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Episode 38 – Christopher Franchi Hexagon Threesome + Mrs Pin!

Head2Head Pinball·podcast_episode·analyzed·Apr 9, 2018
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TL;DR

Christopher Franchi recounts his entry into pinball art and career progression at Stern.

Summary

Christopher Franchi, a renowned pinball artist with 30 years of licensing design experience, discusses his transition into pinball art starting with Batman 66 in 2016 after Stern discovered his work via Google search. He details his work on multiple Stern titles (Batman 66, Guardians of the Galaxy) and upcoming Kapow projects, explaining his design process, creative constraints, and collaboration with game designers and art directors.

Key Claims

  • Stern discovered Christopher Franchi work by Googling 'Batman 66' when they were unhappy with the original Batman pinball artwork one month before the 2016 Expo reveal

    high confidence · Christopher Franchi confirmed this directly: 'They did a Google search for 66 Batman and my work popped up'

  • Christopher Franchi was given approximately three weeks to complete Batman 66 artwork while moonlighting at a full-time job

    high confidence · Christopher Franchi stated: 'my introduction to Pinball was, hey, you got three weeks. What can you give us?' and 'I was moonlighting doing all of this extra work'

  • Stern has an unwritten exclusive rule that artists who work for Stern cannot work for other manufacturers like Jersey Jack, though exceptions exist for Kapow partnerships

    high confidence · Christopher Franchi explained: 'their rule is if you work for Stern, you work for nobody else. However, being the fact that I was brought in because of a kapow game, whenever that partnership comes up, that's sort of fair game'

  • Christopher Franchi worked on Guardians of the Galaxy for approximately nine to ten months (November 2016 to September 2017)

    high confidence · Christopher Franchi stated: 'I basically had from November of 2016 to September of 2017. You know, so it was a good nine months, nine, ten months'

  • Greg Freres is the art director at Stern who coordinates between game designers and artists

    high confidence · Christopher Franchi identified Greg Freres as 'the art director' who contacted him for Batman 66 and Guardians of the Galaxy projects

  • Christopher Franchi created 120 different gadget designs for Batman 66 Limited Edition variants, with the 'Shark Repellent' and 'Batmobile' being the most sought-after

    high confidence · Christopher Franchi confirmed: 'I had to draw 120 of them' and 'That was the one that everybody wanted, that and the Batmobile'

  • After Batman 66, Stern contracted Christopher Franchi for additional games including two Kapow titles that may release under Kapow, Stern, or both labels

    medium confidence · Christopher Franchi stated: 'As soon as that was revealed, I got two more, which are both, I believe, I know one for sure, but I believe both are Kapow titles. I don't know if it's going to be, I don't know how they're going to be released'

Notable Quotes

  • “They did a Google search for 66 Batman and my work popped up. And that just goes to show you how a little bit of tenacity can pay off.”

    Christopher Franchi @ ~7:30 — Explains the serendipitous discovery that launched his pinball career

  • “Light years away. Light years away.”

    Christopher Franchi @ ~14:00 — Describing the difference between the original Batman artwork and his replacement design

  • “I basically have no life. So then with Guardians of the Galaxy, how long did you work on that in totality?”

    Christopher Franchi @ ~30:45 — Candid admission about the work-life balance challenges of designing multiple pinball games simultaneously

  • “You want to put something that relates to the property that's almost like in music they refer to as a deep cut, a deep cut into a property where somebody did something in one of the movies or the TV show episode or whatever it might be.”

    Christopher Franchi @ ~45:00 — Articulates his design philosophy of including subtle, detailed references that dedicated fans appreciate

  • “Sam Stern came to me and said, we're going to do a pinball machine based on the movie On Golden Pond with Henry Fonda... I would not bother immersing myself in that world because I would just tell them no.”

    Christopher Franchi @ ~48:30 — Demonstrates his selective approach to projects based on personal interest and engagement with the source material

  • “So much of what you do in pinball is collaboration. You don't, you know, all these puzzle pieces have to fit together in your work as a team.”

    Christopher Franchi @ ~50:00 — Reflects on the collaborative nature of pinball game design beyond just artwork

Entities

Christopher FranchipersonGreg FrerespersonGeorge GomezpersonJohn BorgpersonStern PinballcompanyKapow PinballcompanyBatman 66game

Signals

  • ?

    design_innovation: Christopher Franchi's approach to playfield artwork design using hexagonal geometric patterns and nested structures, particularly for mode indicator integration in Guardians of the Galaxy

    high · Discussion of hexagon-based design philosophy and mode indicator layout on Guardians playfield; described as original approach with no up-front direction

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Stern's discovery of Christopher Franchi via Google search for Batman 66 artwork represents informal talent acquisition; suggests art director Greg Ferrer had agency in artist selection

    high · Christopher Franchi confirmed Google search discovery and Greg Ferrer as the contact; demonstrates internet presence importance for freelance artists

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern maintains unwritten but enforced exclusivity clauses with key artists, preventing work with competing manufacturers except through partnership arrangements like Kapow

    high · Christopher Franchi detailed: 'if you work for Stern, you work for nobody else. However... kapow game... whenever that partnership comes up, that's sort of fair game'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Different IP licensors impose varying creative restrictions; Marvel characterized as artist-friendly with extensive style guides but allowing creative interpretation, while Warner Brothers described as more restrictive and photo-reference-dependent

    high · Christopher Franchi compared Marvel vs Warner Brothers approval processes: 'Marvel is very pro-artist' vs 'Warner Brothers are not always that easy... they really kind of want you to use their stuff'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.477

0:00
Music You can speak to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. Find us on Facebook. Email us at headtoheadpinball at gmail.com or go to our website at headtoheadpinball.com Welcome everybody to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. This is episode number 38 and my name's Martin and with me always... It's Ryan C. How are you going, mate? I am very well. How are you, Ryan? Good. Do we have a special guest today? We are all about the special guests. This guy's favourite colour is purple, orange and teal and he doesn't have the time of the day for circles and squares but he will give the time of the day to a hexagon. Ladies and gentlemen, Christopher Franchi. Hey guys!
1:05
That's a pretty true. I should have worked out something clever but that was shooting from the hips.
1:13
How are you Chris? You interrupted me, I was making love to two hexagons at one time. So, what sort of shape does that create when you have a hexagon? I'll let you know in nine months.
1:35
Don't take a head on. Everyone who doesn't know, you should know who Christopher French is. He's the amazing artist behind Batman 66 and Guardians of the Galaxy. And what I wanted to do today, if it's okay with you, Chris, is just kind of like walk through your Pinball career so far. Because it's been short, but a lot has happened in that time. So from my understanding, your origins with Pinball, like you used to play it when you were a little kid, right? Like your introduction to Pinball wasn't a year and a half ago when you got involved with Batman. And it was, you know, you used to play it when you were a kid and you owned a machine before you went to the industry?

  • Marvel approved Christopher Franchi as the artist for Guardians of the Galaxy after he submitted pencil sketches and character artwork samples

    high confidence · Christopher Franchi explained: 'Marvel wanted a tryout... show us a sketch, pencil sketch of a cabinet, a piece of artwork of the character... Stern submitted that and Marvel approved me based on that'

    • Guardians of the Galaxy
    game
    Marvelcompany
    Warner Brotherscompany
    Joe Kengoperson
    Mark Cookperson
    Stephen Martinperson
    Zyngacompany
    Fright Ragscompany
    Martinperson
    Ryan Cperson
    Head to Head Pinball Podcastorganization

    product_strategy: Batman 66 Limited Edition variants tied to 120 unique gadget designs created significant collector FOMO; Shark Repellent gadget became most sought-after, with collectors strategically selecting random numbers

    high · Christopher Franchi noted: 'That was the one that everybody wanted' and Australian distributor refused to release gadget mapping to prevent pre-purchase disputes

  • ?

    operational_signal: Playfield artwork design requires late-stage involvement after game mechanics finalization, creating iterative changes and complexity; insert placement necessitates masking background artwork

    high · Christopher Franchi described playfield work: 'it was my first play field... it's the hardest part... Changes are always being made... If the inserts move, you have to go in and you have to take out the background'

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Stern testing color-printed armor accessory manufacturing with durability issues; wear resistance from regular play (wedding ring contact) prevented product launch despite aesthetic success

    high · Christopher Franchi explained: 'Greg is a happily married guy... his wedding ring had worn off the print on the armor. So they knew that it wasn't an option they could use unless they come up with something that's going to make it adhere to the armor better'

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball community actively engages with artist identity and artistic styles; Christopher Franchi's distinctive saturated color aesthetic and design choices become recognizable and discussed by enthusiasts

    medium · Hosts reference Christopher Franchi's color palette (purple, orange, teal) and hexagon preference; suggests community-level awareness of individual artist signatures

  • ?

    content_signal: Head to Head Pinball Podcast Episode 38 features extended interview with pinball artist; represents growing media coverage of individual designers and creative contributors

    high · Full episode dedicated to Christopher Franchi's career trajectory and design process; hosts conducted detailed discussion of his work history and methodology

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Christopher Franchi emphasizes inclusion of subtle, detailed IP references ('deep cuts') that reward engaged fans while maintaining overall design coherence

    high · 'It has to make sense. You can't just put, you know, a turd in on a plate from God. Look, you put a piece of poo on there. You want to put something that relates to the property... a deep cut into a property'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Collaborative design process between game designer (John Borg), art director (Greg Ferrer), and artist (Christopher Franchi) with varying levels of creative direction and freedom

    high · Christopher Franchi described receiving minimal upfront direction on playfield design: 'they just kind of given me free reign... They gave me a schematic... No direction... just all me'

