Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, June 3rd. It is episode 63. I'm Tony. And I'm Dennis. And we are joined once more by a guest, a super special guest. He is one of the hosts of the wildly popular video show slash podcast Straight Down the Middle, a pinball show He follows the better red than dead philosophy when it comes to his LED color selections He is known far and wide for destroying Iron Maiden for theme reasons alone And the disgusting practice of putting ketchup on a hot dog The Eclectic Gamers Podcast welcomes Zachary Minney to the show Zach, welcome Wow, I love that intro Thanks so much, Dennis. Tony, how's it going, buddy? It's going pretty good. There's nothing wrong with ketchup on a hot dog as long as it's got... As long as you're five. Oh, it means more than just ketchup. I ate three of them yesterday just for you two. Look, it doesn't need... It's a hot dog. It's a simple... Look, we're not... Because we know people get mad when you turn podcasts about pinball into podcasts about food. But I'm just going to tell you... Do they really? Hot dog needs... Maybe we should do a test. Needs three things. Well, it needs two things. Mustard and onions. If you want to include cart water that the hot dog was sitting in while it was waiting for you to go buy it, you can include that. That's it. That's it. It doesn't need to be Chicago style where they put – Chicago screwed up pizza. They screwed up hot dogs as well. They did not screw up pizza. You do not need to – They did screw up hot dogs. Celery salt on a hot dog. You can't even taste celery. Celery salt. Yes, it's one of the core components of a Chicago style hot dog. Not that you'd ever taste it because, one, celery has no taste, and two, that they put jalapenos on it as well, so you can't taste any hot dog anyway. Because all you taste is jalapenos. Yeah. Onions and mustard, really? Yeah, onions and mustard. That is the core-based proper hot dog. Now, to be fair, if you want to have a really good hot dog, the first thing you've got to do is smother it in chili. Okay, I'm probably right. And then add onions and mustard. If you want to turn it into a chili dog, to me it's no longer a hot dog, and you may go down whatever path you wish. Chili, onions, and mustard. Perfect chili dog. I could get on board with that. So, Zach, do you like mustard now? Did we convert you? You know what? I'm going to try mustard. I don't particularly like mustard any time I've eaten it, but because of the outpour and the messaging that I've received over this darn hot dog fiasco, I'm going to try several different Mustards So I'm open to change guys I'm open to change I don't ever try and make people like something they don't like My recommendation would just be that you not ever Eat hot dogs ever again And the problem is solved You are an abomination And you're not expected to Like a condiment that you hate So I mean that's a compromise My core philosophy always is My opinion is the correct one and I will teach people to like what I like. That sounds familiar. Is that fair? Is that fair? That sounds real familiar. It does. This is very dark, I feel. Oh, this is going to be good. This is going to be good. So, anyway, we're in our introduction phase. So, Zach, I've already welcomed you onto the show, but let the listeners know. You've got to talk about what Straight Down the Middle is or what you do or your involvement in the hobby. For those listeners who are tuning in, we are not going to do a video game segment this time. It is going to be all about pinball. We're usually very heavy on pinball anyway. Next episode we're doing is going to be the E3 episode, so there's going to be video games out the wazoo. People can shift over at that. So tell us about you, Zach. Tell us about you. Oh, well, my name is Zach. Straight down the middle of Pinball Show is something a buddy, Greg, and he's in Louisville. Greg and I started, I think it's been about a year and a half ago. We started, we wanted to, we liked the tuxed hockey stuff off of TNT Amusements, and we really liked all the podcasts that we were listening to regarding pinball, but we wanted something a little bit different, something with a little bit of comedic value. So we thought, I met Greg. He was kicking the tires on some of the machines I was selling. So one day I was like, buddy, just give me a call, give me a text. Let's talk pinball. Let's hang out. So we hung out. The first time we hung out, we actually recorded the first, second, and third episode straight down the middle. It's a YouTube-based show. We do different things like machine reviews. We do top ten lists. We do different promotional stuff. We wanted to kind of do just a catch-all media for anything pinball. And my philosophy in pinball is always it's so visual that we have to show people what we're talking about. So from then on, we've just kind of hit the ground running. We've got a different format than a lot of people. We have Twitch stream now with Chuck Wirt. We have a Facebook page. So check us out on all different types of things. We're always trying to bring something new to the pinball media industry. Yeah. Actually, I completely miss out on most of your experiences. I actually subscribe to the audio podcast to listen to on my commute. So when you do reviews, I just have to close my eyes, and then I'm in a ditch. because I was right. But, you know, that's what had to happen. So, I mean, we all make sacrifices for the hobbies that we participate in. That's right. Well, so many people were asking. They were saying, well, I want to listen to it in the car, but I don't want to, yeah, end up in a ditch. So what can we do? So a lot of the episodes that make enough sense to turn into an audio, we just transcode it into an audio and we throw it up there for people. It's not the best because visually our show is very visual, So we do a lot of gags and editing jokes and clip art and memes and stuff, but you still get the basis of what we're trying to do on audio as well. Yeah, I've been thinking about actually converting over and just watching it on YouTube because those come out so much faster than when you finally get around to doing the transition. For example, I had to make a super special exception to get the Iron Maiden info for that intro because the audio version wasn't out yet. That's correct. But I saw the drama. The pinball forums were aghast. They were blowing up on me, man. Goodness gracious. I'm still getting messages. Wow. You might for half a year. I mean, this could be Stern's game of the year. It's okay. Screw it. The theme sucks. It is what it is. We're going to have some fun exploring poor theming here later in the show. I think so. Yeah. Tony, intro time. What's going on? Well, I managed to break the 100-hour barrier on Battletech. Bruce would be proud. 25 hours ago. I've beaten that game, and I'm still playing it. I have actually started to play video games other than Battletech now. I played a couple hours of Oxygen Not Included. I played, I've been playing some Stardew Valley. Otherwise Nothing big has been going on We just had the Well I guess that's a lie Something big did go on We went to Petapalooza last weekend And then we had a tournament this weekend So I actually played I've actually played pinball Two weeks in a row That doesn't always happen for me So Yeah Petapalooza is It's sort of a private party Usually happens a couple times a year Todd, who's the owner-operator of Big Daddy Enterprises, which if you ever had to get some boards or something, you may have relied upon him for those. That's right. Yeah, he's a major parts supplier for a lot of people who are doing restoration work in the hobby. So he has over 90 games. Wow. And he hosts a couple times a year. So a lot of people in the Kansas and Missouri area get invited to go out there, and they usually run a couple of tournaments in conjunction with it. So it's always a lot of fun. He's a really good host. And it was a good event as usual, though. My performance, not so good. Where do you put 90 pinball machines? In a basement, in a very big basement. In a basement that I drew. Even without the pinball machines, I would drool over this basement because it is one of the largest, nicest basements I've ever seen. I mean, it's not like a super finished basement. It's basically just open space, but it is perfect, and it is full of machines. It's amazing. Wow. It's sort of a, I mean, I've seen other basements that kind of go in this layout. It would be what I consider sort of if you have a ranch-style house and a basement that runs the length of a ranch house, that's the sort of space potential. Yeah, that's a large basement. Yeah, it is. And he also has games in his garage and such as well. They're not all in the basement, though. The vast majority of that collection is. So what games do you guys like playing when you went to Peneloponza? Well, he's got a really eclectic collection of different manufacturers and eras. So for me, it's just a lot of the stuff that I don't normally get to see. So he's got like the A-list Williams games, for example, but we have a lot of those on location around here. Yeah, we're lucky that way. I know you live out in an area where it's much more difficult to actually encounter location pinball. Yes, very much so. So I tend to gravitate more towards a lot of the System 11 Williams games, which we don't see out on location very much. He has a lot of the popular Gottlieb EMs. He's got a few things like System 1s that are less encountered. He has a few other rare titles as well, so like Time Machine, Alice in the Garage Band, yeah, Comet. So he's just got a big mix. So, yeah, if there's some of those popular Williams games that we don't see a lot on location, I like to play those there. But it's usually the late 80s, early 90s stuff, just because they just don't get routed very much in this area, at least. You know, we're not Seattle, so. So, yeah, that was my weekend last weekend as well. I had this week off work because I wanted to just not do anything and then cleaned up the yard. so I'm covered in poison ivy because I didn't pay attention. And then we had a big windstorm so I was up on the roof this morning putting my chimney cap back on and I didn't lose too many branches. So anyway, that's just about it. Just boring stuff. So we're done with intros. We're done with the boring. So let's move on. Let's get to why Zach's here. He's here to educate us about pinball. He's been doing his show for a year and a half. He knows everything there is to know about pinball. Absolutely. That's why you're here, to give us some education. We need to learn. I'll be happy to teach you. We spend a lot of time on video games, too, instead of properly learning everything there is to know about pinball. So we're going to start with the news. Let's do it. The first news item I want to note is This Week in Pinball. Woo-hoo! That's right, which a lot of us rely on, in whole or in part, for learning about the news of the industry, they are now open to and seeking donations for the site because it's one person doing a lot of work. So I have a link in the show notes. If you want to give a donation, you can go and follow that. He's doing a lot of giveaways. He's always done giveaways, but there are a lot of giveaways associated with this as of June. You do not have to donate if you can't afford to, don't want to. You can still enter the drawings. There's a way to do it. you're automatically entered if you donate. It doesn't matter what amount. Any amount gets you entered. You can set it up for monthly if you want to set it up for monthly. But I just wanted to note it because we use this week in February. We link to it quite a bit. So it's a really useful resource. Jeff does a lot for the hobby. And I understand he's putting in 30 plus hours a week doing that. So it's a lot of work. It's not like this show, which is very easy. I'll stop it, guys. Yeah, Jeff's a close friend of mine and I'll add to that, Dennis, that this guy is the most humble individual, not like myself, unfortunately. But the dude is just so humble, so nice. He spends so, so many hours doing this. And he called me before he listed this donation service, and he was having a really, really hard time with that just because he's never wanted to ask anything from anybody. That's just the type of person he is. So this was really tough for him, so I think everybody should know that. but he spends 20 to 30 hours every week for all of us to get the exclusives, to get the news. So please reach out if you like pinball media and content. Reach out and do a monthly thing that would help him out the best. Yeah. It's just he's not asking for any set amount. It's completely voluntary, and there's no harm in asking. That's my philosophy. And the sweepstakes, you guys, the sweepstakes is killer. I mean, this guy's giving away all kinds of crap. Yeah, you're like number one sponsor. Penn Stadium. I saw that right there. That's right. That's a big gift. That's like $300 worth of PinStadium Lights. That's right. You can light up your world. You're wild under glass. It could be lit. That's right. That's right. I could go on a tangent about that, but I'll save you guys and your viewers. But he's also, what do you guys think about him giving away deep root pinball machines? It kind of threw me because I thought, well, they're not even making pinball machines. Yeah, that's little. Let's talk about that. How do you guys really feel about that? Five pinball machines and Robert Mueller's getting the designers to go to these people's homes and set them up. A little lofty, if you ask me. Yeah, it's, well, I mean, I don't know how many people would really want or, well, maybe I should say need the help in setting up a game. I'm hoping they're a little more built than what I'm afraid of when I hear that. So I guess if Deeper is just doing that as a sponsorship sort of thing, I'm assuming Jeff didn't go out and is buying these and then using them as giveaways, because I'd say, dude, you're not going to get enough donations to pay that off. No, no, no, no, no. Let's set up your Patreon first. That's true. We'll do baby steps. I like Barry Asler, but do I really want Barry Asler coming to my house to hang out? I don't know. Maybe Barry's a nice guy. I think he's a mustard hot dog guy, sir. You might want to know a little bit more about him before you start. Anytime you can do a giveaway that involves a pinball machine, it's going to turn heads. Absolutely. My understanding was that the Deep Root stuff will come later down the line. It's not as of June. So I'm assuming that's just a little tease here. And then when we get closer to 2019 TPF, when that stuff gets announced, I think that's when you'll actually see some substance behind it. So as an interesting heads up, I don't know a whole lot what to think. There are a lot of people in the community that I don't think are taking Deep Root Pinball seriously. They're spending way too much money to be joking. Yeah. Yeah, there's no way that you're shoveling that much money out and you're not going to put something out. It might not be good, but. Right, but until people see the machines, they're going to be skeptical about whether it's something you want or not. But, you know, if you win something that you didn't buy, you can always sell it if you don't like it. Absolutely, absolutely. And if it's a $50,000 pinball machine, why not? Sure. Yeah. I don't think that's included, but yeah. No, the price range, I think, was more in the $3.5 to $10. I'd take one happily. Sure. Yeah, no, I mean, that's free money. No, I am very, just because of the designers involved with Deep Root, I am very interested in seeing both the new stuff that comes out from the relatively unknown names that are going to be coming up with things, and obviously when you've got four well-established designers in your stable, it will be really interesting. I mean, me personally, I would say I'm most curious about what Jon Norris will develop because he's been out of the game the longest of all of them, and I think he had a lot of really unique playfield layouts when he was with Premier. I knew you'd love that one, Dennis. It's so, well, you know, Premier, they have so many neat layouts, and they're so crippled by the rules where they weren't allowed to go and clean them up. But we had this discussion with Bruce as of our last episode, though. The layouts, broadly speaking, are very good out of Gottlieb. They're unique and they're fun to shoot. It's just when you have bad mystery award rules, from a tournament perspective, it kills it. You just can't play it. Absolutely. And it can even take away the fun in a home environment because