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Episode 72 – Jack Guarnieri from JJP and Dr John!

Head2Head Pinball·podcast_episode·2h 35m·analyzed·Dec 3, 2018
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Dr. John on Hard Quiz fame; massive Kiss update; Monsters leaked playfield details; Primus stock concerns.

Summary

Head to Head Pinball Podcast Episode 72 features Dr. John Cussin discussing his recent appearance on ABC's Hard Quiz (watched by over 1 million viewers) and his pinball collection, followed by extensive pinball news coverage including a massive Kiss code update (267 lines of changes), leaked photos of the rumored Monsters pinball machine with detailed playfield analysis, discussion of Todd Tuckey's book drama, and updates on Primus pinball stock levels.

Key Claims

  • Kiss received a code update with 267 lines of release notes after 12+ months without revision, redesigning wizard mode with 15 city combos

    high confidence · Martin and Ryan discussed the Kiss code update in detail, noting the extensive release notes and designer Lonnie D. Robb's work.

  • Over one million people tuned in to watch Dr. John on ABC's Hard Quiz

    high confidence · Hosts stated this as fact during Dr. John's introduction

  • Monsters pinball will have lower playfield on Premium and LE models, similar to ACDC implementation

    medium confidence · Martin stated 'I have heard that' regarding lower playfield for Premium and LE; Dwight Sullivan likely involved given clear inserts requirement

  • Dr. John has approximately 25 machines in his collection including Iron Maiden (recently sold), Deadpool, multiple EMs, and classic titles

    high confidence · Dr. John discussed his collection in detail, mentioning recent sale and specific machines

  • Monsters pinball features a Zap button mechanic with nine ways to light super jackpots that can be stacked and cancelled at player discretion

    medium confidence · Detailed playfield description extracted from leaked photos, though not officially confirmed

  • Primus pinball stock is severely limited with only 51 units available (or fewer) based on website cart restriction

    high confidence · Martin reported attempting to add units to cart and receiving stock limitation notice

  • Stern will not publicly comment on Monsters until January release

    medium confidence · Hosts noted 'they're not going to comment on it because I believe they're not going to release this thing until January'

  • Dr. John's daughter Emily is ranked the top female player in Australia in the adult division after junior age rule change

    high confidence · Dr. John stated this directly during interview

Notable Quotes

  • “The drama behind the book is probably more interesting than the book ever would have been”

    Martin (paraphrasing someone he spoke with) @ Todd Tuckey book discussion section — Commentary on Bookgate controversy becoming bigger story than original content

  • “267 lines... The amount of code that went behind each one of those lines is staggering. This is a massive update.”

    Martin @ Kiss code update section — Highlights unprecedented scale of Kiss code revision

  • “Hello, Kickstarter backers, which is John and me. I think we're probably the only two people.”

    Ryan C. (reading Stern book Kickstarter update) @ Stern book update section — Humorous commentary on minimal backer base for Stern book Kickstarter

  • “No one gives a shit about Primus, but we still knew about it a month in advance.”

    Martin @ Monsters leak discussion — Commentary on inevitability of Stern machine leaks

  • “It looks just like Monster Bash... it's just maybe like a small amount. The torso dude is kind of where Frankenstein is, and there's a left and a right ramp... how many games have a fan layout? Like almost every game.”

    Ryan C. @ Monsters playfield analysis — Contextualizes layout similarities as industry standard rather than design copy

  • “There's no points down there... It's such a waste of space.”

    Ryan C. @ Lower playfield discussion (ACDC comparison) — Critical assessment of ACDC's underplayfield design as cautionary precedent

  • “If you miss out on a really fun level play field, then it's not really the same game at all, is it?”

    Martin @ Premium/LE differentiation discussion — Justifies playfield differences between Pro and Premium/LE as legitimate product differentiation

  • “I woke up in the morning and it's a bit weird because it's one of those websites where it doesn't hide the amount of stock that's left... I just went to add hundreds of the cart and it said, sorry, you can only add 51 or something.”

Entities

Dr. John CussinpersonEmily CussinpersonMartin RobbinspersonRyan CpersonLonnie D. RobbpersonChristopher FranchipersonTodd TuckeypersonDwight Sullivanperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Todd Tuckey book project involved contract dispute where publisher's release letter was publicly posted by author, violating confidentiality agreement; escalated when third party selectively quoted email

    high · Martin and Ryan discussed 15-page response email and Todd's decision to publicly share full correspondence after selective quoting; hosts noted Todd was following initial instructions before situation escalated

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Positive reception to massive Kiss code update; community sentiment improving after extended wait period and code quality validation

    medium · Martin highlighted 267-line changelog as evidence of substantive improvements; noted Kiss was only unreleased Stern title still awaiting major update