    • 2:15
    Well, yeah, I grew up playing hockey. I played hockey for 30 years. And every hockey rink had, you know, at the time back in the 70s, you know, three or four pinball machines. And my brother played as well and he was a year older than me. So we started off playing together, but then he would play after me. So I spent a lot of time in the ice rink, you know, just killing time while he played. And that's where I honed my pinball skills, if you will.
    2:47
    And yeah, then later on down the road, I bought myself a Data East 1989 Batman because I'm a big Batman fan.
    2:59
    And that's about it. I've always loved pinball, but for some reason never really kind of fell into it. Like, you know, when I say fall into it, I don't mean like stumble over it, but I mean like kind of dive in, you know. Well, you weren't pursuing a career in it anyway.
    3:20
    Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's one thing that really puzzles me is it would have been something that would have been right up my alley. And usually when there's something that I want to do, I kind of go out and pursue it. And I've been successful at it up until now, being able to do some of the things that I want to do. But that was one thing I never pursued. And Stern just luckily came to me for some help on something that they assumed that I was probably their best hope for. And I guess everything felt all right with Batman. Yeah, so let's talk about that for a sec. So my understanding is that the art for Batman, like a month out from the reveal at Expo in 2016, was already kind of done, but the higher-ups at Stern weren't kind of happy with it. And they apparently kind of Googled Batman 66 art, and you were the first one to come up. Is that how the story goes? That is actually 100% true, yeah. They did a Google search for 66 Batman and my work popped up. And that just goes to show you how a little bit of tenacity can pay off. Because most of the Batman artwork that I did prior to me, there were some professional jobs I had done before Stern. For Warner Brothers, I did a Batman Blu-ray cover for an animated movie based on the TV show and some model kit boxes. But I wouldn't have gotten any of those jobs if it weren't for the fact that I had done the Batman artwork just out of love. And, you know, had it posted and it kind of went around, you know, the interwebs as things do. And that's how people found me. And so before then doing the Pinball machine, so you were a graphic designer by trade? That was how you made your living?
    5:23
    Yeah, yeah. I worked in the licensing industry for probably 30 years, doing everything from stuff for the NHL to sportswear for all sorts of different things, Batman, Superman, the Beatles, Marilyn Monroe and Betty Boop and stuff like that, Betty Page. So how do these companies find you? Because you're not part of some bigger organization or some massive agency. So how do these companies find you to do your work? When it comes to that, I'm like a massive fail. I'm not in on the LinkedIn and all of that kind of crap that all these professionals are. So I guess I can look at a lot of it. A lot of it is like who you know. A lot of the jobs that I had prior to the Internet was just people who knew me, who had suggested me to someone who was looking for an artist or whatever. I'm somebody who can really benefit from an agent because I get lost in my work and I don't like dealing with that sort of stuff. Like, oh, I better call around and rustle up some work or something. It's not my thing. It's not what I like to do.
    6:43
    So I've just been fortunate to have people who knew of me and recommended me to people. And it just kept me in either freelance work or in full-time jobs for the most good part of my life.
    6:57
    So who made that call? That called you a month or so before Expo. Was it George Gomez or was it the art director?
    7:05
    It was Greg Freres, the art director. Yeah. I'm not clear on whether it was George Gomez who, you know, only up late have I heard stories, and I think it was from George himself, that he panicked, didn't like the art, and said, we better find somebody.
    7:26
    And so it was sort of his, you know, initiative to track somebody down, and, you know, Greg was acting for him, I believe. That was the story. So I'm assuming that you would have seen the original art. How different is what you did compared to what they already had?
    7:47
    Light years. Light years away. What I had seen, and all I had seen of what was already done was a back glass design, and it was primarily empty. There was a, you know, from what I recall, it was like a big purple background, and there was a logo, and there was some little artwork of, like, you know, It looked like paint overs, what they call it, when you take a photo and you just kind of retouch over top of the photo. A picture of Batman and a bat signal. I just remember it being really barren. There wasn't a lot going on. When you look at the back glass I did, it's just sort of like an explosion of elements from the TV show where this was very unlike that. And I don't know who did it. I don't want to say too much about it other than I'll just say that I understand why they called me. But, you know, at the same time, my introduction to Pinball was, hey, you got three weeks. What can you give us? You know, it was the you know, the story's been told, but, you know, the nutshell version is basically I was given an assignment one at a time. The first thing was they hired me just to do the illustrations for all the gadgets. And Greg kept saying, gee, I really wish we had time to get you to do a back glass design. And I said, I can have a back glass design for you in 24 hours. Send me the template and I'll put it together. Because he didn't realize how much art I had already done that wasn't being used. It wasn't like I was going to stay up all night and start by scratch and have to draw all these characters. I had stuff ready to go. So I said, give me a template, I'll put something together. So I did, and they loved it. And they said, can you do another one? And I did another one, and they loved it. And then they said, can you do the cabinets? So it was like sort of this snowball rolling down the hill. It was one assignment after another getting piled on leading up to Expo to get the games done. And the last assignment I was given was, now that you have all the artwork done for everything other than the playfield, they had somebody else do the playfield. I don't remember the person's name now, but it's somebody famous in pinball. They had already done it, but they had used photos for the characters on the playfield. So they said, can you just kind of run in and take all these characters that we have and redo them in your art, and then we'll replace them on the playfield. So that was the last thing I did. And then once the games were revealed, I continued. I hadn't finished working on the gadgets, so I had to draw 120 of them. And that's quite a pat.
    10:34
    And then on top of that, we need three bat glasses, three bat boxes, three cabinets, all this other stuff. That was kind of put on hold because those were for the tags for the, I believe it was the premiums. Premiums and the LEs or what they call the super LE was the years, the different years for Stern and the TV show. And then the standard LE were all named after all the 120 gadgets.
    11:04
    So I was given until November to finish that job, which was still not very easy, considering that during this whole time I was holding down a regular 9-to-5 job. Yeah. I was moonlighting doing all of this extra work. And so, yeah, I didn't get a whole lot of sleep for about two, three months. Well, I remember messaging you and asking about the gadgets and what they were and if they corresponded to which number because I kind of had one, me and a friend had one on order at that time and we're trying to get the good gadgets. and you sent me a bunch of them and you said, you know, the higher up the number or, you know, after a while the gadgets get a bit ridiculous because there's 120 of them. So I have to kind of, you know, you get the main ones first, like the, you know, the shark repellent and the, you know, the batarang and then it kind of goes to some ridiculous ones. Because you have to fill 120. That's Cooper B thermal long underwear. So do you consider the shark repellent kind of like the ultimate gadget because of how it was? That was the one everybody wanted and oddly enough that ended up in Australia because the guy who got it contacted me. Yeah, that's Mark Cook. This is the guy that we interviewed last week that's in on the Iron Maiden. So he's very happy that he kind of chose a random number and it just happened to be that one. Yeah, yeah. That's the one that everybody wanted, that and the Batmobile.
    12:38
    But if I'm not mistaken, I believe the Batmobile, which is gadget number one, is owned by Mr. Joe Kengo from Kapow Pinball. Yeah. And it's funny because, I mean, when I was also ranked, I mean, I contacted you, George Gomez, and George Gomez was the one that kind of gave me the numbers that corresponded to the gadgets. You had all the pictures, George had all the information, and the Australian distributors refused to let everyone know which one was which because they didn't want that whole fight that kind of brewed in the background of people saying, well, I don't want this, and how come this person got that, and I want this gadget.
    13:17
    People go crazy over numbers, but when you then tie a physical object and a picture to the number, then it gets even more personal, doesn't it? Yeah, it was crazy. But, you know, I avoided all of that by having my own machine built that is what is labeled on the tag as an extra super limited edition, one of one, and then it has my signature on it and it says artist edition or something like that. So I have the rarest of them.
    13:47
    I have the one of one. I've heard you on other podcasts as well, and we've spoken, that you have said that you really only had a short period of time to put that art together.
    14:01
    I mean, we love the art on it. I mean, one of the things that you really do notice about the Batman 66 is the art's great. What would you have done differently if you had more time? Well, you know, I don't regret anything about it because, you know, yes, I was rushed, but like I said, I had access to all of this art that I had already done that I was already proud of the results of. I could draw a picture of Batman. I had it laying around, and it was for nothing, but I just did it myself.
    14:31
    I don't stop working on it until I'm happy with it. So I had artwork laying around that I was very happy with, and I was able to use it. So I don't think, you know, the design didn't suffer because of the time because I just happened to have a, you know, a vault of, you know, stuff to turn to. I think if I had more time, I probably would have liked to have done more original poses because, like, the villains, the four villains that are on the side of the cab for, I believe it's the middle of the road version, Which is what, in this case, the LE.
    15:08
    Those were taken from artwork I did for model kit boxes. And, you know, while I was grateful that I was able to use them and I had them at my disposal, at the same time, you know, it would have been nice to be able to create something special for the machine rather than just use what I had. Right, I got it. Yeah, that's probably the only thing that I wish I would have changed. I can't complain too much because when you get a call, I'm like a huge Batman TV show fan. I have a massive collection at home specifically of the Batman TV show. So when somebody calls you and says, hey, do you want to work on a pinball machine? That's exciting news enough. But then when they say it's Batman 66, you know, I mean, you know, I gladfully lost three months of sleep to do that project.
    16:05
    I'm still very happy with it. I don't have any regrets that I wasn't able to change anything or had more time.
    16:13
    I have one myself, so I'm just really happy with the way everything turned out. Was it just good timing as well that you didn't have any other major projects on and you could dedicate that time exclusively to this? Yeah, pretty much. The only thing I was doing at the time, like I said, I don't have, you know, an agent running around for me.
    16:32
    You know, so I had a full-time job where I work for friends of mine and they own several businesses.
    16:40
    And basically I do all the graphic needs for all those businesses. It's not really, I guess, what you'd call the best use of my ability, but they're very good friends of mine and I enjoy working with them. So, you know, they always say, you know, you can't beat a job if you love your work. And I do, you know, so that was a good thing. And then I think the other thing I was doing is every once in a while I would do some, you know, when I got a call for doing another model kit box, those are very few and far between. Maybe two a year I would do.
    17:16
    I worked for a company called Fright Rags and I did a lot of horror movie T-shirt designs. But again, those were just kind of like you have to get a random call maybe every two or three months. We got a license for Bela Lugosi or for Texas Chainsaw Massacre or whatever, and I could contribute whatever I wanted.
    17:37
    That was pretty much it. So yeah, at that time, they just hit me at a spot where nothing was going on. And I think if anything was, I would have probably told those people to fuck off.
    17:51
    Look, I got a Batman pinball job, you know, screw your horror t-shirt. I've got better things to do.
    18:00
    Chris, after Batman, I guess Stern and everyone was pretty happy with your work because they contracted you for three more games, is that right?
    18:12
    Three more games, are you talking about right now or since Batman? So after Batman. So, you know, I guess they contracted you for that one game, but then, you know, because of the success of Batman, they gave you three more games. Is that correct?
    18:30
    In total, yes, but not at one time. As soon as I finished Batman, I was given Guardians, and that took me into, that took me all the way through to Next Expo in October of 2017. Yeah. And it was revealed shortly after that, and as soon as that was revealed, I got two more, which are both, I believe, I know one for sure, but I believe both are Kapow titles.
    19:01
    I don't know if it's going to be, I don't know how they're going to be released, one Kapow, one Stern, or if they're both going to be Kapow, I don't know. And those were given to me both at the same time, more or less. One of them I started working on sooner because it was more of a sort of a we were putting together sort of a song and dance for the licensor to get the license. But when the second one came along, the license was already secured. They were ready to go. So, you know, a little bit of time in between there, but for more or less they've been overlapping and I've been working on the two at one time, which is easy. Is part of your contract, and I hope you can talk about this, are you exclusive to Stern and Kapow and all those groups?
    19:51
    Well, the Stern deal is, and apparently it's an unwritten rule, but their rule is if you work for Stern, you work for nobody else. However, being the fact that I was brought in because of a kapow game, whenever that partnership comes up, that's sort of fair game. That's allowed. But I wouldn't be able to work for Jersey Jack or any of those other guys. I pretty much got to stick to that, which is fine because I've only got so much time to give. In the past year, I had quit my job that I had when I was working on Batman and took a job working at Zynga through Joe Kamenko.
    20:41
    Zynga is a company that develops video games for cell phones and handheld devices and things like that. And so I still have a full-time, you know, day job. And this is still happening on the side, you know, swallowing up all of my extra hours. And when it's two at one time, that's extremely difficult. I basically have no life.
    21:04
    So then with Guardians of the Galaxy, how long did you work on that in totality? You know, on and off, I basically had from November of 2016 to September of 2017. You know, so it was a good nine months, nine, ten months, but there was a lot of downtime there. You know, you always start with the back glass designs, then you go to the back boxes and the cabinets and all of that stuff. And the play fields usually last because the guy designing the game's got to get that done before you can, you know, You don't just start drawing pictures and then try and make it fit. You have to wait until you get the play field. And, you know, I probably went able to do it a little bit faster, though it wasn't required. You know, we hit the deadline. Everything was fine. But it was my first play field because, remember, you know, I didn't do the play field for Batman. I just sent them some art and they placed it with what was already done. So I was, you know, the play field is the hardest part. I mean, it is a bear. It's difficult. Changes are always being made. You have to shuffle things around. You know, once there was, you know, this clean area and you had this beautiful artwork, and I'm like, we're going to put a ramp there now. I'm like, oh.
    22:24
    You either lose it or you move it, and little tweaks are always being made that are on a play field. It's just a giant pain in the butt, you know. If the inserts move, you have to go in and you have to take out the background because wherever there's inserts, you mask the art out of those areas. So it's a big task. It's a big, difficult task. And right now I'm in the midst of having to do two of them at the same time. How much direction do you get from someone like John Borg who's designing the game? I mean, because in your TPS talk, you kind of showed that he kind of put the inserts in there for the eyes and said, you know, have Star-Lord's face there. But, I mean, besides that, does he give you a general – because I know he knocked back a couple of ideas. Does he let you know what he wants roughly or he just says, you know, make something and I'll tell you if I like it or not? No, well, I think it's Jon's job to communicate to Greg Freres, who's the art director, what he wants, who would then come to me and tell me. But so far, they've just kind of given me free reign. Like you said, with Guardians, my only directive was we want Star-Lord's mask on at the bottom and the lenses of his goggles on his mask are going to be the shoot again indicator. And that's it. Other than that, you know, they gave me a, you know, just what they call a trap, which is a schematic of the whole playfield with all the inserts. No direction. You know, there wasn't little hexagons drawn on there like, you know, here's all the modes and they each get a hexagon and then that will be contained within a larger hexagon. You know, that was just all me, you know, starting from scratch and going, I don't know what to do with this, so I'm just going to start in the center where the, you know, the mode indicators are. The inserts for that. And I'm just going to work my way out.
    24:24
    You know, they made a couple of little tweaks here like, you know, could you brighten this up or could you, you know, add some detail to this or, you know, whatever. There were little suggestions made after the fact, but there's no direction given up front. I don't know if that's how, if they just feel comfortable with my work and that's what they do with me and, you know, other people are given more details. I couldn't tell you that. I could just tell you that, you know, when it comes to working with me, they just say, here's the place, he'll go for it. Unless there's something, you know, specific that they have in mind. So if I can then just go back just a little bit further. So, you know, they come to you for Batman because you're the man, right? You're the guy. They Googled, you came up first, well done, Google AdWords. So then you've got to then go into Guardians of the Galaxy. Now, it's different because you've lived and breathed Batman 66. It's your world. You understand the art style. You understand you've developed your art style for that. You then go to Guardians of the Galaxy, which is a relatively fresh franchise.