it can be difficult to not one-trick. It's just a one-trick pony game, especially because a lot of them are too old to really be mode-based. I mean, Stargate was really their only big mode-based game. Everything else sort of predates that. And then they were out of business. Anyway, yeah. So I'm always curious about the failures in history. So Premiere interests me from a – think of it as a Greek tragedy standpoint. That's what I find interesting. But I don't tend to rate Gottliebs at the top of my personal list of games. But I talk about them a lot because I listen to a lot of pinball podcasts as well, and I'm tired of always talking about medieval madness and shadow. Oh, come on, I love Shadow It's fun, we have one on location though So I get my fill of Shadow And it works? And it works, oh yeah It's run by one of our top operators in the state We take our pinball seriously here in Pancake Land You know what I love about you guys Is that you're somewhat close to us We're in the southern Indiana, Louisville region And everything seems to be Chicago or northeastern based So whenever I started listening to your podcast, I thought, oh, my God, these guys are, like, not that far of a drive away. Yeah, we're real close. We could come visit. We could give you actual good barbecue as opposed to what you have down that way. Ouch. Ouch, man. So mean. I would never have said that. Not until the second date, at least. So anyway, so this week in pinball. Link in the show notes. Also, I didn't mention it in the intro, but I've got links to your YouTube channel, Zach, and the audio version. And so anyone who, for some reason, isn't yet listening or watching can just easily go and access that. And also, I do want to add, Dennis, that there's a little rumor going around that This Week in Pinball is starting their own podcast. Yes. Actually, that little rumor was noted in the page where he was talking about the donation process. Yeah, I saw that. I've seen that drop. I've seen hints dropped a couple of times. So what do you think of that, Zach? What do you think of another pinball podcast out there in the world of podcasting? Honestly, I am obsessed with anything pinball and pinball media related, so I listen to every single podcast there is out there. I'm so sorry. I agree. There's some junk ones out there. But I will say, this is not to toot you all's horn here, but initially, I'm going to be honest. I'm a very honest guy. Initially, when I started listening to you guys' podcast, I was thrown by the video game slant with it. So I didn't listen to it as much, but this is no BS. Your podcast, because of the intelligence you guys bring, the knowledge you bring, and some of the statistical analysis, you guys have, in my books, one of the greatest pinball podcasts out there. A lot of the ones I used to listen to, I don't listen to as much. You're right up there, a one and two for me. It's very kind of you. Your check is in the mail. I'm building you up before we get to the later part here. But no, speaking of pinball, it seems like a good idea. He's got the news, so why not have a format that is something more on the entertainment side rather than the objective news-related stuff. I think a little mix will be good. And I do hear the rumors suggest that he's doing a co-host as well, and it is one of the greatest pinball personalities in the community. So I'm really stoked to hear their back and forth. So that's exclusive right there. Yeah, I like that. Me personally, I'm always happy for more podcasts. People all talk about how there's so many pinball podcasts. They aren't listening to enough of them to understand. Once you factor out just how many quote-unquote active pinball podcasts don't even come out monthly, there's really not that much content coming out. That is how shows like Tony and mine can rise up even with the video game elements in it because people are just desperate. So you'll just take what we give you. I enjoy the video game slant now because I'm not in that world. So whenever I hear it at the end of the episodes and I think, oh, my God, this is cool. At least I'm knowing about some of the Loot Crate stuff and just the different things that the gaming world has all. So keep it up. Loot Crate episode is one of our most popular. Yeah. Yeah. No, but it does alienate people, too. We have, I mean, it probably impacts our initial listener grasp just because it's in the world podcast. You're dealing with almost half a million active podcasts is my understanding of the statistics. And it can be as niche as you want them to be. So why – we're basically straddling two parts of a Venn diagram. When we started this show, we straddled three. Yeah. And there are some people who really like that if they're into both worlds. And then there are other people that are only into one world. And, you know, why – you can always listen to Coast to Coast if you just want to hear about pinball. You don't have to listen to us. But then you only listen once a year, though. Well, not if you start at episode one and then just listen to one a week. You've got like a year. You've got many years worth of material there. Yeah, that's true. If you like the old news, yeah, that's true. Yeah, no, no, yeah. Nothing would be breaking it. No, sadly, no. But interesting interviews. Top cast, too. They're completely defunct. Great interviews, though. Absolutely. Okay, news item number two. J-Pop, a.k.a. John Papadiuk. who is now with Deep Root Pinball. However, this was the very last minute thing I saw that I just had to stick into the show notes here. But he has formally filed appeal regarding the civil judgment, which relates to his Zidware enterprise, the whole Magic Girl debacle. We talked about that a couple episodes back, that the courts found him personally liable for the failure to produce. This is an appeal on that. So the legal system wheels continue to wheel. it's going to dance in appeals and appeals and appeals and appeals for a while most stuff does like this I think if he doesn't win if he doesn't get his appeal I assume the odds would be against I haven't read the appeal that would be on a matter of law though so that would be a challenge that the judge probably did something wrong would be the notion so just statistically speaking most appeals don't get granted if they don't get granted I think there's one more level of appeal he could probably go to and then that's probably it. I think that's the end of it. And, of course, what kind of money we're talking about? He's going to appeal to every chance. And there may be legitimate grounds. I don't know. Because unlike the Kevin Kulik, Skit-B stuff, which is in federal court, it's easy to get access to what's going on with that. This is all happening in Illinois. It's a state thing. And so people aren't able to easily produce the court documents. So I can't just sit there and read them and then know exactly what happened, which is what I've done with the Kevin stuff because it's available. And I'm not paying $7.50 a page to keep up on Zidware. Sorry, my Patreon is not running. I spent enough when we were trying to figure out what was going on with American Pinball and I was doing open record requests, and they charged me out the wazoo for that stuff. So don't worry, I'm only a little bitter. All right. So let's move to the third item. This one, I'm sure Zach's had a good look at. It's the Deadpool leak, the image, the Playfield image. So for those that don't know, there's an image that's been, it's kind of quietly made the rounds for a while on cell phones and in the dark corners of Android and iPhone. But it's now come out publicly. It's been on social media. And that is an image with kind of a sketch of the art laid on it of the Playfield for Deadpool. Now, what's not known entirely is, is the image the Trudeau design or is it the Gomez design? Because everyone's understanding is based off of a Zombie Yeti interview. Zombie Yeti is an artist. Jeremy Packers is his actual name. He was on Head to Head Pinball, another excellent podcast. And that he noted that George Gomez took over Trudeau's project. Now, he didn't say it was Deadpool, but that's what everyone's thinking it is. So, the date on the photos are after Trudeau was out. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a photo of the old playfield. That said, when I looked at the playfield, to me it looks like a Gomez design. It's Gomez. Come on. Look at the ramps. There's no flipper gate. It's Gomez. Zach, can't we stretch this out a little bit, man? Can't we talk about it? No, look. Are you always blunt on your show, always? No. No, I'm very slow. I take a neutral approach on the show right when I saw the photo and I heard that the questions were is this Gomez or is this Trudeau the first thing I did was look at the flipper gap and I go Gomez it looks like the backboard looks like Avengers yeah it's got one of those Avengers shots it's almost verbatim the black widow ramp I think I don't see anything in here that screams Trudeau at all. There's nothing. Any rebuttal there? No, no, I am in complete agreement with you. I couldn't find a single element that made me think it was a Trudeau design. Yeah, no, I think it's a newer league. I will keep my horribly non-family friendly jokes out of it. Yeah, no. You be not. Thank you, Tony. No, what I worry about, have you guys had a chance to really look at the photo? I've looked at it twice now, but I haven't studied it in a great deal of detail. I've probably looked at it for less than five minutes altogether. I didn't get a giant high-res version and go deep on it. My sad story about us has been looking at this thing for the last seven months, and I've dissected every little shot of this thing. I'm excited about it, but I just don't know about the layout. Yeah, the, I mean, you mentioned the comparison to Avengers, and that's the concerning part to me, because Avengers is not a great game. I don't mind it that bad, but. I don't hate it either. I've really only gotten to play it at shows. I don't know anyone in the area who owns one. And, but the thing is, it's not the, it's not so much the rules. And they did a patch, which could help it out. But there are some of those shots that just are not particularly comfortable. That Black Widow shot's the devil. Right, right. And then that's the shot that's here. So I'm not going to say one shot ruins a game. A game's going to have challenging shots. You may have heard of a game called Houdini. Rumor has it it has tight shots. I don't know if you've heard that. They say it does. Some say it does. Yeah, they say so much. Some say it's a masterpiece, though. Who's just saying? Just saying. You really liked it. I wouldn't go up it. I didn't say it was a masterpiece. I said I enjoyed it. You said it was the greatest pin that was ever crafted. That's what I heard. I'm drunk. I don't recall being that drunk at Texas. Maybe that was American Pinball who told me that. I was drunk. It was probably straight down the middle because I love that game. I know you do. I love the shot layout. I love the rules. I love the beauty of it, the art. There's nothing that the game does wrong for me except for some bugs in the code, but Josh Coogler's cleaning that up. What about waiting 20 minutes to spell out every single rule for you, then giving you the ball and not telling you anymore? Dennis, there's two buttons on the left and the right of the machine. You press them at the same time. I don't know about those buttons. There's the ball. It's ready. Where are these buttons? I don't know. Yeah, no, Tony and I both played it at TPF. That was this year. We didn't play it at 2017's because the lines were massive and they were constantly breaking. And they had obviously such a prototype. So we did play it this year We both enjoyed it It does talk a lot I'll give you that But Okay, so yeah The shot layout I don't know That's why I was only half joking When I mentioned that Iron Maiden may go down As Stern Pinball's best game That they make this year I think it will be for the community There's a There's a fluctuation Not to be too controversial here But there is a fluctuation in popularity that I've found in pinball. And that fluctuation oftentimes comes outside of the actual machine itself. It comes from the community. And there are certain individuals that people gravitate towards because of the way they are. So they want to support those individuals. So I think Iron Maiden is a fantastic game. The gameplay is phenomenal. The code is phenomenal. But I think a lot of why this game gets promoted so much is the theme is this bad boy rock music. Like, you're cool if you like this kind of music. So a lot of people fall into that, as well as just the designer himself being a first-time designer and the greatest pinball player to ever live, Keith Elwin. So that helps elevate it as well. So I think there's a lot of components to why, and I agree with you, it will probably go down as Stern's greatest pin of the year. But having said that, without ranting too much, there are some really, really cool machines coming out for Stern pinball in the fall. Right. Yeah. So I know we're still sort of in the Deadpool area, but it's only one photo. We can only do so much with it. Hold up. Dennis, sorry, real quick, buddy. If you look at that Deadpool photo, for all of the viewers out there and the listeners out there, what are they doing to that right orbit? And you guys might not have the photo in front of you, but I'll ask that a lot of your listeners go look at the photo. I still don't know what in the hell is going on with that right orbit. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. No, it's a good point. And we do have to remember that that design may still have been in tweak form. I mean, it is many months old. Artwork is beautiful, though. Yes. Yeah. Well, Colossus could be bigger. That's fair Yeah, no, it's a fair point Who knows, maybe they'll come back and say After all, this wasn't an approved release They may end up saying Marvel might say Colossus is too small Yeah, no, Colossus Part of that negotiation with the licensor See, that's one of the things This is a slide-off topic This is one of the things I've liked with the Deadpool movies Is because Colossus is my favorite X-Man And he got royally screwed over in the original X-Men movies At least in Deadpool, we get to see him be a joke, but still fun. I mean, my takeaway, yeah, I couldn't really tell on the, that inner right orbit, I assume, is supposed to feed up to that ramp. That was my assumption. And then, but there's also an outer right orbit, which I think is just set up to return to the top lanes. It just doesn't look, there's no rail guide. So it just looks like it's the side, like you clunk into it and hop up there. And I just think the rail guide's missing. That's my guess. Hopefully. That's my guess. Now, what I really want is for them to actually just glue a Funko Pop for Deadlift on there because it's going to be Hot Wheels Syndrome all over again. People are going to complain about how Stern just went to twice our ass while they were doing the 50% off sale. I don't know. A bunch of them. Funko Pops are incredibly popular. And I'm not saying anything bad about Funko Pops because I've got a ton of Funko Pops. But some people could get real into that Funko thing. Not in pinball. This is not some lowbrow collector thing. These people, they will spend $400 to put some powder coat on stuff. They could have just gone to the local shop and done it for $55. That's the sort of community we're dealing with here. I think it's a powder-coated Deadpool. Yes. You need to at least put some powder on him. I think it's just a placeholder for an interactive toy, I'm hoping. Yeah, that would be my assumption. I think it's a placeholder. I don't know yet whether the toy will be interactive, as in the ball will actually hit it, or maybe it might just be something that moves around when targets are hit or something. Yeah, I don't know. You might see a Deadpool in a spring there. Yeah, yeah. They probably have some leftover springs from those TIE Fighters. That's right. So they could use that. I wanted to ask, when you mentioned Iron Maiden, and you noted that you thought one of the major elements out of a mix of factors that were appealing to people to want to buy it was Keith Elwin and it being his first design. Do you have a sense, like, what percentage of purchases are driven by the fact that it's Elwin's first game? Oh, that's a bold question. You're looking for a big answer there. No, I do not. I'll take a small answer. I'd have no clue. No clue. But I would say it's substantial compared to other first-time designers. Okay, so you think