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Triple Drain Pinball Podcast Ep 31: Only Pinball Talk And Lots Of It

Triple Drain Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 37m·held·Feb 12, 2023
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Triple Drain discusses Pinball Awards results, innovation definitions, and Pin Clash tournament details.

Summary

Triple Drain Pinball Podcast Episode 31 is a lengthy, meandering conversation among hosts Joel, Travis, and Tom covering the Pinball Awards ceremony, community merch/Patreon updates, streaming category strategy for pinball content, Pin Clash tournament sponsorship, and an extended discussion on what constitutes innovation in pinball machine design. The hosts debate whether innovation should be awarded to entire games or specific mechanical/code features, using examples like Godzilla's MagnaGrab and Bond 60th's optical spinners.

Key Claims

  • Pinball Awards had 55 professional judges and 150+ public voters across multiple categories

    high confidence · Joel directly states participation numbers as an awards committee member

  • Public vote decided second or third place in multiple Pinball Awards categories, including writing/photography

    high confidence · Joel explicitly mentions public vote determining placement between Nudge and Nap Arcade

  • Triple Drain Pinball Podcast won third place in podcast category, losing to The Pinball Show in first and Silver Ball Chronicles in second by one vote

    high confidence · Joel states they lost to Silver Ball Chronicles by exactly one vote; Joel admits he voted for The Pinball Show himself

  • Flipping Out stream won second place in streaming category; Dead Flip, Don't Panic Flip, and Fox City were three-way tied for judges' third place

    high confidence · Joel provides specific category results and explains three-way tie resolution via public vote

  • Weird Al won Most Innovative Pinball Machine award at Pinball Awards

    high confidence · Joel states 'Weird Al actually won that category' during innovation discussion

  • Godzilla won Most Innovative award in the prior year

    medium confidence · Joel asks 'who won for innovation last year' and Tom responds 'I think it was Godzilla'; Joel confirms 'I think Godzilla won everything'

  • Pinball Awards gave away nearly $10,000 in giveaways during the event

    high confidence · Joel states 'we did like almost $10,000 worth of giveaways'

  • Pin Clash Godzilla qualifying starts February 17th and concludes April 2nd on Twitch

    high confidence · Joel and Travis discuss specific dates; information can be found at pinclashtourney.com

  • Jack Danger recently moved from streaming in 'Just Chatting' category to streaming in Pinball category on Twitch

Notable Quotes

  • “As a distributor, there are times where you're getting information from the pinball show. Strangely enough, not for Godzilla. It's pissing you off.”

    Joel @ ~18:00 — Highlights tension between distributor (Travis) and content sources; shows information accessibility gaps even for industry insiders

  • “Silver ball Chronicles beat us by one vote. So theoretically, if I would have voted for us, then we would have tied.”

    Joel @ ~24:30 — Reveals Joel voted for The Pinball Show as judge despite hosting competing podcast; demonstrates judging professionalism norm but creates awkward dynamic

  • “I'm just curious. This is how Travis finds a weakness, and then he has to dive on in.”

    Tom @ ~45:00 — Characterizes Travis's competitive nature; humorous team dynamic reveal

  • “To me, it's very difficult to say that any one game is innovative to the point of having an award for it every year.”

    Joel @ ~62:00 — Core critique of Pinball Awards innovation category; challenges category structure validity

  • “If there's a new mech, does it lead to a cool moment? To me, that's kind of what I look to.”

    Joel @ ~65:00 — Articulates substantive definition of innovation as gameplay-impact rather than novelty alone

  • “What shots did that divert? It didn't really divert anything, but on Godzilla it did. If you changed it, it not only diverts the shots, it changes how you approach other modes.”

    Joel @ ~67:00 — Demonstrates sophisticated design analysis; compares Doctor Who building mechanic to Godzilla's implementation to show mechanical impact matters more than novelty

  • “I think it would be better to highlight certain individual stuff because there is a lot of engineering that goes into this.”

    Tom @ ~73:00 — Proposes awards structure change; suggests recognizing specific mechanical innovations rather than blanket game-level awards

Entities

Triple Drain Pinball PodcastorganizationThe Pinball ShoworganizationSilver Ball ChroniclesorganizationNudge MagazineorganizationPin ClasheventGodzillagameWeird Algame

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Triple Drain podcast recently achieved Patreon monetization and merchandise sales revenue; recently paid off merch bill; using revenue to build merchandise inventory; merchandise visible at community venues (District 82); demonstrating sustainable small-business model for niche podcast

    high · Joel mentions recent Patreon member acquisition, paying off merch bill, building inventory, and Tom sending pictures of merch in public; references Silver Ball Swag notifications

  • ?

    community_signal: Debate over whether Weird Al's P3 platform qualifies as game innovation vs mechanical innovation; some judges felt no true innovation occurred in pinball last year; argument that P3 repeatability as innovation winner undermines category credibility

    medium · Joel mentions 'there are podcasters that didn't vote' because they felt nothing was innovative; discussion of whether P3 platform should be recurring category winner

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball Awards ceremony attracted 55 professional judges and 150+ public voters; public voting demonstrably influenced category outcomes (resolved three-way ties, affected photographer/writing awards); event included in-person attendee experience and large giveaway pool (~$10k)

    high · Joel detailed judging structure, vote margins, and giveaway amounts as awards committee member

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Podcast awards demonstrate fragmented but active community media ecosystem (Pinball Show, Silver Ball Chronicles, Triple Drain, Loser Kid, Poor Man's, Dead Flip all competing); public voting engaged and decisive in category outcomes; credibility of judges questioned when voting for competing shows

    high · Joel's admission of voting for The Pinball Show as judge despite hosting competing podcast; detailed vote margins; multiple podcasts mentioned as alternatives

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.292

0:00
the pinball network is online launching triple drain pinball podcast all right tom are you ready i think so travis i anybody watching video knows but travis are you ready let's just get on with it all right here we go We're three guys who like to talk it long So we came up with a class by our name We're Joel and Travis, Tom and Tom, they love And we call ourselves Triple Drink Triple Drink, Triple Drink We're Triple, Triple Drink All right. First off, we actually had a listener reach out And they're going to make us a video. They're going to make us a video for that. So it hasn't happened yet. But maybe anybody that's watching the video now after the fact, thank you. If you're watching this on YouTube, you know, leave a comment, all that stuff. Is this shy Travis right now? Well, there's the deal. So we so, yes, video is coming for the intro. But Travis right now, for anybody that's listening to the audio podcast currently is turned backwards. We're looking at the back of his chair. So, Travis, feel free to do your dramatic reveal. This is your moment. you go for it no i'm good i'll just i'll just i can do it like this so okay yes well you sound great so all the audio listeners probably loving it i mean we need i at least i don't know if if people start subscribing maybe i'll turn around so oh yeah 29.99 a month yeah yes uh patreon we actually got another patreon member recently i really appreciate that thank you for all the patreon supporters We actually just paid off our merch bill, and so we're letting that build back up, and we're going to see what we're going to do after that. But thank you for that. And we have people buying merch. It's awesome getting notifications from Silver Ball Swag. So we're selling merch, which is great. It's really cool to see it in public. Tom's been sending me pictures and whatnot, so I think it's become a popular thing to wear at District 82. But, Travis, you look ridiculous. I'm ready. Give me some dramatic music or something. Tom, give me a beat. Hold on. I wasn't ready for that.
2:22
Who listens to this show? Who spends their time? Well, the answer is nobody. What was that? Did you just unzip something? What? That was a record scratch. This isn't a strip. Okay, ready? Ready, Travis? Yeah, I'm ready.

medium confidence · Joel notes Jack Danger 'has been streaming under just chatting category for a long time now, he's back' in pinball category; speculation about whether Twitch encouraged the move

  • Nudge Magazine's second edition sells out; first edition already sold out

    high confidence · Joel received physical copy from Jason at Pinball Awards; states 'The first one's already sold out'

    • “Joel, cause somebody clicked my scene.”

    George Fisher (OBS operator) @ ~78:00 — Live production mishap moment; Zach accidentally touched touchscreen monitor mid-broadcast, causing scene change during video playback

  • “We're three guys who like to talk it long so we came up with a class by our name”

    Joel/Travis/Tom (intro song) @ 0:00-1:00 — Podcast branding; humorous self-aware description of show format as long-form discussion

  • “I would just say if anybody is thinking about whether or not they should buy this magazine, you should. You should is the answer.”

    Joel @ ~40:00 — Strong endorsement of Nudge Magazine; emphasizes soft-touch quality, photography, and writing despite not being deeply integrated into pinball industry media ecosystem

    • Bond 60thgame
    Jack Dangerperson
    Carl D'Angeloperson
    George Fisherperson
    Joelperson
    Travisperson
    Tomperson
    Jasonperson
    Dead Flipperson
    Pinball Networkorganization
    Silver Ball Swagorganization
    Flipping Out streamorganization
    Electric Gamers Podcastorganization
  • ?

    competitive_signal: Pin Clash tournament establishing competitive meta around Tokyo Carnage bonus on Godzilla; hosts indicate strategy/technique will emerge; Carl D'Angelo demonstrating challenge difficulty through streaming attempt; tournament format incentivizes single-ball performance optimization

    medium · Hosts indicate forthcoming podcast episode will detail Carnage bonus strategy; reference to 'bridge meta'; Carl D'Angelo's on-stream attempt and complete drain

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Community debate emerging about whether innovation awards should recognize entire games or specific mechanical/code features; argument that P3 platform advantages distort award utility; proposal to evaluate discrete innovations (specific toys, rule implementations) rather than game-level winners

    high · Joel, Travis, and Tom conducted extended discussion comparing MagnaGrab vs building mech vs optical spinners; Joel/Tom proposed structural changes to awards to highlight mechanical innovation specificity

  • ?

    event_signal: Pinball Awards 2024 successfully executed live event with hybrid (in-person and streaming) format; featured $10k giveaway pool; attendees included Jason (Pinball Party), Amanda Hamilton, George Fisher (Panic Flip), and various podcasters; marked as significant community gathering and competitive event for content creators

    high · Joel provided production details, attendee list, and giveaway budget; described event as 'blast' and well-produced; invited community to attend in-person next year

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Bond 60th featuring four optical spinners as headline innovation; European community enthusiasm for Bond IP; topper availability and collector interest in dual Bond versions (Bond 60th and prior Bond game) indicating sustained IP licensing strength for James Bond theme

    medium · Previous guest Neil described as Bond fanatic acquiring both topper versions; Travis mentions Bond 60th innovation as example; community positioning Bond as 'dream theme'

  • $

    market_signal: Nudge Magazine positioned as premium print product for pinball community; second edition generating buzz; first edition sold out; production quality (soft-touch finish, vibrant photography, professional writing) establishing credibility as legitimate industry publication; pricing appears sustainable in niche market

    high · Joel provided detailed quality assessment; noted first edition sold out; praised photography and article writing; encouraged community subscription; received copy as valuable gift

  • ?