    25:29
    What does that mean for you? And how enjoyable is that for you exploring a new sort of world? Well, very enjoyable because I love the movies. And, you know, as far as adapting to that style or that world, it comes very easy to me because that's what I do. You know, like I said, I've been working in licensing for, you know, 25, 30 years. And, you know, I understand, you know, every property has their own particular set of rules, what you can do, what you can't do. Luckily, Marvel, I knew ahead of time that Marvel is very pro-artist.
    26:12
    Granted, they had a very extensive amount of assets in their style guide for Guardians of the Galaxy, but you don't necessarily have to stick to that as long as they approve what you do. But they're very accepting of it, whereas people like Warner Brothers are not always that easy with stuff like that. They really kind of want you to use their stuff and they're really picky when it comes to when you do something otherwise.
    26:40
    Luckily, I was already approved as, you know, what they call a sanctioned Warner Brothers artist because I had done Batman already, so that made it a lot easier. But, you know, doing Guardians, I really enjoyed the movie.
    26:54
    And so it was really fun to draw. You know, the characters are, you know, there's nothing dull. It's not like I'm doing a man from uncle pinball machines. Two guys in suits. Hey.
    27:06
    They're all very colorful and have cool costumes and all that. So it was very fun to do. And it's the job. I don't have to be immersed in the world already to do a job. Part of the job is to, when you get the assignment, you sit down and do your homework. You watch the movies, whatever. If, you know, that needs be, you know, one of the ones that I'm working on right now, I was very familiar with, but, you know, I sat down and kind of gave myself a refresher on everything anyway, because it's always those little things that people really love about pinball when you sneak that little thing in there. And, you know, it has to make sense. You can't just put, you know, a turd in on a plate from God. Look, you put a piece of poo on there. You want to put something that relates to the property that's almost like in music they refer to as a deep cut, a deep cut into a property where somebody did something in one of the movies or the TV show episode or whatever it might be. And you can draw from that and add that in there as like a fun little nugget.
    28:18
    That stuff is great. People love that stuff and it's fun to do. So, you know, I still have to do my homework, but it doesn't matter what it is, you know. I can't imagine, I mean, I'd be hard-pressed to think of something. If somebody said, I'll give you the honest truth. If Stern came to me and said, we're going to do a pinball machine based on the movie On Golden Pond with Henry Fonda.
    28:43
    One of Ryan's favorite films. Yeah, I would not bother immersing myself in that world because I would just tell them no. You know, I'm not interested in doing that. How about something like Star Wars, right? So I'm not sure who did the Star Wars art, but obviously they were under a lot of restrictions. Is that something that you would possibly avoid as well because you don't have the artistic freedom to do what you want?
    29:10
    Not necessarily. If it's something I enjoy doing and I think I can contribute something to it, I would suffer through that. because, you know, it's a learning experience, you know, and so much of what you do in pinball is collaboration. You know, you don't, you know, all these puzzle pieces have to fit together in your work as a team. You throw ideas off, you know, I mean, I've given ideas to the guys from Stern as far as gameplay goes. You know, it's nothing to do with artwork. And sometimes they say, hey, that's a cool idea. Well, corporate did. And sometimes they say, you're an idiot. Shut up and draw. But, you know, it's still, you know, the doors are open for that sort of an atmosphere. And, you know, so doing Star Wars, you know, would be, you know, I probably would have taken that on.
    30:02
    It would have been interesting, you know, great characters. I'm very familiar with it. I don't, as far as I know, that was done by several people, and none of them are like, you know, people that are, you know, working under the stern roof. I think they just hired freelancers. I think most importantly they hired people that Lucas said, hey, we have these guys that we go to for work. Why don't you use them because we're already familiar with their work. I think that's how that was done.
    30:34
    I'm not 100% sure, but I'm about 98% sure that that's what had happened. And I'm sure there were some minor things that were done by Stephen Martin, who's the art production assistant for Rick Freres there. Super talented guy. If you've ever been to Stern, he's the guy who makes all those banners that when you walk in, there's a banner for each game hanging in there. He designs all of that stuff. So going back to Governance of the Galaxy, I saw in your TPF talk that you also, there was a color printed armor that was designed by you and some other things involved in the accessory program including the topper. Is that something that they asked you to do or did you put your hands up for extra things like that? Oh, you know, anything I can put more hexagons on. No, Greg first came to me and he said, hey, we have these people, this vendor who can print on the armor. So why don't you throw a design together and let's see what happens. And they were still kind of testing the process as it was. So I did some artwork and they printed it. And, you know, Greg is a happily married guy. He's got a wedding ring on his finger. So they put it on a machine and he was playing it and his wedding ring had worn off the print on the armor. So they knew that it wasn't an option they could use unless they come up with something that's going to make it adhere to the armor better, put a coating on it or something. But it looked really, really cool. It just, you know, they don't want to, Stern doesn't want to sell something to somebody that looks real pretty and, you know, 10 minutes later looks like crap. Yeah. Okay, and they pretty much built it exactly how I designed it on that first try.
    32:53
    So when you're designing a topper, I mean, were you involved in a Batman topper at all, or is that separate?
    33:01
    Batman, that's a funny story because I knew that they did toppers, and when I was working on Batman, you know, I just kept seeing this, like, cockpit, you know, from the Batmobile up on the top there. Pretty much how it looks except the center part is actually three-dimensional and it has the light on it. I was picturing more of just a complete flat light box, you know, where that center light was just artwork. So I had sent that. I whipped up the artwork and sent it in to George Gomez. And he said, you know, I was already working on a topper that was the center part of the Batmobile. So if we put our two ideas together, we can use your artwork for the two glass bubble windshields with Batman and Robin inside and then my centerpiece will slide right over the top of that. So we were both thinking the same thing but two different ways and both ideas kind of came together on a really cool topper. You've been able to get that approved pretty quickly because your design style that you've added to Guardians of the Galaxy has already been approved, I guess. And I was just wanting to know, when you first get handed the license, do you actually have to speak to the license holder and say, this is the vision I have for what I'm going to do with the art? Or do you just start doing it and then seek permission once you've already put the work in? Well, Marvel wanted a tryout. They basically, you know, show us, you know, basically a sketch, pencil sketch of a cabinet, a piece of artwork of the character, you know, how you would draw it. And so Stern submitted that and Marvel approved me based on that. Now, at that point, that doesn't mean everything I do is golden. You know, they can always say, well, I'm going to go back and fix this guy and go back and change that or whatever. But at that point, I was given, you know, the keys to the kingdom, and they're just like, okay, do your thing. We'll worry about whether it's okay or not later on. Just do what you do because, you know, they approved my art, so they were in a sense kind of trusting me to get the job done right, both them and Stern. And when I finished everything and we submitted it, there was not a single change in the artwork on all three machines. Marvel just said, yes, yes, yes. We joked many times at your expense, so thank you for that, about hexagons, right? And I bring that up because we laugh because I think Ryan counted that there was 250 of them on the machine. But you did add that and that is actually quite a distinct style that's been added to the Guardians of the Galaxy design universe, if for want of a much better word.
    35:56
    In fact, it sort of takes that brand a bit further. It attaches itself to the brand. Hexagons are now a thing. What do they think of that? Or do they not really care about that kind of detail? They just think, yeah, it looks great. Put it on the line. To Marvel it made sense because they knew where I pulled it from. I didn't just say, you know, I think I want to use hexagons for this.
    36:15
    In the second movie, even though the movie is based on the first movie, in the second movie, when they're traveling to all these different worlds to try and find Peter Quill's dad, they have to go through this mesh of hexagons, and each little window that they go through takes them to a different place. So the idea of using that as sort of a motive on the pinball machine was that basic idea. You know, like there's just, you know, there's many different worlds out there. You know, this is just one of them. And, you know, those hexagons just sort of represented gateways to all the other worlds that are out there without necessarily showing them because we weren't showing them in the movie. We were just, you know, showing whatever those guys were doing. So it's actually an element from the movie that nobody seems to have caught. They just think I pulled a hexagon out of my butt and said, you know, hey, let's shake the poop off and use these.
    37:22
    Well, I guess that's probably why it works. When I first saw it, I didn't realize that that hadn't been already in the art. So you've obviously pulled out something that's, as you said, it's almost like it is a minor motif and you've just made it more pronounced and that's what works. Yeah, well that's what I mean about doing your homework. You've got to sit down, you can't take it for granted because you've only got one shot and you really have to study the stuff and just feel real comfortable. And when you sit down to come up with a design, you know, nothing's taken for granted because everything, you know, space is so precious when you do something like this. You know, there's always things that I want to bring into something that you're like, there's just too much. I can't. Either there's not the space or if I do, it'll be cluttered. So everything you add is very precious and you want to make sure that when you do that, you know, it's something that counts. So, you know, throwing in hexagons, you know, was not like a space filler, like, well, I don't have anything for this, so I'll just put some hexagons there. You know, it was, you know, it was definitely used with, you know, intent. And, you know, hopefully that will get up. You're probably one of the only guys, Chris, that don't like too many inserts. Too many inserts to you makes your job probably more difficult, right? And some people, like we had Zach Sharp the other day saying that, you know, he wants to know the story of what's doing the Dimmel machine based off the inserts, even if the machine is off. Because from your standpoint, you probably think that you can probably tell the story more if you have more room and less inserts, right? Well, you know, there were so many inserts on Guardians that, you know, my first concern was where am I going to fit art?
    39:18
    You know, they're everywhere. But then I started thinking about, you know, you can't look up at the screen. It's nice to have the screen, but, you know, that's really for the people around you. You know, every once in a while, if you get into a ball lock, you can look up and it'll tell you what's going on. But for the most part, during regular play, you can't look up at the screen.
    39:39
    So you know a lot of times you know graphically you want to tell that story And that where I utilize the inserts on Guardians of the Galaxy whereas you know we had all these indicators where you know this ramp is the Drax ramp and the Gomorra ramp and the Broker going to be this orb thing And so on the arrow pointing out that particular shot, I thought, well, what if I put, you know, these people's faces on here so that when you're playing, you know what you're shooting at because you see it. It's right in front of you. Rather than have to read the person's name, you've got an instant recognition when you look at a shot and you see Gamora's face. You know that's the shot. You don't have to read anything. You don't have to do anything. You get an instant visual. So a lot of times, you know, definitely, you know, you can work with, you know, that's where engineering comes in with art and together you make it very comprehensive for people.
    40:37
    You know, but sometimes it just doesn't matter, you know, where those inserts are. As a matter of fact, one of the games that I'm working on right now when I was given the original trap that showed all of the inserts, I said, boy, you know, I'd really like a big illustration of this license, like, you know, right in the center. Do these inserts have to, like, just shoot right down through here, or can we try some different things? And that's when I realized, you know, I thought, and not because it was, you know, I mean, it was great working with Borg on Guardians and working with George on Batman. But I always thought that, like, you know, that's their job and you don't want to step on that. You know, they'll give you what they created and you'll work around that. But I just kind of took the initiative and I went to George and I said, is there any way we can move this stuff around to create some more real estate? Because these things don't necessarily really need to be here, do they? And he said, no, you know, send me, you know, what your ideas are. Because he gave me a photo of a whitewood. So I just kind of photoshopped and moved them all around and said, what about this? He said, we can definitely do that. So, you know, I guess that's why they say it doesn't hurt to ask. Because in that case, it worked out, you know, and it's still, you know, because George doesn't know what I'm thinking as far as artwork goes, you know, but I do. So when I look at what he's giving me to work with, then we can kind of come together and come up with a solution to something that's ideally best for the game and for the visual presentation.
    42:21
    Things can work out. Does Joe Kamikawa have any input into these Pimball machines, or is he just more of the big guy that gets the license that are impossible to get and gives them a stone?
    42:38
    Joe has a lot of input. He wants to be part of the process every step of the way. Like I said, right now I'm working on the playfield for one of them. I'm about to start the playfield for the second one. And for that one, basically I'm sending him daily progress. Like, here's what I have done. I've added this stuff. I've added that. He's asked for little tweaks here and there. He's very easy to work with. He's not demanding or irresponsible with his power. He's just like, do this because I can tell you to do it. He's been in the industry a long time. He's worked in pinball for a long time. Definitely everything he has to offer is something valuable that you need to listen to. So everything that he's done so far, all the suggestions he's made have been great and everything. This one in particular, it just drives me nuts that I can't talk about what this stuff is.
    43:43
    This one in particular that I'm doing the play field right now is just going to blow people's minds because it's so unique and I can't tell you why.
    43:55
    You can tell us why, we'll just break it out. Yeah, well, what made it up? Wink, wink. Breaking news! Breaking the pilot for revealing secrets. Yes, tell me what we're doing. I get accused of doing that enough. I don't need to actually do it myself. Actually, if I did, I could probably just, you know, oh, yeah, sure, yeah, that was me and just lie about it. But, yeah, I get accused of that all the time. So you get handed the license to do this. Would you rather be in a position where you can dictate what license they would do? Well, dictate is a strong word. Oh, yeah. Well, influence. Actually be part of the process. I guess what I'm sort of leading to the question is, would you rather be a stern employee or are you happy to be still external contracting? Because, you know, you get to be a part of those meetings that says, right, everybody, look at all these 20 licenses we've got around the wall. What would you want to do? Would you rather be in that situation or are you happy to just give them what you get and just do it? Well, you know, of course I'm very grateful for what I get.
    45:03
    But, yeah, I definitely would. I've suggested licenses to them. One of them in particular, I know their response to me was, we're looking into it right now. And I'm like, oh, okay, cool. And, of course, since, you know, everything is so dog-eat-dog in this industry, I can't tell you what they are because, you know, I have a bid. You know, someone else is going to go, ooh, I'm going to go after that. And there are my dream themes.
    45:30
    I started off, my rookie outing was my dream theme, so I'll never ever do better than Batman 66. Nothing will ever come down the pipe where I'm just like, yes, this is so much better than that. I can die now because I did Batman, but there are other things I'd like to do. I think Jaws is at the top of the list. However, in my experience in doing, I did some Jaws t-shirts, some licensed t-shirts, and the rule was you cannot use Roy Scheider or Robert Shaw or Richard Dreyfuss.
    46:12
    I don't know if they're just not part of the licensing deal. So my thought is if you have to do a Jaws pinball machine and you can't do those characters, it's not worth doing. You don't just want a big shark on there. The shark is so secondary in that story. It's the major villain, but it's the story of these three guys that are so different that come together.
    46:34
    They tell all their stories of their lives and all that. They're really the story in the movie. The shark just kind of happens to swing by and eat somebody once in a while.
    46:44
    They're the reason. That's the catapult to get these three guys together. There's a big shark and we need you three different guys to kind of see eye to eye and take care of this problem. So I really don't think if that's the case, I would advise against anybody, Stern, anybody getting that license, if they said, yeah, you can have it, but you can't use these actors.
    47:07
    That would just suck. That's the hard part, I guess, about all of us kind of sitting on the sidelines is, you know, how come they're doing this thing and how come they don't do that and how come they don't do that? And I guess the, you know, CERN and Jersi Jack or whoever's doing the license can't just sit there and say, like, these guys are impossible to work with and these guys want, you know, half a million dollars to use this person's face and we can't spend that money.
    47:31
