego called Area Amusements.
    9:33
    And the great thing about that is, you know, I knew circuit boards, you know, I could troubleshoot down to component level and all that. But the thing I did not know was any kind of electro-mechanical repair at all. And I was intimidated. And my boss, Mark, at the time was like, no, no, if I can do it, you can do it. It's super easy. And I was like, okay, yeah, whatever you say. And then sure enough, you know, he just threw me into the fire and started bringing these games in here. You know, just fix it. Here's a schematic. You can figure it out. And, you know, once you actually just, like, look at the schematic, it's like, oh, yeah, this is kind of simple. and I did that for years I really enjoyed it actually um really enjoyed restoring uh not only pinball but like gun games and uh we also had like all kinds of novelty you know stuff that would come through like racetracks uh old slot machines and it was a really fun job I really enjoyed it so you got to work on a lot of amusement type of games besides just pinballs yeah pretty much any any electrical mechanical game from you know 60s on up uh i would work on the the helicopter games the driving games you know all those things i forgot about the helicopter game i put so many quarters in that game yeah yeah uh you know that big lunar lander game i think valley made that gigantic spinning moon yeah we we worked on so many cool things that was a great part of that job. It's, I mean, once you learn to work on electromechanical, everything, you know, everything else just seems so easy compared to that.
    11:15
    Do you remember, I was going to say the game, there's a driving game that had like a little record thing, spinning disc thing. And would you make, when you crash the whole, it would zoom in and zoom out. I think it was called, it was an electromechanical game as well like that. But before, the video game stuff, it was almost like a projection situation. Does that sound familiar at all?
    11:39
    I mean, there were so many of those. It's funny, you're recreating my childhood, Keith. The place that I played in had a lot of those types of amusement games in it down at the Jersey Shore, and I'm more of the age of your brother. So that's my recall of my youth. And Dave and I have talked about it in other podcasts. But that's great. I was always wondering how you made it from your youth to actually being a tech. And that kind of filled in all the gaps.
    12:17
    Yeah, I just kind of fell into it. And it turned out I really enjoyed it. And like I said, if it paid better, I would have stuck with it, you know, earlier in my life. But, you know, after all these guys started retiring in the, you know, early 90s, mid-90s, that's when they actually started seeking me to work for them. So that was cool.
    12:40
    So when did you make the transition to your own business? So I would collect pinball machines, you know. we you know as an operator that i worked for the games would resurrender their earning life and this is before you know the market exploded and i was like oh you know i really like that you know whitewater i'll give you a thousand bucks for it and i go yeah sure take it you know and it was like that for a long time but then pretty soon i found that i had like all these games and a friend of mine had a bar in san diego he was trying to operate games himself and he's like dude i i'm getting overwhelmed here can can we split these he's like i'll let you operate two games in here if you take care of my three games i was like yeah sure so it just kind of started off as a hobby and then um him and his wife got divorced and she got the bar and she said she kicked all his games out and just contacted me he said hey bring all your stuff down and uh so i had one location for a long time it did really well and it basically was like yeah this is cool but i'm not going to quit my job or anything for this you know it's just kind of pocket money um and you know i was happy with that everything was fine and then um this bar in la opened up called 82 and they were like, dude, we need tons of games. And I was like, all right, I can help with that. And, but I was a little unsure because it was all the way up in LA. And I was like, no, all right, you know, I'll just, you know, put all my newest games up there and we'll see how they do. And it ended up being bonkers and I didn't have time to work full time restoring games anymore. So I kind to mostly quit that. I'd still work for them one or two days a week.
    14:40
    Even up until I went to Stern, I was still working one or two days a week for this operator for every amusement just because I enjoyed the job. That was my transition from doing tech work to being an operator. You were kind of the race car driver and the race car mechanic, so to speak. with the pinball. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I only had two locations, but they both did so well that I was doing great.
    15:11
    Now, was one of those the one you mentioned in another podcast where you had the Sea Witch game? Was that one of ours? Yeah, that was the high dive. That was my first location. That's the name of the bar, the high dive? Yeah. Great name. I used to keep all, you know, kind of like the newest games And I remember when X-Men came out, I put X-Men Ali down there. Game of Thrones, when it came out, I put that down there. But I always had one spot where I had a classic machine. So I remember having a Royal Flush, a Meteor, a Sea Witch, Mousing Around.
    15:53
    But, man, that Sea Witch just killed. The employees loved it. and they would all play the Sea Witch. Yeah, they would all play the Sea Witch. They wouldn't play any of the newer games. So I was like, hmm, this is actually interesting. And, you know, because the older games, you know, once you go through them and get everything, you know, dialed in, they're fairly reliable. So I started experimenting with, you know, bringing older and older games to 82 in LA. And they didn't do as well, though. You know, people, you know, love them. Oh, I love that I can play this. But, yeah, they just didn't get the return of investment for the bar that they wanted. So I pretty much had to stick with newer games.
    16:34
    But probably for the right title, like Sea Witch, if you hit it right, then it's great. Then they'll fill the cash box, right? That kind of thing? Yeah. You would think that the casuals would gravitate towards that kind of thing, but it was kind of the opposite. They're like, ooh, Iron Man. And they start dumping quarters into that. Okay. I think it was mostly that the traffic through there was mostly, oh, there's a license I love. Let's play this.
    17:01
    Yeah, I know I sent it to you in one of the emails that Dave is a repair person for the pinball world here in the East Coast. And like you said, few and far between, especially with the skill set that he has. Dave, I'll let you jump in and talk a little bit about that Yeah, so Keith, so interestingly you were going through within your early life and your path through and it's like, yep, I was checking the same box we were kind of like parallel a little bit because I did a little bit of college didn't really, it wasn't my thing, I did some tech school and that's when I got into electronics and that's when I'd go down to the junkyard and pick my old toaster or an old phone and try to get them to work, take them apart, make things work. So very electromechanically inclined. And so that's in common there. And then you said you had a friend that said, hey, come on over. You can learn this stuff and fix this stuff. And I had a friend as well, the same kind of thing. I was trying to find old school pinball machines to play. By that time, I think in the 90s, they weren't really around. They had like the newer 90s games, which I wasn't really into. I wanted the old school still. And I said, oh, come to my house. And I came to his house and he said, how do you get these things? What do you say? Oh, I'll show you all about it. You know, just kind of like you did, you know. So I learned that. And then in the mid-90s, I started my business, restoration business, started these pinball restorations and got about 70 pinball machines, including that blackjack you saw and, you know, mostly classic Bally, Stearns, some Williams. And I even have some 90s stuff. and uh yeah it's been uh as you know it's like potato chips you just uh you can't just have one you know yeah yeah so the guy that got me into it uh dave used to uh work at the bowling alley at an arcade at the bowling alley and i would be there because i worked just down the street so you know i'd be there at lunch i'd be there after work he'd just see me there playing pinball all the time and i'd constantly complain to him you know hey this is broken this doesn't work and And he finally got to the point where he was like, you know what? Why don't I teach you, you know, to fix this? Here's the keys and here's the tools.