    community_signal: Tom indicated or implied to be appearing on separate streaming venture ('Joel and Friends' / 'Flipping Out with Friends'); tension/humor around departure from Triple Drain; suggests Tom splitting availability between multiple pinball content platforms

    medium · Joel references 'the show that Tom's leaving us for'; mentions 'Joel and Friends' and 'Flipping Out with Friends'; suggests Tom cannot be on particular show due to format conflicts

  • ?

    product_concern: Code update delivery system (Stern Insider Connected) enabling mid-broadcast game updates during Pinball Awards; causing production disruptions during recording; demonstrates both capability and instability of wireless update system

    high · Multiple game reboots and updates occurring during episode recording; Godzilla and other machines receiving updates; touch-screen monitor incident caused by wireless monitoring system

  • ?

    product_strategy: Godzilla receiving multiple code updates during recording session (mentioned as 'My game just updated everybody'); ongoing post-release development and refinement; indicates active code maintenance and feature expansion after launch

    high · Joel and Travis both reference simultaneous Godzilla updates; Joel states 'My game just updated'; implies rolling update deployment strategy

  • ?

    content_signal: Jack Danger recently shifted from streaming in 'Just Chatting' category (high discoverability, low pinball visibility) back to Pinball category; community discussion about optimal category choice balancing outreach vs community investment; speculation about Twitch ambassador influence

    medium · Joel noted shift; discussed trade-offs between oversaturated 'Just Chatting' discovery potential vs dedicated Pinball community building