    I guess they can't throw the license under the bus because, you know, so many of these, like Disney owns so many different things that you can't say what you need to say. We've talked about this before, Brian, in that, you know, so many people come up to us and say, you know, they should do this theme and they should do this thing. Well, Stern's been in the game for a very, very long time and they've got art directors and they've got people that head licences. They know about these themes. They've already investigated. It's not like they're all of a sudden going to go, oh my God, Ion Maiden. That's a great idea. We hadn't thought of that. Dreadpool doesn't work like that, of course. It's ridiculous, right? That we just sit there and go, oh, you're so stupid because they haven't got the wiggles, right? Why didn't they include this or, you know, whatever.
    48:18
    Yeah, these people, you know, Stern and Jersey Jack and Spooky and all these guys are investing thousands and thousands of dollars into doing this. You don't think that it's in their best interest to include, you know, to do the best job possible to include everything they can and to milk that license for everything it's worth. You know, if something's missing, it's for a reason. It's because they just couldn't do it, you know.
    48:45
    Yep, I absolutely understand that. As I said, they're clever people. I don't know. I mean, they would all, they've been amazing. It's getting worked out.
    48:55
    It does frustrate me because, you know, people sort of like, they're just like dogged about it. They go, oh, well, they're idiots because. It's like, well, they could be idiots for other reasons I don't know. But when it comes to licenses, I mean, every year they go to the license expo in Vegas and they would have people that are, you know, knocking down their door saying, hey, can you do a license for my new line of lipstick? People would be approaching them, they would be approaching people, it's Jodie Dankberg's full-time job to do licensing, right? So they come across these things, some of them are easy, some of them are hard, some of them look really easy, but then when you start going through the journey you realise it's not as easy because you wanted so much freedom or you wanted the voice actors or you wanted the likeness of a particular actor and then you find that that's not quite what you got. Well, you know, I have nothing to do with, you know, the license. You know, if Stern gets a license, they don't ask me what I think up front. You know, they'll acquire it and then they'll figure out who's best for the job. And if they decide it's me, they'll come to me and they'll say, hey, we got Jaws. Hey, you know, do you want to do it? Well, do they have the actors? No. Well, then I don't want to do it. Yeah, I have very little say in all that. The licensing stuff is all done by the people at Stern.
    50:27
    And, you know, it's up to me to find out what the rules are ahead of time if they come to me with something. You know, Batman, I had no questions. I'm just like, where do I sign? Yes, please.
    50:41
    With Guardians, that was a little bit different. I could have said, well, tell me more about it. They just said Guardians, and I love the movies. I'm like, that sounds like fun. Yeah, let's do that. And I was still very green in pinball, in pinball design and all that. Just because I've been drawing all my life doesn't mean that I know everything about every industry. It takes time to learn all that stuff.
    51:08
    And I'm still learning now. I still call up these guys from Stern with these questions. I just can see Greg sitting there scratching his head going, you fucking moron.
    51:19
    It's just stuff that I don't know. I ask him, how come you guys don't do saucers anymore? The ball rolls into the divot and then it just sits there and it kicks the ball out. Then he tells me that, oh, we did use it for something. I'm like, oh, okay.
    51:35
    I'm still learning all the time. And, you know, fortunately I haven't been through a situation yet where, you know, I've spent a big tremendous amount of effort putting together three art packages with final art. And, you know, it's gone to somebody for approval and they've just shot down half of it. You know, I've experienced that pain yet and hopefully I never will. How I will handle it at that point, I don't know. I just throw my hands up and go, I quit. I don't know. Hopefully not. Hopefully I can be a big boy. But time will tell. I've done two machines. When you compare that to what other people have done in their lifetime in this industry, it's nothing. You know, people have come by and done more than two machines and they're forgotten about. You know, nobody knows their name or, you know, what mark they've left in the industry and all that. So I've got a ways to go. Well, let me use that story to segue into instruction. You talked about how everything's going well so far. So can you use your current start power to try and convince Stern that the yellow instruction cards, they're perfect for conveying information to people on site. Because people that walk up to a pinball machine in a public location, you have to assume that they're the dumbest mother effers in the world because they put money in, they don't know where to press start. Big instructions like put 75 cents in, here are the rules. But, like for Batman, for example, it was more geared towards the collector. So there were kind of custom instruction cards that blended in perfectly with the art. Now, it pains me when I see people with like an alley or a premium and they spend thousands of dollars on mods and they put color D&D in, they put the PDI glass and vampire glass and all that kind of stuff. But they forever leave the yellow instruction cards there. And for me, it sticks out like crazy. I know that's the purpose of them is to stick out. But when you have them at home and it's on free play, so do you have any pulling power? Like the Guardians, for example, those were yellow.
    53:55
    Every machine from Stern that isn't like that Batman machine has yellow instruction cards. Well, I'll tell you, I know what you're saying and I'll tell you this, But, you know, I own, I'm leaning on my Guardian's machine right now looking at the cards. Oh, your custom one, right?
    54:14
    Yes. And my custom Batman one is at home. I'm in my office right now. Not home office, my office office. My office away from home. And I'll tell you this is something to consider. Now I'm looking at Guardians and there's these two apron inserts that have artwork that are backlit and then there's an artwork frame around each of those and then in the center right below the trough there is a full color card that has some basic information on the game. Now, if you also add, if you also take those two yellow cards and you make them full color with artwork, it's going to look like a gigantic mess of artwork down there. You know, you're going to have five different things that are all competing for your attention because they all have full color art, you know, based on the characters of the, you know, the property and whatnot. So you need something to set that off just from a visual standpoint so you're not just assaulted when you look down and you see you don't know what to look at. I am a soldier. When I see yellow, I feel like I'm a soldier. Well, the yellow is a bit abrasive, shall we say. But Batman didn't have that. They had some artwork on the apron, but there were no inserts. There were no cards. There was just those game cards. So they could do something a little more exciting with the artwork there because that's all there was. There wasn't competing with anything else. So I would assume, you know, this is all assumption because this is not my thing. You know, they did not come to me and say, please design yellow cards, you know, with coin operations. That's done by Stern. I did the three, you know, for the Guardians, I did the three, you know, the two backlit inserts and the sticker in the center, but I didn't get yellow cards. And that's not my call. But, you know, just from basic, you know, graphic communication, why they pick yellow, I don't know. But I know that's why they're not full color and have artwork with the characters and all that, is that it just would have been too much in one area to have all of that.
    56:27
    You know, I don't know if maybe they think white is too cheap looking and they wanted to throw a color in so they match the flippers. I don't want it to be white or yellow or purple or anything. I just want it to kind of like... I don't want it to stick out either. The whole purpose of it being yellow is to stick out and kind of catch your attention more than everything else.
    56:47
    It's just the whole community kind of makes their own instruction cards after every single CERN release because most people don't like it. And I just would have thought after all this time with the Alliant Machines, Maybe it would be cool if they kind of included both.
    57:05
    I'm not sure how much it costs and the time involved, but I mean if these kind of amateur people are kind of making their own little bootleg ones and then, you know, people are happy with that. But you also mentioned it as well, Ryan, that, you know, if you've got somebody that's brand new to Pinball machines, and I don't like the yellow ones as well, and of course I make my own custom cards as well, but because it stands out so much, people are drawn to that to go, okay, what do I do? I think if that was something that was more suited to the machine, it might actually get a little bit lost.
    57:35
    Again, you said it yourself, Ryan, you've got to cater to the moron. We love these morons. I mean, that's not a pinball rule. That's a rule in graphic communication. Some of the cleverest ideas have been shot down because the moron would be like, I don't understand. What? You know, when you take a logo, Sports Illustrated is classic for this. Sometimes you can barely see any part of that logo in there because whatever the image is, they've taken the heads of whatever the sports figures are and overlap them over the logo of the magazine. And they're confident enough in their brand that they know all you have to do is see that S and the ED at the end of Illustrated and you know what that logo is. You know what magazine this is. We also know there's a big-titted girl on the front cover as well, right? Well, yeah, yeah. You said a sport guy, but it's usually a girl, right? Sports Illustrated? One issue an entire year is a bikini check. Ah, okay. I've only seen the bikini ones, sorry. Because that's the only one you're interested in. Yeah. That's fine, but some brands don't have that confidence and they get mad if you cover up their logo in just the slightest amount.
    58:58
    So the rules are different for everything. So that stuff has to be pretty straightforward. And it's also got to be in different environments as well. It's got to be in a dimly lit bar or a pub or somewhere. But that's the thing of it is you can replace them, right?
    59:22
    But think about this. I mean, there's a cottage industry of people out there making art blades and mods and all that. Do you really want to take someone's job away by coming up with an art card for a Pimball? You just want to say, here's your yellow cards. Have fun. Make your own cards. Let's not take one more thing away from somebody. There's people making this fun stuff. It's so awesome to see everybody's takes on, you know, like, you know, I just got a little Walkman sculpture for my Guardians thing from Measle Mods, which is super awesome. You know, I think the more you do, the less opportunity you give those people to fill in those gaps. So, you know, let them have at it, you know, let them make the little cards and, you know, when you consider what goes into making a pinball machine, It's so petty to go, I hate those stupid young clients. I'm a petty man. I am a very petty man. I agree with Ryan in some respects in that it's not just that they're missing an opportunity. It's that they really are an ugly colour and they've been the same design for so many years that maybe it's time for someone to have a look at it. I don't blame Stern or anyone. I blame the person who brags about their machine and is like, look, I spent $3,000 more on my pinball machine to make it look like this, but they still have the yellow instruction cards. Do you know what I mean? Like, I want to make it as pretty as possible, but I still put the other. So if Stern kind of did that for them, then I wouldn't think they're an idiot. But that's just me. That's just my OCD with the yellow instruction cards. I just don't think they look nice. And if you keep your machine stocked, then that's fine. But if you spend $3,000 on your Pinball machine and post pictures online and brag about it, then get rid of the other instruction cards. Well, you know, art is subjective, you know. I mean, trust me, I've read the gamut when it comes to Guardians of the Galaxy. Some people call it clown vomit. We would never have said that. Some people think that the colors, some people think that, you know, that it looks really good because of those, you know, those bright colors and it stands out. You know, you're going to get both. I don't get upset when somebody says that they don't like it because, you know, that's going to happen. You can't please everybody. It's impossible to please everybody. So someone's going to complain and you've just got to roll with it. And there might be somebody out there that thinks yellow cards are really neat. Wow, they really stand out. That's fantastic.
    62:00
    Well, just maybe one last question. Why do you think you've become more involved in the pinball community compared to other industries you work with? Is that possibly because the pinball community has a website, like a pin site where everyone gets together and maybe the t-shirt business and the model kit industry doesn't have that kind of community?
    62:25
    It's a fun culture for the most part. Granted, there are people who try to ruin it, but that's across the board.
    62:37
    When I got involved, there's two things you can do. There's two paths you can take when you do something like this. When I get invited into this world, I can either sit back and do my job and shut up, or I can bully my way in, more or less, to become a part of this world And, you know, meet these people and get my name out there.
    63:03
    And pinball was just something that that's what I wanted to do. You know, when I got exposed to it and I saw what kind of people were up in, I listened to the podcast and all that. It was something that appealed to me. And I said, well, I'm not just going to sit back on my heels. I'll, you know, get my name out there. You know, you use this for, you know, basically exposure.
    63:31
    And when you do that, when you open yourself up, people don't feel so, you know, timid or whatever to come to you and ask you questions and all that.
    63:41
    And I enjoy that, too. You know, I get friends on my Facebook page all the time. You know, I used to just, you know, approve people that I know. But now I look and I, you know, I go through the profile and I see pinball pictures. I'm like, okay, you know, and hit approve, and they'll ask questions and all that, and I enjoy that. I enjoy, you know, talking to people about it, you know, for the most part, you know. I mean, I haven't had somebody come to me and say, you suck or whatever, but, you know, there's plenty of that on Pinside. How do you enjoy the shows? I mean, do you enjoy attending shows like Texas Timber Festival where, I mean, for the last portion of the time, you were kind of at your booth, you know, with your artwork and stuff. Do you enjoy that kind of stuff or do you prefer to mingle around?
    64:25
    I would like to do both. I have a responsibility when, for example, Texas, Ed invites me out there and pays my expenses to come out. I have a responsibility to him to be a guest. I'm not just going to ride on his dime and come out there and then just play pinball all afternoon as much as I'd love to. And that's where the, you know, that's where the, I don't want to say problem, but, you know, I was looking at a video somebody did a walkthrough and I'm like, I didn't see that. And I'm like, and I think about it, I'm like, I hardly walked around that show when I was there because I felt responsible to Ed to be a guest and be available to people, you know, not just to sell artwork, but, you know, if anybody had questions or whatever they wanted to talk about it. You know, people love talking pinball. Well, I had plenty of people come by and just, you know, shoot the shit about, you know, what I do and pinball in general. And people asking me what games I like and all that kind of stuff.
    65:28
    You know, I have to be available for that if someone's going to pay my way out there. So that's the only regret is that I don't really get the opportunity. Though Ed did do a neat thing this year in that he closed up shop. Was it Saturday night or Friday night? He closed up shop at like 11 o'clock, but all the vendors and all the guests and all that could still stick around for another couple hours and play the games and all that. Yeah, that's when me, you, John, and your daughter, Prasley, were playing and you were kicking our ass at all those games.
    66:00
    That was fun. Yeah, I noticed, oh God, who's the guy from Slam Tilt that we were with? Run. Yeah, he didn't mention the fact that I kicked his ass. Well, yeah, because he owns No Fear and he's meant to be the best football player there. Yeah, I'm listening to the podcast and I'm waiting for him to say something and he never mentioned it at all. This is you calling him out now, Ron. You need to go back and mention that game where Chris Ranchi doubled your score, we hit two Super Jackpots on No Fear and he'd never played it before. You were getting instructions but you were hitting all those shots that we were telling him to hit. Yeah, and it wasn't easy either. That's a tricky game, those shots. Not all of them come easy. Oh, well, I mean, one of the flippers is heartbroken as well, which is the funny thing. Yeah. Everyone else was having trouble with that flipper because it was kind of in the wrong spot. You adjusted and you were hitting all the shots. Yeah, one and a half billion, wasn't it? Isn't that what I got? Yeah, on a heartbroken machine, that's very good. A broken piece of shit. So to answer your question, seeing fun like that, good times, like if I was just doing horror t-shirts for a living, I wouldn't have that kind of fun. You smoke somebody with a whole lot of luck on a pinball game and be able to brag about it. It's a good time. It's a great community. It's a lot of fun. And, you know, when you're dealing with licensed characters and you're an artist, you just can't beat that. Some people like to create. I don't really like to create. I don't think I'm good at coming up with my own character. People tell you that. Why do you draw other people's crap all the time? Why don't you come up with your own? You can make all that money. I'm doing very well just drawing other people's stuff. My creativity doesn't lie in coming up with a good character. It's being able to do something with somebody else's character. You know, that's just my strong point. You know, and I'm going to ride that, you know, because if that's what I'm good at, then that's what I need to be doing. You know, if I know I'm not good at creating my own characters, why try? Why waste the time? You know, life is short. I'm not going to take, you know, five years off to try and develop my own comic book only to have it be a piece of shit. And nobody cares.
    68:27
    And then I try to get back into the industry and they've forgotten about me because it took five years off. You've just got to go with what you know. Yeah. Well, Chris, we have a little bit of a viewer question. Are you still there, Marty?
    68:43
    Yeah. Can you – we kind of put the feelers out and let people know that we have an interview in you and someone wanted to kind of write you a quick message. Yeah. Hi, Chris, it's Walter Sobchuk, and I just want to say I'm a huge fan of your hexagons. I mean, octagons, what are you, a fucking stop sign? Forget about it. Squares? They're just squares. Who are you talking to, Walter? Shut the fuck up, Dottie. Anyway, I just want to say I like the way those hexagons tie the pinball machine together.
    69:15
    We have no idea who that is. That was in the anonymous email. This is what happens when you fuck a guy in the ass.
    69:24