    19:16
    Basically, he's like, you know, he liked pinball, but he wasn't, like, super into it. And so I would, like, nitpick things. Hey, this target doesn't work. It can't be multi-ball. And he'd be like, you know, finally he just got to. This usually does this for a living because you find stuff that wrong more than I can because I don know what I supposed to do Yeah that how it started Cool And you had more of a you played pinball so much you actually knew how the game was supposed to play and he was more casual guy just operator He didn't really know the nuances like you did, right? Yeah, yeah. He would spend his entire life playing T2 and simpler games where I was playing World War I, Taxi, and some of the games that had a little more to them.
    20:00
    Okay. I have a question about ops. I bought some items from a gentleman out in California 20 years ago, and he told me the story of the bulldozer at the dump. Did you ever, with your travels and travails, ever have to dispose of pinballs, or was your op smart enough to sell them?
    20:32
    There were definitely... One of the things that would happen would somebody would drive up with a game that's been in their barn for 30 years and it's full of rats and, you know, kermites. And they'd be like, hey, how about you give us 50 bucks for this? And we're like, how about we not? And then they would just leave it, you know? Yeah.
    20:55
    Yeah, I've disposed of a Spectrum once, I remember, because it was just, it was so bad. But I kept the backlash, which was actually the only thing in decent shape.
    21:09
    Yeah, I mean, not too often, but there were a couple. Usually if the game had termites, we wouldn't bring it in, obviously.
    21:18
    So those would be – those are usually the ones that we trashed. Besides the Spectrum, there were no great – oh, my God, I can't believe you trashed Quicksilver or whatever. Nothing like that.
    21:33
    Yeah, this was like a regular – I guess the op just didn't want games to go to homeowners or to other people. So when the life expectancy was gone, they took it to the dump and disposed of it. I always thought that was crazy, but it happened regularly. The one that I went to, the fun and games where I cut my teeth on, and I was basically, these guys would have a, they'd get all the brand-new games from Stern, and they'd be like the test location, and they'd have the games, brand-new Sea Witch, brand-new Quicksilver, so much so that the guy would say after about five months or whatever, and say, okay, Sturm would say, okay, you want to buy that game now? Well, I'm not going to pay retail. The game's used. Well, you used it. Well, I don't care. It's not new anymore.
    22:15
    But he would actually take these games after a couple of years and they weren't making money. He wouldn't sell them to his competition. He wouldn't get competition. He didn't want it. So he actually take them out back and take his sledgehammer and freaking trash them up and bust them up and throw them in the dumpster. It was sad. Yeah. I mean, isn't that crazy to think that now every single pinball machine made, unless it's burned in a fire it's going to be here forever people just don't do that to their games anymore that's true because nowadays the games last they're not trashing them but back in that time frame so the older school games they're as time goes on even more so with the older games because like I said they got trashed they didn't know what they were overbuilt from what they were they would last forever if you treat them right yeah Yeah. You know, you get some of these cool games in here with old operator stickers or high scores scratched in them. I always leave those because I think it's cool. Yeah. Patina, it's called. Yeah. Yeah. I like that, too.
    23:17
    I'd like to take things in a little bit different direction if I could. When did you get started playing competitive pinball? and I want to I guess state that I don't remember I got into the hobby 20 some odd years ago they were few and far between and obviously we didn't have you know the internet like it is today we didn't have cell phones so it's a lot easier and we'll talk about gameplay in a little bit I heard one of your comments um what do you think you know when did you get started and Were they on a regular basis out in California?
    24:01
    Yeah, the tournaments were few and far between. My first tournament was in 1993 in Arizona. It was actually a friend of mine that I worked with at the arcade who he would actually go to this show, not to compete, but just to buy and sell stuff. He was like, oh, you know, you should go to the show. They have a tournament. And I was like, oh, yeah? Huh. and you know i was like that's cool i i didn't really think that much about it and then um like the following year it's the same thing he was like hey you should go go play in the tournament and i was like you know what yeah why not you know because i didn't know how good i was compared to anyone else i just like yeah i know i'm the king of the arcade here but you know that doesn't necessarily mean anything so yeah so in 93 my friend and i uh went out there and it was like You know, it was 118 degrees or whatever in the war. Yeah, we didn't have air conditioning.
    24:59
    And it was like the most miserable trip I've ever been on. But, you know, the tournament itself, it was actually kind of fun. And that's what kind of triggered that whole process.
    25:12
    Anybody from that time frame that you met that you still know? Yeah. So also it was Jim Belcedo and Neil Schatz. I knew his name was going to come up. Yeah. The three of us all went to our first tournament together, not knowing, you know, hey, we're going to be doing this a very long time. What year was that, approximately? 93. Okay, wow. Right. That's really going back. Yeah. Twilight Zone had just come out.
    25:40
    Wow. And tournaments back then, it wasn't really much of a bulletin board, more of a poster inside an arcade. Is a tournament going on, that kind of thing?
    25:50
    Yeah. pretty much. I mean, you play just the one game, high score wins the tournament. It's not like it is now where it's, it's complex, you know, multi-stage process. Okay. Interesting. When did that change?
    26:06
    I would say the early two thousands, you know, like the pinball expo and this other chairman were basically, yeah, here's five bucks, put a score on. And then, you know, I think what it was top 12, top eight or whatever, that they'd have like head-to-head one game, you know, sudden death, kind of a final, quick two-hour final. And then it really changed, especially when the IPA came around. All the tournament finals became really long and, you know, day-long process.
    26:39
    Did you hit Penn Fantasy in Vegas in 98, in those late 90s? Did you ever hit that? Yeah, the one with Slash was there? Yeah, I was there. Okay. I know what Slash, I remember because Tim Arnold was running it, right? And this is the one where he had a bank of six Captain Fantastics for the tournament.