    • 2:41
    Wow. What a terrible setup that was. Show it off, Travis. What do you got on? move the mic a little bit there it is that is a bad girls t-shirt a bad girls t-shirt look at that oh there's uh we had a listener i don't know if he wanted to be shared or not but we had a listener that that reached out to me and he said their local league he printed a bunch of these bad girls shirts and just thought that travis deserved one so for the audio listeners it's pink it's a pink shirt says bad girls on the front with some bad girls graphics on the back he actually sent me oh Tom's wearing his triple drain merch look at that I'm wearing a Lando Calrissian shirt how's that for yeah for supporting this podcast anyways the he reached out to me thank you so much he actually sent me a shirt as well he had some odd sizes so none of the sizes fit Tom but yeah thank you so much for the support hopefully Travis that's because you're saying I'm fat Joel no it's the opposite there were two xls the shirt is pretty dope i gotta admit yeah who would have else is cool like in the background i'm gonna take i want to take the spotlight off me i want to put on joel because joel doesn't get enough obviously joel if you could spin slightly tom look at that stern insider connected working right there right behind him yep fired my games up right before we started uh this is funny though looking in the background it's the Let's see how long it takes. There's like a Wi-Fi update going on over your left shoulder. And over your right shoulder is like the new hotness for toppers. Oh, right. Cactus Canyon. Yeah, Cactus Canyon. Yeah. So we're going to talk more about that. Can you hear my Led Zeppelin topper in the background? No. We can't even see it, but you know what? It looks pretty sweet in the background. Yeah, his lights are on. Thank you for turning it on. Yeah. Yeah, I got yelled at by Joel last episode. He was pretty tyrannical as a producer. Look at Travis's. I mean, it's cool. It's like seeing something grow before our eyes. You know, your background is slowly emerging. You have a few more items. You have books that I didn't know you knew how to read. I do have something right here. What else do we got? Those are picture books, Joel. I can tell.
    4:55
    Yeah, cover up my address here. But look. What were you shipped? It's a box. It's a cardboard box. It's a box. But it's the. Translate? Yeah, it's the Theater of Magic. le translate that's been signed by brian allen nice fantastic artist how did you steal that magic i do not have a theater of magic i have a sickness joel oh it's called buying a translate the game i don't have but it's art i'm gonna put it on the wall like perfect where you know believe it or not yesterday i got a translate in my in my uh in the mail uh what i actually did was what I saw on the TNA 2.0 or the TNA forum is that the new TNA 2.0, the back glass, which is printed actually on glass is much more saturated. It's a much brighter. The colors are much more vivid. Somebody had a side-by-side picture of it. And so sure enough, I reached out to spooky to see if I could just buy one and they sold me one. So I bought a new one. So now I have, I will be putting that one in my TNA and then I will have my other TNA that I can hang on the wall. So, yeah. Very cool. Tom, Did you buy a Translight? No. Everybody loves Joel and Travis. I don't get shit. We paid for it. We used our money and bought it.
    6:13
    That's how that works. I mean, I used my wife's money, but yeah. Whatever Joel said, yeah. Well, yeah, we actually have a bunch of stuff to talk about, and we'll just start at the top of the list. So we're going to start with the Pinball Awards. Last time we recorded was actually on a Friday. It was right before I left for the pinball awards. We had a fantastic episode with Neil, by the way. Got a lot of positive feedback from Neil. It was really cool. A lot of people enjoyed hearing about just the European pinball scene and how different that is. And then also I got a lot of feedback of, like, it's really cool to hear from a Bond fanatic, you know, who's looking at Bond not just like every other pinball buyer. Like, this is a dream theme. What does that mean for him? The Bond 60th. Obviously, he's getting both. He's getting a topper for both. and just kind of hearing all that. So Neil was fantastic. It was awesome having him on. But we did record directly before, like 24 hours before the Pinball Awards. So just a brief recap of the Pinball Awards. First off, it was awesome. I was a part of those, not only part of the committee that dealt with, you know, planning and judging and counting votes and all that stuff. But we ended up having like 55 actual judges that filled everything out. And then we had like 150 something public that voted as well. And it was really cool. There were multiple categories where the public vote actually decided either second or third place. So I know one of them, it was, I think, photography. No, it was photography. Nudge Magazine did win. It was writing. I think the public vote was actually the deciding factor between Nudge getting it or Nap Arcade. And then from a streaming standpoint, thank you very much for the people that voted for the pinball. The flipping out stream, we got second. But third place was actually a three-way tie with the judges, and it was a three-way tie between dead flip, don't panic flip, and Fox City's pinball. So Tom Graff actually – Fox City's pinball by the judges was a three-way tie, and then the public vote ended up being the deciding factor that pushed dead flip into the third place. So always a popularity contest. Well, that's what you get with a public vote. I'll never win that. Yeah, but judges wise, I mean, Tom, what you do is fantastic. And thank you for everybody that voted for the flipping out stream, which has been awesome.
    8:33
    Other things, podcasts, guys, the three of us. This was another thing. We actually got third. It's fitting. Triple Drain, you know, taking third. Should we lose two? OK, so we lost to the pinball show, which I agree. I think the pinball show, I love them. I wait. What do you mean you agree? I voted for. I voted for the pinball show. I look at the pinball show. It's consistent. It's entertaining. Travis, you have to admit, as a distributor, it's kind of insane. But the pinball show has almost been like a news source for you. You're getting information. Travis is being dramatic. I just look. My code's updating for Mandalorian. Look at Insider. And you hate Insider Connect. And it's actually. Now, what are you saying? I go, where? For my information? As a distributor, there are times where you're getting information from the pinball show. Strangely enough, not for Godzilla. It's pissing you off. From the pinball show? Which part? I'm confused. Like Zach. Zach shares information about what's on the line or what's this or stuff that he's heard. You know some of this is not direct communication that you're getting. Joel, I see the same emails. What are you doing? All right. I'll be honest. Dennis may not like this. I actually have not listened to a TPS show in about five months. Since you started working in pinball. It's been a little while. It's been a hot minute. But I need to listen, though. I listened to EGP last week. That's a great show. And I listened to Loser Kid the other day. I listened to Poor Man's the other day.
    10:14
    And I did watch your thing, though. The Joel and Friends. It's the show that Tom's leaving us for. Yeah. So I'm leaving. Tom's not leaving you. I'm not going to pay you guys. I don't even get invited to that show. Tom, you're late. Joel and friends. Off the list. Tom, if you want to stay awake, you are happy to be on that show. I would love for you to be on that show. Travis, unfortunately, can't be on that show anymore because it is flipping out with friends and the pinball company.
    10:43
    Joel and friends. It's a big war. but so basically what's going on it's like i've heard zach on other stuff i've heard dennis on other stuff i just haven't heard them both combined and that's fine but i need to figure that out i think i mean i personally the bottom line is joel yes joel voted for somebody else though tom i sure hear that as a judge who's your second who'd you vote for second you only voted one yeah and as a judge we are told to be um what's the word like um not objective or subject whatever it is you're supposed to be professional and like what what is your voting for the pinball as a whole not me personally what do you think so little of the show that you actually produce do i think you're like double barreled middle finger even if i look at the last how long are we recording we've had whatever five plus minutes do i feel like the five plus minutes of content we've just provided the pinball community is as valuable as the pinball show? Yes. No. Yes. No. A thousand percent. Yes. Look at Tom.
    11:48
    What am I? Yeah. Oh, it's like, why don't you even show up? So what I will say is we actually got, so we actually tied with, no, we didn't tie. So silver ball Chronicles, David Dennis, but they got second, but the way it worked, which this is what was funny is they beat us by one vote. It makes sense now, Tom, why Joel hates us so much. Cause he lost David. Yes. Yeah. It comes out. Okay. Silver ball Chronicles beat us by one vote. So theoretically, if I would have voted for us, then we would have tied. And then the public vote though, we beat silver ball Chronicles by a large margin. So we got second in the public vote. So either way we're doing well is we're doing well. I appreciate all the people that listen to us that happen to vote for us or think of us. I'm looking forward to the Twippies to see where we line up there. But it's just I'm glad we have people that are enjoying this show, not only the podcast, but also on video. You know, we see the views there. So really, thank you so much for the support. Patreon, merch, everything. Tom and I very much look forward to the Twippy votes and seeing what three podcasts you voted for. Yes. We very much look forward to that. No, no, no. Twippies, I can vote for me. Twippies, I can be. What do I want? I voted for us in the Twippies. Don't worry. Did you? Has the voting already happened? That's my question. You are so, yes. I really don't know. It happened a long time ago. And again, I'd like to congratulate dead flipping Canada's pinball podcast for winning for winning. It's whippies.
    13:16
    Hey, dead flip came back to the pinball. He came back to the Twitch pinball. He, he saw, he saw in disc was just going off and he's like, Oh yeah. Like here, here's pinball. I rediscovered it. So good for him. I think Jack danger realized like, Oh, Carl's Carl, is making waves on Twitch in pinball. I think it's great. I really wish everybody would stream in pinball though. You know what I mean? Just because I think it just adds more to it. It gives more visibility for everybody including that streamer. Well, it's about the pinball community. Yeah. It gets big. What we're talking about is, so Jack Danger, and there are others, but sometimes they stream in the just chatting category. And the just chatting category of Twitch is an incredibly popular category where you can guess. I mean, there's everything. It's just oversaturated. There's so much there. So the thought is, if you have somebody like Jack Danger streaming and just chatting, and some Joe Schmo opens up Twitch and clicks on the just chatting category, that they may randomly see, oh, what's this? This is pinball. They may stumble upon it. While obviously, when you stream within your own category, nobody's going to stumble upon that unless they happen to think, oh, pinball, and then they search for pinball. So I get it from an outreach standpoint. I could see that. But at the same time, like this is the community we are trying to build. So it is surprising that Carl was streaming in pinball. That's where he's been. And then with the Indus stream getting the top page, like it blew up. And so what was kind of surprising was to see Jack Danger, who's been streaming under the just chatting category for a long time now, he's back. he's back in the pinball category. And I, I don't know. I wonder if Twitch like was like, Hey, you're a pin. You're a, you're a Twitch ambassador for the pinball category. Maybe you should stay in the pin. I don't know. I don't know if it's a Twitch thing or if it's just a personal decision, but either way, it's a good thing. Yeah. I think it's a great thing to stream in there. And you know, I, we had to stop Tom from streaming in the hot tub.
    15:20
    We told him he debated with us. He's like, guys, think about retiring from pinball. I'm going to blow up a hot tub. I'm going to fill it with Mountain Dew and sit in front of these machines. That'd be good. That's when he'd leave us. That's when he'd leave us for sure. He probably would blow up doing that, yeah. Oh, we know.
    15:38
    Other parts from the Pinball Awards, it was cool seeing some people in person. I actually met Jason from the pinball party. Yay. He was great meeting him. Super nice guy. Obviously, George from Panic Flip, I know him. He was there. Amanda Hamilton was there. I mean, it was great. It was just a great time. Check out some of Jason's songs, too. like his Neon Dale stuff. Neon Dale, yeah. Really good. Album's fantastic. I would just say, looking ahead, next year, mark it on your calendar. We did like almost $10,000 worth of giveaways, which was incredible. People were winning stuff. So just next year when the Pinball Awards are announced that date, mark it on your calendar. Be there for the live experience. It was awesome just being there in chat, going nuts, have a chance to win some stuff. And if you have a chance to come in person, it was so much fun. It was absolutely a blast to do. Um, side note, I do have to mention this because I I'm truly impressed. Uh, Jason is, is good friends with the people at nudge nudge magazine. And so Jason actually brought me one and it is, this is actually fantastic. This is actually fantastic. It's soft touch. Not only does it feel good, feel good, but like the photography in here is incredible. Well, is that a centerfold layout? No, there's no centerfold. But there's good. I mean, the photography is – Joel with the pinball ASMR right now. Rub it some more, Joel. Rub it some more.
    17:04
    No, not seriously. Don't actually do that. The photography is exceptional, and the articles are actually incredibly well-written and quite funny. I would just say if anybody is thinking about whether or not they should buy this magazine, you should. You should is the answer. Buy it. I am incredibly impressed. This is the second edition. The first one's already sold out. But I do. I need to hop on there and become a subscriber and just get everyone from here on out because I really am impressed by this. So thank you. Thank you for this. And I'm looking forward to reading many, many more. So I will bring, you know, next time I should bring these with me. So I can't get over you chilling and rubbing the product. It feels good. It has soft touch on it, guys. I'm just waiting for him to reach both hands out of the camera view and just pull back in precision flippers and just start those don't feel good it's just shiny metal and now I'm conflicted because pin clash is on Godzilla and I haven't put precision flippers on Godzilla but I'm pretty confident it wouldn't be I'm assuming that would be frowned upon could that be banned?
    18:15