    Did I get that line right? Yeah. Oh, Jeff. Just the man. But you know what? What's funny is when I photoshopped that picture of Jeff to look like Walter from Big Lebowski, it didn't look much different than Jeff.
    69:45
    I know. I was trying to work out what you changed. I just added the hair and tinted the glasses. And I'm like, that's all it took.
    69:57
    Let's go. Well, there you go. Thank you very much, Chris, for coming on. We really do appreciate you taking the time. And we love what you do. Oh, sure. And I was on record saying that I reckon Guns of the Galaxy Playfield, best Playfield art. Love it. Thank you. Well, you know, speaking of, we need to set a record straight on something. So I remember back when Guardians first came out and you guys were discussing it, Ryan had something to say about me in particular. Marty, do you have that little audio clip?
    70:37
    Here we go. It's a combination of both. I thought the side art, the back box art, was very colorful. And obviously we know it's crystal Frenchy. So what he does, he tends to use a mix of colours that normally wouldn't go together, but he's obviously worked out this formula where there are contrasting colours that sort of just work together when you put them all together.
    71:06
    It's borderline, I'm going to say it, it's borderline clown vomit on the sides. Okay, well I want to say that if it's clown vomit then I want Christopher French to vomit all over my face.
    71:19
    You have a floor, Chris. I give you permission. You don't have fun. Wasn't that followed up with something like he can do anything he wants in me or something?
    71:36
    I remember some kind of comment that I was just like pulling a Scooby-Doo. Oh? So, Ryan, yeah, the next time we're at a show together, remind me. I owe you a vomit all over the face. Well, hey, I flew all the way over to Texas, and you bring it up now when I'm back home? Come on, Chris. Yeah, well, you know, come to think of it, I should have detected your crush because you did give me your sack. Oh!
    72:07
    Wait, that was a kangaroo sack. You brought me a little kangaroo sack and some cookies. You're like my grandma. Tim Tams, Tim Tams.
    72:19
    Oh, that was very nice. We just wanted to, I had to get with Marty ahead of time on that and give you a hard time.
    72:26
    I'm serious. I love the art. Batman is a machine that my wife thinks, I mean, she's seen it in person. I gave away my spot to someone called George and we went over his house to unbox it and I brought my wife there and when we unboxed it, she was so upset. And she's like, you had that on order? I'm like, yeah. I'm like, why did you give it up?
    72:49
    And it's the best looking Pimball machine she's ever seen in her life because of the colours and the presentation and the bat, you know, the side blades and everything. So getting the blessing from your significant other is something I think that's very important in Pimball because I'm not sure if you heard the little clip that, you know, of her opinions on The Walking Dead. She absolutely hates the machine so much. Right, yeah. She doesn't even want to look at it. So to have something that, yeah. Well, you tell Chanel that I appreciate that very much and that in turn I believe that she's one of the best looking wives a guy could have at the same time. So double score. Double score. Yeah, you did well. You did well, sir. You did well. You did. Punch the zombie's weight. Oh, wait. Come on. Now, wait a minute. You guys are going to let me go and we're not going to play the Australian slang game. I feel ripped off. You've got to throw me a few. All right. I got some here quickly, okay? I actually have some ready. All right. What does off the duff mean?
    73:58
    Off the duff? Off the duff. Okay. Now, I'm not going to ask you to put it into a sentence just yet like some other cheaters have done. So I'm going to guess first and say that it sounds like something like we have a saying in here, in my office.
    74:21
    In America we have a saying called off the cuff, which means you're just kind of like thinking on the fly. Is that what it is, something like that? I'm going to put it in a second. Up to down. So I met Christopher Franchi at Texas Pinball Festival, went out for dinner. We had a great night. Next thing you know, I'm up the duff.
    74:45
    So, accepting my clown vomit on your face? I think it's the repercussions of that. Yeah, is it drunk? Pregnant.
    74:59
    Oh, pregnant. Off the duff. How pregnant? From my experience, when my wife got pregnant, she went on the duff. I mean, she literally sat on her ass for nine months.
    75:11
    All right. The next one you probably know, but everyone in the U.S. didn't actually know what this was when I was talking about it. A jumper. A jumper? Yeah. What's a jumper? A jumper. Well, when our car doesn't start, we get a jumper. Or if you, let's see, girls have clothes called a jumper which is like pants and like sort of a top built into one.
    75:41
    A onesie. A jumper is a sweater, what Australians call a sweater, a jumper. A sweater? My next guess was going to be a hot woman if you want a jumper. When I said jumper in the US, everyone thought that's a guy who jumps off a building, like he's going to end his life, he's a jumper. Oh yeah, well yeah, that's it.
    76:01
    Ritchie Ditch. I need a jumper. Did you bring a car? Chris, are you Ritchie Ditch? Wait, say that again? Are you Ritchie Ditch?
    76:14
    Ritchie Ditch? Ritchie Ditch. I'm getting all the hard ones. That's what you said. We're scraping the barrel now.
    76:24
    Let's see. Ritchie Ditch. Yep. Well, Ritchie could be slang for rigid, Didge could be short for digit, so stiff-fingered.
    76:34
    I love your process, but I'm way off. Well, it's actually short for original, but it means you're the real deal, you're a good guy, you're Ritchie Didge. It's true. Well, I can see where the Ritchie comes from original. What is Didge? What is that? It's rhyming with rich.
    76:59
    It's not the Da Vinci. It's like flying to a sky or something. Alright, last one. Yeah. What would I be telling you to do if I said, Chris, just throw it in the boot? Fuck you in the butt?
    77:17
    To which I'll have to pass. You don't know you're a handsome guy, half man, half beard. Throw it in the boot. Wow, throw it in the boot, put something in the trunk of your car maybe. Yay! There you go. You knew the answer. Is that right? To use that guess. So there you go. Is that right? Oh no, no, I didn't know. I just kind of throw it in the boot, I don't know. That's what it is. It was a lucky guess. That's not bad. For a spur of the moment, Mega Aussie Flaming Test, all basic Australian terms explained. You did well, Ryan. Yeah. Alright. Sure. And I did well too.
    77:57
    Fuckers. Alright Chris, thanks for chatting us today. I know you have to get back to your work and we can't wait to see the machines later on in the year, maybe at Expo or whatever happens with that event that seems to be up and up. I can tell you right now that's what it's going to be. The Expo, if people don't know, Rob Burke officially owns the name Chicago Expo now, Pinball Expo, whatever variation of that. And it is going back to mid-October. It will not be in September. And these two games that I'm working on will most definitely, I can say without a doubt, They will most definitely premiere at that show because the reason I can say that is because these are Joe Kamenko games and Joe does not mess around. When Joe sets a date, that date is met. So people will see this at Expo in October, both of these games. And thank you for having me on. You know, people have their dream themes. This is my dream podcast. This is the one I wanted to be on. So I can retire. That is so cool. I can retire. Yeah you guys are awesome man Best podcast out there by far Don listen to anybody tell you that your shows are too long because I sit and you inspire my work When I sit here and I working on Pinball Machine Art I listening and they not long enough I listened to your shows back instantaneously Like when it ends I go back to the beginning and listen again Oh, that's awesome. So, yeah. So, keep up the good work. You will have that twippy next year, boys. You just keep doing what you're doing. It's our life dream.
    79:44
    All right, guys. All right, thanks. It's been a lot of fun. Take it easy, buddy. Bye. Bye-bye. So there we go. That was a good friend of the show, Chris Franchi. What did we learn, Ryan?
    79:57
    There's going to be two Pimball machines possibly released at the same time, which has never happened before by the same company, or has it? I don't know. It's very confusing to me because it just doesn't seem like that's something that would be possible. Hmm. And people are going to message you and saying, oh, you know what the next title is. We don't. We have no idea what the next title is. So don't ask. So time for some news, Marty. Pinball Expo is back on. Rob Burke bought out, I think, the rights under Mike and that second event isn't happening now, the Pinball Palooza. It's now just the Pinball Expo. So to people visiting, I guess it's the same thing and knowing the backstory and knowing how the sausage is made, I guess, how the saying goes, it was all for nothing unless you're addicted to drama and you want to listen to all the crap. What do you think, Barney?
    80:57
    I probably the same as you could not give a shit. I really couldn't. But I don't think that that really two shows probably could have survived. It probably would have split people. So it's probably good that there's only one. I mean, we still don't know what Mike is going to do, but, you know, whatever. Yeah, it's in a different country and we're not going to attend it, either of us. So we don't care.
    81:27
    The amount of discussion behind it, I know people are very passionate about it because it's been going for 35 years or whatever it is. Yeah, for the people that are going, they just want to go and have a good time, so we don't need to know all the drama that happens behind the scenes.
    81:42
    We've talked about it before, and people have been saying that it really wasn't moving and it wasn't getting any better and it was going downhill. So maybe Rob is the guy that had all the plans to make it bigger and better, and that's exactly what's going to happen. So I hope that's the case. Who knows? As I said, that's when it gets into the whole, this person did that and this person did this. As long as they update their website, I think the show's in good hands because their website is still the same from the 1980s. Horrible.
    82:15
    New TNA code, they're up to 1.2 now. It was released today. That makes co-op mode and team co-op mode official. There's also a bunch of fixes there and nice little things like when you change the setting in the menu, it changes the colour of the change of value so you can easily scroll through and see what you've mucked around with without taking the picture and running it down.
    82:41
    I mean, there's a read-me file, you can go and read it if you want. But what we got from Spooky and Scott Denisi today was confirmation that they've sold now over 400 units, which is quite amazing considering that it was only 330 last time we reported, I think, which was about a month ago. So they're showing at Texas Pinball Festival, really propelled their sales forward and I guess, as we discussed before, this is one of those games that you get addicted to when you see it in person. You can watch as many streams as you want and it looks fantastic. Once you see it, once you play it, that's when you want to kind of put your money down. So I think they're easily going to blow past 500. Yeah, for sure.
    83:26
    Yeah. Great news, Spade. Spade, great news. What else do we have? We had Stern of the Union, Zach Sharp, who I think wrote that, finally listed down Shadow as an existing game of Brian Eddy because they talked about it, I think, in their press release and at Pinsk Pinball Festival and only mentioned AFM and Mable Madness. So, Breakdown Shadow is now an actual game. The popular machine they mentioned.
    83:54
    Shadows? It's not popular. I said it. It's sold more than both of them. I'm sure it did, but that doesn't mean that it's popular.
    84:05
    It's a cult classic. I know, you own it, so you want to feel it. It's not in the same league as the others, and you know it. I think Shadow is a fantastic bang for buck game. Well, it has a show up in the middle. I mean, when people get... You should see my mother-in-law play the Shadow. When she gets multiple, which is the most pointless multiple ever because no one's going to hit it in a loop if they're a noob, she screams more than she does when she plays it. Well, there you go. Your mother-in-law loves it, therefore the value is just going to shoot right up.
    84:45
    That's great news. It was a good story, wasn't it? Well, it is. I mean, I actually really do like Shadow. And when I come over to your place and I've got all these machines to play, there are two machines that I go to first. Shadow Berings. No. Shadow, I'm going to tell you, Shadow, I play all the time because I never really got to play it a lot. Like, when it came out, it wasn't popular, is what I'm saying. Cult classic. Yeah, popular after it's meant to be popular. Okay, I'm sure it's a cult classic, but cult classic doesn't necessarily mean popular. Anyway, and the other one is Simplen's Pimball Party because I'm dying to love that game.
    85:26
    Well, once... I know I can't say that now. I'll say it a bit later. Aerosmith got an update. Did it? Yeah. Oh, I read that. It was in China now. If you're in China, you can put Chinese coins in it or something. Yeah, it really was. I mean, it's been a while since the last update for Aerosmith and it had a lot of lines in the readme file. But none of it meant anything. It was the longest pointless read-me ever. It was just like, man, one of these lines has got to be something like, you know, like Guardians of the Galaxy has all their modes rewritten and Aerosmith is just like, yeah, if you're in China. I don't know whether, like normally when these releases happen, you know, Stern puts out a note on their Facebook page. I don't think there was anything mentioned about this particular release. I don't think it was in the Cern of the Union either. It was like a day after the Cern of the Union. It possibly was, but it just kind of came out of nowhere and people were like, hey, Aerosmith. Get excited. Well, honestly, because you could just imagine all the comments on Facebook wouldn't have been very positive. They would have been, oh, where's Ghostbusters and where's Real Affortune. They're still going on about that. Why does my kiss have no cities, goddammit!
    86:44
    So, they've just dodged a bullet right there by not putting an announcement out there. Smart, smart. And I also saw a comment somewhere, I think it was on Facebook by possibly George Gomez, I can't remember, about the Iron Maiden red armour will be laser cut. Yes. I mean, that's not really big news, but I mean, people want to know something about the appellee that they've ordered and sold out and they haven't seen it yet. So, I mean, most of them are kind of like a side cut anyway, you know, lazy cut anyway. Are you going to ask me the question?
    87:20
    Well, I asked you the question on Monday, sorry, Tuesday after we recorded. You said you don't know yet. And then I asked you on Wednesday. You didn't know. And then I asked you on Thursday. And Marty, do you have any news? I have news and for all those people that have messaged me and everybody mentioned on the screen, I have got an Iron Maiden limited edition coming.
    87:43
    Do you know what? I was gearing myself up for massive disappointment. You know when you do that, you kind of go, oh, you know, if it wasn't meant to be, it wasn't meant to be and I'll, you know, I'll move on, I'll do something. But as soon as I got the call, I'm like, fuck yeah, oh, fuck, I really wanted this fucking machine, oh. Oh, fucking. Before you were like, it's not that good. You know, it's Iron Maiden. I'll be like, you know.
    88:09
    You said it last week, like, all their songs are a bit samey. And now you're like, they're so original. I'm like, I love all the songs, they sound so different. Oh, I fucking love them. So look. I love all the songs, even wasted years.
    88:25
    But what was funny was that I actually had this really, like, massive client meeting. Like the most senior people, it was a quarterly review, so it is one of the most serious meetings I could possibly have. There's 10 people in the room, we're presenting, we're doing all these results, and my phone rang, and someone had it in my phone, and I saw that it was from AMD. And I honestly, I just went, oh, sorry guys, I've got to take this. I've got to take this shit.
    88:55
    And I literally stood up to take the call, and I went, what the hell am I doing? I went, um, it can wait, sorry. And then my boss after me said, what was that call about? And I said, oh, that was news to tell me that I got my arm made.
    89:10
    And he said, yeah, okay, fair enough. Because that's how much everybody knows I want this fucking machine. But you know, I would have been okay if I didn't get it.
    89:20
    So, you don't have room for it, so I really need to take... Well, I mean, I've got... it's a long way away. It's like two and a half months away. I think the end of, what are we now doing? February, March, April. Is it the end of June, I think. The end of June. Yeah. So is that, yeah, that's a month and a half? Yep. Is that two months and a half? Yeah. So I've got that much time. Someone buy my Hobbit, for God's sake. It's a great game, isn't it? It actually is a great game. And it's one of those things where I just, in 12 months' time, it's going to have this massive code update which is going to absolutely transform the game. And I'm going to keep myself for not having it. But right now... Well, you might still have it if no one buys it. Well, that is actually true.
    90:08
    No. Yeah. I'm guessing we're going to see some Iron Man stuff this week. I mean, Deadfoot was teasing something, but it could be anything.
    90:20
    Yeah, weird that we still haven't seen the LE, but... Yeah, I think he's hinting at probably Tuesday night US time, which is Wednesday morning our time, so same sort of time as the launch video that he did. I wonder if they're going to show the premium instead of the LE, because they've already sold out totally of the LE, so why would they... Yeah, it's not neat now. Yeah, I mean, like fuck you, fuck all the people that have ordered it, they don't need your money anymore. They've got it.
    90:47
    So what is the order? The pros come out first. Is it the LEs and then the premiums or premiums first? No, the premiums are last. Okay. So, I mean, when that person sent that 15, you know, in that little group chat, sent that 15 minute video, I started watching it and I was just like, man, I don't want to watch it anymore because two and a half months wait. Yeah, I went through that with The Hobbit. I watched every single video and then when you get it, it's not as special because you kind of know everything. So my advice to you is just to go, you know, watch a bit of the dead flip screen just so you can kind of confirm the money that you're sending, but don't sit there and watch every single stream on the machine because you'll go crazy. Look, I will. And, you know, I remember when I was waiting for my hobbit, I remember every single day, like two or three times a day, checking the whereabouts of the ship that was coming across from America. So that's, I do get a little bit obsessed with these things. So I'm going to try and do my best this time. Yeah, you're going to be streaming it and we're going to be talking about it in detail. So let's talk about it right now. What else happened this week? There's a new podcast in town. Yes, our good friend of the show, Jonathan Houston. Yeah, I was looking forward to having him as like the European, you know, correspondent that knows like everything, like the back story of like every single story. But now he's got his own podcast. So, yeah, Jonathan and Martin from Pimball News. I don't know what the actual link in the show notes, but I think it's just called Pimball News and Pimball Magazine podcast, Pimball podcast maybe. Sure. But they chatted in. It's a once-a-month podcast, kind of like the same as his newsletter, but they're kind of talking about it. And it was quite good. And I enjoyed listening to it. And there was a story, one of the cool stories that he kind of talked about was that when he was talking to John Borg at Texas Pinball Festival, John Borg mentioned that he was asked to design like a generic kind of game, like, hey, design a game. And then like when you're kind of like halfway through, we're going to tell you what it is. Right, okay. And he thought it was going to be Iron Maiden, so that giant Groot head was going to be a giant Eddie head, and Eddie would swallow the balls and then spit him out. But then they're like, oh no, it's, you know, Keeith Elwin's doing Iron Maiden, so your design is going to be Guardians. So they could have been flipped, which is quite weird to me. I guess it kind of makes sense, because nothing on the machine besides, you know, the Groot with the giant Groot hands is kind of specific to the game. It's got the rocket kickback, but that could have been anything. If that was Ion Mane, it'd be like the, I don't know, the Aces High kickback, the missile launch. It could have been anything, yeah, for sure. So, interesting story there. Oh, well, we've got a generic game, so there you go.