that's a bigger factor than, say, Scott Denisey being a first-time designer and the popularity of Total Nuclear Analyzer? I think those two are great examples. Oh, sorry. I think both of those are great examples as two leading designers for the first pin that people really love. I think that Scott game Elwin game and Lawler game of Dialed In all three do have a commonality two being the new designer one being a very veteran designer but they all had a long time to bake the idea was for an incubation for a very long time probably longer than necessary honestly but it does make one wonder if maybe things have been a bit more rushed than they ideally would be I don't know what the normal development cycle is on average for a Stern playfield based off of, because when I look at Richie, I think they're giving him a year. But then when I look at Borg, I feel like they're not giving him a year. When we go all the way back to what I always love to talk about, Premier, where the average development cycle on a game was three months. And most people agree that was way too short. That's incredible. That is incredible. The one interesting thing about it is, given how successful the company was, and it did make the pinball division of Gottlieb Premier made money all the way to the end. They failed for other reasons. That, even with that parallel development, that three-month cycle, and then you look at how many people today, with all our advances in technology, how much easier it is to develop assets. We've got the CAD software to drop in your flippers and all the mechs and just how much failure there is. It's just sad. Yeah. It's just sad. sad. There are pandas right now that look extra sad because of this. Because they know. We're going to talk about China and pinball when we get towards the end of the news. That panda is what we're thinking of as an accent. We're going to see that play out at the end of the song. It's going to be great. It's going to come back. The themes are going to replay. It's going to be just wonderful. But before we go on to greatness, we have to go on to, well, you might think this is good. You might think it's absurd. Chances are you think it's both. And that's Supreme Pinball. Pretentious pinball. So, those that might vaguely remember, we've mentioned this before, there's Pinball Machine. It is designed to be a promotional piece for the Supreme brand, which I guess once upon a time was a skater brand and now is an expensive brand. I don't know. 200 games made by Stern. Reports are in. The original sale price was roughly $10,000, which was a lot less than I think most people were projecting. But those 200 games sold out in nine seconds. Jeez. The auctions are up with all of those games $20,000 or more. I'm not sure they're selling. At the $20,000 to $30,000 range, I believe some sold. I have not heard anyone who asked for anything over $40,000 having a sale yet. But there are some that are up over $80,000. Last I recall looking on eBay. Still, $20,000. You're doubling your investment. We call this scowling. Yeah, I'm not going to lie. I was trying my ass to find one. Yeah, that could have been a really good review for Straight Down the Middle. Yeah. I mean, sell it. It would have been a great review, but I wouldn't have opened it. I would have greedily just sold it, yeah. Done a whole review, right? You rank the whole, just the sealed box as you walk around the box on the video. That would make for a good video. I like that idea. Now, Zach, have you played the Spider-Man Home Edition that the layout is from? You know what I have not? No. Okay. I've only played a game or two on it. It's fine. I think it shoots fine. I don't have enough time to really speak intelligently on it. People speak highly of the, I think there's like a captive ball mechanism that people like on that. Yeah, the overall layout, especially when you compare it to the other, the pins, bar the other pin that I remember. Because I think I've only other one I've played as a Transformers. Yeah, it just shoots better. It just shoots a lot better. But obviously a lot of people in the hobby only want what I call operator grade pins. So they kind of ignore those home units. But sometimes they show up to shows. Yeah. So do we... What are your thoughts on... Tony, what do you think of... Is this good for the hobby? I mean, assuming the scalping's not good. Well, yeah. It's good for Stern. and that's all this was. It was just a quick dime somebody picked up and went, hey, we'll sell this and we'll make a ton of money. This is no different than the Pabst machine or any of the other, the Domino's machine. It's all the same general thing. Do you think it's helpful to the hobby, though? I don't think it hurts the hobby. The Supreme video had like 2 million views. Right. I think that was because it was Supreme, and how many Supreme people who are into Supreme stuff are going to go start playing pinball because they're like, oh, hey. But if they have to own everything, then they have to buy this machine. They have to. My argument is that it is phenomenal for pinball. Like you said, Dennis, getting that many views, and who cares if it's Supreme people viewing it. If those Supreme people who have to have everything, like you said, this is a very collectible hobby. So if just one of them, 10 of them, pick up pinball now, what's the loss here? I think it is great for pinball. Yeah, I think overall it's – I'm going to fall in the middle. I think it's a positive, but I don't think it will be a significant positive. The viewership thing is the best angle, but the uptake I think will be very, very small. But there is a chance, especially if this is on some location at – Not all of these are being flipped. So some of them may have been picked up by Supreme Stores. We know of one that's on location in New York. There are people that are drawn to it because they know the brand and they get in a game. Perhaps a certain percentage of those will at the very least start to notice and play on location. That's where I'm hoping that that ends up going. It might drive on the collector side as well. But just because it's only 200 games, there's only so much interest that this can ultimately generate. it's a little too exclusive to get what I want which is more growth than pinball but I do think it will have if it has any impact it's positive I think there's at least 200 pinball collectors out there chomping at the bits that would love to have this in their rare collection well they didn't even make 200 dominoes where were they go get them dominoes you forgot about the collectability of dominoes the worst of all time but that's the thing the hype was sold a lot different on Domino's and different things like that. Well, call Charlie up and tell him to start supreming this. Supreme Pizza. Hold the mushroom. I don't know. I think people will want this. Don't you guys want to play? I sure as ****. Since I've already played the Spider-Man, I can't say I'm particularly compelled to play it, but I definitely would if I saw it at a show. This kind of makes me want to get a Spider-Man and just completely gut and repaint it so it looks like this, but instead of white and red, have it be white and blue and just as pretentious down the thing instead of... It would sell. It would sell, Tony. Not for $20,000. He might get $15,000, but, I mean, come on. That color scheme is not going to be nearly as good. Well, of course not. I'm trying to look for one for straight down the middle to review as we speak. Well, I wish you luck, because I am not looking for one right now. It's not on your shopping list. It's not. It's not. I haven't had the Pennside wish list yet. I wouldn't avoid it if it showed up at a show or somewhere where I went to play. I'd still play it, but I'll play anything. I'm trashy that way. That's the only way we know what we like, is if we try stuff. Well, let's move to the next news item. You know, this is a really stern-dominated news cycle. It is. Sometimes we have lots of bad news coming from Topscart boutiques Jack hasn't done his cartwheel yet so we're still Waiting on that I'm still monitoring the JJP Pirates Thread, they're still putting out Gameplay footage and stuff Here's something that they didn't put out any footage for Because everyone already knows everything about this game And that is the next Vault Edition From Stern Pinball is Star Trek As of this month Here, June 2018 The pros are back on the line and the premium run is going to happen in July. They noted there are no changes. It is essentially an additional run on the two of the three, obviously, because the LEs are the LEs, and they're not making more of those. But two of the three coming back. The Star Trek, I believe, came out in 2013, and if I recall, they took it off the line early in 2017, was when they actually stopped production. So, what are you guys' thoughts on this as a VE or Vault Edition? Because, one, the game is pretty new, and two, the other thing I've seen a lot of buzz about is all the other Vaults have had some sort of physical changes to them. There were certain upgrades, you could argue, or just substantive changes that they made to the construction on the Iron Man Vaults. Obviously, this Fireman vault had a completely different art and dot package, and then there were cosmetic changes and a fix for the lower play field on the ACDC vaults. So let's go ahead and start with you, Zach. What are your thoughts? I think it's a bore fist. I don't understand it from a collector point of view, but, you know, it's a collector's point of view. I think Stern's doing this to make money. That's what Stern does best, and I've come to accept that. Stern Pinball wants to make collectors happy. if they can, but number one is keeping those doors open. So I think they're just trying to make some more money. I could care less about it. Star Trek is one of the greatest firm pinball machines ever made, so they'll sell, but it's bringing nothing to collectors, absolutely nothing. For God's sakes, you could have reworked the art or rethemed it. What I have problems with, guys, is them calling these things vaults. Vaults should be special. They should be innovative. They should have taken what was old and make it what was new. And that's hard to do a year ago when they stopped making these machines. But there's so much you can do with that license and that theme that, for me as a collector, it just kind of rubs me the wrong way. But, you know, teach their own. I want Stern pinball machines. So if this is what it takes for them to keep going, then I'm fine with it. But it's boring. Tony, what do you think? I'm not going to disagree. When I first read about a Star Trek Vault Edition, my mind instantly, before I got any farther in reading so I got disappointed, my original thought was just like the major change to Spider-Man is I kind of wanted to see this redone with an original series art package. Oh, that'd be great. That would be so perfect, or even better and way beyond what I think they would have ever done, but it would have been an original series-based art package, but all hand-drawn art. It would have been amazing. I would have drooled over that machine, and that would have taken a machine that's one of my favorite modern sterns and turned it into perhaps the perfect stern. there's still enough of the original cast out there that they could have gotten good call outs and made those changes and I think it would have been the perfect machine and as is it's another run and I'm not going to say I'd turn it down because like you I really enjoy the game I think they had a wonderful chance to turn out to vault it into something really amazing and it just didn't happen Okay For me there's two things that people don't like About Superstar Trek One is the art and two is the code So the code people are I think people are accepting of the code It is Deep if you will It's deep But it doesn't Immerse you Now what that art package would do People don't like that art package It's based on the more contemporary film series So they're fine Now, the L is the art package to have, and that's not available here. So I'm with you, Tony. Make it that I want Shatner. I want those guys in here. And I know you can't get audio or voiceovers from them. That's fine. But darn it, if there are two things that we don't like, this pen is great. Just change the art. Change the art and charge us more money, and we're fine with that. But just do something different. I would have spent it. Or if you want to get real crazy Change the art Make a couple changes to The Vengeance toy And make four versions Or heck five versions Make one for every single Star Trek Oh wow I mean that's just stupid crazy But that would be fun It's a proven machine Why not take what you have in this proven machine A Steve Ritchie design Arguably one of his best designed games of all time And done something special If you're going to do this, don't call it a vault to slap me in the face. Call it a re-release. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess for me, I was surprised. I was surprised for two reasons. One, I did not know, though I'm sure Stern knows better from what they hear from their distributing network about this, but I did not assume that there was high demand still for Star Trek because it was run for a long time. I remember Star Trek was the one new in box game I bought I bought it at the end of 2015 because I assumed falsely, I assumed that the license was only going to be good for two years because that seemed to be their normal cycle and so I thought okay this is going to be off the line so if I'm going to act I should go ahead and get it now if I'm going to get it new and then they sold it all through 2016 as well and then sometime in 2017, maybe late 2016 But I think early 2017 was when the last of them went off the line. Distributors still had a few. We knew an area player who won a pinball machine. She won at Star Trek. The dealer who was doing the prize did still have them, at least pro models. So that is what it is. All that said, Stern's never defined what Vault Edition means. So to me, you can go in and say what you want Vault to be, but they've never claimed that Vault Edition meant anything other than it's an old game that's being regurgitated in some capacity. When I look at, I don't know enough about Iron Man to be able to immediately, and some others I'm sure will say, oh, it's so obvious, but I wouldn't be able to tell you readily the difference between the Iron Man Vault Edition and the Iron Man Regular Edition. I don't know the fundamental differences. To me, it was just another run, and they happened to have made changes to the cabinet design and stuff in the meantime. I didn't imagine it was a selling point. Maybe on retrospect, perhaps it is. I think the vaults are more popular, but I'm not certain of it. Obviously, ACDC, when they reinstituted that, all the art changes were just because things had changed with the band. It wasn't driven to make collectors happy. The one thing that they did, which was nice, was they fixed how horrible it is to try and maintain that lower play field because it was a big pain to take out. So they needed a better mech, which is good. But Star Trek doesn't have a mech that isn't easy to access, to my knowledge. So there's nothing to fix there. Go ahead. No, no, you tell me what's broken. I would argue about that. I would argue that on Iron Man, what they did is they took a game everyone loved, and they fixed what wasn't working, i.e. the magnets. They made them larger so they weren't tearing up playfields. And they gave us a beautiful foil art package on the side. It's just little things like that. So they kind of set the precedent whenever they started and said, here's a vault, Iron Man. They did stuff to make it better. And they put, what did they put the, I think on the DMD, it was a graphic on the DMD as well, the speaker box. Anyway, so they did that. And then they come out and they spoil us with Spider-Man Vault and they changed the entire thing. So whenever you start like that and you call things vault and you're changing things, it just doesn't feel as good saying in the very first sentence, nothing changed. It's the same thing. It's a vault. That's why I think there is a little something more to calling something vault. That's where I'm coming from. I can see it. I can see the angle. I don't really disagree either. It's just there's never been, to me, there's never been consistency from vault to vault. Spider-Man is a dramatic reworking. I think it was entirely driven from the fact that no one remembers the Tobey Maguire movies. It didn't make any sense to try and go get that movie license from