    Carl I think you should ban precision flippers i don't know joel's gonna enter pin clash which by the by the way everybody should put lightning flippers on their game i guess i guess before before we go further we probably should actually say hey there's a new pin clash coming out from uh carl d'angelo i think that the qualifying on godzilla starts what february 17th it's not yeah i think it's a week away yeah so it's like open qualifying we'll get into that more later but if you have a godzilla it you have a streaming rig and a stream that's on twitch you can enter it just like joel apparently is going to out of three of us and i guess now you're going to use basically like steroids well i'm not going to put i'm not going to put precision flippers on you are interesting it would be interesting to hear i've already been reading the discord and people are like well where do the outlanes need to be and carl's like i don't care you can close them all the way up like he doesn't it's like oh okay so i'm never banned that shit yeah yeah curious to see what He thinks, but definitely look into pin clash, uh, triple drain. We are actually sponsoring pin clash. We, we threw a hundred dollars into the pot as well as a comfy from Travis is going to send a comfy. And we gave a very unique, um, goal, which our goal is of all submitted times of all the submitted times that end up being submitted. Whoever gets the dead center one, the middle of the pack, technically you are average. You're not above average. You're not below average. You are average. Whoever gets that score is winning $100 and a comfy from Travis. Travis is holding his hand up. What time are you going to get on this challenge, Joel? I will be below average. You'll be below the time average. I will absolutely be below average. Hey, I don't know.
    19:58
    No, no, no. We can lean into this. What's a good time? I have no idea. It's not time. No, it's not time. It's not time. It's a total carnage bonus for Tokyo. Joel is going for time. I'm just curious. This is how Travis finds a weakness, and then he has to dive on in. It's not time. My game just updated everybody. Yep, mine's still doing it. But still, Godzilla has yet to even update. Well, it'll get there. It'll get there. So basically what's happening is you can find the information at pinclashtourney.com. It starts February 17th. That was not me. It goes Sunday. April 2nd on Twitch. It wasn't me. I swear to God. No, that was your game rebooting, wasn't it? It was. It's a duck that like, meh. It's a weird sound. That was from the pinball machine? Yeah. I bet mine will do it when it restarts. It makes this very weird meh sound. It's very strange. Well, his sounds like it's actually like doing an unzipper. Like a zipper sound. Okay, anyways. It's just what's on your mind.
    21:04
    Just rubbing that nudge machine. So anyways, it's a carnage bonus. You've got to play the best one-ball Tokyo carnage. And we're not going to explain what carnage bonus is because we've done it in a previous podcast. We've already done it. Obviously, you just try to collect this within like 10 seconds so you can qualify like Joel does. I say we go more into detail next podcast about it because there's going to be a meta. There will be a strategy that people are going to hone in on, and we can probably explain that strategy. I know Travis is already – he's already – Is it called the bridge meta? We're going to dive into it. It should be really good. I mean, Carl already streamed a – An attempt? An attempt. How'd that go? Well, I don't think he drained the entire game. Well, that's Carl. I know. It's like amazing. How do you do that? I don't know. He's really good. And the last little note that I have on the pinball awards is innovation. And the reason I wanted to bring this up is because I thought it was really interesting hearing some other podcasters that didn't vote in that section. So most innovative pinball machine. There are podcasters that didn't vote. They felt like last year there was nothing innovative in pinball. And we actually had a Facebook. So Tom had put on our Facebook post that we were going to record. and there was somebody that actually mentioned that and they said do you think that like can we still be innovative in pinball and so uh weird al weird al actually won that category and i think a lot of people lean into it being a p3 game and so sure if we look at weird al it has a hamster wheel that's unique i've never seen that before and then i have that magnet on the ramp to help pull it up but i think a lot of people lay into the fact that it or lean into the fact that it's it's a p3 like the P3 platform is innovative, which I agree. I 100% agree. But that platform shouldn't win every year because it's the same. So it's looking ahead. I challenged myself on, well, what was the last thing that I thought was truly innovative in pinball? And the thing that I thought of was the MagnaGrab on Godzilla. I thought that post with a magnet, I've never seen that before. I've never seen that implemented that way before. I thought that was a truly innovative toy. It was a unique toy. So I don't know. It's the conversation was, is the only way to be innovative these days to be code or, you know, even even Elwin on the 60th, like he made that design all out of the top of his head and then come to find out the figure eight is very similar to a figure eight that's Diamond Lady? Isn't that like it's another game? He's like, oh, I didn't, you know, like, are we at a point where there's so much pinball out, like trying to be innovative with a layout is even a challenge? I don't know. What are your thoughts on pinball innovation? Or I mean, Bond 60 has four spinners on it, like optical spinners. I don't think that that's been done on anything. So there's innovation right there. I mean, so what I don't know is who won for innovation last year, the pinball award? The year prior I assume it would be the MagnaGrad I think it was Godzilla I think Godzilla won everything So did they just they was there a word for exactly what the innovation is or was it just saying like this game? Was that what it was? Most innovative. It's not a, yeah, you weren't, you voted for Godzilla. You didn't vote for the Mago. Yeah. I think that's part of it. It's to me, it's very difficult to say that any one game is innovative to the point of, you know, having an award for it every year. To me, it would make much more sense to have just innovation mean just something general in a game, such as like a bash toy, a rule set. Vote for a particular mech. Yeah, I mean, because that's where the innovation is. That's a good point. When you look at it, it's like Toy Story. Okay, what do they have? They have a jump ramp, right? I mean, that could be. I mean, it's happened, but maybe the way that a jump ramp is implemented could be a big deal. To me, it's like, for instance, I look back on No Good Gophers, right? It has a jump ramp. Plenty of games have a jump ramp. But what makes that one especially innovative? It's the fact that you could actually jump ramp towards the right into a hole-in-one, which is a cool moment in the game. That leads to a cool moment. So to me, that's kind of what I look to. If there's a new mech, does it lead? If there was a game.
    25:37
    Godzilla just updated. updates yeah let's see let's see godzilla had two of them though godzilla had the building right that was yeah that's pretty cool that changed the shot path what's this but what some people say the building is just doctor who which i agree i mean it's not it's not but they they refer to how did how did doctor who changed the ramps how did i get i understand that the the building moving the fact that it was a river i agree i agree that it was different But there are people that argue that. Right, but then that's what I would say back. What shots did that divert? It didn't really divert anything, but on Godzilla it did. If you changed it, it not only diverts the shots, if you really dig down into it, it changes to where certain other things start, like your bridge attack multiball. It may change from right or left. It changes how you approach other modes. So to me, that is true innovation. When a certain mech in a game, changes how you even play during certain phases of the game. So to me, that's what I look for as well. Even Rush has a toy that has an innovated – oh, God, I can't talk. I'm going to talk like I'm five.
    26:52
    You fit right into this group. Don't worry. Thank you. The ramp on Rush Premium. Oh, raising up and down? No. With the lights? It lights up. Oh. Oh, I'll give you this. It does pretty cool stuff with those lights. So I think this is actually I this is a great idea, because I think if instead of the voting being like which games was innovative rush versus this versus this, if it would have been like rush light up ramp compared to alien, you know, grabbing the ball with the mouth compared to fathom having displays in the apron, you know, like that's unique. You know, like if I would have mentioned each individual thing, which of these things do we feel is the biggest? Like, wow. Yeah. OK. I mean, because otherwise we might as well say like the best innovation is like an LCD screen every single year. Yeah. And that's why it's different than the P3. It'll be every year. Well, no, we might as well say like Stern Insider Connected forever will be the biggest innovation because now we can update. Update our games in the middle of a podcast.
    28:05
    I guess it's useful. We just have to properly define innovation. I think we just got to be careful of putting that as a blanket on a game. I think it would be better to highlight certain individual stuff because there is a lot of engineering that goes into this. Yeah. Or there's a lot of decision making that comes from people that may not even be the engineers. It may be the coders. You know what I mean? So stuff like that. I think that that would just be a better way to go about it. I agree. And if anybody listening watched, so the Pinball Awards, it's on, if you go to the Pinball Network on YouTube, you can watch it there. It's under the live section. It was fantastic. I really enjoyed it. It was extremely well produced for a live show. I mean, it was great. We had a lot of talent, if you want to say that, in that room. that we all pitched in on doing our parts. And George Fisher, with OBS, he's a wizard. He knows what he's doing. Jason was there with audio. We had all the pieces we needed to have a great time. And yes, I know we were very proud with how it went. And I'm looking forward to next year. I'm looking forward to doing it again. The best moment, Joel, was when you got up in front of the staff and you were like... So that moment. that moment so we gave greg and zach a a screen that they had on a monitor that they had on their podium so they could see what was actually on stream so they would know we didn't hear the videos so we in the room we had no idea what like it was silent when the videos were playing between uh categories so we didn't know like he was what they were watching those videos and then george was like 10 seconds five seconds and then he'd kind of point where to go well what zach didn't know was that monitor was touchscreen. So he was actually looking at the same monitor that George was. So he touched the screen and he actually changed scenes. So we were in the middle of the video and he changed the scene. And then, then it was kind of a scramble to where were we? Let's get back to the scene kind of thing. And so George just like turned on the mic. So it wasn't silent. So we could hear Zach being like, Oh, I messed up what I do, you know? And so in the room, people are like, well, what like Zach's like, what are we looking at? Like, what are we looking at right now and George goes, uh, Joel, cause somebody clicked my scene. So I'm just standing there like, uh, what's going on? And they're like, what are we looking at? Uh, Joel. And then everybody in the room looks at me. So apparently I panic and the response is this, I don't know, like just pumping my arms. So it ended up creating a funny moment. I don't know. I don't, I don't know. So when you, when I realized I'm on camera, apparently that's what I'm going to do. But anyways, pinball awards, it was fantastic. Check it out. But if you have any feedback, Like that's actually a really good point instead of doing just most innovative pinball machine. Actually, what's the most innovative thing? I like that. I think that would be worth proposing to the to the committee. But, yeah, feel free to email the pinball network at gmail.com. Thoughts, anything like that or comment. Comment on the comment on the video on YouTube. Other awards, believe it or not, Travis won a pinball degenerates award. Sorry, I'm supposed to do this. Yes, so pinball degenerates award for what? The most degenerate score. Who would have guessed? Who would have guessed your 0-0 ball one is going? It's just proof. I don't even have to flip the ball to beat a Carl score or to beat an Eric Stone score. I sure didn't get that award. Yeah. He had to do so much on the last one. No, he just got a trophy and a bunch of money. No. I got a trophy, too. Oh, that's true. You got a plaque. I don't know if they're giving money, though, for it. Well, the pinball degenerate award? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're screwed. You definitely need to put that behind you and continue to improve your background. Oh, I will. It's probably going to go somewhere back there. Let's talk about what I won. What did you win, Tom? What did you win? Nothing. Oh, okay. The Pinball Degenerate Awards, it's the Pinball Degenerates Facebook group. It's a very entertaining group. Feel free to check them out. But, yeah, there were a lot of nominations for different things. Shout out to the pinballers. they won the best game room or the most degenerate game room, which was pretty cool. So yeah, very neat, very neat. But I think that's it for awards. We're really, I mean, nothing really coming until Twippies and we'll, we'll have to talk about that after we record in late March. So should be a good time. Maybe we can do a live show. Oh yeah. We will all be there. All three of us as of right now should be at Texas Pinball Festival, which should be real good. if only we had mics that we could take with us in a recorder we're going to put that on Travis we'll see it probably won't get done then other things worth discussing let's just go ahead and dive right into Scooby-Doo it's come out the spooky team did a live stream it wasn't live they recorded it and put it up on YouTube it's been out for a little while now I know all three of us have watched it we'll start with Tom Tom, initial impressions of what you saw from the Scooby-Doo gameplay.
    33:19
    It was interesting. Okay. Solid. Thank you. Any particular things you found interesting? No. So you did not buy one. That's what I'm hearing. You did not run out and place an order for a Scooby-Doo. It was fine. I thought the quality of the actual presentation could have been upped. Oh, the actual stream? Yeah. But it was spooky, so got to give them a pass.
    33:52