    93:41
    Is that it for the news this week? That is it for the news this week. This week in Bimball. That was horrible. Well, I spent most of the week toughing up my games for Rage Tilt at Ryzen, which will be this weekend, so we'll be talking about it next week. It was really fun. I changed the game so much. It almost like, you know, you've got four games, so you know when your machines become kind of stale. You feel like something fresh. And even in a big collection of, I've got 16 machines in my front room, things can still kind of get stale. That's why I just play TNA non-stop. But me changing and kind of tweaking all these games, I've stopped playing TNA finally because it's almost like the games are new again. Like Tron without any outlanes and ACDC without any outlanes, it just makes the game so much fun because you're hanging on for dear life. And when you get a multiball, you can kind of like breathe a sigh of relief that, you know, you got a bit of a... Yeah, I don't know. It's fun. And Metallica with the new rules, I changed the rules to crank it up as 555. I'm not sure if that's too easy. I don't know if your one at Indies was that 555 or 888? I think it's 555. So it's one where you're trying to get everybody to do crank it up. Yeah. And, man, it's really, I mean, my Metallica is hard to begin with in single-ball play. So I haven't touched anything except those rules. So it's kind of brutal, but it's really massively risk-reward because you will, at one stage, get into Crank It Up and, you know, catching out at 20 million jackpot is probably a good idea. If you sit there and try and finish the whole thing, you're going to end up with nothing. So they did two things. So obviously they made it easier to get into Crank It Up, but they made it harder to get into Multi-Ball. Yeah, so Sparky is 14 hits, which is the maximum. Coffin and Grave Marker is exactly the same. Coffin, I change it to Virtual Lock because there's going to be four people playing. I think it's unfair for people to kind of control the ball out of the shooter lane, and then some people have it spit out straight away.
    95:54
    Plus, I just realized, I mean, sometimes you've played the Metallica Premium in LA. Yes. You know when Coffin says, like, Lock is lit, and then you shoot the coffin and it doesn't grab the ball. Yeah. It's so frustrating. It's just like, you have to like slowly, it has to be like looping around there. You need to bounce off something, yeah. Yeah, it's a shit rule. The more I play it, the more I'm like, it's not there.
    96:17
    It's lit, and you make the shot, so it should start multiball. If you drain off that, a coffin can be huge, because it's the only multiball you can stack with something else.
    96:26
    So, yeah, I change it to virtual lock, like the Pro, so you just hit it, and it locks the ball. Yeah, yeah, yeah, good. I'm glad you have. It's the one thing I really don't like about, well, I mean, obviously it's the hammer that gets in the way of the sparky shot as well, just your field of view.
    96:44
    I've got a slightly smaller, yeah, I've got a slightly smaller hammer, so it's not that bad. Horrible. But yeah, definitely visual lock on that is a welcome change, so thank you for that. Yep, I'll talk about one more machine. The Walking Dead changed that so you cannot start a mode during multiball. A lot of people just kind of like, they start Wellwalker and then they go for the, you know, that's their safety line. But this is like, hey, you can play multiball and I change the ball save to half the time. Nothing's going to happen if you don't start the mode beforehand. So it's really risk-reward kind of thing as well. And that's how it's set up for tournaments anyway. Yeah. And sorry, one last thing. With Tron, I've played Tron so many times. I had it for like two plus years. I realized that when you hit the right orbit, which is a super hard shot, right? You have to go through the pops. There's a switch, but in front of the switch is a post that kind of blocks the shot. If you have super pops lit, when you shoot through the pops, it'll block the shot. So the ball feeds into the pops, right? So you get more points. But that means, that's before the switch, so that means it has to register the shot before. So when you hit one spinner hit, it will register the shot. Which I think it comes in handy to know that because you can easily kind of hit the spinner, but from the spinner to the rest of the orbit, it really has to be a perfect shot. So if you're playing Tron and you've got silver pops lit, you can kind of like almost fake the shot in there and it registers. Is that a cool bit of information for you, Marnie? Do you remember that? Oh, fuck. You're in the edge of your seat, Marnie? No, but I just, I know that you just, oh, you just get all excited by that kind of stuff. I'm not, I found an exploit. It's not an exploit.
    98:40
    Hey, I found the TNA exploit. I know. Yeah, I didn't talk about it, but I don't know if it made it in, but in the beta firmware, beta firmware, Yeah. Do you know, I'm just going to talk about it really quickly, okay? You mentioned the word exploit. Look, I just know you are now just so quick and excited, aren't you? Okay.
    99:01
    Don't make this a thing, Mark. It's already a thing. All right. If you're in multiball or any time, if you shoot the right orbit and then shoot the luck shot,
    99:14
    you get something called a quick luck and it's worth 50,000. Now in the beta firmware, if you're in multiball and you do that, even though you're not locking the ball, it would award you the 50,000 times three if you had three balls. So it was 150,000 points. Now if you lose a ball, right, the game wasn't smart enough to know when the ball was auto-plunging or you hitting the right orbit. So you could be cradling the ball on your right flipper, you dump a bunch of balls, the ball... Stop it.
    99:49
    Maldivall starts, you let the ball drain, okay, and then you wait for the ball to go all the way around, the insert goes red, you backhand that and you get 150,000. You can do that like three times in 10 seconds and that's an exploit. I told Scott about it, we had a bit of to and fro. As much as an argument you can have with Scott Dinesi because he doesn't argue because he's such a nice guy. I know. So, consider to think about it. So, I'm not sure if that made it in. I'll have to try. But if you're a really good player, that's potentially half a million points available in 10 seconds if you can do it. Well, that's right. If you're a good player. Well, I mean, that's with the ball save on. I mean, when the ball save is off, if you can hit that right orbit and backhand that shot, then that's good enough. Yeah, okay. I can't see. Okay. Not on that. The ball is wild constantly. The ball is wild. Marty, what did you get up to this week?
    100:45
    Look, I streamed Star Trek a couple of times and you managed to come over and see Star Trek. What did you think?
    100:52
    What did I think of Star Trek? I think it's a great game. I started one. But you got to see it with my Pins stadiums. Yeah, the brightest fucking game in the world. It really is now. Yeah, it was. And it took a while to get used to it. When I first came in, you're like, what do you think? Yeah, it looks good, but it was blinding me. But then after, it's all about getting used to it. Once you get used to it and you look at a normal game, you're like, ah, this game is very dark. So if you get one Pin Stadium, you're fucked. You've got to get them for all your games. I like that, I'm afraid. That's it. You're all now shilling, right? No, I'm not shilling because I'm only getting them. If you get one, you've got to get all of them. Yeah, that's why I don't want any because I've got fucking 20 machines to get them for. I can't spend that much money, but if you get one, just be warned. And people say, yeah, that's like Colour GND. No, Colour GND I've got on some of my games and I don't have on others, but if I had Pinsadiums it would be none or all. Yeah, fair enough. So I choose none for the sake of my wallet. So, well, another thing that's happened is, I think last week I may have mentioned that my Pinball 102 had arrived. Well, today I was greeted with Pinball 101. So these are the instructional DVDs by Keith and Randy Elwin. So I am now going to study these and I am going to become Elwin Jr. And I'm going to freaking just win Pinboob because I've watched these DVDs. That's what they're going to do. Elwin Jr. Correct. You want to be Keith Allen's kid? Forget the fact that I'm 20 years older than him. That's not the point. What I'm saying is I'm going to be the new Elwyn. Okay. No. Have you watched any yet? No, of course not. I don't watch movies. This is ridiculous. I just buy these things. I'm just going to put it up the shelf. I am going to watch it, but I think it's... I'm not so sure whether it's going to start really basic. I'm going to go, can you skip to where I win the game? I haven't seen any footage at all. Do you know the format? Is he just going through the games or is he just going through skills of... I have no idea. I was waiting for 101 to arrive. You know, I like to see these things in sequence. I don't want to get the major plot twist in the second DVD without seeing the story evolve in the first DVD, if you know what I mean. Is it in 102 where Keith gets a call and gets a job at Stern? I think that's probably what it is. Where, you know, in 101 he's probably mentioning little hints about it.
    103:27
    Is it in 102 where he diswraps some magnetic balls in the russac and throws it up against him? That's probably what it is. I think it's in Pimball 102 where he smiles.
    103:42
    What? He's so serious when he plays. Haven't you seen him? He's very serious. Yes. Look, the other thing to note is I just, it's part of my week as well in that last week when we had our now good friend of the show, Josh Sharp on our show, that was not quite above board, was it, Ryan? What are you talking about? I don't know where you're going with this.
    104:08
    Well, we sort of mentioned that we've got my ringers for the podcaster's bloodbath. Ah, yeah. That was full of shit. It was crap, wasn't it?
    104:20
    And so, as a result, they're going to be going to the finals. They're not going to wait around after the finals to play on some stupid Aussies bloody ringers and some bloody blood bath invitational thing. So, all I'm saying is, I don't know whether I'm going to do it before or after, but I'm putting it out there. I need two people in my team. So if you are a good player, or even if you're not, Ryan keeps saying to me, no, you've got to win this. I'm like, I couldn't care. I just want to have a bit of fun. But you've got to trash talk like crazy. Oh, yeah. I don't even have to practice for that. There was a trash talker before, and everyone did all the trash talking before the tournament. And then I remember Ron and Bruce talking about it, and they said, like, while people were playing, everyone was being, like, super respectful. So that, like, no one would, like, no one would scream at anything while they're playing. I want you to be like breaking the pinball because this is not an IFPA tournament, right? So you need to just invade their personal space, grab their ass from behind, just anything. Stuff I would normally do. Exactly, exactly. Just be yourself, Manny. Yeah, anyway. So reach out head-to-headpinball at gmail.com if you want to be my ringer. But that means we have to be a guest. Yeah, well, sure. Well, then, you know, we might have to get you on for three minutes like we did with Josh Sharp. When you're asking questions, when are you going to be working at Stern?
    105:45
    Yeah, and stuffing up that one. I have five questions to ask and I screwed up one of them. We will get Josh Sharp on the show soon, I think. It's a good sport, which is good. But look, the thing that happened that was a highlight of my week, and it was something that we did together. Yeah. I know. So you sent a note to me saying you need to listen to this other new podcast. What was it, Ryan?
    106:13
    Mrs. Pinn. Mrs. Oh, my God. Just, guys, you've got to listen to this podcast. She is fucking hilarious. Well, she's funny, right? She's hilarious. But also, what's really good about it is, so she is the wife of a pinball player, and she really is a pinball wife, but she's really supportive of it. So she goes around, they go looking for venues that have got pinball, she's into it, you know, I don't want to give too much away because I want you to listen to it, but she does get really involved in making things for the pinball as well. But she's very funny. But also she has a couple of different segments. One is Womp, which is... Don't spoil it. Okay. I won't tell you what Womp is then, apparently. But the other one is she also does Pinball for Dummies. Am I allowed to say that? Yes, you are. Okay. And what's really good about that is that because she really is getting into pinball, I mean, there's a lot of things that we talk about in our podcast. And I often have to say, Ryan, you mean Texas Pinball Festival, Or you mean international for the people. Like we have to spell things out because people will send you messages going, I don't know what you're talking about. The good thing about Mrs Pinn is that because she's learning, she does pinball for dummies. And so she actually brings it down to the basics and you're going on her journey as she's learning things. And in between that, she's fucking hilarious.
    107:44
    I think it's really refreshing because most of the people that have a podcast, they know a certain amount. And then so you're kind of getting the same opinions. I mean, people are different enough for me to listen to a lot of podcasts, but this is really fresh because it's someone who's just going and staying that journey a couple of months in. Yep. And in particular, the first couple of episodes, she's literally just talking into a microphone, right? Yeah. And just brought off the top of her head. So I want to see more of that. But then she's got some segments as well. But the good news is... The good news is, Marty, well, yeah, there's too many dicks on the dance floor. We've, we've, we've, every single person we've interviewed, including Chris Franchi today, what have they got in common? They're, they're male, okay? So, yeah, and we said, we were discussing, like, we've got to get a female one. I mean, there's a bit of a misrepresentation here of what's going on in the hobby. So, I mean, when that came up, we were like, yes, we have to get her. Absolutely. This was an easy decision. Yes. I was worried that you wouldn't want to do it, but I sent you the link and it was a couple of hours later. I'm like, say something, Mali. And you're like, oh my God, fucking hilarious. So I'm glad you liked it. Within 30 seconds of listening to the first episode, I'm like, right, I am absolutely, I'm hooked on this. I think she might be releasing every week. But anyway, we got her on. Here's what she had to say. All right. So joining us now is something that's very new and dear to our hearts. And what it is, it's a podcast. We love podcasts, don't we, Ryan? Sure. We really do. But what we love more than anything are podcasts that make us laugh. And we are joined by somebody that in such a very short period of time has made us laugh a lot. So joining us, Mrs. Pinn. Hi, guys. How are you? Are you going? We're great. It's 6.06 a.m. in Pennsylvania right now. So we're alive and ready to podcast about pinball.
    109:49
    So walk us through this because your husband, Dr. Pin, you like to call him, he messaged me during the Texas Pinball Festival and said, And my wife has just recorded a little podcast, have a listen, and I was so busy I didn't listen at all because it was just in... Fail. Yeah, fail.
    110:11
    And I said I'm going to bookmark it and I'm going to listen later and I forgot. And then a couple of weeks later everyone's talking about Mrs. Pinn. So walk us through. You're watching Jack Danger eat a pork sandwich. Yeah, you know, we watch Jack Danger on Twitch a lot, and he's awesome. He puts the cameras on the machines, and you can see what he's doing with his hands. You can see where the ball's going. You can see his face. And it's just we were watching the live Twitch of him at the Texas Pinball Convention, and it just must have been like a lull in the action because as soon as we turned it on, he was just sitting on some grass, must have been outside the conference hall, And he was eating a pulled pork sandwich. And I was just like, you know, it was like a Friday night. It's not like we have exciting lives over here at our house. But I was like, babe, really? What are we watching right now? And so, you know, somehow we got started talking about podcasts. And I was like, listen, if this is an example of like a stellar podcast, I think I could do better. I'm just saying. And so, you know, Stern Pin is my biggest supporter, guys. But, I mean, he, I think he had a little bit of doubt and there's enough feisty in me that I was like, oh, screw that. And so five minutes later, I had downloaded a recording app and was podcasting live, commenting on Jack Danger. And that's how this whole thing began. And that's kind of what we loved about it was the fact that you could just tell, you just hit record and you're just like, I'm just telling you what's on my mind. And it was just, I mean, you know, we know, your podcast has just gone gangbusters really quickly. And I think it's because it really is just so real and such a cliche to say fresh, but, you know, we spend a lot of time putting together notes and making sure we've got stories. And you're just like, well, I'm just going to talk to you guys. So here I am. Yeah, I mean, I do have an outline of sorts. I do have something in front of my face. But honestly, I feel like it's keeping it real that keeps it fun. If it was scripted, then it wouldn't be funny. So I wouldn't be nearly as good at it. Not that I'm really good at it to start with, but, you know, it wouldn't be good if I was like reading from, you know, a scripted thing. So, winging it.
    112:48
    So, you've got two Pinnball machines at your house. You've got the Ripley's, believe it or not, and Terminator 2. Is that right? We do, yep. And you're looking to add a third, I believe. Yes. My husband is turning 40 next year. And so, I basically was like, what do you want, honey? And I was like, you want me to throw you a big party? Do you want to go on a vacation? Do you want a pinball machine? And it was like, and he was like, that's it. I want a pinball machine. And I was like, okay, think about which one you want. You can pick one out. So yeah, he's thinking about Houdini. He's been into Magic for a really long time. And the Houdini theme came out and he lost his mind excited. So I think he's going to play that. I think he's going to get that one. But I haven't played it yet in person. And I'm like, listen, we are not going to be spending that kind of money on a machine that I haven't even seen before. So that's the only I was like, I think that's pretty fair. I just have to play it once. That's all. So we're hoping to be able to play it.