    27:01
    Yeah, I remember. I don't remember which is which. I remember I went to all three of those. Okay. Yeah, I remember they had a bank. Yeah. And there's, I think, maybe 8 Ball Deluxe went here. Probably. Yeah, that sounds right. Yeah. I remember in C I went to California Stream in 2004 and there was a no hold in poker tournament that you were a part of and I didn't know who you were and what you were but I was up with you on Black Knight and you played a ball and didn't do that well and I played a ball and kicked butt and then I went all in and she looked at me and said you have no idea who I am do you and I said no who are you and she said you're about to find out I said that? Yeah, you did.
    27:47
    That doesn't sound like me. Are you sure? You looked at me. It's like, really? Like you were shocked that I was going to go in? Because you were already established as a really good player, but I didn't really know who was what. I knew Neil Schatz was there, Keith Bowen, Owen Kearns was there, Eric Stone was there. but I didn't really know you at the time but I found out real quick that's funny I can't believe I said that makes for a good story I saw you but dared not approach you at 2020 in disc you were really into it and I'm like oh there's Keith Elwin and you played well but I believe the winners of the Classics, which I was there for,
    28:47
    was Kaylee George and Eric Stone, if I recall correctly. Do you remember that end disc? Was that the final one at the old venue?
    28:59
    Yes, it was. Yeah, Begley. I remember that Classics tournament. I remember playing I think it was a Grand Prix or something. Yeah, I think that It was in the box. The one that I remember. They have multiple classics tournaments, so they all kind of blend together. Right. Well, I kind of figured that with you. You're not playing as often as you once did. And it's funny. I went out and looked real quick and saw all the tournaments that you had won in the early and mid-2010s. And then all of a sudden, around 2016, things came to a halt. Something happened then, didn't it?
    29:45
    2016? Yeah. Didn't you get a job? Were you a present employer? No? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But they have nothing to do with my... No? That had mostly to do with Papa going away. Papa and Pinbird. oh yeah it's true I thought you might have been a little busy that's all no no no no George was like yeah go to tournaments obviously Raymond goes to everything still it was my decision it just I enjoyed those two tournaments so much and when they went away it just I don't know part of me died well I heard you're going overseas for a tournament next month right yeah yeah i do i do love the uh ifpa tournament it's a fun format um yeah i mean i still compete i still got indisc i still got ifpa once in a while i hit up a district 82 now and then and uh yeah i don't know roll sets anymore i don't play anymore everyone thinks they ask me these questions on these new stern games is like dude i don't go in the office. I don't know. I haven't played that game.
    31:04
    Oh, really? But you live in the Chicago area, right? Yeah, I do. I'm not giving excuses, but it's just... My days of trying to learn rule sets I think are at an end. I know so many. There's no more room for new ones.
    31:22
    Yeah, and you were saying, basically, I was listening to another podcast, and you were saying that a lot of the kids these days have a way better advantage. They can go to YouTube thing and look at the rule sets and they can just bang, come up to speed so quick versus what we had to do years ago and just kind of, you know, go through it yourself kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, when I was like competing at my highest, it would be very rare to like a lot of these tournaments, you didn't know the rules, you didn't go in on the game because it would be a brand new game. It's like, all right, here's an Independence Day. Good luck learning the rules on the fly. You know, all it takes is one person, hey, look, I can just do this all day, and everyone just copies that strategy. That's kind of how it was back in the day. But I think now with modern rule sets and, like you said, YouTube and all these really good players coming up, you see all kinds of different strategies now, which is actually pretty cool.
    32:19
    Yeah, people can actually copy off each other and kind of take the – oh, I'm going to use that on my thing. I'm going to put that in my toolbox. You know, they can kind of – yeah. Yeah. What are your favorite classic pinballs, EM and Solid State, pre-1985? What would you say, like your favorite classic ballets that you like?
    32:38
    I'm glad you said ballets, plural. Okay, I'll start 1985. Beat the Clock. I have one of those. Love it.
    32:48
    Flash Gordon, Frontier, Ballet, Ballet, Ballet. Skateball? Oh, I'm not hearing the game that I wanted to hear. I thought it would be Skateball. I know, I'm getting there. The whole premise of this call, Keith. I know, I'm getting there.
    33:00
    How about Skateball? Yes, Skateball. Skateball Deluxe. And before Skateball, probably not too much. I was never really into the six-digit valleys, but, yeah, go ahead.
    33:15
    I loved your comment, I own one, I'm a skier. Hot-dogging. I love your comment. With a dumb third flipper. I still like the game. It's a dumb third flipper. It's just a separate flipper, yes.
    33:32
    Actually, I really like 8-Ball Champ, but I have a special ROM in mine, so you actually have to play the game.
    33:39
    Oh, special ROM. I got to hear about that on the download later. All right. But, yeah, Skateball was just this place called Steve's Arcade by my house. They had a Flash Gordon, Skateball, 8-Ball Deluxe. And, yeah, I would play that Skateball all day. I mean, I loved the way that thing shot.
    34:02
    And when I was old enough and I couldn't afford a game, I was looking to buy games. And I saw a really nice one, but it was in Canada. So I had to pay a little extra to get it here, but I still have it to this day. I've had it probably 20-something years. And how about Canada? That's funny that you say Canada because my first skateball came from Calgary through Montreal. And I sold that game to my buddy in New Jersey and I ended up buying another game.
    34:34
    Yeah, I mean, it's the cool thing now is I work with Greg Ferris, who did all these, you know, art packages back in the early 80s. And so I'll pick his brains like, what were you doing here? You know, what were you thinking here? especially on Frontier I was like why is this guy bare chested with a knife fighting a grizzly bear he was like dude I don't know I had two Frontiers back in the day and I liked them back when I was a kid playing them but they didn't grab me as much when I had them here I think it's the crickets just got to me yeah i didn't i didn't play nearly as many uh classic sterns at the time which is a great thing because then when i got older uh i would start going to show and start playing some of these classic sterns i'd never seen before oh really okay yeah like i had i had not played a Quicksilver until I was probably like 40 years old. Wow. Awesome. I want one. So I bought one.
    35:38
    Same with Sea Witch. I never saw Sea Witch on location when I was a kid. Bought one of those. I have a Lightning that I bought that I'd never seen. I mean, it's not the greatest game, but that's interesting. Yeah.