    Of course. Why not? The bookcase flippers, interesting. Yeah. Actually, I thought that worked pretty well, considering it's it's very different that that left flipper on upper flipper on the play field. But I didn't watch like a ton of it, so I haven't really like studied up on it or anything like that. So I'd like to hear your guys thoughts. Oh, well, Tom, would you say the upper flipper would be innovative? Do you think that would qualify next year as an innovative mech? Yeah. Yeah, I think that would qualify for sure. Yeah. So what he's describing on the upper playfield on Spooky, it actually, it's almost like a big L. You have, instead of your flipper, it's like an extension on that. And so what is unique is when you hit the center ramp, which actually goes up to the upper playfield, you have to hold the upper left flipper like you would normally. And that actually moves that back part so that it stops the ball from just rolling right past the upper play field onto a ramp. So you have to kind of get used to that. And then the way that you're doing it, when you let go of the upper flipper, if you time it right, it almost like slingshots the ball over to the right. So you kind of have to use it to aim as well. It's, it's a very unique way to control the ball movement up there. Almost like a teeter totter or something. Yeah. Well, I think that that's probably the most interesting thing in the game because the upper flipper set to look like a bookcase, which fits into the theme. The fact that you could not engage it, let it still come down right to the left flipper again. Or you could engage it, like Joel said, hold it up and then use that top part of it to slingshot it into I guess it's a Scooby Doo lane or something like that. or you could even let it roll down a little bit and use the bottom part of it to hit wherever you need to hit. Yeah. So, I mean, that is pretty cool. Two separate areas to use as a flipper with this mech. I agree. I will say the upper flipper, though, because of that, and I don't know if it's just the extra weight on the mech itself, but it doesn't seem like the ball that comes off that left flipper is super fast. Like, it seems kind of slow, and I don't know if that's a good or bad thing. I mean, we'll have to figure that out when we actually play it, but there are a bunch of shots in that upper play field. I held the upper play field. We had one to give away at the pinball awards. It's huge. It is a huge play field. There's like five or six shots up there. There's a horseshoe up there, so you have two shots there, a bash toy, and then there's like three shots over to the right. And I don't think you can backhand some of those shots on the right, so you're going to have to be able to hit that with the upper flipper. And whether or not you do it normally from the flipper or slingshot it, I don't know. This game is full of horseshoes. A lot of horseshoes. yeah i think there's a lot if you like horseshoes this is your game yeah if you like hitting a shot and immediately coming back at you or your game this is your game um no i will say at least well you go first travis what what are your thoughts your takeaways from scooby-doo i mean it's so like i said i'm not gonna really how do i wear this so i i do agree with tom i i wish that the presentation of the actual stream would have been a little bit better but at the same time it's like you know at least that there's a stream out it's something you know yeah i don't think they know anybody in wisconsin that that could stream they are going to do an actual jack danger stream the problem which is kind of strange to me as well since jack is a stern employee yeah yeah he's actual pinball designer so i mean it's just yeah but it is what it is at least they're getting it out either way. So with that being said, it's so for me, it was kind of difficult to listen in to what was going on because sometimes the game audio was clipping out of what they were they were trying to convey. And so that that part was a little chaotic for me. But, you know, at least just putting on mute and just following shots and following what the LCD screen was saying, it a lot of stuff made sense to me with what was going on. The the main takeaway that I took from it is the gameplay will take forever on this game like the ball times are forever and one of the things that i was concerned about that we talked about before this even got like the gameplay reveal is the far right hand side leading up from basically the right end lane all the way up to i guess it would be like a right orbit shot or the other horseshoe shots and all that there's really nothing but that one slingshot that's going to toss the ball out so when you look at this design I mean, nothing about it is really designed to be dangerous in general, to go to the outlet. And we even looked at some measurements and it's like even the gap from the post on the left hand side to, I guess, that big plastic part. The gaps. Yeah, really not there for a ball to go to the left out lane. And it's a double left out lane there. So it's just kind of like unused parts of the play field. And I noticed I think I might have saw it took about 20 to 25 minutes into this video until like a 40 minute gameplay video. Even see a ball go to an out lane. I think if I remember everything seemed to be draining right down the middle. And then they also have a target that will come up and actually save the ball down the middle. So all of that combined is a little bit concerning for me. But at the same time, it's I think that this game is not necessarily for people that are on location. I think it's more for people that are in a home environment, because if this is on location, you almost have to pull those posts out completely. But even then, it's like that could be dangerous because I think that that makes the plastic to those to the in lane and out lane. I think that makes it too exposed where then you'd have chip plastics, too. So I'm curious to see how that works, because none of the shots are seen dangerous going to out lanes. And then even on that left side, you even have the lowest drop target. Right. It it seems to block shots go in that direction as well. And everything just seems to just easily feed left in lane or go right back to the flippers in the play. I totally agree. That was my first. You know, I realized I was what, 10 plus minutes. It felt like into the video and bug was still on his first ball. and and i know the designer said the reason they did so many horseshoe shots is they needed dangerous shots they needed shots that sent the ball back at the flippers quickly because every other shot that isn't a horseshoe is a safe feed into a habit trail there's like four or five habit trails that all feed your lower flipper like the problem is the problem is though a horseshoe shot even if it feeds back the flipper that's still a safe shot that's not dangerous for anybody that's That's above a casual. They're going to learn to dead bounce it. They're going to learn to catch it. So, I mean, unless that ball is like going to a slingshot or something like that, which, you know, I just think by looking at by design, it feels like to me that this is designed for the casual in mind to have long game times to have long ball times. I think they even said in their video, like something about tournament players. Well, yeah, they're obviously they want this to be in tournament. No, I don't think so. Yeah, I don't look at this game and think that it's designed with anything in mind other than the casual playing at home and getting to play for a long time. Well, so that brings up a whole other thing. But to wrap up, what I would say is the physical layout. I know when we watched the spooky, the Halloween stream, like immediately we were just like, what is going on? I mean, with the scoops and the rejections and all this stuff, like there were immediate issues that we saw. So I will say coming out of the Scooby-Doo stream, there wasn't immediate issues that I saw when it came to mechanical or layout. What I will say, though, is like, yeah, that lower left side, there's two rows of drop targets. I barely saw those used. The lower right side, they added an extra sling because there isn't anything there. I don't know if I ever even saw it go off. The outlanes are barely used. And then that middle diverter, you can like collect Scooby snacks and then that gives you up to three saves. So it's almost like you have this ball save that's constant. And yeah, well, the game plays to vertical, too. That's the thing. The game does not require you to go horizontal. Not at all. It's I mean, even then, because they have timers that time you out of stuff and the timers just that it seems lopsided with what the design is. Because I don't recall anybody even finishing a mode. really until like about 18 minutes into the video. And then I saw the unmask bonus. Isn't that how they finish the mode? Like it's kind of like collecting a gem. You can finish a mode, but then if you unmask them, you get like, that's where all the points are at. Finishing the mode starts that hurry up, right? Sure. Yeah. So that's, that's what I'm wondering. Did any other modes get completed? Well, easily because it felt like they were timing out of a lot of stuff. I don't, there was, so apparently there are actual character modes and I didn't see any of those. Those aren't in there yet. And then I didn't see any multi-ball associated with the apron locks. I didn't see anything with that there yet. But overall, just speaking of coat, so to wrap up, the overall physical layout, I want to shoot it. I think it looks unique. It didn't look floaty like a wide body because it is a standard body on the bottom. You would disagree? I thought the game looked really floaty. At one point, the ball got stuck on the upper play field because it lost momentum. Well, the upper play field, though, seems slow. The upper play field seemed slow to me. everything just looks slow to me like it just that's that's the main takeaway i know talking to a lot of other players that watch it as well the vast majority felt like the game looked floaty okay but but it's interesting you don't think it looked floating and that's fine everybody's entitled to their i don't know it doesn't make it easy i thought the layout you know there are plenty of reveal streams that we see and it's you put some in this this is kind of another conversation but it's you know like stern or dead flip will do a reveal stream and you'll get these people that step up to it or even buffalo when they did the some of the reveal streams like when they did the um i think it was wonka or pirates and you had just casual people walk up all of a sudden the game looks like a brick fest and yeah and when you compare that to the people that are actually designing the game who have played this game more than anybody else on the planet they you know is the game easy or did they just make the game look easy because they know the shots like here's the problem it's all their people stream it here's the problem though even Even you just said, and I agree, the game looked easy overall. There wasn't many outlaying drains, but then why were modes not getting completed on a regular basis? That's what I want to say. Yeah, the equilibrium is off right now. Well, so I would say the physical layout, that's kind of my takeaway. But it looks great. The light shows. I'm really happy with that. Now, talking about code, that's what I think is weird here, is I actually think the code is actually rather complex. They actually, some of these modes are pretty involved. And that's what it's like, well, why aren't we seeing these complete? Because they're long. Like they made these modes very unique. Like one of the modes, you have to find certain shots at the bottom side, but to do that, you have to collect air up in the upper play field. So you have to hit a bunch of shots up there. Captain Cutler. Yeah. You want to get enough air, then you can go down low and hit a bunch of shots. It's like, there are, there's steps here. One of the modes is a safe. You're literally trying to crack a code. So you're trying to see there's four shots and you have to hit them in a very particular order. So you got to remember what you hit and hit it in that order. So to me, I think as like an, I, you're going to laugh, but like as an above average player, I would say that's exciting. That's exciting to me that these are unique and creative code, but yet we just said, it seems like this layout is made for novice or casual people. These rules are not for novice cabbage, casual people. They're not going to have any idea what they're doing i would i was looking at joel and i was even thinking i would have a hard time completing some of these modes because it seems it seems to happen so quick and even at one point they actually i think this is like i'm looking at the screenshot right now this is about 18 minutes and 45 seconds into the video they even put up a disclaimer of text over it and says that a mode can be super complicated they play it again later stay tuned and that was when they got into like the mystery van multiball the multiball right and yeah they couldn't they couldn't explain it within 10 seconds it just seemed like and then it happened so fast like nobody knew what happened there's no way the viewer knew what happened i still don't know what happened i just know that that multiball was there so yeah that's that's the thing it just seems like that there's a lot of shots for certain things it seems to be obviously that they're creating a a wide mix of diversity in terms of like what type of shots you need to hit and how often you need to hit them. That's what it seems like that they're going for. And that's fine. It's just at the same time, you still want these modes to be accessible for people. So if it's accessible, that would be great. But even watching all them play it, and they played it plenty of times, that was the concerning part that I saw that there was modes not being completed on a regular basis. It just felt like the timers went much quicker than what they should have been compared to how many shots had to be completed. it. Okay. Well, that would be a great, we don't have to transition, but that, that actually makes me think about this game right here at cactus Canyon a lot. And we're going to, we're going to talk about that, but when it kind of brings up this bigger picture and maybe feel free to write in triple drain at gmail.com or Facebook message us. But the thought there's like, if you're designing a game for novice people and no, I don't think any manufacturer today is designing a game for novice people because that would completely turn off the rest of the pinball buyers that are like, oh, the game's too easy. But that's kind of a question is like, what do novice players actually want? Because they don't want deep code. They don't care. They need something quick, shallow, that's going to give them instant gratification. So to me, I mean, Cactus Canyon, we're going to dive into that. That game does that very well. But like the jump ramp in the Duke Caboom ramp in Toy Story, simple. It's already lit. It's one shot. And then they keep trying it until they hit it like that's a simple novice level thing for instant gratification um godzilla the thing right up in the middle is the building just keep hitting it and you're going to get your satisfaction so i'm thinking like scooby if the layout is supposed to be more friendly you know what are they putting into that game like i think the captain cutler thing up at the top is kind of a bash toy and there's magnets maybe that's the thing that that novice will want to do I don know I don know I look I look at it and I mean I went ahead I asked my kids I asked my wife I asked my friends and family like out of this layout what do you guys think What interests you the most And overwhelmingly everybody was saying the upper play field Nobody cared about the drop targets to the left. Nobody cared that it was a wide body. Nobody cared about the spinners. Everybody cared about the upper play field and that flipper mech that we talked about earlier as a bookcase. So that would be the part to go. So now it's just a matter of making that accessible to people that's close to the start button. That'd be the goal. Here's an interesting thought. And so think back to Simpsons pinball party. The first time you go to the upper play field, it holds the ball and then it snaps that upper flipper to like let you know, like, hey, it's right here. So there's nothing in there from a mechanical standpoint that would that would because the center ramp is what feeds the upper upper play field. But unless you have that flipper held, that ball is going to go whizzing by you. So that to me is like, as a novice player, they're not going to be prepared for that. So I'm almost curious, what if they coded in that the very first time you hit that upper play field, it automatically holds your left flipper up? You know, something to just show that. Like, oh. Like, I think there needs to be some hand-holding for these novice players. Otherwise, the ball's just going to whiz by every time. They're never going to be able to do anything on the upper play field. No, that's true. And I think a lot of this depends, too, are these players playing on location? And I think Scooby-Doo would be a good location theme, too. I think a lot of people would see it, unlike my camera, that you can't see. But, I mean, what do you think, Tom? Between this, because, you know, I mean, we've all seen what Bond's done on location. We've heard some people report that Bond's done fantastic on location. We've heard others say it's not doing as well. So when you look at it, this is just like two majorly different themes from a very similar era. But I'm curious to see how Scooby-Doo carries over on a location setting. Yeah, I don't know. It's hard to say because I think it will do well just based on theme. Oh, yeah. So I think people are going to gravitate towards it just because of the theme. Whether they keep putting money in it, that's another story. But if it's accessible, which it seems like it is, I think it'll do well. Yeah. You know, I think one of the big things is the bash toy on the mini play field, too, which we haven't really touched on. I think people really like bash toys. Oh, yeah. Especially something like that where it's not going to absolutely kill you because it's not in front of your flippers. so um i i it's hard to say now i've seen some spookies on location and they're usually down so is this one gonna survive the test and uh you know be be up and running you know kind of thing where it's not having issues.