    113:49
    I'm going to do a bit of a segue here. So I'm going to talk about your Ripley's Believe It or Not. Sure. I think it's a fantastic game and I know that you think it's a fantastic game. But for those people that haven't listened to your podcast yet, from head to head, we're telling you go and listen to Mrs. Pinn and we're going to link it in the show notes. But one of the funniest moments was to hear your excitement about making your own topper. Oh, yes. That was quite, it was seriously, Dr. Pin came to me and was like, honey, so, you know, they don't make a topper for this thing. And I was kind of thinking maybe you'd want to help me make one. And I lost my mind. I really did.
    114:33
    I love a project. So this is the difference that me and Mali were kind of talking about it before we started recording just now.
    114:41
    You know, a lot of guys and girls, I guess, they struggle with their partner getting involved in their hobby and it kind of becomes a thing where it's like you go off and do your own thing and I do my own thing and it's our separation kind of hobby. So you, on the other hand, seem to kind of be embracing it and seeing it as a challenge to get everyone in a family involved, you know, and the top of the story was an example. So is that with everything that you and your husband do in life or is pinball something that you're actually very excited about and you actually want to be your hobby as well?
    115:19
    I mean, I'm really trying, man. I suck at pinball, though. It's really – it is not – I initially was like, oh, my gosh, this is going to be great. It will be a game everybody can play, and I truly think that my seven-year-old is a better player than I am. So, I mean, it is not super easy. There's a lot of nuances that I really don't know if I have the skills for. But, yeah, we just – you know, if he was into golf or, I don't know, like golf, I'm like, all right, go ahead, go play golf. That's great. But he's into pinball, which is something I can totally do badly, but I can do it. So, you know, and it's something that we've gotten our kids into, too. And anytime we have some free time, we get on the pin map and go and look for new machines that we haven't played yet. And we drag the kids along and sometimes it works and sometimes it's a fail, but whatever. You know, we try it and it's awesome. So that was one of the things that really stood out for me was the commitment when you were talking about how you've got this pinball map. And what I'm really wanting to know is whether that's you being supportive of your husband or are you just one of these map ladies that just loves a map? Or you do like scrapbooking and all that kind of stuff. What part of it is support and what part of it is you're probably a bit mad? Well, I'm totally a bit mad. I mean, that's obvious, but no, I think... She's into dorks, Maddie, doesn't she?
    116:54
    Yeah, I don't know. I think it's a little bit of both. I think that it's a hobby I can totally get into, and I'm a little bit mad too, so it all works out. It's great. It's a good combo.
    117:07
    Now, you need to explain to our listeners what WOMP stands for. Oh, well, you know, one of the things we were trying to figure out and Dr. Pinn was helping me, but initially it was I was totally winging it. And then I realized that I kind of had to have some kind of a focus on the podcast. And so I was trying to think of segments and I came up with Pinball for Dummies because I know nothing about pinball and I'm eager to learn. And then I came up with WOMP, which stands for Women of Motherfucking Pinball. I hope I can say that. Yeah, you can say that. Okay, great. Fantastic. I love it. So Womp is just kind of a way for me to highlight all of the awesome women that are in pinball currently and to, you know, do some research on the awesome things that women are doing in pinball, even though it doesn't seem like it's, it needs more highlighting for sure. So that's why I kind of started that part of the podcast up. Well, we agree. And throughout the hobby, people are always saying that we need to get more women in pinball. So I think you flying the flag is a great thing. And I know that you've already called out the pinball princess. So you are going to go on a journey of discovering amazing women in pinball. Can I throw out a name for you? Sure. So I've been over to America and I've played some tournaments there and there's also some great people in Australia, some women that play in our tournaments as well. But one person that really stood out for me because when I went over there I didn't know anybody but this particular person came to me and spoke to me a lot and I always look forward to seeing her. So I want you to have on your list Louise Wagensonner.
    118:54
    Louise? Louise Wagensonner. Louise, I've probably got your name wrong, but I love catching up with her. And there lots of other women that I love catching up with as well but the one that I catch up the most So have that on your list Check her out She a great player as well Great player Tim Tame I got it It on my list I literally just wrote it down
    119:16
    You've merged us together. Marty is Gin and Sonic. I'm Tim Tame. Shoot. I keep doing that. You guys sound so much alike. We don't. We kind of don't. No, you don't. Not at all. But seriously, you don't. You don't sound alike at all. It's early here. It's very early. Do I have to throw out a name as well, Marty? Yeah, go for it. Okay. Robin Harrison. She's a bar owner in Toronto, and she's a kick-ass pinball player, and she runs a pinball location as well. So a two-for-one.
    119:46
    Look her up. Yeah, a two-for-one. I love it. Okay. Now, what me and Marty also like about your podcast so far is that you're learning, right? You're still new to all of this, and you're not letting the fact that your newest hit all disencourage you in any way. So we want to give you a bit of a quiz to help you out on your way.
    120:09
    And we're not going to give you one of our quizzy names. Yeah, no. Dr. Pinn was quizzing me last night on names. And I was giving him a haircut. And I was like, listen, you have during this haircut to quiz me on pinball stuff. And then you're done because it has been a long day and I can't feel like such a failure. And he goes, all right, well, who is, who was it? Somebody. And I was just like, I have no freaking clue, babe. I don't know. I don't know who these people are. Like, I'm trying. I don't know. It was so bad. So just prepare yourself. We'll make it a true or false then. Okay. Andrew Highway is the owner of Spooky Pinball. True or false? I think that's false. Ooh. That's right. Well done. Yeah. Oh, my God. I got one question. That's it. That's 100%. You got it all right. Well done.
    121:13
    All right. Make it till you make it. Tim Sexton, okay? Tim Sexton is an 80-year-old longtime employee of Stern Pinball. He's one of those guys that's like one of those custodian people. They kind of like they keep employed at a company just like do their mail and stuff because they don't want to fire him. Pinsxton, true or false?
    121:32
    Oh my God, I have no idea. I'm so ignorant at pinball, guys. This is just highlighting my stupidity.
    121:40
    I'm going to say, I mean, that sounds like something that might actually be true. I'm going to say true. No, it's false.
    121:51
    But the funny thing is, like, you know, over the months, you're just going to be able to rattle off these names because, as Ryan was saying before, It's kind of like you're fearless. You're like, yeah, sure, guys. I don't know these people, but I'm going to know these people. It's like when you know you do your pinball for dummies. You're like, do you know what? I discovered today that you can nudge a machine. Now, what's really interesting about that is we know that. We've been doing it for years, so we're not going to say it on our podcast. But there are so many people that come up to me and say, you know what? I wish sometimes you would just sort of explain what you're saying because you think that we know. So, but you know what I mean? Like there's a lot of people that don't know that you can nudge a machine. They don't know that you can tilt the machine and they don't know like the tilt bob that you were talking about.
    122:38
    Yeah, you know, I mean, that's why I legit searched on Amazon for Pinball for Dummies and they don't sell the book. I was going to read it. You should write one. Maybe I should. But honestly, because you're going through all the different things that we take for granted. So you're the first person to be able to write Pinball for Dummies. I'm not saying you're a dummy. Don't take that the wrong way. Oh, no, I admit that I am a pinball dummy. It's all right. But you should do it. Write a list. All right. I just wrote down on my paper, write a book, and I put it in a bubble.
    123:14
    That means it's on my to-do list, guys. Right after you give your husband a haircut and take the kids to school and, yeah, you've got a busy life. I mean, it's not glamorous, but man, it's pretty full. It's busy. So what are some other sort of new names that you've been sort of discussing with your husband that you have no idea, but you're sort of now getting your head around?
    123:37
    I mean, it's tough because there are so many different areas of pinball, and I just don't know any of them. So then, you know, Christian will throw out names of players, and then he'll throw out names of people who actually work on the machines and make them. And then he'll throw out these podcasters who sometimes are players too, and they just all convene together, guys.
    124:01
    That's the problem is that there really are a lot of names in pinball. I mean, probably not to you guys, but to somebody who's new to the subject, it's so easy for me in my mind to get everybody confused. Yeah, no, I 100% agree with you. And I distinctly remember when I bought my first pinball machine and I thought, oh, I'm a pinball guy now. I can kind of like hang with the pinball crowd and have a conversation. And I remember sitting there at a pinball meet and people were kind of like openly having a conversation in front of me. And I was kind of like third wheeling it. And I couldn't actually understand what they were saying at all. It was like they were speaking a different language. And they kind of turned to me and said, oh, you know, what pinball machine do you have? And I said, oh, Indiana Jones. and then they teach me all these questions I had no idea about. I'm like, ask Dave. He's my football guy.
    124:54
    It's very overwhelming because people talk in abbreviations and as Martin said, they just assume that you know everything. But the good news is that it comes to you eventually. I mean, that was four and a half, five years ago. You're four years ago. I mean, that's not such a long time. I mean, five years from now, I might know who all these people are. That gives me hope. You know, Jack Danger, that's a great start.
    125:21
    I do. I really, like, is that his real name? I know I mentioned that in one of my podcasts, but like... No, it actually is. That is a badass name. It is a badass name. But apparently, from what I heard, it's, I think it's maybe like a French name, and I think it's pronounced really Jack Danger.
    125:40
    Oh, fancy. That's a real story. True or false? Is it really, Jack Danger? I think that's true. That's true. I think it's actually true. Here's one more true or false. Dirty Donny. Do you know who he is? No, I have no idea. Okay. Is Dirty Donny the cut and paste Photoshop artist responsible for the artwork on Game of Thrones and Star Wars?
    126:05
    Oh, jeez. I have no idea. With a name like Dirty Donny, does he sound like he's an artist? So does Dirty Donny sound like a cool artist or a copy and paste like shitty artist? Dirty Donny? I mean, I feel like I would want to name like Dirty Donny if I was an artist. I'm going to say that's true. That's a pretty awesome name. Well, he is the artist. The Pimball machines I've described have horrible, or in comparison to other machines, horrible art. Dirty Donny is badass. He's a badass guy. He's responsible for Aerosmith and Metallica, really awesome art. Yeah, not the copy and paste stuff. And that's something, again, you talk about all the different things you need to know. I mean, that's one thing that over time you'll look at is by looking at different machines, you'll know what looks good and what looks good. And they're not all the same. They're not always great.
    126:57
    Right. Well, that's true. And do you know all the major pinball manufacturers at the moment? Okay, so I did a podcast about that. I feel like I could probably name a good portion of them, but probably not all of them. I'm not going to lie. Go for it. Tell us what you got. Oh, my God. Well, I mean, I know. So, like, back in the old, I did some, like, old school looking around and looked into Bally and Williams, which I know aren't in existence anymore, but in the past have made a lot of games. So, that's just one more reason why it's all confusing, because you've got to think about what's current today. But pinball is a sport that all of these retro machines are still in use and in play everywhere. So, I mean, it's not even good enough to know what's happening now. You really have to go back and, like, kind of learn the past, too. Well, yeah. It's like at school when you've got modern history and ancient history. Yes. It's the same sort of thing. I sucked at history, guys. I sucked. Yeah, same. I didn't have the patience for it. But, you know, before doing your own podcast, have you listened to other podcasts? I, so, Dr. Pin, we, in the car, he'll play these podcasts, and I'm not even going to lie, sometimes I'm like, I'm like, babe, can you please, like, let's just put something else on.
    128:19
    Because a lot of times they have swear words in them, and our kids are always in the car, and so it's, I know, well, I mean, I swear like a sailor when my kids aren't around, But when my kids are on, I got to keep it PG, you know, so sometimes that's the reason why we have to turn them off. But, yeah, in the car we listen to them. We've listened, obviously, to you guys a lot and we've listened to the pinball profile is another one that we listen to in the car a lot. So, I mean, I can't claim to never have listened to a podcast before I made my own. So I feel like I'm all right with that, you know. Good. All right. Well, we told Dr. Pin to get you on Podcast Garden because you're totally worth the $2.99 a month.
    129:04
    It's true. We believe you are on Podcast Garden now, so it's legit, right? So you're here to stay. Yeah, it's legit. He hooked me up. I couldn't figure it out. And by like 8 o'clock at night here, I am just done. After 14 hours with my kids, I'm totally toasted. So he hooked it up. He went online and I made the account, but then he was able to figure out how to download all the audio. So we think all the links are working now, but we're on there. So it's good. It's great. We will link you in our show notes, and we will also tell everyone to subscribe to you guys. And we look forward to hearing more Mrs. Pins in the future. And we want to follow your journey into fan. Yeah. Oh, thanks, guys. That's so sweet. What sort of frequency are you going to be podcasting? Is this every day, every week, every month?
    130:00
    You know, I haven't really put any pressure on myself. You just do whatever you like. You're just beat of your own dreams. I kind of do. I kind of do. You know, I don't know when I'm feeling it. Sometimes I'll do two right in a row because I really get into it. And then, you know, sometimes I just wait until I feel like I have something to say because nobody wants to listen to somebody saying nothing. So, you know, I make no commitments. Oh, Miss Steevers, I like it. I know, I know. So, yeah, I don't know. In general, I think it's been about once a week since we started, but sometimes it might be more and sometimes it might be less. I don't know. We'll see. I love it. Yeah, there you go. Well, thank you so much for coming on.
    130:47
    Oh, thank you for having me. This is crazy. You literally made Dr. Pins' dreams come true today. But not yours. We know he listens. Mine too, of course, of course. Yeah, yeah. He's a big fan. So thank you guys so much. No worries. Thank you. We honestly, genuinely believe just the best thing to come out of podcasting in recent times. So thank you so much for making us laugh. Oh, that's awesome. You're welcome. All right. See you later. All right. See ya.
    131:20
    So there you go. Our first ever female guest. So, you know, I don't know what that means. I thought you were going to say something really profound. You know.
    131:35
    Profound? Me? I don't say anything profound. I laugh silly so it becomes a laugh track. That's what I do. Oh, don't mention that, Marty.
    131:47
    The money's good, though. I mean, it's been used so many times because it's so unoriginal. There's a lot of money coming in.
    131:53
    Marty, slam Zetop 100. How did we go? Oh, well, do you want the official how we went or the real how we went? The official. What does Facebook say? Was it a draw? Did I win? Well, the Facebook vote says that there were 68 votes in total. Ooh, another record. Another record. And 34 of those votes went to Ryan and The Walking Dead. Gasp!
    132:23
    So that means 34 went to Martin on Total Annihilation. It's a draw. Both are great games. Are we just going to move on? Except for the fact that the very last vote on Ryan the Walking Dead, just before the poll ended, was from Ryan C.
    132:52
    I'm just getting you back. Well, you had an opportunity to vote for yourself, Marty. You're allowed to vote for yourself. No, you called that out, so I was never going to do that again. I certainly didn't vote under another Facebook name that I created as a vote.
    133:11
    We got some mail regarding the Slam of the Top 100 because people are obviously kind of liking it regardless of how bad our arguments are. One's from Andrew Clark and he asked if we would go through an EM Top 100.
    133:26
    No, I wouldn't do that. I mean, we've got 50 episodes worth for the normal PIN. I don't know what we're going to do when we start to eliminate all of them. I guess we have to make a separate spreadsheet or something. We probably will.
    133:38
    You know... We just don't know AMs enough to make it... No, and if you want to do AMs, all you are going to get is probably both of us reading the flyer.
    133:47
    Well, okay, maybe after the 50 episodes of the Top 100, maybe we can. Or maybe we can do the 101 to 200. I don't know. And we also got an email from Jason and he had an interesting idea about a slam, the top 100 handicap, where basically the higher ranked it is, the less the votes are worth. But we don't, I guess, want to bring too much mass into this because, you know, we want it to be as fun and as light. It's a kiss and giggles. Yeah. It's not meant to be serious, guys. Yeah. I mean, we had an idea about... Except for people cheat because they take it seriously. Yeah.
    134:25
    Um, Jace, are you ready for this week to slam us up 100? Yep, absolutely. Please generate a number from 0 to 100.
    134:35
    Sure. What? Oh! I don't know if Mike can leave it in, but we generated about four numbers before this, They were all the ones you already did, so for one to come up is fucking hilarious. That is maybe Mare Madness. You sure you don't want to do that rule, Marty? I'm fine. Let's keep with the rules that we've already got. Let's go. Okay. Please generate a number from zero to a hundred. Come on, number two. All right.
    135:17
    Ninety-three. Okay, so that's Rob Zombie's Spook Show International. Oh, fuck, I'm crying. Okay, this is why it's so funny, because me and Marty discussed for a couple of minutes before the show, So we're like, hey, these suggestions, we can kind of tweak it. So if I generate a number like 50, the next number is generated between like 10 forward and 10 back, so between 40 and 60. So then it's interesting because they're together. And he's like, no, fuck it, let's give it the other rules. I didn't say no, fuck it. I said, that's taking this thing way too seriously.