    35:51
    Meteor and Galaxy were like two Stern games that were all over town. They're everywhere. Aside from those, once in a while you'd see a Flight 2000, but aside from those games, I never saw any classic Sterns in there. I get a pretty big classic Stern collection, and I love my Stargazer. Do you have any time on that? I love Stargazer. Big game I love. Yeah, I'm trying to think of all the classic Sterns I have. Ali?
    36:21
    I like Ali. I've never owned one. Again, in another podcast, you talked about a shot in your most recent game, Bond 60. That rope-a-dope shot? Yeah.
    36:34
    That's what it started off as, yeah. So, you know, Stern actually wanted me to do a take on Galaxy for the Bond 60th. Interesting. Yeah, you know, I'm like looking at this play field, and I was like, this skill shot takes up a third of the play field, and it's not even interesting. So I quickly just trashed that idea. It's like, you know, I'm just going to make my own game. and yeah, the rope-a-dope, and both, you know, Cheetah and Ali have that same kind of rope-a-dope spinner shot, and I was like, this is, you know, I want to do this, and then I kind of like, well, you know, if I have it curved just a little bit more, I can have it come back down the left side, kind of like, you know, Ali does where he can hit those drops on the side, and it's kind of evolved from there.
    37:19
    And 9-ball, too, had that same kind of horseshoe thing as well. Oh, yeah, yeah. I have a nine ball, too. That's a great game. Yeah. Oh, I love the spinners. Yeah. And I think, yeah, I love all the spinners you did on the Bond 60. It reminded me, again, of the classic Stern stuff, like the, again, Stargazer. That is a crap load of spinners. Big game as well. Cheetah.
    37:44
    Yeah, I mean, you put spinners and drop targets all over the place, you're going to have a good time. Yeah, exactly. Well done.
    37:51
    Thanks. How about for classic Williams? Do you have any, like, the old school, you know, late 70s, early 80s stuff? Anything come to mind for that? I really liked Time Warp with normal flippers.
    38:06
    I used to play a lot of Tri-Zone. That's a fun game. Yeah. Firepower. I hated Gorgar. I just didn't like that game ever. You know how many people come to me and say, can you restore my Gorgar? I'm on, like, Gorgar number eight right now, restoration.
    38:22
    Great. Never got into that game as a kid. I hated it. Used to play a lot of Black Knight, Jungle Lord.
    38:31
    Firepower, you said? Firepower 2. Also, yeah, both Firepowers. How about Alien Poker? Oh, yeah. Loved Alien Poker. I loved Sorcerer, Comet, Space Shuttle.
    38:44
    I liked all those games. Like I said, pretty much everything but Gorgar I was into. How about Blackout? Yes yes Blackout I used to throw in a Warlock which is pretty much the same game But yeah love the Blackout just because it talked I didn think it was a super great game but just Blackout Right yeah Condition rad Yeah, all those Williams talking games were great.
    39:15
    Cool. And how about for a classic Gottlieb game? Is there anything there from the late 70s, early 80s? I used to play a lot of Amazing Spider-Man. I used to play a lot of Genie.
    39:30
    There weren't that many Gottlieb games on location. Surprisingly, there were more Atari games on location out here than there were Gottlieb.
    39:42
    Classic Gottlieb stuff. So things like Pinball Pool, Joker Poker, any of those you played back in the day? No, not at all. Wow, really? Okay. Like I said, Genie, Spider-Man, tons of Valley E.M.s, William E.M.s. but very, very few Gatlings. So out in California, basically, there's mostly Bally stuff out there, Bally and Williams and a little bit of Stern?
    40:10
    Bally, Williams, a little bit of Stern, a lot of Atari. Well, yeah, Atari, that's where I wanted to go, Atari.
    40:18
    You know, a lot of stinkaroos for Atari, unfortunately, but Superman was a fantastic game. Superman was great. I remember I shopped one of those, and that thing had like 90 star posts and I was like, oh my god. It's crazy how many star posts are in that game.
    40:35
    Speaking of Superman, I'm going to show you something. Hold on a second. I got two of these. Oh, nice. So I have a friend of mine who does restoration on play fields and I took these out of two games and he airbrushed, touched up, clear coated. They're like Newell Stock Superman play fields. I have two games I'm going to make out of these, but they come out real nice. I think it was California Extreme that one guy brought one year all those Atari pins, Neutron Star, Roadrunner. Roadrunner 4x4. Yeah. Did you get to play any of that stuff?
    41:15
    Obviously, none of the rare stuff, but Superman, that awful game Middle Earth, Atari. Yeah. what's the one, the Time Fantasy? Was that it? Time Fantasy, yep, that's another one. Or Time 2000? Was it Time 2000? Yeah. No, the arcade, the big one, the Family Fun Center, had like a row of Atari games.
    41:40
    I hated them, but you know, as a kid, so if I saw a credit on it, I would play them. But Superman was the only one I would actually put a token in. Because that's the only game Steve Ritchie did that one. and he's the only one that's i guess said you know what i'm gonna design this game i'm gonna put flippers where they're supposed to be right next to each other we're not this offset stuff you guys kept doing yeah it's like it's like when you have an engineer design a play field they're like yeah people will love this he's like no i think steve was like no people don't love this they don't love this no they hate this yeah that was and i actually did play uh neutron star was their only regular-sized pin they made. They only made one of them, a prototype. But that's actually a nice playing game. It had no artwork on it. It was a white wood and just black plastics or whatever. But if they ever came up with that game, that would have been a good game to play, along with also Roadrunner. They only made two of those. That was a lot of fun because they had just Roadrunner go beep, beep. When you go around a big long shot, a big loop shot, it would do that.
    42:49
    So California Stream had this big bank, and I forget the collector who brought them all. I think he used to work for Atari. But he made like a big horseshoe of all these Atari games, and he had all of them. So in that one section, you got to play the whole history of Atari. But that was like a one-shot deal. I've never seen that happen again anywhere. Yeah, yeah, I remember that. And then they had the – I think maybe it was Pentagogo where they had like a row of like seven or eight spirits lined up, which was amazing to see. Oh, yeah, another rare game. Yeah, that was a fun game too. I'm looking at Neutron Star. That does look interesting.