    51:48
    That's another story. And I know they did a whole new operating system. They did a whole new, all the parts underneath, it's a whole new system. So how reliable is it? I don't know. We'll have to see. What were you saying, Travis? No, I was just echoing Tom. That is a big deal. I mean, I know the location that I used to play at down in Oklahoma City at Cactus Jacks. They usually get every single Spooky game. So I've played every single Spooky that's been created at this point. and yeah, they go down quicker than what they should. And it is a little bit frustrating because there are certain games that you want to be able to play for a while, like a TNA or a Rick and Morty, or even Alice Cooper. There's some interesting shots on there. So yeah, hopefully these issues have been addressed because, I mean, obviously the longer the games stay up on location, the more people get interested in your company and your teams that you're producing, the more you can get your brand out there. So, yeah, hopefully that can be done. And I see this doing well on location. As long as it doesn't make those sounds. Every one of your games is updating right now. It's Godzilla again. Yeah. Right. I love it. It's like, you know, it's ready. But, yeah, I think the upper play field is pretty cool. The ball obviously is designed to stay up there for as long as you can with that middle post. Yeah. Between the middle post up there. Yeah. It is very friendly. And I think you're right. I think you're onto something there. If novice see that and the fact that the hands move of the guy and it's a bash toy up there, that would be a pretty easy like, hey, hit the center ramp. It's going to go up there, but you got to hold your flipper up and then just keep trying to hit him and your start a multi ball. Like that's a very easy thing to communicate. But I don't I mean, my overall takeaways from the stream were like, I'm excited to play it. I mean, I'm impressed with how much code is already in the game. Like, I think they've really there's a lot in there and they're only going to add more. you know really great video clips they've got good call outs like i love that the code the the actual modes are creative i i think that's in their very each mode was very unique based on the villain and trying to tell a story so i think they're doing a lot right i think they're doing a lot right but until more people touch the game and really feel like how does it shoot is it too easy how do you adjust that i don't know but but regardless there wasn't any i didn't walk away with like a bad taste in my mouth it was like okay that's a good that was a good first showing and let's see what's you know let's see what happens after that i think this is a mile step up from halloween and oh yeah yeah i i i think fully what's interesting about this game is i felt like the people that bought it before seeing it they they were just fine with seeing it they're like okay yeah i made the right decision and i think the people that decided not to buy it but okay fine i made the right decision. I feel like everybody saw what they expected to see out of it. I don't think that there was any general surprises out of anybody, it feels like. So that reveal happened right, it was the Friday before the Pinball Awards. So I was there and I was there with Zach. And Zach, I mean, he's checking his phone all the time because it's like the business never stops. And he's like, well, sold two more Scooby-Doos from that stream. And sometimes streams are the exact opposite, right? You get calls of like canceling orders because they saw streams. So I would say the overall feedback from the stream is good, is good.
    55:12
    But, yeah, I had mentioned Cactus Canyon. I want to bring this up. And I will say this game, so Cactus Canyon, this is Zach's Cactus Canyon remake, LE. I brought that from his house, and this is what I'm streaming until I'm assuming Bond 60th or Scooby-Doo or something that's coming out. I had very low expectations for this game. This game, I was told by a lot of people, you will get bored. You will get bored of this game. The code is very shallow. So I just, to me, I don't know. And I know there weren't a ton of, you know, this didn't have the same love as Monster Bash, Medieval Madness, Attack from Mars. I had very low expectations for this game. I am really enjoying this game. And I know that this is hard for Travis and Tom to understand because, like, this game. The topper lights up. It has a light that goes back and forth. No, okay. I see why you love it. The topper is legitimately impressive. Now, I have a Deadpool topper. I'm a fan of that. I have the Turtles topper. I will gladly buy the Godzilla topper when it comes out. This topper is a whole other level. The way it's built, it is sturdy. I'm pretty sure I could drop this thing and it wouldn't break. It is sturdy. Let's try it right now. Yeah, let me get on that. But the topper is what I've had friends and family over. Everybody's like, whoa. They're taken back by it. But then what is cool, though, is there are times in the game when you do the to the whatever, the shootout and different things. When you hit a drop target, anytime you shoot a bad guy, the whole guy, he like knocks back. So there's an audible like knock sound. And just having that when you're playing and like hearing it, it's it's just one more little bit of sensory input. That's fun. His arms don't go crazy like they did in the video. Like they're actually choreographed very well. And then the topper mode is fun. Like it is a fun, uh, it's way more fun than the video mode would have been. Um, so I will say anybody that's thinking about buying the cactus, a cactus, can you remake? It is worth buying the SE plus like the topper truly is incredible. Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye. I'm going to shill the heck out of it. But what we were saying though, is like, what has blown me away from this game is how much my friends and family have genuinely liked the game. and I think it is because it is so accessible. The theme is understood. It's Cowboys. The theme integration is incredibly well done. The shots, like my wife actually played this game. She actually touched one of my pinball machines. My wife did. And what did she do? She actually hit shots. Like she actually was hitting the center ramp and like it's accessible. It's easy to hit. So you feel like for novice players, you actually feel good. I actually felt good playing the game. My brother, we played, we streamed it the other night. He stepped right up and was able to hit shots. And when you can hit things, you feel it's way more fun than bricking. That's for sure. But then like my kids and everybody like, oh, I love that his hat flies up when you hit the bash toy. It's a bash, like bash toys are super accessible. Everybody understands you hit the guy and his hat flies up.
    58:14
    The quick draw, the fact that it stops the ball and gives you a little scene where it's popping up targets. And, oh, it's very, like, there's no explanation needed. There's one target that's lit up. It stopped the ball for you. Hit that target. Like, I just, that's the thing. My friends and family actually were hitting the start button over and over and over again. And I just haven't experienced that. I haven't, with all the other games, Zax Let Me Borrow, this is the first game that, like, my friends and family have truly enjoyed. And walking away from the stream, like my brother, I would consider him, he's gotten to be a pretty decent player. He walked away from the stream and he's like, that's the most fun game we've streamed. And I was like, really? And he goes, I enjoyed playing that game more than every other game you own except for Godzilla. That was his one exception. But I was like, you like Cactus Canyon more than Deadpool? And he goes, I think I do. He's like, I love Deadpool. I love the theme. It's a fun game. It's funny. But he's like, genuine though? I had more fun though. playing cactus canyon so i don't know it's just what and that just says it's it's it's screwing me up guys do you want to answer why travis or should i you you can answer first and i'll answer second okay um so i i think the reason for that is a couple of things one is the rules are extremely easy to understand yes so you hit these three shots it starts a mode you know it's it's a typical bally williams era rule set whereas you compare that to today's rule sets with deadpool godzilla oh yeah yada yada yada um they're complex so they're harder for people to the novice people to understand um and then you have you have really cool toys on that game honestly like you said you have the guy with the hat was that bart yep um you have the gold mine that raises and lowers you have the drop targets uh you have the little train that goes by You know, so there's there's a lot of stuff on that game.
    60:38
    The reason I particularly don't care for it. And I shouldn't say that I like going out to a location and playing it. OK, but I wouldn't have it in my house because it's too easy.
    60:54
    You know, and I'll let you talk, Travis. But speaking on too easy, like my brother, the second game he played on it. He was actually progressing pretty far in the game. The second game he played. Now I explained the rules and whatnot, but I think he had gotten through all the modes. So that's, I think, Stampede. And then I think he had started, what is it? Shootout, Showdown, which is when you get all the quick draw targets. So it's like he got two through two of the five things just on his second game. And I, when we streamed it the other night, that's the first time that I've truly played it for an extended period of time. I was one shot away from the wizard mode. So I had missed mother load. Mother load is the multi-ball mode, which I will say is awesome. Like the multi-ball, you start multi-ball, all five jackpot shots are hit. Once you do that, then the mode, the, the gold mine scoop is raising and lowering opening. And you have to time it when it's open. And just like, it reminded me of the Groot head. Um, when I had a guardians of the galaxy, like there's one of the modes, the Groot head mouth is going up and down and you have to time the shot. Right. Very cool. Very, very cool. So, but what sucked is I drain, I missed it. And so I would have had to grind all the way back into multi-ball to have another chance at it. But that was it. If I would have completed mother load, I did everything else needed to qualify high noon, which is, I think it's high noon. No high noon. Okay. Corral. Yeah. The wizard mode. So this is something, I mean, I'm definitely going to keep playing this game because maybe if I get to the wizard mode, I'll lose all sense of enjoyment. I don't, I don't know, but even, even just playing it, you know, when I'm streaming, I'm playing a game for two hours straight. It kept drawing me back in. It kept drawing me back in, and I wanted to play more. But I don't know. Travis, thoughts on?
    62:38
    No, I mean, you're pretty much saying exactly what everybody in pinball kind of knows about it. I mean, that was the thing about it at the very beginning, too. When it went on location, there wasn't many of them produced. I think there was maybe like 900 total, and then they ended up going to like pinball 2000 platform or whatever it was back then. So, yeah, one of the big draws of it, though, for people when they first start playing is that everything is truly accessible to it. And we keep using this term apparently all all podcasts long. But it's true because the plunge comes directly to right flipper. So you're never going to get a house ball or anything like that. You really don't even have to use the ball save. It's basically a fan layout. There's just really no true dangerous shots in the game. And, you know, that's a big reason why my wife and my kids were drawn to it. years ago because it is on location and original down in Oklahoma City as well. So we have plenty of time on it. It just, it comes down to things are very easy to start and shots are very easy to hit. So when you mix those two things together, it provides a good experience overall. And this kind of goes back to what we were talking about with Scooby-Doo, that you got to be careful in making things too overcomplicated compared to with how difficult the game shoots or how easy the game shoots. And I think with Cactus Canyon, for a lot of people, it's easy to approach. Now, that being said, because it's so easy to approach, if you have multiple games in your collection, you may and you've mastered them all. Like you've gotten to say you get to like a wizard mode on like Mandalorian or something like that. That's a lot of wood chopping, right? You're probably going to destroy Cactus Canyon fairly quickly. That's just the reality. And, you know, for a potential buyer, you got to decide, is that worth it to you? Is it worth the topper? Is it worth some of the movement in the game to have something that you may end up eating on a consistent basis? And some people are perfectly fine with that. And there's other people that as soon as they beat a game, they lose all interest in it. So the last thing you want to do is spend $10,000, $12,000, however much they are now, on a game and then lose interest in it within a month. I totally agree. And I will say the other things that I do enjoy with the game, the XL display, the XL dot display is gorgeous. The speaker lights on this thing are awesome. Like the light show is super impressive.
    65:04
    It's just CGC as a whole. I'm really impressed. The game is incredibly well built. It's freaking heavy. Like getting this thing down in the basement.
    65:15