    136:08
    So I've got this. You are fishing going down, right? So, before we even start, guys, I'm appealing to you directly, I'm talking to you. Just make me win this. Rob Zombie will beat Medieval Madness. Come on, guys, you want to do this for the little guy. Go.
    136:29
    Are you ready, Manny? Yeah, sure. Okay, stopwatch. Medieval Madness, it's so good. It was the first game that was remade by Planetary Pinball. and absolutely amazing fan layout. You cannot beat the toy of the castle. It has an upper play field where the ball goes into. It has a gate that you smash down, okay? It has a drawbridge. The ball goes underneath the subway into the moat. It has a lock shot down the side. You've got two trolls that pop up. It has amazing call-outs. You cannot fault this game. It is the perfect pinball to introduce new people into the sport. Done.
    137:09
    I can't even bag Rob Zombie so I'm just going to keep on talking about Medieval Madness because I've never played it but are you ready Marty?
    137:20
    Are you ready Marty? 3, 2, 1, go. Rob Zombie, what a fantastic artist. His music is amazing. I'm just going to talk about his music really for the next 30 seconds because he's got great characters. I love the flippers. The flippers are really good on this. I love the bucket of chicken. Like who doesn't like a bucket of chicken? This machine has got a fucking bucket of chicken. Now admittedly people sort of were a bit cool on the rules but since the last code update this has become a fantastic game. It is a challenging game and it's not for people that are basic when it comes to pinball. This will really challenge you and you need to know the rules, you need to know your game, it will punish you otherwise and therefore it's a rewarding game and an awesome game. Bucket of chicken.
    138:15
    I'll let you go for 50 seconds because you need all the money. You were waiting for me to cut you off. Please spare me this. All right. I'm not even going to bag Rob Zombie as I said. I'm going to keep on talking about how good Medieval Madness is. It has some of the funniest call-outs in Pimball in history. I'm so psycho.
    138:41
    Francois de Grimm. Hilarious. Earl of Ego. Kneel before me. Lord Howard Hurts. Who the fuck are you?
    138:49
    Sir Loin of Beef. One of the coolest things that no one ever mentions in Medieval Madness. When you start Royal Madness, okay, but when you start the Royal things, I'm going to go for a bit more money because fuck you, I gave you an extra 20 seconds, okay? When you get one, it's Royal, you know, it's, you know, Peasant Multiple Madness. When you get two or three, the call-out hypes up a bit. When you get four, it's even more. When you get five, he says the exact same as four, but then he just goes, oh, at the end it just goes crazy. There's little fucking details that Lime and Sheep's putting into those games that makes this the number one game of all time. Put that in your fucking pipe and smoke it, Marty. Okay.
    139:30
    What's your comeback? You ready? Yep. Set, go. So, I will say, Medieval Madness is a very popular title.
    139:41
    But so is Britney Spears. That doesn't necessarily mean, this is a really good straw man argument, by the way, So it doesn't necessarily mean it's good just because it is number one. It's the populist vote. It's boring. It's a fan layout. It's just really uninspiring. And it really is for... Chicken eaters. Yeah. And it hasn't got any buckets of chicken. So there's that. Did you mention the bucket of chicken looks like a bucket of shit? Even better. So I deserve your votes because the bucket of chicken looks like a bucket of poo. Okay, if you get more than 20% of the votes, I will... Come on, guys. No, wait, no, I shouldn't say that because then people will just switch over. Come on, guys. Lucas Barton, thank you for voting for me last week. Yeah. Let's continue that on, okay?
    140:27
    How dare you. Let's definitely keep these in rules. That was too much fun. I'm telling you now, I'm going to win at this date. Okay. You watch. Is this the call centre? Yep. The power of the call centre? Correct. Marty friended me before the show, he said, you vote for yourself, I have 200 people that work under me, I can easily adjust to vote. There'll be 201 people voting for me.
    141:04
    And I'll be promising them all a bucket of chicken. Come in so we can take this outside. Fucking hilarious. And did I mention Tina Fey? Yeah, it does have Tina Fey. Tina Fey, but you know, and she plays the wench or whatever it is, like the peasant, whatever. They should have used her a lot more.
    141:23
    Well, there's no females in it besides the people that need to be saved. Yeah. They took our shrubbery! Yeah, but isn't there like there's a princess and then there's the peasant and I don't know.
    141:36
    It's like castle bones. Get your weenies. Yeah. I just keep on going. Not really funny. Sorry, guys. It's like totally medieval. Nah. Oh my god, hilarious, she's a valley girl. Whatever. Terrible game.
    141:52
    They took out historical awards for treasured historical monuments. Anyway, that's one of my favourite ones as well. Anyway, vote for me. Please crush Martin. Crush his... Crush my soul, everybody. Crush it. Come on.
    142:05
    And Charlie Emery's at the same time. That's right. So vote for me is to vote for Charlie Emery, right? That's a little guy that made good in Benton, Wisconsin. It is a vote for him and his family. His family are relying on your vote. They need to eat, Marty. I know. Yeah. So, should we head to the... Should we head to the Balbois? Oh, yeah. So, can we remind everybody about the competition and what high stakes are here? The artwork that was never used for Alien Alley from Andrew Highway's failed hydroscope business by... Was it Ulrich that did it? No.
    142:53
    It's embarrassing that Brian... Wait, who's Brian Eddy? Yeah, that was a bell. Brian Eddy. Yeah, that's right. Oh, no, Brian Eddy. It's Brian Eddy. No, no, it's just Brian Eddy. No, Brian, it's Brian Eddy. You know why you're pinball people. Oh, fuck me. Brian Allen. Keep on talking, Marty. I'm going to look it up. I've got it on Facebook.
    143:16
    Everyone thought, you know, after he made those fantastic titles and The Shadow, he then went into hiding, but really what he's been doing, he's been secretly doing unauthorised art for pinball manufacturers that have leased the world of money and then put all that money into a hydrofoil. I'm so sorry. Ryan Allen. Okay. I'm going to link in the show notes his Facebook page. He's a very talented guy. Okay. Yep, sure. Fuck.
    143:46
    Ryan Eddy. Why did I think that was the name? Oh, my gosh. Yeah. So, are we going to do the normal emails first and then that? Because there's a lot of emails you have to go through. Let's do this first. Well, okay. What we're going to say is we actually got, we were actually really surprised. We actually got a lot of entries and a lot of them made us laugh and I was actually quite blown away by the effort that people went to, like writing actual full articles, like newspaper press release articles. Yeah, we fucked up. We should have just said write the title so it would have been easier to present, but we didn't say that so people decided, hey, I might win this thing by writing the entire article. So, Martin, would you like to read some of them? Well, I'm going to... Don't mention the name because I think we're going to put this to a Facebook vote because we can't decide ourselves, I don't think. I certainly can't decide. Okay, well, I'm going to say what my Facebook line is then, okay? But don't mention the name. Okay.
    144:48
    So, the headline is, and I'm going to try and put this in my news voice. Successful pinball manufacturer turns promoter, brings new metal to Australia.
    144:58
    Successful pinball manufacturer has left the flippers behind to take on a new business venture bringing new metal rockers, Limp Bizkit, to Australia. Like, I know the name, Limp Bizkit. Anyway, in 2016, Kevin Kulik sold his successful pinball business to follow another passion of his and we caught up with him to see what led to the change of direction. He had this to say. Well, a few years ago, I just had one of those days where you don't want to wake up. Everything is fucked. Everybody sucks. You just don't know why, but you want to justify lying to a bunch of people about what intellectual properties you own. That day came to me. Australian Limp Bizkit fans are a totally untapped market and the rest is history. Kevin has so far ignored negative feedback from critics saying new metal should be left in the early 2000s where it belongs. He said it's his ability to keep moving forward with a project despite any setbacks that have made him so successful in the past.
    145:56
    Limp Bizkit. Yes. What was your favourite one? Well, I had two. One of them is like a one-liner and the other one is quite long, so am I allowed to read both of them? Yes, I'm going to humour you. You can do both. Okay. The one-liner, and because it was so freaking stupid, is Kevin will now own a letter-folding company in China. And that made me laugh because it's obviously, we've been laughing about a letter-holding company thing for, I don't know, the last two months or something. And it's as random as, I mean, just think about how random Andrew Highway creating a hydrofoil company is. This is a similar level of random. It's bizarre, isn't it?
    146:39
    What's your other one? Okay, here we go. The title, Kevin Kulik is about to make a different kind of mark on the world with his newly released Skid B underwear life.
    146:56
    And the article, this range of basement made undergarments will be made by Kevin himself and has promised that there will not only be that familiar feeling in your backside, like his previous work, but also some kind of attention to detail. There will be various models to suit a whole range of sizes, styles and budgets, said Kevin. Kevin, formerly known for his work on Predator, an expert of dangerous pinball machines, said that the imaginary work of these projects has given him invaluable knowledge that ties in perfectly with the underwear market.
    147:33
    Kevin went on to say that there will be a limited edition version that has a slot in the back for those who'd like to get screwed.
    147:42
    I'm so simple, though. He seemed to know a lot about that particular version and said he was good at it. Conversely, the limited edition will be followed by the premium metal bat version for those that don't like to be screwed. Kevin also showed a brown poo, sorry, pro version for those that like to blend in with their surroundings. Kevin said that this one has come in very handy of late. Kevin has also invented the anti-skid coating defense that he said, and I quote, We'll stop all sorts of shit sticking to you. Kevin said he's excited to bring this innovative new range of products to consumers and his previous investors will be very familiar with the feeling of bending over and taking off their underwear.
    148:33
    Pricing is yet to be announced but has asked for all upfront payments to be sent in cash or mail order only. Kevin said the first shipment should be sent out sometime in 2018, 80 something.
    148:47
    So there you go. So you've got, let's put it out there, there's three to vote for. You've got the letter folding machine company, you've got the Skid B underwear, and there was also the new metal, the Limp Bizkit one as well. Yeah, there's about 20 entries or so here and some of them are really good. We just can't do a half an hour segment. I'm sorry guys. And there was also one from Lucas Barton which would have been in contention but it's political and religious and we just can't take it. I'm sorry.
    149:24
    We laughed at it. It was very good. I laughed at it a lot. Thanks Lucas. So there you go. So what will we do? So the winner will put it out for a vote. The winner will get the signed Translight. And what do you reckon? The two runner-ups get a critical hit package. Sure. Why not? I've got them. Might as well give them out. Yeah. And we can't do a three-person, like, proper Facebook photo, so we're just going to, like, write them in the comments, I guess, and people like the one that they like. I don't know. We'll figure it out. We'll work it out.
    149:57
    Some more emails. We got an email from Adrian. He says, what was the first new generation of Pinball machines to incorporate code to enhance the gameplay experience? These days everything seems to be centered around machines being released without complete code and people streaming for code updates.
    150:15
    I guess EM machines couldn't really be updated. Solstate machines had, yeah, they can be updated with a chip socket, but they didn't really do it. Even the D and D-era games have the same thing, and sure, there's different versions of options.
    150:34
    But, I mean, everything kind of had to be released, ready to kind of make money. I guess it wasn't until you could update via USB, which was after the White Star System, SAM, which was, I guess, in the mid-2000s. That's when, I guess, things started to get a little bit sloppy, because they could. And yeah, the second part of the question was, with the latest incarnation by JDP, Pirates of the Caribbean, is there a point where machines are getting too complex in terms of code and rules that isn't inspiring to the next generation of pinheads to enjoy their pinball experience? Please reference that in no way I am criticising J.Jack and their amazing creations. Just an honest question. I look forward to seeing you next week at the Rage Tilts at Rises. So I did jump in there and say yes. But the interesting thing, and I know Gary Stern's been on record saying that they've got to be easy to get into and hard to master. And that's really what it is. Even though the likes of Pirates of the Caribbean is, I think, an extraordinarily complex rule set,
    151:41
    as long as it's accessible, as long as you've got something that anybody walking up to playing pinball for the first time Can actually get some enjoyment out of, then that's great. That's all you really need to do. And you know what, we've talked about Hobbit in the past.
    151:55
    Hobbit was almost like a love letter to the fans of Wizard of Oz saying, you know, you probably just need to make it a little bit more accessible. And that's what they did.
    152:08
    Pirates of the Caribbean is now just going to be completely out there. Adrian, you don't need to know most of the rules. You just probably need to know how to get multiball and maybe some stacks of modes. That's probably it, really.
    152:19
    I thought about that question as well, and I don't necessarily have the proper answer, but I mean, something like Ion Maiden is probably just as complex as, well, maybe not, I mean, as Pirates of the Caribbean, but it's almost like the way that Pirates of the Caribbean was presented, like when that first speech was made by Eric and he's just like, there's this many modes, and it's just like, they're advertised. Advertising it as a complex Pinball machine to begin with, whereas Keith Elwin isn't advertising it as complex. It's like there's five modes. You're really dumbing it down. The person that explains the Pinball machine and presents it for the first time has to set the tone for what people, I guess, are going to be talking about. And if you dive too deep into the rules, no one ever tries to explain the deep, deep code stuff of some of the complex machines, But, you know, they're doing that for Pirates and it turns some people on, it turns some people off.
    153:16
    Yeah, I understand what you mean. And also with Pirates of the Caribbean and also with, I guess, Jerser Jack machines, they're meant to be the premium machines. So you're paying good dollar for it. So I guess they probably do want to present just how much stuff has gone into the machine. That means that you're actually getting good value for money, right? Yeah. So, and we already talked about the different layers of Pimball machines and the layers of the onion. So, as long as it has those kind of layers, then you don't need to know the super deep stuff. Yeah, that's what I agree. But I think, yeah, with the explanation of Pires of the Caribbean, it was pretty much, here's all the detail in one go, as opposed to saying, here's a simple version of it, now here's a more complex version of it. It was... Well, you don't even need to, I don't know, I said some games, I'm trying to think of an example. Well, Walking Dead, people don't see that as a super deep game. They see it as a really cool game with cool rules, but no one ever says, like, oh, it's so deep and complex. I still don't understand, but I've got two of them. I still don't understand how every single mode works. Like when Colin McAlpine was talking about, like, you want to start Riot with Bloodbath and this, because the score of Riot is based off Switch Hits, so you want to shoot the Riot shot into the pop bumpers, and when you have multiple, it's like, I didn't know that. I could have easily just read a rule sheet. But that information, I believe, I could be wrong, isn't presented on the D&D, right? So if Lyman, when they introduced the Pinball machine, started talking about it, they'd be like, oh, fuck this, fuck this. But they don't. It's almost like you have to not tell people everything that's in the Pinball machine so that they can't complain about it. It's probably like that. And that's why if you did look at it, actually, you know, an example is when we see the readme file that comes out for any of the games where they've had a bit of scoring, Like there's lines and lines and lines of stuff that you go, I didn't even know that stuff was in there. So thanks for letting me know that you've now reduced this from 2 million points to 1 million points. I didn't know that shot existed in the first place. So there's just so much that's happening in these games that we are completely oblivious to.
    155:23
    The last email is from Jeff Ryan. And I asked the question last week, who is Eddie? And he answered it. Do you want to read this email? He says, The beast and his kin, whom from cradle to the grave, have made it their priority to crush the soul with conformity. Individuality and inspiration are purposefully undermined not by conflict but by mundanity. Mundanity? Life becomes a grey grind devoid of possibility. When you eliminate drive, imagination and the ability to express oneself, what remains is easier to control. One's life will never be their own again. Yet despite all of this, the passion still burns in some of us. The desire to make, to create, to share and to learn. A primal need from the dawn of mankind. And like the deities of old, this furious manifestation of the self has an identity all of its own. Eddie is the embodiment of free will, a chaotic spirit, the unseen catalyst during crucial turning points in history. The spark that lights the flame. He is the true nemesis of the beast.
    157:00
    It's very wanky. Look, I just think with this particular character, which has been around for so many years, like nearly 40 years or so, it's almost like there is a story behind this particular character. I mean, it's got a video game about it now, so if you think about some of the dialogue or some of the words that are written about those things, they're just like this. It's fantasy. So, yeah, I kind of look at it and go, yeah, fair enough. That's Eddie. He's the undead.
    157:37
    Are we done, Marty? We are done for this week. How can people contact us? You've been doing that, Baird. You can jump on headtoheadpinball.com and all of our links are there. Full stuff. No. Subscribe to us on iTunes. You can send us an email at headtoheadpinball at gmail.com. You can subscribe to us on Instagram, Twitter, Twitch. We're on Twitch, Marty. Everything. All the links are on the website. If you jump on the website, everything is there. Please, okay, this is my, we get people that rate us on Facebook all the time and give us five stars. Thank you very much. I'm not sure how much ratings mean on Facebook, but they don't really, I don't know if they really contribute to anything. So, thank you, everybody. See y'all next week. Bye.