    43:25
    It looks like a little bit of Dragon Fist in there. Yeah. Dragon Fist meets Stars. There you go. Oh, Stars. What do you think of Stars? Oh, Stars. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I like turning Stars, those specials, into 100,000 points. So you nail those things. You get the points on it, which is great. The best thing that ever happened to Starz was their soundboard wasn't ready yet because, man. Oh, yeah, please. Trident, Nugent. Oh, my God, those sounds are so bad.
    44:03
    A 1980s cash register. Beep, beep, beep, beep. Yeah, yeah. So, man, if Starz came out with that, I don't think I'd ever have played it. Yeah, that was a great game and a great game, right time, right, you know, chime box. especially the chime box of Stern, as you know, had the wooden chime box. It almost had a more melodic xylophone kind of feel to it than other chime boxes. Yeah, yeah. Now, Steve Kirk was the master.
    44:31
    Yeah, and I have all these games, but not a lot of room to set them up. I do have all of Steve Kirk's, the three games he did. I think he only did three for Stern, as far as I know. He did Stars, Meteor, and Nineball. It would be great to have all three of those together. He'll take credit for Flight 2000.
    44:51
    Is he part of that, Flight 2000? He said he designed it. Because Harry Williams did it, right, supposedly? Yeah. I remember reading somewhere Steve said, that's my design. They just made it a wide body. Oh, yeah, because that's where Gametron. Gametron came from, yeah. Yeah. Gary Stern told me that story. I was like, oh, okay. Okay. Now you know the rest of the story. That's a good one. I like that. That's so cool. I never really played. I've seen a Game of Thrones. I never played one. Have you played one of those? I have. Yeah. It's, it's, I mean, it's flight 2000 narrow body. It's, I think it has a single pop bumper and, um, I really like flight 2000, so I'm not gonna, uh, say it's better or worse, but, um, have you played the new rule set? you know, well, I would just say enhanced rule set of flight 2000. No. Is this stop stealing locks or something?
    45:46
    Um, No, this guy, he's out of Pennsylvania, and he does some really cool ROM enhancements. He takes apart the code, can add things in. Basically, it's like if the designers had more time to make a game better, that's kind of where his head's at. So he's done some really nice enhancements on Flight 2000 that I can always share with you sometime and send you the file if you want. If you have a Flight 2000, you want to try it out. Actually, I sold my Flight 2000 with a one-of-a-kind ROM, actually, where I think bonus went to $19,000 instead of $10,000. Yeah, so this one does too. Yeah, this one does the same thing. Actually, I think it even goes higher. It might go to $29,000. Oh, I wonder if it's the same guy. He just built up what he sent me a long time ago. Could be. It could be the same guy. Yeah. He's the only guy I know that does it. Okay, yeah, that's the same guy. Yeah, because I remember I was complaining. He's like, this bonus is worthless. He's like, here, try this. Okay, so yeah, same guy. So he's done even more on that now. He's done a craft. It's on Pinside. He puts it on Pinside too, so you can actually find all his stuff there. Yeah, I remember having to do some weird ROM pack conversion because it wouldn't fit on a standard, whatever it was, 32K EEPROM.
    47:03
    Right, but nowadays, well, I think he did it. He actually found more spot in the ROM. He robbed some other stuff and made it all fit. but nowadays with the Weebly board, you actually can take a 512K ROM and throw it all in there and just throw it in the Weebly board and boom, you can do whatever you want with that board. Yeah. Cool.
    47:24
    Yeah. You know, he's done some great stuff. I like a lot of his stuff I do with, I do tournaments. I ran a classic pinball league for five years, just all classic games. I had like six different locations of houses and had a lot of good time with that. But part of it was I wanted to have him do some special ROMs in the ballets for me because ballets, you can't separate the special and the extra ball. You can't make a special worth 50,000 points, let's say, an extra ball with an extra ball. It's one or the other. Everything's worth a novelty. Everything's worth an extra ball or everything's worth, you know, that kind of thing. So I had him separate on the ballet stuff. So now in tournaments, you would get points for specials and you'd still get your extra ball if we were playing extra balls. Oh, nice. Yeah, that is annoying. Yeah. But Stern knew back then to separate them. Stern always separated them. I think every other company separated them. Bally did not, at least for a certain range. But, yeah. They say how these sounds would default to chimes and battery died. Yeah, exactly. I go to so many people that will bring me their game, and it's like they played it forever like that. And I turn on the 03s on 16, 17, 18 on the software, and they go, wow, I never knew the game could do that.
    48:41
    Well, because unfortunately, like some of these games have operated a long time. The operator didn't even know that. The battery died. They never replaced it. So yeah, you're up there playing Frontier with bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. Yeah, it's like, oh. And you know why? And you obviously know why they did that, because back when they were doing this, going from chimes and going to real sounds and that kind of thing, they didn't want to lose their audience. So they wanted to keep a chime function in there so people would still not be afraid of embracing the future kind of thing. Yeah. I just don't know why it defaulted to it. Yeah. Why did it default that way? Yeah. Well, I guess they're – I think they were gun-shy. I think the management of these companies must have been, well, let's just play it safe. And, you know, I'm thinking – you know.
    49:25
    So you don't really operate anymore. You're all done with that. You've got Stern full-time now, right? Or do you do any kind of – This is correct. Okay. Yeah. Do you miss operating games?
    49:38
    No, no. I miss working on them. No. Working on games on location with people around you is not fun. Working on them in the garage or whatever, restoring them, that is fun.
    49:54
    So you actually still work on your own games, that kind of thing, from time to time? No, not really.
    50:01
    Since I moved to Chicago, I don't have a garage space. So I have all like I have a Flash Gordon, a Frontier, and then the rest are all new Sterns in my little game room. So I don't really do that much work. But I do miss it. I do plan on get some shop space here sooner or later so I can set up all my games and storage and also start, you know, getting back to doing restorations because it's fun. I enjoy it. It's fun. I do it like 24-7 and it's like I'm afraid of getting burnt out, but I'm not getting burnt out yet. But it's like I feel like I got to do something else and take a walk or something, you know. When I was 16 years old, I saw an ad in the newspaper for this guy selling a Xenon for like $100. I was like, oh, my God, yeah. So I had my brother drive me, and I get there, and the guy's like, oh, yeah, he had a storage unit. It was like a two-story storage unit with power, and he had all these pinballs. It was crazy. And so I was like, okay, yeah, I'll buy this game. it worked and and as i was loading up in the truck he's like oh by the way you can have this he handed me this nos xenon playfield oh wow wow yes please yeah so i was like okay cool and then i mean it was playfields worn it wasn't terrible but it was pretty worn and then i was like i wonder if i should try to you know install this myself and uh yeah after i kind of got bored the game a little bit i was like yeah i'm gonna go for it so yeah here i was 16 years old doing a playfield swap, never having done one and having no guidance, because obviously there was nothing online or anything. I just looked at it. I mean, other than the ground braid kind of being a pain in the butt, it went pretty smooth.