    And the play field is perfect. Like I know they still screen print their play fails, but they're just like it is a drastic difference comparing that play field to a stern play field. And I'm just I'm really impressed. I'm very impressed by this game. But it impressed me so much that like here I am racking my brain where if I'm in a constant pursuit of four games, four games that I can own. But I want to find that balance of a game that draws me in, but also a game that my friends and family want to actually play and play on their own. And it's made me question, should I have a CGC game? Should I have a Medieval Madness or an Attack from Mars or a Cactus Canyon or a Monster Bash as one of those four games? Have a game that's incredibly well done, but it is well liked by novice people. And when I was streaming it, there were people in chat that were like, I have a Cactus Canyon and will never leave. It's my most played game by my friends. And that's the thing. just having it. Do I think it's a one pin collection game? Probably not. You will get bored of it. But in a four pin or larger collection, having a game like that, that anybody can step up to and have a good time. It's really made me think about it. It's really made me think about trying to buy one of these, but I'm stuck. Like I love this topper. I feel like I have to get an LE or an LE or an SE plus. And it's made me look back where it's like, knowing how good this light show is, they don't have those RGB LEDs in attack from Mars. They never made one that way. they made with Medieval Madness. The Royal Edition has that light show and the extended XL display with the lights, but you either have to have the Royal Edition or you have to buy the upgrade kits to upgrade your old one. Monster Bash has that. But I was looking, like I'm watching Monster Bash videos. You like fall into modes on this. You just hit a shot three times and you're in the mode. Monster Bash isn't that way. There's a little more complexity to it. And I'm curious if that little more complexity would be a turnoff to the novice people. I don't know. No, well, most people know what Monster Bash is, too, and casuals love that as well. I mean, seeing universal monsters, seeing Frankenstein come up and down, and then seeing Dracula, you eventually get them started going back and forth. So, yeah, these are just things from that era to where the rule sets very much weren't super deep on most of the games, but it did have certain mechs that you were able to see very early in the game. And for somebody that's dropping coins into a game, that makes sense. That's what you want. And so it does make complete sense that a novice or a casual would be into something like this. And that's pretty much what they had to do, too, because if you look at it, none of these themes are really licensed themes either. So it's not like people are being sold on just the theme itself. They're being sold on the general idea of the theme. So Cactus Canyon, it's not because, oh, it's Cactus Canyon. It's because, oh, it's bad guys. It's a Western and stuff like that. That makes more sense. It's the same way. Attack from Mars. It's not because, oh, it's attack from Mars. It's because it's aliens and you see a spaceship. Yeah. So, I mean, these are just decisions, design decisions, coding decisions that were very much based off the era. It's like a snapshot. I don't think that you would see the same thing really be done too much nowadays. No. I just can't recall anything off the top of my head that's really like that in general. I mean, there's bash toys. There is, like Walking Dead. But look at Stranger Things. Look at Stranger Things. You hit three shots, and it starts the mode. That was going to be the only example I could really think of. Big Demogorgon in the middle with a bash toy. Yeah, like whenever you put a bash toy somewhere, that is what people associate. I mean, it's just like even Walking Dead, there's people that probably have really no idea what the rules are. There's a lot of people that don't even realize what the drop targets do in relation to prison and to the well walker. But they know the well walkers right there. They're just going to hit the shit out of them multiple times till eventually starts a multi ball. So, yeah, you just see hallmarks of that. But I don't think I can't really recall games being produced that fall into the more Cactus Canyon vibe because it's even like like Munsters, for instance. Right. They went they went shallower code on that and they did it on purpose. and a lot of people that are still into that theme at least they do have that bash toy with herman like you had to have something like that you had to have that hook with it so i mean that's basically that and stranger things might be the only two things i can really think of like up close because i know mando didn't have it no you know no i mean even though i had a little dangly target that wasn't something that you know anybody really really cared about so it's it's really made me think though that like i don't know i see the appeal with a cgc type game in my in my game collection but here i am if in my head i'm like well what do i which one should i get should i get if i'm gonna do that if i'm gonna do that type of thing do you go cactus can you do you go monster bash do you go medieval madness well the one thing that keeps kind of pulling me towards cactus canyon is the potential lyman 2.0 code like is this game going to have its current code set which everybody will love and then is there going to be a deeper version of the game for everyone else to enjoy that when you start you hold in the flippers or something you peel the you pick the other one like if that that would be that would be the perfect case scenario right that would be give me this game so all my friends and family can love it every time they play it but then if i get bored of it give me the code set that i can go way deeper when like that sounds awesome that sounds awesome but i also know that's kind of a it's very up in the air is that actually going to happen at this point i don't know i don't know that answer we we haven't really heard anything else really about it other than what i think josh sharp went on uh jeff teolis's podcast pinball profile shortly you know after lyman had passed away and i think he kind of mentioned code a little bit but then after that i mean i don't i don't know i don't really know anything else about I thought I had heard that they had a really good game plan of all the stuff they wanted to do, but it was Lyman. He's the one that's actually typing in the code. And at this point, I don't know who is going to want to open up that file and start tweaking. Like, who would want to take on that responsibility? Like, I don't know. I pity the person that does, but at the same time, if you're the guy doing it, thank you. Thank you for doing it, and hopefully we can get that code out and finish this code. But I don't, I mean, to wrap it all up, I just, overall, I was not prepared to like this game at all. I thought it would be fun. It'll be a fun thing to play for two, three weeks before I get something else. But this game, and maybe it's just the first CGC game, remake game I've had, I'm incredibly impressed with the build quality, the upgrade to, like, I don't want to, I have no interest in owning an original Cactus Canyon. All the bells and whistles that they put in this thing are incredibly well done. the topper is incredibly well done like this is a fun game this is a fun game that i'm enjoying and that's what i was reading in chat when i was playing it like people are just like cactus canyon is just fun pinball if you're okay with that to have a good time but yeah does it warrant a spot in your collection because you may only have fun with it for 30 minutes and you're bored and you want to go play another game fine i don't i don't know i don't know that answer but that's a personal choice for everyone um but we will see so the challenge there and this is the segue is if i was to get a game like this i would have to give up one of my games i would have to sell it or trade it and what crazy to me is that game deadpool would probably be the one i have to sell or trade and so that a whole other thing Like am I willing to give that up I don know But that leads me to a really good question and this was a viewer question which is, when do you sell a game? When do you sell a game, and how do you handle seller's remorse? So, Tom, I don't know how much you want to get into it, because I know you have some games going out and a potential game coming in. I don't know if you want to disclose any of that. but mentally how do you wrap your head around when is it time for a game to leave and then seller's remorse so you can go first we'll get in i'm going to be doing a trade soon but we'll get we'll get into that in a different episode sounds good um but um i i think i think you're just you get to a point with the game it's like i've seen everything it's just not doing anything for me anymore and it's a time to go on to something new new games come out you want to try them out um but uh i i have i have bought games back and the magic the second time around just wasn't there okay um this was more early on i guess but like i i've had uh i had a starship Troopers and I really liked it when I had it. I got it back and it just wasn't the same. And Judge Dredd, same thing.
    74:34
    But yeah, it's just I guess maybe I'd have more buyer's remorse in a smaller collection. If I had four games, I think it might be a little harder than when you have 35 to 40. What about your emotional, like there are people that they're like, well, I can't sell that game because it's the first game I had, or it's I can't sell that game because my son and I refinished the whole game and I can't like. There's some of that, like Spider-Man was the first game I bought new in box. I still love that game. I don't think I'll ever sell it.
    75:17
    Raj. Yeah. Will not leave. Well, luckily it's a good game. It will not leave, Joel. But luckily it's a good game, right? That's the challenge. And I don't mean this in – I don't mean – Ray, I'm sorry. But there are people that bought Led Zeppelin because it's Led Zeppelin, and that's a dream theme, and they just – they don't like the game. And now they're stuck. They're stuck because they're like, it's my dream theme.
    75:45
    But, you know, and I think – I will tell you, Led Zeppelin I had a blast on. You can get them now. They're available. They're selling for cheap. I would absolutely encourage people to give it a shot. That game is actually a ton of fun.
    76:00
    With that said, though, there are people that that was like, that's their dream team. They have it. And now it's the emotional pull versus the actual, are you playing it? If you're not playing the game, that's my thing. if I own a game and I realize like to be 100% honest right now when I come down into my basement if I only have time to play one or two games the two games that I'm actually playing are Cactus Canyon and Godzilla like these are the two so I haven't put much time on on Deadpool recently and that's just because I have two other games that are pulling grabbing my attention um that's kind of my rule of thumb another thing that I would highly suggest is make some friends and if you have the ability to trade, what's that like? Yeah. If you have the ability to trade a game, do it. And what I mean by that is, um, Jurassic park. I wanted, I wanted to play Jurassic park. I wanted to experience it. I wanted to have it, but I didn't want to commit to buying it. And I also didn't want to commit to selling anything. So luckily I had a friend, Ryan, who's in, who's in the area. And so he's borrowing TNA. I'm borrowing Jurassic park, having TNA now out of the house really makes me, you know, it makes you question like, do I miss it? My answer is yes, I do. I absolutely miss having TNA here. I'm looking forward to getting TNA back. But when you have that opportunity to trade away a game and you're like, I haven't been able to play it in two months. I haven't missed it. Well, it's probably time to sell it. It's probably time to sell. And I've been able to do that with Turtles. Moving Turtles to my parents' house has actually really made me appreciate Turtles more because I play it every time I go to my parents' house. Like it's the only game here. I might as well flip it around. It's like, man, I miss this game. This is a fun game. Like I really. So that's the thing. Like make sure if you do a trade, you do it with somebody you trust. Yes. And, you know, they're not going to like take it out on route or sell it on you.
    77:56
    But if you can do that, though, if you can get your game out of your house somewhere else, whether it's a trade or let a friend borrow it or something that, I mean, that gives you a taste of what it would be like to sell it. And if you're okay with that, then, then there's your answer. Otherwise, if you're like, I need it, TNA, come back to me. I miss you. Like I've sold TNA before and I regret, like, I know I won't make that mistake again, but Travis, what are your thoughts? You've gone through games. I mean, Well, it's, there's several different ways you could look at this. So I would assume, so what's the conditions that we're going off of? If you have like 10 games or less to where you actually notice the game, something like, because if you have it and Tom can probably attest to this, when you have a big collection, it's okay for some games will go a long time without being played to the point that sometimes you just got to flip it on and just plunge a few balls just to make sure that everything keeps working. I have a bunch of EMs that I do that. So this could happen with all eras. what I would probably say based on, I can't really speak to tell people what to do. I can say how I like to do it. I like to make sure I identify my dream themes. So I know it's Walking Dead, I know it's Godzilla, I know it's Avengers, games like that. And I got extremely lucky that two of my dream themes were designed by Elway. That's just like pure luck at this point. But yeah, there's certain games out there. So those three games, I would have a very hard time getting rid of. I wouldn't say never say never about all of them except for Walking Dead. And the only reason why is because that's the pen that my family bought for me. And that's the very first pen that I ever owned because of that. So it holds like such a close place to me. It means a lot. That's a good reason for me to never give up on that. But that being said, the strategy I use having that game and knowing that I'll never sell it, that's the game I'm willing to trade with trusted people to bring a game in because I know I'm never going to sell it. And I know I'm OK with not playing it for a few months. So I've done multiple trades in the past or other games to see to get to play them, to get to figure it out without having to drop six to eight thousand dollars. I've done that a lot. So I would tell somebody, find a game or two that, you know, you don't want to sell. Joel's missing this. I buy a game of the Elgato. No, I'm trying to find the actual question but yes i'll got it it's a good it's 30 minutes it's like good like hey it's okay i'm listening to you travis it's fine but no i i would say that that's a good reason to have a couple of games in which you know you never want to sell or at least it's highly unlikely that you will sell them then just be okay with trading it out with the people that you can trust in your local pinball community that would enable you to play a lot of other games that otherwise you wouldn't get a chance to to get to experience i think that's an easy way to go about it and And that's why TNA, I was totally fine with trading out TNA. It would have been interesting if I traded out Deadpool. Maybe that would actually tell me, hey, I haven't had it three months. Do I need it back? Do I miss it? I don't know. The actual question here is, yeah, since you all own multiple games, when slash how do you decide to move on and sell a title? I have a hard time letting go, even if it's driving me crazy. Mando is the answer. I've always worried about seller's remorse. I mean, luckily, most games, if you truly ever had seller's remorse, you can get almost any game back. Well, here's the reality of it, too. If you're not having fun every single time you're turning on the game, just move on from it. Rip off the Band-Aid. That fun isn't going to all of a sudden come back. And you can decipher if you're just tired of a game for now and you need a break. You can tell if you're like, like you said a second ago, Joel, you love Deadpool. You know you love Deadpool, right? So you're okay with taking a break from it. It's not like as soon as you turn on a game, you go there, you'll say, I'm not having fun with this game. No. But the bottom line is there's certain games when you get enough games in. Right. And you've had a game for three years and you've beat it a few times. The code's not getting updated anymore. You