Sony that late in the game. And I don't know. The numbers may have been bad enough that Stern decided that was not worth the money that it cost to re-up and re-do the art. They had to change the dots to make it consistent. It's a great-looking game. I agree that it's an improvement on what came out originally, but all that said, they've never, for any other vault, gone to that extreme, and I don't expect them to ever do again. All the Tron fans aside who want 82 Tron, I just don't think they're going to do it. But I think they're going to re-release Tron. I just don't know if they're going to go to the trouble of changing up all that stuff. Maybe, if they only sell them at premiums. I don't know. I don't know. I would like it. And that's really why this is in here. That's the question everyone's going on about is, well, where's Tron? Where's Lord of the Rings? Well, now, here's the thing. If we're going to go off of what Stern's done with vaults, they have never vaulted outside of the Sam board set. They've never gone back to Lightstar. But can they not do that? Is that not possible? I would assume it's possible. I wondered if there are engineering reasons why they don't want to, though. Like, they're maintaining Sam boards because there's so many Sam. I mean, they're still probably building certain Sam games, vaults aside. I'm trying to remember when the transition was. What was the last Sam game? Walking Dead, maybe? I'm not sure. WWE, WrestleMania might be the first spike. I'm not positive. Yeah, that is a spike. Yeah, I think it was the first. Just no one remembers it. But ACDC, Sam, Spiderman, Sam, Star Trek, Sam. So, yeah, I just, I don't know. I would like to see them redo Lord of the Rings. I would think Tron would make more sense because I think there's more demand for Tron. They did do reruns on Lord of the Rings. There they did, I guess they just called it a rerun, I think in 2009. So from their standpoint, they already tried to satisfy that. Now, is there still demand? Yeah, I would say so. Absolutely, yeah. But, you know, I don't know if there's a challenge with it. And that's all from then everyone's like, well, what's the deal with Tron? Is it the challenge working with the movie license when the movie's that old? Does Disney not want to do anything with Tron? I would think if you offer them money, they wouldn't really care. Right. But I don't. I don't know. But, I mean, I was disappointed in part because I already have a Star Trek, so I don't need to be involved. I wasn't really disappointed with the nature of the announcement. I agree, though. It's just a money thing. Here's an interesting theory that I wanted to see what you guys think. I saw someone, I don't recall who, who speculated that perhaps the issue here was there's some demand for Star Trek. They just have a little hole in the line because Iron Maiden's doing so well. They just need to keep things just busy enough that their workforce is working. Tron would be too big of a run. They need something that they can just do pros in June, premiums in July. That's it. And then shift to new. And shift to Deadpool. That makes sense. That does make sense. So that they deliberately chose doing this with no work whatsoever because it was an easy license to re-up. They've had – the relationship with whatever they did to get the Star Trek license went really well in Stern's favor. All those call-outs that are in it come straight from the movie. But there's no background noise. The audio was recorded as a separate track. That's why it's so clean. So they have all that. The license went for more than the two years. it just seems like they got to do whatever they wanted with it. That does make good logical sense. I thought it was an interesting theory, so I wanted to present it as an idea that maybe this was just, yeah, from a technical standpoint, I could get behind the argument of, yeah, let's not call it a vault. Let's just call it a re-release. But since the license probably needed to be re-upped, to them it's not just running more of the unit. They had to do something special to get the right to do it again. So that's why I call it a vault. I don't like your logic, I want to keep my anger I feel sorry for the poor Trekkie fans out there This is just even further From a new original Trek game Yeah, I mean Gosh, I don't know What would you Would you go, do we do the nostalgia thing And do original series If we do another Star Trek I would be fine with that Well, because the license holder would probably say, we want you to do Discovery. It's the one we're actually airing. Nobody's going to buy that. Black Alert. It's a good show. I'd even be happy with TNG or DS9. I'd be happy with Enterprise because I liked Enterprise. You'd be happy with Voyager. Well, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's not get crazy. Maybe we can make it into the Voyager. That makes sense. I mean, yeah. Not to go down another tangent on this vault thing, but if they try to do Tron like this, do you know how much kickback it's going to be if they say here's your Tron vault and there's not one change in this thing? People are going to go ape. I mean, they're going to go crazy. Yeah. I guess so. I don't know. I think you're right. I think there will be a lot of people who are upset if they change absolutely nothing, but I think the main thing with Tron is I think they'll do something. I think Stern will. Even the art package doesn't change. If they end up coming out with a premium and some people are probably afraid of that. They'll do a premium run that will be, well, it's not an LE. We're going to do some premiums. People just like the Tron. I like Tron okay. I don't love Tron. I like Iron Man better. In terms of a brutal Borg design, I would rather play Iron Man than Tron. Collectors like Tron because it blings so pretty. It is pretty. But you see, you get this whole weird mix because a lot of people are like, well, we want 82 Tron. Well, do you want to change the dots to match it? Are you going to give up the whole Daft Punk soundtrack, which is half the game? Because you have to if you go 82. I don't want 82 Tron. And just blend it. Just give it 82 art and keep the dots from the new movie and say, just get what you get and like it. I can see just changing once again to the ever popular, just change the art package just go to hand-drawn. Sure. If the licensors allow it. Since it's a Disney property, sometimes they get... Star Wars is hand-drawn. Yeah, by their people. Yes, that's the rule. That's their rule. Understandable. I understand that. Poor Steve Ritchie. He always gets the hardest licenses to work with. Except Star Trek. That's true. Last news item. It's not a stern one. It's HomePin. HomePid, which is making Thunderbirds Argo. It's a Chinese-based manufacturer, Australian-owned. They have a Facebook post that announced that their next pinball machine is going to target the Chinese market, of which there currently is none. Zach, what do you think of this as a strategy? I think as a business. Yeah, I mean, as a business, this is a smart idea. I get it. I just don't want to play it. I don't even know what it is, and I don't really want to play it. I don't particularly... What if it's like Tron? Well, it's not going to be Tron. I know it's not going to be Tron based on the first machine that they came out with, Thunderbirds. I mean, could you get a worse theme than Iron Maiden? Yeah, you could. It's called Thunderbirds. Nobody cares about that machine. It's orange DMD. It's 20 years old technology. People want new stuff, and they want good themes. And if you don't have a good theme, at least have a good original theme. And that on top of all the other controversy behind that, this is something that I frankly could care less about. But I think it's a smart business move on Mike's part to try to sell to a demographic that actually may care. Tony, what do you think? I think like he does. It's an obvious attempt to sell. The question is what are they going to do for a theme? And with certain themes, I could see where it would still have an interest in the West. I mean, if it's from some of the classic stories like Journey to the West or something like that, that's a well-known story that has seen multiple movies, multiple games. It's the basis for tons of stuff. It could be, as long as the game's halfway decent, popular even in the West, which I think would be a great move for them. If they could open a new market and have something that would sell on the old market, business-wise, it would be wonderful. On the other hand, I mean, it's Thunderbirds or it's from the maker of Thunderbirds or go. I mean, it's not exactly like they're breaking the world as is. Yeah, I disagree. I think this is not a good strategy. I think that the strategy should be, given that this is an upstart on the pinball manufacturing side, that I think might cast a target at the American market. It's just where all the sales are at. He needs to target the American market with a license they care about. Growing the Chinese market is growing Chinese demand in pinball. I think that's more than just the theme. I think that's an exposure issue. And he's in the best position to do that because he's actually building there. But I think the theme is a really small thing. It's going to be a big jump from getting the Chinese population to go, oh, this is pinball, and this is fun, to, oh, this is pinball, this is fun, this is a collector's item, and I should start collecting these things now. There's none of that history there. America has all of that stuff. That he chose a theme, which I agree with Zach, was truly terrible from an American perspective. Truly terrible. That was the biggest mistake that I felt he made. He had his reasons for doing it. I understand that. I think for game number two, he should be going, no, I need to up my sales. And the easiest way to do that is to sell to America. He's got one advantage over any other manufacturer, and that is it ended up being even to the U.S. with shipping. These are cheaper than Stern Pros. Now, you can look at them and go, well, you see why. But regardless, they are quote-unquote commercial grade. They are full pinball machines, and they are several hundred dollars less. They're about $5,000 versus $5,400. And he's got a lot of stuff in that machine. Like, I'm not going to even downplay that. He's got some toys and some mechanisms, and he's got some stuff in there. Yeah, that's right. So, Dennis, you wouldn't buy a Hello Kitty pinball machine, I take it? Depends on what the layout is and what the rules are. It's never about toys. Toys are for people who don't know how to play. That's mean. That is mean. It is what it is. And sometimes there are people who really love toy-driven games who are good players. For example, let's do some call-outs here. Jeff from the Pinball Podcast, his favorite game of all time is Twilight Zone. Now, normally, when I hear someone say that their favorite game is Twilight Zone, my first thought is, oh, you don't know how to play pinball. That's why you like it. Because it's got a bunch of crap on it. I love Twilight Zone. Twilight Zone shoots not so great. It's not a bad game. It's just not a great game. it's one of Pat Lawler's better games but he's also not one of the better designers so you just gotta factor all this in you just gotta factor this is my personal opinion Dialed In is Pat Lawler's masterpiece if everything were that good he'd be in my top 5 but it's not it's mostly Roadshow I do like Roadshow you like Roadshow too? I play these are just my interpretations which are not always, unfortunately, though they should be, accurate. I know other tournament players who love Pat Lawler designs. I think they're clunky. But other people really like that stop-and-go kind of point-and-shoot style that his format orients around, whereas I am more of a flow ball. I think I even heard Steve Ritchie once say that he regrets doing so many flow-based games because now so many people, and I would be one of them, want flow ball all the time. We don't want the ball to stop ever. Just make that ball. I'm playing pinball, not pin wild under glass. Yeah, I think it's opinion. It's just the wrong one. Pinball is about art. Pinball is about seeing what the silver ball can do with magnets, with mechanisms. Pinball doesn't always have to be ramps to orbits all day long. Sometimes I'm turned off by, oh, my God, this ball is lasting so long because I keep hitting shots And I'm not a great player, I'm not saying that, but just the fact that just shooting a ball around is what defines pinball, I think is asinine, actually. Hmm. Well, that's an interesting perspective. You have some good points, like long playing games, I think. There's a balance. There is an immersion factor that is necessary, but there are just certain elements that can get you into that, get you into the mindset that you're playing a game. Because that's what it is. You're playing a game. That's what these were always built for. They were not built to be art pieces. Now, maybe people think they are now, but that was never the point. The art was only ever to catch your eye to drop that first quarter. That's all the way back to the E.M. era. That was only the point. And that is not fine art. Most of that art compared to fine art is pretty poor. Yeah. Pretty poor quality. But this is in the same thing. It's just two different styles of play. you're still playing the game. I mean, do you only play first-person shooters, or do you only play 4X games? Do you only play RPGs, or do you like to change it up and play something different now and then? That's a completely good point. But you know very well, Tony, that the 4X game player is more intelligent. That's a very good attempt to shift away from what we're going for. My shifts are flawless. I think we, I don't know what we've agreed on, but it seems that I won was what the point was. I think it's always a nice balance. I feel good about this. I think we've accomplished a lot here. Psychologically, I'm in a good place. We're just going to go ahead and leave it there and we're going to walk away while I still think that I'm right and everybody else is wrong. Sure, sure. I don't like all the games to be the same. That's why I don't have an entire lineup of 16 Richie games. Too 16. If I have to pick one, one favorite, he gets to be my number one. But I wouldn't want them all to be the same. I do want there to be mechanisms that are interactive and give you enjoyment with the ball. Some of the stuff I think is more fluff, that I think is style over substance. And that's where Zach mentioned things with the manipulation of the silver ball. That is important to me. A smog head that doesn't interact with the ball is not important to me. Absolutely. It brings you into the story of the game. You're playing this journey through Mordor or whatever it is, just like a film, just like a piece of music. You're wanting to feel what that experience is. And just by shooting clean shots isn't going to do it for you, Dennis. You have to smile, turning his head, looking at you and blowing fire through that play field. That's whenever you feel invigorated. That's when you want to shoot and you want to complete the tasks and the goals. Hitting five times jackpot bonus and no small does little to nothing for me. I can see that. For me, though, if you have the sound package integrated and the rules integrated, when you accomplish that orbit shot, it can make you feel that you've done something. I don't need to be in the movie. I've expressed many episodes ago, I don't live in the world. I don't feel like I'm the pinball. I've never felt that way. So do you have no difference in feel between playing a Whitewood of a machine and playing the actual production version of a machine? I feel a difference, but I have played Whitewoods that I would own. That's true. I've played Whitewoods that I would own too. When I played Total Nuclear Annihilation, all I saw was a Sharpie on the play field. But the sound immersion and the rules immersion was enough for me that I would have been happy to own that. Yeah. Now, was it better when they had assets in? Sure. But what does Total Nuclear Annihilation lack? Toys. It doesn't have toys. It's got an inline drop target lock system. You can classify that as a toy if you want, but it's not an immersion toy. That's a functional multiball lock toy That doesn't look like anything having to do with anything nuclear Right, but at the same time You're looking at a machine that is an original theme How would you like shooting Star Trek If you removed Vengeance And you removed everything off of it And it was just ramps and orbits and this and that