    51:41
    So we put it together and turned it on and good to go, or you must have had some gremlins. I did have a gremlin. The ground braid was touching a coil lug, and so when I first turned it on,
    51:53
    120 incandescent bulbs. it's kind of fun. Boom, big flash. But I immediately saw it because it kind of arc welded itself together. So I fixed that and then went to Mouser Electronics, bought a whole boatload of bulbs and we were good to go. Cool.
    52:13
    I have a question about one of the games that you see in Dave's game room. your thoughts on fathom and have you had the opportunity to play the remake uh i have not played the remake i own a fathom uh i really like it um i do wish uh when you play in a tournament you're kind of just doing the same thing over and over and i kind of wish um there was a home run to make it so you just can't at least you would have to alternate locking balls rather than just keep shooting the one on the right. But other than that, I really like the game. I'm not selling mine.
    52:57
    Yeah, you and everyone else. And if they are, they're five figures or more. Oh, my God. If you want to hear this story, I actually went there to work on it, and the lady was like, you know what, we don't even really want this. and this was, I don't know, maybe 2003,
    53:20
    somewhere early 2000s before Fathom values have exploded. And it's like, she's like, what will you give me for it? And I was like, you know, I don't want it. And then she was persistent. She's like, just make me an offer, make me an offer. And it was like, I don't know, 700 bucks. She was like, how about 800? 800, you can have it. And I was actually reluctant. I was like, all right, fine. Just so we stopped bugging me, I picked it up. I threw it in my storage unit, and it sat there for like two years. And all of a sudden, boom, the value on the thing just exploded. And I was like, huh, I guess I made a pretty good deal. Score. Yeah. You did very well. I remember my buddy Jack buying one around that same time frame, and I remember him saying, wow, you know, $1,000 for this Fathom. That's a lot of money. And then, like you said, a couple years later, you know, the numbers just went through the roof. Crazy. Fathom was one of my first games I actually got. The first game I got was a Galaxy. I think I paid $70 for that. And then my buddy of mine who got me into pinball got me into fixing things. I think Fathom was the second one. And I paid $250 for that, working, but worn out play field. That was a score. That was in the early, I think, late 90s. and then I scored another fathom for like 850 bucks. I got shit from Oklahoma,
    54:46
    um, late nineties, but I got a lot of good scores. Flash Gordon's worth here in a box. Xenon's for 50 bucks. Uh, the eight ball Luxie see right there. That was 300 bucks. Wow. Uh, but of course these are all, I restored all these, so they weren't in this nice of shape, but they were pretty nice anyway. You know? Yeah. Like I said, my Xenon for a hundred bucks with NOS plate fuel. Yeah. I picked up my Frontier for $300, and I picked up an NOS Playfield off eBay for like $75. It was crazy.
    55:17
    You know, those were the days, man. Deals to be had. And I don't know why I've never come across an 8-ball deluxe.
    55:24
    I've never had one in my collection. It's one of my favorite classic games. Wow, really? And they made so many different iterations of the game. I like the 81, the best back here. they get the short head one they get the swing out door thing I hate the swing out door so much yeah I know not a fan of that fall of particle board either that the game is made out of from the mid 80's yeah my 8 ball champ and my beat the clock I hate opening the back box I feel like the back glass is going to explode in my hand don't want to get those wet either I have an 8 ball champ too that I like as well. The same guy, did he do that software for you too? Yes, yes. He made it so you can only collect 100,000 once. So you're actually focused on collecting pool balls over just collecting that other case over and over. Oh, I like that. Okay, that's good. Any tweak you can do in a ROM like that that'll make it so you just can't rate the same shot over and over again. That's why on eight ball deluxe, I have it turned on so that only I only get one extra ball per game on that. So he doesn't keep shooting that same shot in the left all the time. Yeah, yeah. I do feel there's a good balance in eight ball deluxe between shooting that left side all the time and then going for a collect bonus. But yeah, in a tournament, if that left side's set to I know there's some setting where it sets after you get to 70 every time or something like that. I remember there was some Yeah, you can mess around with it. It might go 70 special, 70 special, back and forth. There's a bunch of different things you can do with it. The other ROM thing that was done by, I think a guy was in Sweden or something. I forget the guy's name. But I helped him develop a test site for him for different ROM ideas for these games. And 8-Ball Deluxe was one of them for different sound cues and this kind of thing. We wanted to make it so that when you spell deluxe in order, you get some big prize for that. So I said, how about 500,000 points? Because it's really tough to spell it in order. Yeah. And I've only done it maybe just a handful of times. But that's a nice little – I don't know if you ever played one that had that on it, that ROM. No, no. And you can start the deluxe anywhere you want. If you start at the U, okay, now you're going to keep going down after U. You'll go to L and that kind of thing. You know, or however you spell deluxe, I'm going to lose my mind.
    58:01
    Barakor has those drop targets. Oh, yeah, Barakor. I haven't played that in a long time. On your Flash Gordon, do you have your extra balls limited? I have mine only get two. The one on the right, the one in the middle, that's it. So five balls maximum per game. This is two extra balls per game.
    58:22
    Yeah, that's the only way to have that right side extra ball. Yeah Otherwise All day long You sit there And just It gets boring Yeah And I wish I kind of wish Skateball had the same thing With that That right saucer Because that game Is just unplayable in tournaments because you just you know you knock down Skate a couple times and you just shoot that saucer all day long for I think it was like 50 or 100K. I don't remember.
    58:49
    I don't remember either. So there's no ROM adjustment, no special home ROM for that? Did someone figure that out too? No, no, there isn't because, yeah, that game has always shown up in tournaments and the top players just do the same thing. Just complete skate once now, shoot the right saucer, let it kick out to the bottom of the flipper, repeat.
    59:10
    It's a shame because it's such a great game, but if you're just strictly playing safe, that's how you play it in a tournament, and it's really not fun.