know exactly what to do. Maybe you're just like as soon as you turn it on, you don't get that feeling of joy as soon as you're playing it. So why? Why keep on at that point? Move on from it. Just rip off the bandaid. I promise you, I felt the same way about Star Wars. Love that game. Star Wars is a dream theme. I love the whole, the whole stuff, like anything to do with star Wars. I love it. Right. But after a while of blowing up the death star, after a while of just playing Han or Leah over and over and over again, mixed in with some R2D2, throwing around multipliers, I finally just got tired of it. Yep. And I found myself not playing it on a consistent basis. So I moved on from it. I missed it for a little while, but then you know what? Found it on location, but in a couple of games and I was good. I was fine. And then that told me I was perfectly fine with selling the game, getting the money and not looking back and then moving on to other themes, getting to experience different pinball. And I think that's that's the biggest thing is don't be afraid of taking that chance and experiencing other games and find ways to play whatever theme that you had a hard time letting go of or whatever game you had a hard time letting go of. Just find a way to play it every now and again. And if you have a location nearby or if you know a friend that has it, like if you can have that set up before you move on from the game and, you know, just kind of your fallback. I mean, that makes it so much easier, in my opinion. No. And like Mando, that person's like Mando's are available. Like you could sell that right now. And worst case scenario, six months from now, boom, you can buy another one. But the only the only pin that I would say is if you're not having fun, wait, is like so like Bond. If you own Bond right now, Bond is so far from being done. Like if you're not having fun with the layout, that's not going to change. But if you're just bored because the code's not there, sure. I think if it's already there, it's already in your house. If you can wait, you know, another few months and let that code really start to flesh out, then you get a better glimpse of that game. That one, it would be hard, but you might just have to wait on that. But a lot of other games, I get it. Like I know exactly the fun that I'm going to have with Deadpool. but it's that game that you have in the back of your head of like, if I can only have four, is there a game that I would have more fun with? And it hurts me to see when my friends and family come over and then they walk up to the games. What games do they start? They start Godzilla and they're starting cactus Canyon. Nobody's playing Deadpool by themselves. And it's like, well, like, I don't like, why don't you like that game? I like that game. Why, why are we not, you know, meeting on that? So I don't know. I'm not, I don't know where I'm at with this, but it's just this, this whole cactus Canyon is thrown a hole. It's, it's, it's really messing me up and I don't know how to feel about it. And it sounds like you're done with all the George Gomez interviews. No, it's, it's weird. It's weird. I mean, I, I, when I was at a Zach's barn for the pinball wars, I mean, beautiful games has an amazing collection. Like I stepped up and played as Deadpool and had a great time. You know, there's, there's plenty of games that I was, you know, wanted, Ooh, you got that. I want to play that. I want to see what that's like. And others I'm like, nah, I just, you know, I just walk right by him. like no interest.
    85:12
    So I don't know. It's an interesting question. I think this even brings up another question that a lot of people probably have out there. And it's if I'm not having fun on a game that I used to have fun on before, but I don't want to let go of it. How can I, I guess like spice it up a little bit, you know, figure out, figure out how to have fun with this pen again. So I mean, I find myself doing that a lot with different pens as well to where I decide to play it completely different than what I would have done before. So even for star Wars for a little while, I just played Luke all the time and I developed a whole new strategy. Didn't really care if I was blowing up points. I just cared more about creating the moments with Luke and finding a different path. Yeah. And so you can do that on a lot of games as well. So if you have a game that's in your game room right now, but you're like, you know what? I haven't played it that much. I just haven't been having fun with it. take a look at it again and play it completely different than you have before like it's a lot of fun playing the godzilla saucer meta right if you're just tired of playing godzilla just go for saucers the whole time and it makes the game very interesting in that way and so even walking dead play the well walker meta the whole time that'll make it interesting stacking up with riot there's just certain things you could look at with games just to completely change your approach to it and change your path and see if you might have fun that way. And other ways you could do it is maybe lower the difficulty level down from the multi balls. So maybe you can get you can get stacks a lot easier. You can do something that you might not be doing on a regular basis when the game set the default or change the modes. Be easy. So maybe your journey to a wizard mode isn't quite as daunting. It doesn't feel like you're chopping wood as much. I mean, there's a lot of different if you're going to the wizard mode easier, you know, make your game harder. challenge yourself a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Change some things. I would say the best thing to do would be maybe to change the multi balls to be a little bit more difficult. So then that way you have a challenge of thinking of thinking your approach differently. And I think that that goes a long way to making a game have more appeal when you can change up how you're approaching it, how you're playing it and what you're actually doing during the gameplay. Okay. No, all good points all good points um well we do need to wrap it up a little bit we're almost at an hour and a half there was a comment i'm curious if how much you want to talk about it travis but the only other thing that i have on here is it seems like the industry is slowing down a little bit and i don't know how much and you're seeing this i mean you're seeing this from a like you've got all the numbers you i mean you work for a pinball company but what are your thoughts i mean i know there's a lot of excitement coming around the corner. You know, there's some new games coming out soon. TPF, there may be multiple reveals. I don't know if people are just, you know, bunkering up or I don't know if it's Christmas bills or waiting on that tax return. I don't know. So, Travis, what are your thoughts on that? No, it's like anything else. We talked about this a little bit off podcast. Of course, January and February historically in any industry is typically not as great as quarter four like quarter one there's always a dip right but yeah it's kind of noticing a noticeable dip at this point you know you see certain games that are used games where the price has come way down down on you see like i'm actually seeing godzilla premiums available yeah right now out there and so i mean that's something that we haven't seen in quite some time which is crazy though because i know there are distributors that they are so backordered so some of these big distributors, they've got lists that they're not through. And yet we got these small distributors that are like, I got them. So why is it that Stern distributes them in that manner? I mean, sales that are already committed versus new? I don't know. Allocation and purchase orders is like a whole nother podcast. I don't even know if we can even talk about publicly anyways, but I will say that, yeah, it's noticeable that there is a slowdown that's coming. It's trending. It's probably already here and we're in the middle of it. I'm very curious to see how that affects used market. And I'm very curious to see how that affects second runs of games coming up. I don't know if we're going to see the same backlog of games. Obviously, there's plenty of dealers have James Bonds. They're out. And I mean, I don't recall like Rush sold very well right out of the gate very first time. Godzilla did the same thing first run uh mandalorian did great first run so this is kind of we're just noticing a slowdown with that as well so when you look at all things considered this isn't happening just for one company scooby-doo didn't sell out right toy story they didn't sell out yeah toy story was like quick out of the gate and then just the falling star came right back bond and there are toy story there are distributors that had to cancel they they put in orders they heard from jjp hey your order's ready and they said i can't i already have so many in stock i can't right and and i know there are people there are distributors doing that with stern that have you got mandos for you i don't i can't i already have them you know yeah so yeah so what you're going to see is is there's plenty of other pins coming out there's other cornerstones i'm sure at some point we'll see hopefully we see GTF from American Pinball. You see these Scooby-Doos coming out. You're going to see more Cactus Canyons coming out. And then, of course, you're going to have the Cornerstones from Stern. And then, of course, it's been wildly... It's been rumored about a Jersey Jack pin, another one coming out. And I imagine that there's going to be another one at some point this year.
    91:01
    There's going to be plenty of options for pinball. It's just the question is, is there going to be enough people wanting to buy the game? Or are we going to see the same velocity? And it's interesting because it looks like that's starting to trend down a little bit overall. If we look at everything all put together and not just necessarily just one. Yeah, just not one game. Because, sure, one game will sell better than anything else. Yeah, Godzilla's not trimming down. Right. But it is interesting that we saw as of this morning there were Godzilla premiums being told that other people have gotten additional allocation of them. And there's a reason why people are getting additional allocation of something. I think we can all figure out why that is. So it's like, I mean, it's a clear sign of the time. So I don't know. I'm curious to see what that does to prices overall, because prices are rising from a manufacturing standpoint, raw material. Inflation's still doing whatever the hell it's doing. Oh, yeah. I'm curious. On the Freeplay Pinball podcast, that was a question they asked John Borg. You know, it's a part of the game that's more expensive than people realize. And he very quickly said the cabinet. Yes. And I, you know, the amount of wood that's in there or needed in the wood price are going up metal, metal back box or in CGC's case. I mean, that's all wood like that. And he goes, believe it or not, like the CPUs and stuff like those are relatively cheap. It's not the electronics. It's the it's the, you know, screws and stuff. A screw that used to cost 20 cents is now a dollar and 20 cents. I don't think the general public realizes how much cost has really risen in general and gotten passed on to through other like like take shipping, for instance. You know, price of gas has been up and down. It's been all over the place. Now, of course, you know, those those companies aren't going to all of a sudden like charge less for their shipping. You know, and anybody sees free shipping. It's not free. somebody's paying for that, obviously. So yeah, and prices, it's just, you're dealing with a lot of raw materials going up. The cabinet is actually more expensive than what people realize with the wood, with the build, with everything. So yeah, it's just, when you see these prices, I think people would be very surprised about what things actually cost because there is a lot of misinformation out there in terms of thinking that, oh, there's not much cost into these games when there is. And obviously there's always going to be a markup across the board because somebody's got to make money to stay in business and pay employees. That's just the way it is for any industry in general. It's a good point. It's just something we're seeing. I thought it was worth addressing. The only other thing I could think worth addressing, looking now that you have your games on, Tom, all I'm seeing is your Expression Light kits and Led Zeppelin and Rush, and you have the Ninja Mod light kick and the speakers. The speakers look sick, and you're Star Trek in the background with the lasers.
    93:51
    This is… Looks nice, doesn't it? It looks real good. I'm jealous that he has the rush expression lights. You and everyone else. Super jealous of that. Yeah. How's it feel, Tom? It feels good.
    94:06
    Well, we can wrap it up. Love Tom. Tom's the best. Tom, do you have any other thoughts on that? I mean, do you feel the industry or is this something you're seeing? Or I don't know. Overall thoughts on where you're at in the hobby? Like, and are you waiting on stuff? I mean, what do you think? I'd like to see some new stuff come out. It seems like it's just been a long time. Yeah. Well, it's unfortunate. Just the energy behind Bond, it just dropped so quickly. And then the 60th took so long to even be revealed. And now that's happened, but no stream. We're just waiting. I think we've just – it feels like we've been in a weird holding pattern for like two months. And we're waiting to see. But I think we're going to see a lot. I think there's going to be a lot coming. Dark times. But, like, even me from a selfish standpoint, like, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be streaming Scooby-Doo relatively soon. I'm going to be streaming Bond 60th relatively soon. And that's February. March, there's going to be another Stern game coming out soon. Like, there's a lot coming. GTF can't – whenever that shows up, I'm ready. I don't know. There's a lot coming that I think should be really, really fun. All right. Well, let's go ahead and wrap it up, plug it up. Travis, plug away. What do you got? You guys can find me on this YouTube channel and this audio podcast, the Triple Drain Pinball Podcast. And you can also find me creating my own show that I'm going to call Joel and Not His Friends. It's Flippin' Out with Friends. Flippin' Out with Friends. You just don't make the list anymore, Travis. I'm so sorry.
    95:44
    But yes, thank you for being here. Thank you for wearing that shirt. That shirt looks great on you. Thank you. I love it. I'm going to wear it probably at District 82 during the tournament as well. You should. Speaking of which, Tom, plug away.
    95:58
    Find me at Fox City Spinball. Perfect. With all the social, all the everything. Do you have any tournaments or anything crazy coming up? Sign up. Yeah, we got a big tournament this coming weekend, the winner 3X.
    96:15
    Nice. It's a big deal for a whopper farm. Okay. So rest up. That's this weekend. So tomorrow, yeah. You ready to – Well, I was thinking when this would actually drop. Way to go, Joel. It's okay. They get ahead. I'm living in the moment. He's actually being real. I don't blame him for not voting for us now, Tom. It makes so much sense now.
    96:38
    Oh, man. Well, thank you, Tom, for pointing that out. Appreciate it. And yeah, I'm Joel. I do. Well, obviously, it's podcast. But then, yes, every Wednesday, 10 to midnight Eastern Standard Time, the flipping out pinball stream on YouTube. We'll do a flipping out with friends this week. Sorry, Travis, you won't be there. And and then we'll be sure I just alternate every other week. So check out those videos, like, subscribe, all the things. And yeah, if you're enjoying the video here, you know, like, subscribe, all the things. And yeah, I think that's it. So, Tom, like always, you get the last words. Mystery Castle Indisc 2024.