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Christopher Franchi incorporating hidden tributes and Easter eggs into Monsters playfield design, consistent with his previous work on Batman 66 and other titles

    medium · Hosts noted hand-drawn art by Franchi known for detailed artistic references; mentioned absence of his signature 'Hexagon' element as noteworthy

  • ?

    leak_detection: Monsters pinball playfield details leaked via photos from European distributor viewing; multiple images captured by mobile phone to obscure traceability

    high · Gary Stern showed game to distributors in Europe; leaked photos enabled detailed playfield analysis including mechanics list, art direction by Christopher Franchi, feature descriptions

  • $

    market_signal: Primus pinball experiencing severe stock constraints with only 51 units (or fewer) available in distribution channel

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.468

0:00
you're listening to the head-to-head people podcast find us on facebook email us at Welcome everybody to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. This is episode 72 and my name's Martin and with me it's Ryan C. What up pinball people?
0:40
We've got a big episode. It's from the MTV thing. Kevin Manning knows what I'm talking about. Yes, he does. It's a joke for one person. Good way to start the show, Manning. We have a big episode. We've got Dr. John joining us. We've got Jersey Jack joining us. We might have a Roger Sharp joining us as well. But first, let's introduce our guest all the way from Queensland. You might have seen him on Hard Quiz last week on ABC. Over one million people tuned in to watch Dr. John represent the pinball community. How are you, Dr. John Cussin? Good evening, lads. How are you? Good to meet you. We are very good. And, you know, people already knew who you were, Dr. John and Emily. and you've decided that the fame that you had already wasn't enough, so you decided that you wanted to go on television, onto Hard Quiz. We explained it last week. Keen to know what the experience was like for you.
1:40
The lead-up was, I think, just as hard as the actual taping. We were watching it one night at home with the wife and she said, you should go on that, you know, all this trivial rubbish. So I put an application in online and got a letter about three months later. Had to go to an audition where we filled in a, I think it was about an eight-page trivia questionnaire and then had to stand up and do a pretend buzz around and then had to explain why our topic would be interesting to other viewers. Wow. So they're really filtering out the riffraff here, right? There were about 40 people at the audition and three of us got selected.
2:19
I have these auditions in every state in Australia, So there's a lot of people trying to get on. And so it's a win. And what do you win? Was it a million dollars? Is that what you won? Well, the big brass mug is worth a million dollars to me. It's a shitty brass mug. It's not a shitty brass mug. It's a big brass mug. And it's pretty heavy. Okay, cool. I'll let you stroke my mug one day. So the one thing that we noted about, well, there's a couple of things. First of all, some of the questions were relatively easy. Some of them were tough. They're probably easy to us because we're in pinball. I kept thinking to myself, people that would have been watching that show would have gone, how the hell would anybody know those answers? Because they're just, it's not in the normal world of people, I guess. Correct. I was very impressed with the question writing myself. I spoke to one of the producers after the show and said, where the heck did you get that Steve Kordek question from? which is a very random question on what was the last game you worked on. But they do a lot of research. They apparently rang around some pinheads around Australia and each donated 10 what they thought were very hard questions. And, of course, the first five questions in the round are designed to be stolen by your opponents if they have any idea of what's going on. And luckily, none of them knew anything about pinball, which made it a bit easier for me. That was the second thing I was going to mention, was you were stealing those other contestants' questions, like, all over the place. A little unfair advantage. We didn't know.

Martin @ Primus stock section — Demonstrates severe stock constraints on Primus distribution

Bowen Kerins
person
Jonathan Yousmanperson
Gary Sternperson
Lucasperson
Kissgame
Monstersgame
Ghostbustersgame
Primusgame
Iron Maidengame
Stern Pinballcompany
Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
Hard Quizevent
Head to Head Pinball Podcastorganization
ABC iViewproduct

high · Martin attempted to add multiple units to cart and received stock limitation message; indicates supply/demand imbalance

  • $

    market_signal: Lower playfield implementation (Premium/LE only) creates significant differentiation in game experience between Pro and higher tiers, justifying price premium

    medium · Martin argued missing lower playfield makes it 'not really the same game at all,' suggesting players may feel forced to purchase Premium/LE despite cost; compares to prior releases where Pro adequacy reduced LE sales

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern Kickstarter book project experiencing update delays; micro-update announcing 'bigger update' two days later suggests production challenges

    medium · Ryan read Kickstarter update promising delayed big update; hosts joked about only two backers (Martin and Ryan themselves), suggesting project scope/interest issues

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern implementing strategic feature distribution across Pro/Premium/LE tiers: lower playfield exclusive to Premium/LE with additional button for multiplayer access

    medium · Ryan and Martin discussed playfield mechanics only appearing on home-use Premium/LE models; extra flipper button for controlled playfield activation during multiball

  • ?