If it was the same, I would still like shooting it the same amount It is better to have the vengeance. I would argue that. I think you're proving my point perfectly with TNA itself, Dennis. And this is a bold statement, but I think over 50% of what people like about TNA, they're not going to tell you this, it's not the shooting. It is, like you said, the world under glass, the immersion of the music and of that light show. That's why people love that game. It's a kickback. It's a throwback to the 80s of when they were younger. So all of the intangibles which refutes all of your points about shooting I think those are more important than his basic street layout Interesting I agree with you that some people I think you right that some people are choosing gravitating towards total nuclear annihilation for the reasons you've mentioned. But I also think there's another class of population that's gravitated towards it because of the brutality of the gameplay and how the rules are integrated. And that, everything else is just gravy. Is it better to have mashed potatoes with gravy? Yes, it is. I'm not going to say don't put gravy on my taters, but I'll still eat taters. But the rules aren't what's selling that game. The rules are pretty basic. And where did you derive that statistic from, that the rules aren't selling that game? All the tournament player talk is about the brutality of that game, and it's all about the rules, not about, oh, well, I really like Reactor 5's sound. It's brutal, but essentially it's the same linear code done nine times through a reactor, and we've seen that for 20-plus years. Sure. There's nothing drawing me back to that. I don't think that that's what it is. I think you're on point when you talk about the brutality of the game. That's why people like Iron Man so much, is that it is challenging. It is brutal. But what the cherry on the top, why people keep coming back to it, is they feel immersed with that music. That's all people talk about. Listen to the beat drop whenever you plunge that ball. Or look at the lighting effects the lighting show. That's what it's all about. I think it is. You're right, though. At the end of the day, we're both right. It's a fine balance in between the both. And then when you nail both of those aspects, both the player aspect and the collector bling experience world under glass, I think that's why you have hits like TNA and Iron Maiden. Hmm. Well, okay. That's probably enough drama for now. Sorry. No, no. That's why we had you on, because you disagree with me. That's the whole point. Now that your rage has worked up into a froth, we're going to move. I'm ready, baby. Yeah, that's right. We're out of news now. We're going to move on to a tournament that is all about hate. Not my hate. Tony's hate. My hate. Tony, will you take us into the final matchup here for the worst of the fall? The worst pinball machine of 1994 to 1999. I love this, by the way. I just freaking love this. You know, after your last attack on my philosophy, I knew you would. Hatred is strong. You must let the heat flow through you. All right. We're coming through. So, around five results are not too surprising. Shaq Attack beat Popeye Saves the Earth. It was 69.6%, which is not really surprising at all. I figured it would be a high win over Popeye because Popeye still has... No, I can't let you say Popeye has a redeeming feature. We're at the point where none of these games have anything that can even be vaguely considered a redeeming feature. Well, now, to Zach's point from our last discussion in the news section Popeye does really have a look of an arc It really tried to make you feel like you were on a boat Popeye's a great game, one of my favorites And the show's over, thanks everybody, see ya No, no That's an absolute awesome We know a few people love Popeye Yeah, it's an absolute awesome wide-body Bally Williams There's a lot not to like, I give you that but the hatred that that pin gets is absolutely ridiculous. It is funny to me how many people we've heard who really do like Popeye for it to still be in this grouping as far down as it made it. Well, it just shows that there's a wide range of what, in terms of not just theme or design in the sense of toys and mechanisms, but also flow and rules and shot layout that there is in the hobby. because, yeah, there are aspects of Popeye that I think are okay. There are aspects that I really, really dislike, and then there's how it was developed and what it did. Popeye's a weird example because, unfortunately, it checks a lot of really bad boxes for me. So I'm not surprised that Shack Attack was seen as a worse game than that. I mean, Popeye is playable. I don't walk away from Popeye going like how I felt when I walked away from Barbed Wire. where you felt like you'd been violated. Right. But because, yes. But, well, but Popeye is a widebody and I have so much trouble liking widebodies and it doesn't do anything to help. Like Pirates of the Caribbean, Jersey Jacks won. It does things that make me like it despite it being a widebody. Popeye doesn't execute that for me. For me. But I know some people, very good players, competitive players who like Popeye. And there are people who like widebodies. But there are. Most competitive players I know do not like Popeye, and I understand why after playing it several times. Yeah. So it is what it is. What was the next one? The next one was Lost in Space and Viper Knight Driving. Oh, those are both turds. I know. But Viper Knight Driving won. It was pretty close, though. It was only by 54%. So it was a tight fight between those two. You and Bruce both voted Lost in Space, if I remember from the last episode. And I did vote Viper. It was very close for me. It was a debate. It was a fight for which one I thought was worse because they're both words I can't say on this thing games. Now, do you like either of those games, Zach? I'd have to walk on this one because I've not played neither one of those. Okay. You're not missing anything. Yeah, I don't see them around too much. If you would like to know what it's like to play them, go get a hammer and hit yourself a couple of times. And you'll feel about the same as you do after playing the games So our final round The final decision to figure out Which game was the worst game Of the end of the 90's Which game was the game that Just ruined everything for us Is going to be between Shaq And Viper Knight Drive-In Have you played Shaq Attack Shaq? I've played that a couple times But I've not played Viper Yeah, I haven't played Shaq. I've watched footage. I've watched some gameplay footage of it to acquaint myself with it. It's kind of funny. One of our area players back on round one predicted that Shaq Attack might win this whole thing. Yeah. I will vote Viper on this because I despise Viper Night Driving, which is funny because it actually doesn't have a horrendous layout. It's funny because it's really just a fan layout, and how do you mess that up? But somehow they did. But Shack Attack has some interesting cleverness to its rules with some hidden feature stuff that you activate. And so it's got more to it than you might think. The reason why I have to hesitate is Shack Attack is definitely clunkier than Viper. And I hate clunk, too. But Viper, I've just been snakebit by that thing so many times. That personal biases are pushing me over on that one. I'm going to be voting Viper. I'm going the same way for pretty much the same reasons. Only having watched videos of Shack Attack, I don't really have enough. I mean, I know it looks terrible, and it looks like a game that I have no desire to ever play. But at the same time, Viper Night Driving is one of those games that it's just like, why? Why did I draw this game in tournament play again? Why is this game in a tournament? Who hates you so much? Who hurts you? who hurt you when you made this game? Well, link in the show notes, people, to go and vote. And then on the next episode, the E3 episode, we'll go ahead and get the winner announced or loser, however you want to look at it. But that is that. So we're going to move on. And, Zach, we want to learn more about you. We want to learn about you as a collector. and that's something as we've had several collectors on now and every single one has had a very different approach in terms of how they developed collecting and how they actively go about participating in the hobby of pinball collection and you are probably more unique than even those unique examples that we've had because it seems to me that you possess relatively low volume but you make up for that with what I consider a very rapid turnover Would you agree with that assessment? Yes, very much so. So me as a collector, number one, I want everything. I want new things. I want shiny things. I want old. I want things that I haven't experienced before. Now, given that that's my desire, I cannot own everything. I have four beautiful children and a wonderful wife, so they are really expensive. So I'm not a rich fan. So the only thing that I get what I want is to buy something, play it for a while like a video game, and then sell it. The nice thing about pinball is that they're kind of financially a low risk. You can buy one, and if you purchase one correctly and work out a deal enough, then you will not lose any money or you might make $100 or so whenever you move on to your next really expensive pinball machine. So for me, I get tired of things. I love the Hobbit. I get tired of it. I love any pinball machine you name. There's no keepers to me. Nothing is ever special enough to be a keeper or hasn't been yet. So that's kind of how I move things. And I move things for a show. We need content. We need reviews. I don't have – there's one location here locally, but it's Gottlieb stuff, and I'd just rather not. So I don't – I move pins. Sometimes I've owned a pen for two days, and then I'll get rid of it. I have no ties to anything like that, which is odd. A lot of people aren't like that. Sure. It's very different, though. As you've noted just now, your motivations are a mix. You don't have a lot of location play, so that poses challenges for you to be able to play games that you don't own. Obviously, you're doing straight down the middle, and for review purposes, there's value in having access to a game. Otherwise, it becomes difficult to actually review it. But what would you say is the average time that you typically keep the game? Obviously, just a couple days, I'm assuming, is a very low, atypical exception. Yeah. I mean, for the most part, honestly, this is sad. This is rough. But maybe a month, if that. Three weeks, maybe. Okay. Wow. Yeah. So how many miles have you put on vehicles driving around to pick up machines? A lot. A lot. But here's the other thing, and this is very hokey and corny and stuff, but bear with me. This is somewhat of my personality. But I get to freaking meet pinball people. Like these machines, people will drive a long way to come to my house to pick up these machines, or I will drive up like tonight. I'm driving up to my buddy in Bloomington. He's got a pinball machine that, and here's the other thing, side note, I'm an opportunist. I will not turn down a deal. So if I have a buddy that calls me because he's got too much money and he says, I'd rather you come into my house and I'd sell you a machine and you make $100 off of it. If I can go hang out with my buddy, play some pinball, bring back a game that I get to play for a week and then sell it, I'm never going to turn down that opportunity. I freaking love pinball people and I love meeting new people. So there's no downside to it to me besides, like you said, Tony, the mileage I put on my car. Well, you obviously did not meet us long enough at TPF to change your philosophy, but I'm sure we can make an exception eventually. Okay, so I think this would be a good way to sort of segue this into your reviewing process that you and your co-host Greg do on Straight Down the Middle. So what goes into doing a pinball review? You've got this game. Yeah, let's do Iron Maiden because I think that's the most recent one you did. So you got it. So what do you guys, what's the process? What do you go through? I mean, obviously the categories and such, but I mean just what did you do to decide the categories? What did you do to decide how you're going to weight the categories, why you went with the letter grades? Tell us everything. Okay, so for us, whenever we started the show up, we thought, what do people care about? and we don't have a marketing firm to do focus groups on what people care about in pinball media. So we just very lazy manner went to what we enjoy. And from an early age, I always loved product reviews. Anything that reviews products, consumer reports, video game reviews, I love hearing what other people think about things. I do that every year. I do top ten films that I love. I research everything. I don't know if you guys are like that, but anything that I get into, I get way, way, way too into. So I want to know everything about it. So I pitched to Greg because Greg's pretty relaxed. He don't care about much. I said, dude, why don't we do pinball reviews? Nobody's really giving grades to pinball machines. And we knew the Buffalo guys were up there doing that. But theirs was more a we'll talk about everything and then we'll throw a, you know, out of one out of ten or ten out of ten on it. but we wanted to really look into every aspect of what makes an overall good review, and those are things like art. That plays a factor. Shots and layout, of course, plays a factor. Rules plays a factor. Toys and innovations, always important. Music and call-outs. Theme. Now, LCD integration that people, that manufacturers are putting into their machines. So we wanted to give the viewer something that we cared about and we thought other people cared about as well, and because of the feedback they do, is we rate each and every category of what makes a pinball machine in totality what makes it great or what makes it poor. So we wanted to do that. It's been working out fairly well for us. I get some kickback on some of the strong takes I have, but it is a really hard process. We try to play as much as we can out of a game. we tell ourselves at minimum we need to play 50 to 75 games to have a a coherent clear opinion on a game so that's kind of the process greg doesn't get new machines but he's got louisville he can go on location to play the heck out of machines i don't have location pinball so i just buy the heck out of machines and play every single night 20 to 30 games so that's kind of the process we take. Okay. What do you do in the case of code updates, especially if you've done a review and there's been a significant one? Because that's become more and more of an issue with modern pens. Yeah, that's a great question. So what we do is we put it back on the manufacturers. If you don't want a game reviewed with your beta code, don't release a game with beta code. Stern, unfortunately, we've had to go back. We do, last year we did, or we reviewed last year's reviews again to compensate for those code updates. But initially, if we review, we like to review the new games, and if they come out, the code that they come out with, we're going to review it. If it's good enough for you to charge $5,000 to $10,000 to individuals to buy, then it's good enough for us to review. Okay. Makes sense to me. Yeah, I did hear that episode where you went back and did your touch-ups, as I'll call them, as if it were mirror paint. And, yes, we also never research anything on this show. And what was my second point? Oh, yeah, I don't need you to tell me that my questions are good. All my questions are good. But thank you anyway. So what do you – do you guys like the Mole Machine reviews? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I like reviews of anything. Dennis is the one who does all the deep diving into pinball machines and pinball-related stuff. But I'm like you. When I start to get interested in a hobby, I go crazy deep into something. Not even necessarily a hobby, just interested in something. I go crazy, crazy deep into it. I've got whole things where I put together plans for what I'm going to do when I get to a point where I can actually start doing something. and it's like, okay, so here's my first goal. First goal is I need to lose 150 pounds. Okay, then I need to find $15,000. Okay, we'll start on goal one. We'll worry about goal two later. So, I mean, it's just one of those things that I think with the right things, anybody will go into the deep research mode for stuff. I've met some that probably aren't capable, but a lot of people who can think well. So there's that. What I like about – oh, sorry. Go ahead. I was going to say, I like ranking things as well. I just love the objectivity of ranking things and basing it on some type of quantitative data, some numbers or grades like we do, just comparisons. I just – there's something about me that I just love that. In some ways, I actually think ranking is more helpful, at least from a personal perspective, versus doing like – well, like Pennside, where you go in and you do all these ratings and you get to weight them the way you want to. And I like all that. But the thing is, there's nothing quite like ranking where you're actually telling yourself, and Tony and I will do this all the time on movies in particular, where it'd be like, no, we're going to take all these Star Wars movies and I don't care that you think that Empire and New Hope are both great. I want to know which one is better. Because we can always weigh on later on saying, well, here's where the ranking is, and here are the ones that I actually think are not even worth watching, sort of thing. Yeah, but, yeah. Yeah, no, exactly. We do stuff like that all the time, and, I mean, I've done that with all sorts of things. I will say, objectively, if anybody thinks that anything's better, any Star Wars movie's better than Empire, they're just objectively wrong. But I would lean to agree with you, but, you know, some people are feeling very strongly about some of the newer stuff, and that is really wrong. I wouldn't argue against that, no. I don't associate with anyone who does most of the people who do are young yes that's true hold up you guys don't like the new Star Wars films? no I wouldn't rank them above Empire you should just do that come on no no I don't hate the new films I'll be out there I didn't hate The Last Jedi even though apparently it's really popular to hate that movie. I thought it was fine. Yeah, I thought it was fine too. I loved that thing. I had a blast. Yeah, it was a lot of fun, and it's gotten so much more fun since I've started taking my daughter to them because she loves them. We just went and saw Solo last week, and she was in seventh heaven. But, yeah, no, it's just ranking stuff. That's so cool. It's good. Now, one of the things I was going to note that I really like about how you and Greg do your reviews is you give the letter grades to the categories because the cumulative doesn't it doesn't really mean anything to me because you're weighting all the categories equitably so what I like is I can look at each of your categories and go well for my purposes I don't care as much about art, I don't care as much about toys, I don't care as much about theme but I care very much about enjoyability and rules and shots so I look at and weight the ones that I care about the most and go So, okay, well, and once I've seen some of the games you guys have ranked, I can start to see where I agree or disagree with however you guys like to do your – enjoyability is very subjective. So sometimes, like, Don, former host of the Pinball Podcast and Link Cable Podcast, he and I like very different pinball machines. Like, he loves Judge Dredd, and he likes Roller Coaster Tycoon. These are just games. I'm just like, oh, come on, Don. Come on. But because of that, there are certain elements that I've also learned that he really appreciates that I like as well. So if I know what he's evaluating on, I can go, okay, that's the part I'm going to listen to, and here are the other parts that I just don't think that way. So I just don't see it the same. What he sees as an advantage I see as a disadvantage. And I know from the very beginning I told Craig, I said, look, buddy, this system is going to be flawed. It's made to be flawed. It always will be flawed. It will not be objective because what I think good reviews do is they combine a bit of objectivity with a bit of subjectivity, that technical aspect versus that subjective emotional experience. For me, like film reviews, I always look at the individuals I agree with. I read their film reviews and the individuals that I strongly disagree with mostly to see if the juxtaposition is there as well. So we know it's a flawed system, but what we wanted to do is categorize it so that people, like you said, Dennis, can go back and say, you know what, I can care less about art. Rules and shots and layout is crucial to me. And like, for example, my recent review of Iron Maiden, they were both AA pluses. So if somebody cares about that, they can say, hey, Zach thinks this is one of the greatest games there is regarding shots and layout and rules and code. And the other reason is we're drafting and working on a system, and we haven't spoken about this yet publicly, but we're working on a system that will put this all into a web format so that people can do some checkboxes and see what they care about, what they don't care about. And we're also going to try to include our viewers into this mix in a very special way so that they can interact with us and give their own rankings and reviews of games, and it will be a big, large collaborative effort so that people can look at pinball machine reviews. Whoa, that's quite elaborate. I thought I was being fancy letting people vote in a Google form. Well, we're still working on it. It's a big goal for us. Anything worthy in pinball takes forever. That's just how the hobby is. So let's have some fun with this then. Okay. And for listeners, Zach isn't being blindsided. He knew we were going to do this. So we're going to do a pinball review. Okay, so here's the thing. This is the concerning thing that I have. I went through, I had to as part of my podcast of bloodbath research, as you may know. Yes, I did. I had to. I had to find flaws. I had to find things to attack. And one of the things, and I believe this is still true even with Iron Maiden, is you, Zach, have never had a cumulative score under a C for any game that you've done on the show. Correct. Greg's even worse than me. And Greg has never had anything under a B. He's got everything B. He likes everything. Yes. So he likes everything, or we've got some serious great inflation going on. Everyone's getting their diploma. Everyone gets their participation sticker. Maybe at some point we'll bring him on and we'll judge him then. Because he's not here to defend himself. It's indefensible, but he's not here. That movement happened way after our time. It's straight down in the middle. Losers deserve nothing. So what we're going to do is we're going to do what I'm going to call straight down the left out lane pinball. Oh, I like it. I like it. Thank you. Because it's always the left out lane that eats my poor ball. And we're going to do the Stern 2015 game WrestleMania. WrestleMania, commonly and probably heretofore referred to as WWE. So we're going to go through this choice, Jim, on each of those categories that you've laid out. And we're going to say what our letter is, and we're going to say why we gave it what we did. So, Zach, since you're our guest, we're going to let you lead off on each category. And the first category is art. So what's your grade? And explain yourself, man. Explain it. All right. Let's kick it off, guys. Let's start with art. So for WrestleMania, I was a little bit higher than you guys were, not by much, but I was in a C-. The reason being is because it's not the worst I've seen, and it sure as a heck is not the best I've seen. What I do like, the points that I do like is everybody loves the WrestleMania divas on the plastics. I mean, come on, we can all agree that that's a nice touch. But I also like the general color scheme. I like the layout of where the art, the composition, if you will, the back glass as well as the side cabinet. Now, do I want sweaty grown men on the side of the cabinet and the back glass? No, not particularly. But the artist did lay it out very well. And it's red, white, and blue, baby. That's America. Everybody loves that. The things I don't like as much are the play field is just horrendous. It is really, really bad, especially those belts, the clip art of those belts. If those would have been just hand-drawn, oh, my God, those would have been great. But for that, the plus and minuses, I'm weighing in about C-. What about you guys? Okay, Tony, go ahead. I went with a D. It's a wrestling game. There's nothing you can do that's not going to just be pictures of wrestlers in their poses that they're known for, and that's what they did. I mean, they could have spiced it up. They could have done some changes. They could have done some art that was more interesting, but it went with here is wrestler in known pose. Here is wrestler in known pose You know what we need? We've got a whole bunch of half-naked guys Let's throw some girls on here Just so we don't alienate everybody And okay We'll call it good, yay It is so clip art Like vomiting on Everything that I just I have no interest in it at all Art wise You're not wrong Actually I gave it a D as well Similar reasons My two-word summary would be Photoshop mess. If it was just going off the back glass, the Translight, I would have leaned more towards your end, Zach. I probably would have given it a C, actually. Okay, so they just went with montages. Stern does that all the time. C, average grade, very pedestrian. Star Trek does it, Game of Thrones does it. A lot of them do it. I can forgive that. The play field is ugly. The placement of the wrestlers doesn't have anything to do with the shots either. They're just on there. Very much. And you get the LE version. Okay, you get the wrestlers that I know instead of the wrestlers I don't know. But they're still just sort of thrown on there. It's not hand-drawn. I know standards have now gone up versus where it was at that point. It doesn't matter. It just doesn't. There's nothing about the art that really feels very integrated to me. Everything's just kind of thrown on there. And, yeah, they're photos, so they're realistic. But I expect, I want my art to integrate. And the issue here is I have to spend more time looking at the playfield than black glass. So the abomination that is the playfield has to pull it down for me. And that's why it's not a total fail, but it's not a passing grade. People may gripe all they want about gradient shading on Game of Thrones. This is worse. This is worse. And I really like the points you made. I think I'm going to use that in the future if you don't mind. I have more time looking at the playfield than I do the black glass and stuff. Yeah, that's always the thing for me. Like with Star Trek, yeah, the playfield art, I don't love it, but it's not offensive. It's just sort of space hud sort of stuff. If I had to look at the back glass all the time, I'd hate it a lot more because I don't need Chris Hines staring at me. It's kind of creepy, really. But, okay, so let's go to the next category, Zach. Shots and layout. So for me, shots and layout, I was at a C+, right in the middle of the field there. So chime in guys but for me This is Surprisingly satisfying At times the shots Okay I'm not I don't totally Disagree there's some flow to this There's some flow to this That horse You feel It's above average Just slightly but you feel The shot layout is above average Yeah, because it's different. It's unique. It's got that horseshoe loop that I just love. I do like that midfield, that midfeed. Let me try this again. The midfield. There's that Southern Indiana. The midfield alley shot from that right flipper that goes up and through. I'm trying to think what other machines do that. Now I'm going blank. So the midfield alley shot, I really do like that. And I don't like that upper play field. I really hate that, actually. But whenever they close that off and they allow those ramps to come back down to another ramp, if you hit that three or four times in a row, it is surprisingly satisfying. Now, at the end of the day, it's the flipper gap. I hate the flipper gap. It doesn't work on any machine, in my opinion. And the upper play field gets old, so shots and layups, I fall right at that C+. Okay. Tony. I went with the C-. Okay. So, Phil, I've played much worse games. It rolls. The actual play is not terrible. The biggest thing for me and the thing that pulls the shots and the layout and everything down is that upper play field. The ring is a wonderful idea. It just was poorly executed. For a wrestling game, the whole thought is great, but those slings just don't work. And they may try to hit those shots you have up there, and that just ruins the whole game. I think without the upper play field, it would probably be a much better game, but it would be a completely different game at the same time. I think if they had used something like, which came much later obviously, but something that fired with more power like the Magnus slings on the Ghostbusters, or even just flippers up there, so you could actually have a better chance to aim and have some actual control of your shots than what they went with, it would have been much better as an upper playfield overall, and I think it just totally destroyed everything about the shots and the layouts of the game. Okay. Well, I'm the lowest of us, then. I gave shots and layout a D. Oh, God, this ain't good. Yeah. Okay. So, my biggest gripe would be, echoing Tony, that unfun upper playfield. It's just so gimmicky. It looks, from a theme integration standpoint, I get it. It looks like a ring. But this otherwise fairly flowy layout, as Zach noted, is killed by whenever you're having to be in that upper play field. And you have to be in there quite a bit. Oh, yeah, you do. And because you don't have true flippers, even little two-inch flippers, but instead you're using user-controlled slings, it just has a gimmicky feel to it. So you don't... Because what's the whole purpose of slings? The entire purpose of the slingshot is to lose control of the ball. That's why they exist. They're not meant to manage. But you're trying to pick off targets with some semblance of control on a device that was never designed for control, and I think it's only up there for aesthetic reasons. So that's probably my opinion. Yeah, I think it falls into that Champion Pub gimmicky thing where at first you're playing it, and you're thinking, oh, this is really cool. This is a lot of fun. And then after game 20, you think, oh, no, I'm back up there. I've got a hit in that stupid little scoop. Oh, God, get me out of this. Yes. Sometimes we can kind of reminisce on all the flaws of Champion Pub because it's just a game of gimmicks, and that's the fundamental problem. Great theme integration, though. Yeah. Just like this tried to have some good theme integration. So we got the upper play field thing. Why it's also a D for me, though, is when you look at, and it doesn't matter which version you look at, you look at that play field, that is an almost symmetrical layout. This is a devastating no-no. We had symmetrical layouts for decades in the EM era. Ted Zale with Bally put an end to this nonsense, and then people realized, hey, you know what? This isn't about visual balance and how everyone likes to look at symmetrical things. It's more fun to have different shots at different positions on the flipper. This is not a perfectly symmetrical play field. However, it is very much, again, I think trying to service the theme, keep everything kind of equitable. So it seems like they're basically all the same shots on all the same flipper positions on the left and on the right. Visually, looks very nice to the eye. Functionally, Borville. I think symmetry is something you do not want in pinball machines. The worst EM machines are symmetrical. And unfortunately, that's most of them. But the asymmetrical machines, that's where people started to think, wow, this is really cool. And that's where gameplay started to become valuable when you didn't have code. You could make things different through the symmetry. Symmetry is a problem. So that was why I couldn't give it in the C range. That is just too symmetrical. And Trudeau should have known better. I thought about that. That is a really valid point. Then to go with that. And I'll just go ahead. While it wasn't a major factor for me, I will echo with Zach. The flipper gap thing, I can forgive wide flipper gap in one scenario. You need to put a center post beneath those flippers that you can put. That's fair, yeah. and do nudge bounce with. They don't like to do it nowadays. I get it. You do it with a regular flipper gap like Spider-Man, you end up with an infinite playing game. But you want to have a wide flipper gap, put in a center post, have something sort of skill-driven, no problem. They didn't do that here, fail. So anyway, that's me with the shots. So category