    59:20
    And there were some guys out there doing this, or you could just flip your flipper back and forth on a skateboard and just keep getting the cheapy points on the right end lane, right? well you know kings of steel right oh king's the right target yeah yeah yes it's the same thing you turn scape all of that basically once that value gets up and then that's all you hit yeah just like kings of steel it's like oh this this is super fun it's like i don't think there's a round fix for that either which is crazy you know some guy did a modification on that i think he's from the north shore over here um he actually put a saucer kick uh to kick out to the left and he opened up the area so that it kicks out into the pop bumpers instead. Oh, yeah, I think I've seen that. Yeah, brilliant. That's what it should have been. Yeah, it worked out pretty well. So that's not a bad little hack on that one. It was like a last second cost cut and they just left the rules, I think. Because it didn't make any sense. It's like, why would you have this one target worth so much and nothing else? Right.
    60:18
    What were you going to say, George? You guys are doing great. I have three questions, but whenever you're done going through, it's interesting to listen to you guys go off on all these games. It's great.
    60:33
    Well, no, I mean, you both have high familiarity with it. Look, I don't have the depth of knowledge and I certainly don't have the brain capacity to remember everything.
    60:45
    I'm more the facilitator than the expert, but it's great to hear you guys going back and forth. good and so so keith have you you have you have much time on superman you you own one or you play one a bunch before i've never owned one but uh yeah like i said growing up that wall of atari superman was the only one i would play yeah and especially the atari flipper mechs were just you know like a soggy wet noodle and uh what you can do now you can put williams flipper mechs in this thing and it plays really well. It's not overpowered at all. It plays like a nice, strong Atari flipper, how it's supposed to. It plays pretty correct, but it's not wimpy. Those were the worst flippers in history. Yeah, they were crap.
    61:36
    William's flipper mech worked great in that game. Yeah. I have a question. Sure. Keith, what's your favorite shot in classic pinball?
    61:57
    In classic pinball. I mean, I really, really think it's locking a ball on nine ball. When that bank shot, when you hit the spinner and the bank's right in there. Yeah, I like that too. that's definitely one of my favorites and that's hard to beat I think you're going to have to set your game up again Dave even though it's not a shot I was fascinated by this as a kid Valley knockout that little center zigzag pattern where you had to shoot the ball in from the top and then watch the ball zigzag into the saucer. I was really fascinated by that, even though it was mostly on the plunge. I thought that was super cool.
    62:55
    I'm looking it up right now here. While you're looking, this is going to be my last question. The premise of this show, and I really do thank you for taking the time out to do this. I didn't think we'd go anywhere near this length. But the whole premise of this particular interview was going to be is Skateball your favorite classic ballet game? But I'm going to take it to the next level because of the games that you've spoken about during this show and other podcasts. I'm going to give you four games.
    63:33
    You've identified them as all being games that you really like playing from ballet. I'd like you to tell me which one is your favorite okay frontier skateball eight ball deluxe and flash gordon flash gordon oh it's so hard uh those are all sentimental and you're gonna ask me strictly on rules you don't have to identify it that way it's just more like Desert Island Pin if you only take one with you okay that's better than using the other everyone who knows me knows I love Frontier I love Skateball the Lutz is a great playing game but I think the difficulty and the rule set of its time,
    64:37
    Flash Gordon would probably be the one I'd take. I think the words you used were brutal. Yeah, brutal. I have never rolled a Flash Gordon, and that's saying something. That's how hard that game is.
    64:55
    Is it something that, if it's in a bank at a Classics tournament, would you pick that game? Oh, God, no.
    65:03
    Okay. I mean, ironically, I did pick it for the World Championship final game, but that's because I only had, like, two other picks available and they were games I wanted to play. So I thought it would be fun. You know, it's like, here's a game where the World Championship comes down on a game of Flash Gordon, which everyone knows is, like, one of the most brutal games ever made.
    65:24
    I remember playing it as a kid and putting quarter after quarter. I was like, what am I doing? I mean, I played eight on the left next door. I'm losing at this game. So that's why it didn't do that well in the arcade, I think, because you couldn't win. It's great in the collector community because it's a brutal game and keeps coming back for more.
    65:45
    Yeah, and it has great audio. One of the first talking games, and it was just a whole awesome experience. But yeah, in an arcade, yeah, forget it.
    65:57
    Certainly was a moneymaker. Took my money. To me, Skateball was easy. 8-Ball to Lutch was even easy compared to Flash Gordon, and that's definitely not an easy game.
    66:11
    I have one last question, and I'm done. Would you like to have the opportunity to do another single-level game?
    66:24
    Yes, absolutely. I would like to make a more classic layout as opposed to what Bond 60th was. Okay, I'll bite. I'm not sure. So Bond 60th. I completely understand that comment. Yeah, because Bond 60th is a really nice throwback. But you're saying there was still too much newer stuff in the mix as well. You want to keep a little more pure classic, you're saying, you want to do, if you had the chance? Yeah, no LCD screen. I want to do a game much, you know, not based on flow and more like how a classic game would actually play. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Now I wonder, so this might be an experiment for Stern doing this. They're going to say, okay, let's see how this thing is received, to see how it goes. And maybe, because over the years, so many people have poo-pooed the idea of going back to a classic games like, oh, that will never sell. That time is over. People want, you know, more and more rules, rules, rules, and more ramps, ramps, ramps, and lights, and, you know, just build, build, build. and there's been a voice back saying, no, people might like a throwback.
    67:38
    I'm just wondering if it looks like Stern's trying to experiment a little with that and see how that goes. They've done it with the Beatles they did it with and now your 60th one.
    67:48
    Maybe we might see more of this kind of stuff then. I think what you're seeing is an effect of now more than ever, there are more of arcades and arcade adult arcades, as it were, with bars with pinballs or pinball-themed bars. It's called breweries. Our last show, I interviewed people from two different breweries down in Virginia. So, yeah. Yeah, so what you're seeing is hey, people really enjoy playing pinball on location, but they don't like waiting forever for their turn. or, you know, is it's... Yeah. That was the beauty. That was the beauty of these games back in the day. It's like, you can play with your buddies. You can play a four-player game in, you know, under 10 minutes and you guys will all have fun. Whereas if you do that with a modern game, you know, 10 minutes, you're not even going to get through a couple modes in that time span. So, you know, it's definitely something we're aware of that, you know, there's such a thing as social pinball where, you know, So that's the approach I took with Bond 60th. I could have made it easy, but I wanted to make it just brutal. I wanted to make it so you and your buddies can play it, and no one's going to wander off to play another game while they're waiting for their turn on this game. Yeah, great idea. That's what I wanted. But it also has enough stuff in it that if you have it at home, it's going to be really hard for you to beat everything at once on the game. You can focus your path to trying to get one of the mini wizard multiballs, but trying to get all of them on one game is really tough. So I think it has the best of both worlds in that case. Quick gameplay, but if you really want to hunker down and set it to five balls and try to get through the whole thing, then it also offers that. So, yeah, that's what I went for with that. And I love Beatles myself. It's another fun game that you can play with your buddies and have a quick ball time but still enjoy yourself and have fun. That's what it's about.
    69:53
    I've always said about the old school versus the newer school games is the new school games are more like a novel. The old school games are more like a short story. Yes. And so I like that short story. If you're getting ready for work and you've got to leave, it's like, you know what? I have time for a quick game of pinball. You can grab it on an old school game, but you cannot do it on a new school game. It's like you've got to shut the game off and get off to work. You cannot do it if you're, you know, typically. Yeah, you know, you're still gaming. You got an LCD. You got assets. Well, we got to show these assets. Well, how do you show these assets? Well, you put a bunch of modes in the game and you have longer ball times. You know, it's kind of evolved into what you said. And, you know, not everybody always wants to invest that much time into, you know, the story. They just want to have some quick kinetic fun and hopefully Bond 60th brings that. And it's great that there's now, you know, there's some choices out there. So now you have a nice variety. So it's great. It brings that old school back in so you can have a mix. You can play some old school and play some new school instead of just going one way, you know? Yeah. I mean, I definitely don't want it all in one direction because I still love my Godzilla. I still want to play these games where I want to focus for half an hour. But do I do that all the time? No. Sometimes I just want to play a five-minute game of Bond. So, you know.
    71:12
    Well, Dave and I are both going to Allentown. hopefully we get the opportunity to play that game. Yeah, I hope so. I hope, I hope everyone gets the chance to play it.
    71:28
    It's sold out, right? It's all gone. Everybody grabbed them, right? Or no? Yeah. Yeah. We, we just finished the run this past week. The first, the first half of them went overseas and then we did a small batch for US and then we just finish that up. So everyone in the US should be getting their games if they haven't already by the end of this month. Cool.
    71:56
    You got anything else, Dave? I'm completely out of questions. I got one more thing. We only have a couple minutes left. It's going to time out in about five or six minutes.
    72:08
    But I saw you got a CNN interview at one point. A little CNN quickie thing I saw you on. oh yeah now what how'd that come about how did that uh happen i don't remember okay remember when making fun of me like yeah whatever really have you got much um uh airtime like that and different shows and that kind of thing you've been approached over the years for um you know sometimes it's not my thing i'm not mr rah-rah salesman type i'm not gonna um self-promote myself. I'm happy doing what I enjoy doing and if people like what I make, great. If not, I can handle it, but I'm never going to be like, hey, look at me.
    72:53
    Even when I was competing, I'd rather just be the guy behind the scenes. That's cool. I need to add a word to your description at the beginning of this podcast. Humble. very humble that's why that's when you said i said don't you know who i am i was like what you're making for a good story come on keith you know what perhaps i paraphrase slightly it might have been you might not have said it but i'm saying the look you gave me at least was kind of like really like it's like one of those that's what it was but i took it as don't you know who i am anyone could beat anyone on any given day especially on a classic game so i can't imagine i'd ever say that to you but if it works for your story great you probably you probably didn't say anything i i think i inferred that by the look you gave me because the look i when you gave me the look i was like uh-oh i just had this sinking feeling in my heart that's like i just did the wrong move here because i know you gave me you gave me a certain look it's like really you're Maybe I surprised you went all in. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, that's what it was. That's what it was. Okay. All right. A withdraw and rephrase.
    74:13
    Okay, Dave. We're going to put a wrap to this. Let's wrap it up. This has been great. Thanks a lot, Keith, for coming on with us and wrapping it up. Yeah, no problem. It's been fun.
    74:22
    I very much appreciate it. I didn't think it would go this long, but you're very generous with your time. And it's good to hear about classic pinball, and that's what we're all about. Yeah. I mean, that's my preferred game still to this day. I love classic games. I love restoring them. I love playing them.
    74:46
    I don't think that's ever going to change. Well, we look forward to your next release, whenever that is. And hopefully at some point in time, our paths will cross again. All right. Sounds good. And if you're ever out in the Northeast, you're welcome to come over with my humble arcade and try to take down my high scores. Roll your flash, Gordon. All right. Yeah, roll my flash, Gordon.
    75:08
    All right. Sounds good. Cool. Thanks, Pete. All right. Thanks. Bye. Take care. Bye-bye. You've been listening to the Classic Pinball Podcast. My name is George. His name is Dave.
    75:20
    This is kind of turning into a monthly, folks. Long form. It seems to work. Everybody likes it. So we're going to continue with that format.
    75:28
    So everybody, be well, stay healthy, and we'll see you in about a month. This is Dr. Dave here saying be blessed, happy, don't stay safe, but I will say take lots of chances out there because life is risk, and that's worth living. Stay lit and tilted.
    75:58
    Thank you. We'd like to kind of go through your history, if we could. Okay. And start there, and that'll probably branch out into other things. You okay with that? Yeah.
    76:46
    Okay. Is that an Ian Blackjack back there? It is an Ian Blackjack. He has keen eyes. You know what? And one little quick thing, you know, I saw you playing that in a tournament recently, and it got me. It's like, you know, I have an EM Blackjack, because I saw you do so well, and it's like, I'm going to restore that up for me and put it in my game room. So thanks for that.
    77:11
    Yeah, there's only like 100 of those, right? 120. Nice. Scored it locally, too. That's great. Okay, here we go. Who do you call when you want your pinball machine restored? Dr. Dave!
    77:28
    Dave! Who? Dave! D-A-V-E! Yeah, Dave! Right. But George, you don't know what you're saying. You're under their control. George!
    77:42
    George! Don't worry about the tab. George here has got money. Shut up. This joker's not only stupid, he's a moron besides. I heard that. Thanks for the compliment.
    78:02
    Hasta la vista, baby.