three, Zach, is rules and code. You must love the rules and code. A big, old, fat D. And it's because, number one, it's choppy. This thing, getting through these darn matches are just chop, chop, chop. And you have to hit. Not only is it choppy, but then you've got to hit those stupid drop targets right in the center of the ring, or right before the ring, center of the play field, just to start another match on this thing. It's too reliant upon that upper play field. And I will argue that the most egregious thing that they did with the L.E. package is, where in the heck is my man, macho man, Randy Savage? Oh, yeah. You've got to get Slim Jim to give you the rights to that. I mean, come on. We need Randy Savage or it is a joke to me. So for Randy Savage purposes alone, it's a D. Wow. Yeah. Ouch. Okay. Tony, rules covered. I gave it a D as well for pretty much the exact same reasons minus the Randy Savage part of it. But otherwise. Why do you hate Randy Savage? I don't hate Randy Savage. What's your beef with Randy? Yeah what your beef man I just hadn had the thought about it I hadn thought about it It probably that Hulk Hogan tattoo you got on your back right Yeah Big Jim Duggan I actually gave Rules & Code a C. So now I'm feeling awkward. Yeah. Because I showed some average. For me, here's the thing. The rules, ultimately, as of the last code patch I played, which I don't recall, I think it is the final code that I got time on. I thought they got the rules to an acceptable state. That's kind of where I'm coming from on it. I don't think it's great, but I think it's average. There are no real scoring exploits when they got the final patches in where there used to be early on where you just try and go and stay up in the ring without going to the wrestling and all that. But, yeah, it does make you shoot around. You know, you do those sort of mid, I think Zach described them as the mid-alley sort of shots. I mean, those are important. They got you to shoot around, and that's what I really want out of rules. While I don't like the speed of the Atari Superman game, what I think makes that a good game, or at least the best game Atari ever did, was the rules made you shoot around the play field. You have to. You want to spell Superman, and that's where all the points are. That's kind of like this. It makes you do stuff in the lower play field, then you need to go into the upper play field. There are mechanical and layout issues with all of that, But the rules fundamentally, I think, are fine. No one will ever say that it was the best rule set. But I also think it's not in the discussion of one of the worst designed rule packages either. It's services. So for me, it's a success. I mean, what I do like about the story of that code, too, is that you are climbing the ranks. And that does feel somewhat satisfying because you're that wrestler and you're trying to climb through the tag team tournament, the world champion and different things. So because it is somewhat linear, I still like the story behind that. And I don't know if you guys are like me, but I find this pen relatively pretty difficult, especially if you're wanting to see all that code. For me, it is really, really hard. Yeah, I think it shoots pretty hard. I've always thought that about most Trudeau games. The layout and some of it's the gap and stuff. It's just not forgiving. And Ghostbusters is a breeze, right? Oh, yes, Ghostbusters. I'm always happy when I get over a million. Anyway. Oh, Ghostbusters. I actually like Ghostbusters quite a bit. But I know a lot of tournament people don't, and I like to take them to it because it annoys them. And that's pleasing. So speaking of pleasing, let's go to Toys and Innovation. We just, back in the news section, you gave an impassioned plea for why Toys and Innovation and the manipulation of the silver ball are so critical. So how did this one do with all that? I have a bad feeling about this one. So I am overall at a C-. I'm going to C-. And a couple of reasons. Do I like playing this pin? No. But there are some redeeming qualities about it. Now, do I hate the upper play field, the wrestling ring? I do. I'm not going to lie. I do. But it is innovative. It is a pretty neat-ish toy. It makes sense for WrestleMania. You are controlling the ball with things other than the flippers, so that's always a plus. Plus, on the LE package, that Jumbotron, I don't know if that was one of the first, but that is really cool, and that's integrated well. That makes a lot of sense when I see Hulk Hogan up there in the Legends package, and it's actually playing the match and different things like that. Plus, on the LE, you've got, toys-wise, you have a spinning disc up there. Not three of them, but just one right in the middle of that wrestling ring. So you have a spinning disc, so it looks like you're, you know, throwing that player against the ropes like they do in real wrestling. And it's different. I don't like it, but it is different enough that I'm not going to pan it. Okay. Tell me. I'm going to pan it. I give it a half. Oh, God. I failed it. It's gone. Wow. The only toy or innovation, as far as I could tell, was the ring, and the ring is horrible. Now, to be fair, I've not played in L.E., so I've not had a chance to play around with the spinning disc or any of that. But there's not much there, and what is there is terrible. It ruins the game. That whole upper play field just ruins any chance that game had to be good. It was a great idea, poorly executed. So much so that it's an F It's an F Well I I tried to feign shock But I can't be too shocked Because I gave it an F also Oh my Shots fired I don't really think there's anything I can add that Tony didn't already say There's only one toy There's only one element of innovation It's the upper playfield With slings for flippers So it sucks It just sucks. So I don't care how innovative something is. If it's not fun, I can't give it credit for being meaningful. I know enjoyability is a different category, but I can't just count up stuff and say, well, look, it's got all these options. It's like, hey, look, you didn't go with bucket seats. They went with seats with spikes on them. Well, yeah, but it hurts, so I can't call that innovative. Now, all my time has been on a pro. I don't know why, because you can buy alleys for cheaper than pros were. But that said, the Jumbotron does look nice, but I'm sorry, it's just another screen. The Jumbotron makes sense. It does. It does make sense. So that's all getting into theme integration, which unfortunately isn't a category. To me, that's just integration. so while I don't view just playing clips as a particularly innovative concept granted it's being done on a nicer screen than just on dots but that's been done for a while so I just it doesn't to me it wasn't it just wasn't real it wasn't real innovation the disc would be more but the only problem with the disc is now I love me some triple spinning discs and they have those they surely would never take them away but the problem is that upper play field already sucks because you have no control because of the sling flippers. So why add a disc? It just made it even worse. So you're not going to get anything done up there. You already can't get anything done up there. So it's just because it compromises on the fun too much I just can't pass it. I just I respect the attempt but I don't give grades for respect. I give them for results. You guys are almost convincing me here. The result was a fail. No, you made some really good points. The Jumbotron, the thing is, since we combined the two, and most of the games sold were pros, most people aren't even going to see the Jumbotron. And maybe that's a little unfair to fail it because we blended the two together, but people can hate on me for choosing to do that. That's how I approach those. Jumbotron is neat, but I couldn't get it out of the F range because of just one little thing the LE had. I don't think there's a lot of WWE fans out there that you're going to get nasty emails. I think you're okay on this one, Darren. I'm aware of one podcaster who likes that game. Oh, really? Tommy Skinner with this flipping podcast. Oh, yeah. Our boy Tommy Skinner. Now, here's the thing. If you talk trash about Iron Maiden, it'll be what happens. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, no. We're stealing your thunder, Zach. That's your realm. Yeah. I just assumed you had to set up a filter that searched through everything, and if anywhere in the thing it said, I will kill you and just automatically moved it to the trash. Yeah, people stopped watching our show because of that review alone. So I'm okay with that. They say that, but in reality, they're still watching. They just loaded up on a private tab. My little green heart hopes so. Don't worry. It'll grow three sides as big once they learn that you were harder on WrestleMania. Your street cred's coming back, Zach. It will never be there. Well, let's move on to theme, guys. Theme? What about music and call-outs? Oh, sorry. Let's do that. We can do them in any order you want. I know I read you better than I do. For music and call-outs, I didn't mind it again. What am I liking this game so much for? I'm going to B-. Okay. I will say that's my highest grade. Music and call-outs for me, it's got Jerry the King Lawler. That's why it's the B- because his call-outs are – that's why I used to watch wrestling. I love that guy. The tunes are engaging. They're kind of upbeat. You get some hip-hop flair, which we oftentimes don't get in a pinball machine, so that's welcomed for me and my generation. And then you get the theme music for every character. So not that I listen to John Cena music in my car, but for me it's welcomed. It doesn't turn me off at all. But, again, it's nothing special. B-. Yeah. Well, especially for this game, that's pretty high praise. Absolutely. Tony, do you have high praise for music and call-outs? No, but I can see his point. I went with a D. Oh, wow. I could have, yeah. I'm sure you see his point from down there. Tony, Tony. That's rough. Oh, yeah. All my play time Obviously on this game Was in a bar setting So I never really heard the music I only ever heard call outs And the call outs were fine But the biggest thing with most everything Is almost everything has to do with wrestlers That I have no knowledge of I used to do wrestling Or I used to watch wrestling I was a big wrestling fan But the last time I paid any attention to wrestling Was mid to late 90s. Yeah, me too. So, most of it just didn't have any, none of it had any real grab to me. None of it really, nothing really stuck out to me. And I had to actually go listen to somebody play to remember anything from it. So, that just, if it can't even stick in memory, not even one thing about it could stick in my memory. I saw no reason to even give it an average. Okay. I went with B. Woo! I'm the bottom guy. Yeah. I thought the music integration was really good. They got all the themes for the various wrestlers. I think it sounds good while you're playing it. So the music really carries it. And call-ups work. I don't have an association with the name like Zach does, but I just think it was clean and polished. It's not muddy. It works for the theme. It doesn't just work for the theme. It works for pinball. And so I thought, oh, yeah. It's also a spoiler for me This is my highest mark too But yeah I think the music and call outs Are actually above average quite a bit above average Not great it won't go down in history As a great but I think anyone Who listens to it will be like you know what this is a lot Better than everything else about this game Yeah So now theme Yeah Theme Here we go Tell me about Rasslin This theme is just This theme needs a lot of help. For me, it's right there with Iron Maiden, one of our favorite themes, right? For me, it's a big old bad D. I don't think anybody really cares about – I take it back. A lot of people care about WWE. I just don't know if that crossover is as high as they would anticipate between pinball ownership and playability and wrestling. I could be wrong, but, yeah, theme. I think it's poop, man. and it's oily, grown men doing a fake sport. It's a D. Tony, do you agree? Do you agree? D. B. It's my highest rating. Oh, my God. Oh, Tony. Why? Why? Because wrestling is a huge fan base. And in all honesty, done right, you could turn out a wrestling game that is really good and does integrate the theme really well. I mean, Royal Rumble is an amazing wrestling-themed game. And the same thing could have happened here. It could be done well. It has the possibility to be done well. And I think that it's got a big chance and a big built-in fan base that can be grabbed, provided the game's actually halfway decent. That said, this game doesn't do any of those things, but that's not the theme's fault. Okay. I see where you're coming from. I lean more towards... You're protecting the theme. Yes. I lean more towards Zach's interpretation. The only problem, Zach, was you didn't go far enough. I gave the theme a pass because that's what it deserves. Here's the thing. Wrestling is a bad theme. This isn't even real wrestling. It's fake wrestling. So it's not even a sport. This is play acting. It's a niche appeal. WWF era was when the sport quote, I'm doing air quotes microphone, into my microphone was when this sport was popular no one likes it anymore except for John Cena because he gives a whole lot of money to charity and he's a cool dude everything else about it sucks, this thing sucks I bet you WWE paid Stern to do this run because I can't imagine they gave him money for this license strong takes doing this pin would have been like doing World Poker Tour today rather than 15 years ago. Oh, no. Not even close. No way. Yes. No way. I'm right. All of you and all the listeners know I'm right. Wrestling sells out massive stadiums multiple times a week. You know what I mean? Pinball players. We are a sophisticated lot. Oh, my. Our cognac and single mop scotches in both hands. Oh, whatever. I've been to it I have seen enough I guarantee you there are people that we've gone to there are people who make plenty of money there are people who are well who still enjoy wrestling I don't have a problem with wrestling I don't follow it anymore but I can still understand the draw from it it's just like it's just like watching stunt actors in a movie play fight. It's the same thing. Do you enjoy a good kung fu movie? I enjoy a good kung fu movie. That is complete... Look, if you want to like... I'm not trying to tell you not to like WWE. I understand that you're very sensitive about this. I'm very sensitive about that. That is not my position. My position simply is that this is a terrible theme. It was a stupid idea. Stern is probably ashamed of itself for choosing it. And they should have done UFC instead. obvious answer, hyper-violent, money-driven, more popular, real sport that would have sold more machines. I'll be 100% honest with you. I'm not sold on the more popular section of that. UFC, the whole mixed martial arts thing is bigger than boxing now. Well, that's fine. Boxing has crashed. I'm still not sold that it's bigger than dinner theater. Dinner theater. You know what? I agree on that. I agree on that. I don't think so. I think that the fan base for WWE, you're right, Tony. I think the fan base is huge. The problem is you look like a tool being a fan of WWE. You look like a macho guy by being a fan of UFC. And that, my friends, is what the argument held true to the Iron Maiden and the TNA thing that I've talked about before. That's right. We can't have tools in pinball. Of course not. No. It's not like doing monster trucks is a thing. No. I know that people like to go there because they'll sell you the whole seat, but you only need the edge. Hey, there's nothing wrong with going and seeing monster trucks. No, but it shouldn't be a pinball theme. Just like Oktoberfest, it shouldn't be a pinball theme. Listen, Oktoberfest is about, let me tell you, I can tell you exactly. I have a list right here on this paper of things that shouldn't be themed. Right, that's fine. I can tell you exactly why Oktoberfest would even be thought of as a pinball machine, and because it involves beer and boobs. That's the whole reason that it will exist. Sure, I understand. Just like how Andrew Highway thought that you could sell a Playboy machine in 2018. That's the difference. I get where the idea came from. That doesn't mean it actually works. Yeah, but hold up. That's not even on the same planet. One is having fun. I wouldn't have brought it up at all, but Tony decided to go down this route because he got sensitive about the monster. First the Rasslin put him sensitive, and now the monster trucks. Playboy is a for real theme that tries to take itself seriously. Cartoon, large-breasted women drinking large pails of ale. I think that's totally, that's fun and sporty. Playboy is tacky and gross. Sporty? Sporty. I have a new sport that I would like to watch I'm going to say it It's going to be more interesting than baseball Well, you know There's a reason we don't see more baseball pins We're Royals fans over there Yeah, they're not doing that great this year It's been a long time since there's been a baseball team But we won't be talking about that We're going to be talking about our last element Enjoy it, well, besides the cumulative score, of course But enjoyability, Zach. So how fun was this game for you? Okay, you know what? I've owned this game. I've owned WWE Pro or WrestleMania Pro. I didn't want it, but, boy, oh, boy, it was so cheap. And you said you can't turn down a deal. I will not turn down a deal. Now, this is hindsight. This was a bad business move on my part because I thought it's a brand-new pen. I'll play it for a couple weeks and sell it. Boy, oh, boy, did I have trouble selling this pen. So the first 50 games, I had fun. I thought, people are crazy. This thing has got a unique layout. I'm bouncing around up there. I'm trying to pin people. I'm trying to get all of these belts or whatever they call them in wrestling. But I thought, hey, this is fun. But then from game 51 on, I couldn't get this thing out of my game room quick enough. It was choppy. I was up there in the upper play field. I wanted to drain the ball. But then I realized once I drain it down to the lower third, what am I doing? Nothing. because I've got to get back up to the upper third to play these dang matches. So, I'm going to say minus. It wasn't very enjoyable. Okay. Tony. D. Wow. After all that impassioned theme defense, you ended up... No, the theme's the best thing. I think the theme's the best thing. They're different categories. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. It's interesting. What's in on it? What a dichotomy this is. I would have effed this on enjoyability. Really? Except for one thing and one thing only. What's that thing? Uh-oh. I never lost this game in tournament play. this was my golden god in tournament play. So, that's the only redeeming feature. Okay. I have beat players that I've never beaten on in any other game ever on this game. From a competitive angle, you are not alone. I've seen lots of people rate games just because they do well on them in that setting. So, I don't fault you for it. I did what you should have done, Tony. I gave it the F that it deserved. It, and I did not win it all the time, so maybe that's part of it. I remember once when we had it on location, early in that cycle, I was sitting down and someone was winning by quite a bit, and I wasn't even over by it. I think I mentioned, I wasn't sure, I don't know if there had been a new code patch or what. Someone I just offhandedly said, I don't really know what to do for the points on this. Someone there said, Well, Dennis, maybe you should stand and watch your opponent and see what they do so you can learn something about it. And I said, I don't want to know anything more about this game. I'm already done with it. I'd rather just lose. I'd rather just lose. I kept my honor and I lost. Because sometimes keeping your honor requires the difficult choice. So, yes, the thing with the enjoyability is I don't think there is anything at all fun about this game. I think it's the biggest miss Stern has had since Avengers, and it's arguably a worse game. I would say you'd probably have to go back to Rolling Stones to find a worse game from Stern. You don't even enjoy some of the shots? You're a shots guy. The problem is, again, it comes fundamentally down to the upper play field is a core component of the gameplay. The touch that you need, it's too delicate. You have no control. and I don't like the idea that no matter how good of a player I might become, that I can't have control up there. I can have control on World Poker Tour. I can have control on Grand Lizard, and these are not upper playfields that are kind to control. But I can't have control here because of a design decision. So that makes this entire game fall on its face. The layout only accomplishes a single thing to me, and that's theme integration. But a pin is not made to sit and collect dust. It's made to be played. I don't think it's inspired. The rules aren't enough to keep it compelling because while they're serviceable code, it's not fun code. There's nothing about it. I don't think it has a great light show. I mean, the only nice thing I can say about it is you have the LE, you get the Jumbotron. That's the only nice thing I can say, but it doesn't make it enjoyable. If I want to watch wrestling clips, I'll go to YouTube. I guess you don't like the gold armor too, huh? No. Yellow armor, in my view, like never works. Maybe it would have been Lord of the Rings and Hobbit, maybe. We're going to keep seeing that darn gold armor show up on pinball machines. So they use them all up. That's right. Star will make sure they use all those supplies. Just like we still have to keep having to have those arc mechanisms from Indiana Jones 4 showing up. Isn't that the arc there in Aerosmith? Now, hey, we're using what we got. The toy box. That's right. That's right. So, okay, so overall, it looks like, Zach, you came in at a C-. Yep, sorry, guys. Still no B here. Yeah. Tony, you came in at a D+, and I came in at a straight D. So, we didn't give it an F overall. No, there are way worse games than this. I expected, trying to come up with a game to get Zach, I mean, technically, he finally raised something less than a C, but only just barely. This is my lowest-reped game, guys. I know, but I wanted to send a message, and that message wanted you to go down at least another half-step. See, what we should have done, we should have done Grand Lizard, except for then the music would call out. I don't know if that's played Grand Lizard. I've not got enough time on Grand Lizard because it's just so d***y I don't care to play it. It is, in my view, one of the worst System 11s ever made. And I know. And I love System 11s, too. Yeah, well, I mean, it's hard to encounter them. And they did make 30 of them. And some of them are far worse than Grand Lizard. I mean, Bugs Bunny or Millionaire, I've heard. I've not even played Millionaire, and everyone says it's the worst one they ever did. And Bugs Bunny's so bad, I have trouble fathoming that. Bugs Bunny's so bad, if Millionaire's worse than Bugs Bunny, I would assume that, like, every time you plunge the ball, you have a chance to just have your heart stop working. Yeah. Well, we've covered all the topics I had in the outline, And so, Zach, unless you have anything else you wanted to talk about with us. I have to add, because you guys aren't talking about video games, and that's fine. But I like video games. I don't get to play much because, well, there's pinball, and that's so much better. But what are you guys' favorite video game consoles? Like, the greatest video game console of all time. I want to hear what you guys have to say. PC. Oh, come on, Tony. You want console? Fine. Let me think, Tony. Let me think about it. There's only one right answer, by the way. I mean, for me, and this is going to be so tainted by nostalgia, but for me, if I have to pick one console as the greatest console of all time, it would have to be the original Nintendo Entertainment System. And the reason for that is that is the console that was responsible for saving us, us as a society, from the video game crash of 1983. Atari and all those manufacturers that were putting out cartridges for the 2600 completely exploited the public, turned out shovelware hand over fist. It just decimated the video game industry. It was at a point, which a lot of pinball people would probably love, but it was at a point where people thought home video games are not a market anymore. People will only do stuff in arcades. We can't. This is not viable. People won't trust it anymore. Nintendo came in, took out a system with a very similar chip set to what the Atari came out with. Atari 2600 almost came out with the same chip that Nintendo used. It was out when they made their machine. They also, they, the Nintendo, had another chip to handle the graphics, so it looked way better. They're both 8-bit systems, but Nintendo looked way better. They did the Nintendo seal of quality, where they would actually stamp a gold symbol on games, saying, we have gone over this. It is not shovelware. This is a real video game. Quality went way up The industry recovered Other manufacturers got into play If Nintendo did not come out with the NES There is no Xbox There is no Playstation There is no Dreamcast They drove all of it And while I do not own a current Switch Or any modern Nintendo console And I have not owned a Nintendo console since the Super Nintendo I still have to give them props For saving the industry And for that reason That console has to be number one objectively it's number one. Dang. Yes. That was good. That was really good. I have hard arguments. It's hard to find arguments against that because it's valid on all of your points. I will say I do own a Nintendo Switch. It is my first Nintendo console since the Super Nintendo. But I've owned every single iteration of the Game Boy Since the original Game Boy came out And I think the ability to go handheld That they gave us with the original Game Boy With the kind of battery life we saw off the original Game Boy When it first came out Is one of the biggest things that have hit video games Since probably the first home systems came on The ability to set in a car and play games the ability to be sitting on a park bench and play games. I mean, we see it everywhere now. It's on your phone. It's on everything. And that all started with the original Game Boy system. And I think the original Game Boy system still has some of the best games that are still fun and playable. Some of the ports they put on the original system from other systems worked out really well. and all in all I think that started a huge chunk of what became the modern gaming industry was when they shifted to the portability allowed by such a system and every iteration they've put out yes their new consoles their new systems but they've all led to the same thing up to the point where they've almost put themselves out of business thanks to the cell phone because it does everything that you would want to do on a thing and you already have it with you. And their move to do the Switch, where they've fully combined the consoles and the portability, was a really good move on their part. I do find myself, I take my Switch to work some days and I will sit there and play Stardew Valley on my breaks and at lunch. And then I will go home and I will drop it into the cradle and I will play Stardew Valley at home. Or I will play Link at home. Or I will play Mario Rabbids at home. Or, I mean, again, I will play them and then go home and drop it in the cradle and play some more. Or I'll pull it out of the cradle and take it to work and play it at work or play it when I'm riding in a car. And it's just brought the two things together. I think the portability that they added from the original Game Boy system when it first came out has been one of the biggest things in video games. and why I think just the entire Game Boy series up to the combined with Switch would make me put it on the Game Boy. And now just Nintendo. Nintendo owns the console market. Yes, PlayStation is better graphically. Xbox 360 is better graphically. They have more games. They have more games that are aimed at the gamer. But nobody has the pedigree that comes out of Nintendo. And I see that as somebody who hasn't owned a Nintendo console Until the Switch Which is the portable one Well you guys just dropped the mics there I can appreciate that And I can now say I'm incorrect in the thought that I had And so much so that I'm not going to utter The thoughts that I had regarding this console You would like to hear your thoughts Yeah utter it You were so wrong on all the pinball stuff too But that didn't stop you It sounds like I've got the pinball thing down You guys have got the video game thing down. I like that. Oh, ouch. I would say, I was going to say Super Nintendo, just because it's such a bad console, and I love most of the classic games on there, but you guys dropped nostalgia and history and stats, so I have nothing. I do have a soft spot in my heart for the Sega Dreamcast, but Objective-A-Mobile is great. I don't think it's a great console, but boy, oh, boy, did I love some of those titles that they had for that system. Well, to throw you a couple of bones, Super Nintendo was an incredible advancement in the technology of home console. In fact, really the first notable major advancement. I still remember when I got that and I put in the Zelda game and it was raining. Oh, yeah. Whoa. It blew my little mind. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with Super Nintendo. It's amazing. What a great way to separate in the 16-bit era. And, arguably, Super Nintendo has better games than the original NES overall. Yeah. The NES has a lot of... There's a big reason why a lot of people are really excited about the Super NES Classic. Oh, yeah. And the big question was, why didn't you put as many games in as you did with the regular Nintendo Classic? You had plenty to choose from. Why didn't you do it? Dreamcast. I never owned a Dreamcast. I played it a few times. The thing I thought I would go ahead and throw out regarding the Dreamcast is, arguably, I think you could make a really good case that the Dreamcast was the most ahead-of-its-time console ever created. It's just, there was a lot of innovation. Unfortunately, you couldn't fully take advantage of all of it when that happened. And so, the system didn't do as well for Sega as they would have liked. But there was a lot of really good ideas that were embedded in there. that I... And it had good games. Sure, sure. Oh yeah, remember Power Stone? Power Stone was awesome. Yeah, I liked and I mean, that was the system where I started my playing of the Soul Calibur series to the point where me and Mike, who's co-hosted with us before, would literally start playing Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast and that is what we would do for an entire night. He'd be like, hey, let's go get some food. Then we'd come back and we'd play Soul Calibur for another, like, seven hours until we're, like, passing out. You should have entered Evo. I could have back then. Yeah. You could have been great. You could have been a big star. You could have been a contender. I could have been somebody. Yeah. That was the last time. with Soul Calibur, the original Soul Calibur was the last time I think I was really a good, good fighting game player. And I think I full on could have done it back then with the kind of hours I had and the kind of play. Because we were at the point where there were no combos that you couldn't do. There were no blocks were happening all the time. It was we were solid. I could have been somebody back then. Won those big pots, those tournaments. Yeah. Because there weren't any pinball tournaments back then either. True. Okay, well, did you have anything else, Zach? No, I appreciate you guys answering that. That's why we all love the Collected Gamers podcast, because you guys can diversify and talk about the numerous things that we love as hobbyists. So for that, thank you so much. Well, we appreciate you and the other 11 of you. It makes it worth our time. Well, I'll go ahead and close out the show As a reminder, you can listen to Zach Or more preferably Watch him and Greg in action Reviewing and destroying your favorite games On Straight Down the Middle, a pinball show We have links to the YouTube channel And to the audio podcast version in the show notes You can also always reach out to us Here at Eclectic Gamers Podcast Best way to reach us is either via email EclecticGamersPodcast.gmail.com Or on Facebook.com Slash Eclectic Gamers Podcast we're also available on Twitter never ever on Twitter and Instagram is eclectic underscore gamers and in two weeks we will be back we will probably have at least two guests and we will break down all the major video game announcements of E3 but if there's any notable pinball stuff do not fret pinball fans we will put in the pinball portion at the front like we always do for convenience sake until then I'm Dennis I'm Tony and that was Zach so thanks Zach hey thanks guys you guys are the best