    product_strategy: Kiss received massive code update (267-line changelog) redesigning wizard mode with 15 city combos after 12+ months without revision

    high · Martin detailed extensive release notes and confirmed with Stern that Lonnie D. Robb completed entire update; players requested update for extended period

  • ?

    product_strategy: Monsters expected January 2019 release; Premium and LE models will feature lower playfield mechanic absent from Pro model

    medium · Hosts stated 'not going to release this thing until January' and confirmed lower playfield on Premium/LE tiers based on leaked specs

  • ?

    product_concern: Kiss Gene Head mechanical issue remains unresolved post-code update; ball save compensation acknowledged as inadequate solution by community members

    high · Lucas posted Facebook feedback praising code but noting Gene Head ejection problems; Ryan and Martin confirmed ball save doesn't address root issue or restore 'fun factor'

  • ?

    technology_signal: ACDC underplayfield design established negative precedent for lower playfield implementation; limited shot variety and miniaturized flippers reduced engagement

    medium · Ryan stated ACDC underplayfield 'sucks' and 'waste of space'; hosts discussed only five shots available and questioned mini-flipper usability for home players

    • 3:56
    I went out with an Alaskan girl for five years. Not her, a different one. And then I did martial arts for 35 years, so when I heard Bruce Lee, I went, you guys are in trouble. So what's around the twist? That was the one that that woman had on. I'd never even heard or seen this show. Never heard of it. What? I bought the box when I got home to watch it with my kids. It's a bit dated now, but it's probably a piece of about it. One of my favourite shows is the kids, so it must have been my generation and not you old friends. Oh, they should do it around the twist pinball machine, Ryan. Ah, that'd be great. Around the twist multi-ball. The donkop the multi-ball. Donkop the wizard mode. Oh, God. So, anyway. But it was a fun experience. It was great to watch. I mean, I streamed it live on my Twitch channel, and Ryan streamed it live on our head Facebook page, and a lot of people watched. It was good. You did end up streaming it, Marty. That's why I jumped into your stream. I'm like, are you going to stream it? Because I'll just watch it if you're going to stream it to everyone, and you're like, yeah, no, you do it, because I'm just going to play pinball. Okay, anyway. I just lined up an iPad on the pinball machine next to me, put a camera on it, played pinball while everyone was watching that. Okay, cool. Thanks for that, guys. It certainly gave it a wider audience. Hopefully some of my friends in the US got to see it that way because there were a lot of interest from people I know in America who wanted to see it. Yeah, it is on ABC iView, and I'll link that in the show notes, but I believe you will need a VPN to get that to work. If you want to watch a crappy cam job, it's been, I think, a cam job.
    5:39
    Is that what they're calling it? Oh, right. Okay, cool. They've been calling that for ages. Yeah, okay. So anyway, take care, Tom.
    5:46
    All my people call Cameron, hello. So what you said before about the fact that you go to these friends, there was something with the other thing I wanted to talk about is that you do also travel around the world for pinball and other things, but you have been to a number of locations and I guess tournaments around the world as well. Yeah, I'm lucky with my work. There's usually some conferences on overseas that I can use tax write-offs for, but I've been to Texas Pinball Festival twice. I've been to Pentastic New England a couple of times. We could be sure to be in Las Vegas in New Year's Eve at the end of 2017. Been to New Zealand five times.
    6:29
    So, yeah, we get to travel, and now that I've got the excuse of having a good pinball-playing daughter, it's all classified as daddy-daughter time. Right. Okay, well, these segues are just right in themselves, John, because the next thing I want to talk about is that, you know, what you're originally well known for is your YouTube channel and the tutorial videos you do, which is Dr. John and Emily.
    6:51
    Yeah, we set them up probably about a year and a half ago. There was so much content on the internet about how to play pinball, especially from a higher end level with tutorials and rules. And Bowen does a great job, of course, as the instigator of that. And then I watch a lot of Twitch. Emily watches a lot of Twitch. and there wasn't really a lot aimed at trying to get children into pinball. And so that's what we set out to do by having a child play who had a bit of knowledge, and unfortunately the more we did, the better she got, and now she's become a little bit of a monster to beat in tournaments.
    7:30
    Yeah, I think she's ranked the top kid in Australia and the top female in Australia. Well, it's a hard quiz. Yeah, we just changed the rules last month, but the junior age went from 16 to 18, so she's been knocked back, I think, two pegs on the junior scale. She's still the number one ranked female in Australia in adult world. Okay. And so another thing you did mention on Hard Quiz, this is all I know about you from what I watched on that 30 minutes of TV, that you said you had, I think, 25 machines in your collection? About that, yeah. What are some of the favourites? We don't want to hear all 25, but what are some of your favourites? I'm sitting in my games room recording this now so the number one popular with the family is Harlem Blowtrotters because my nine year old loves that game mostly so whenever she says Daddy let's play bingo it's right to Harlem Wizard of Oz is my wife's favourite Game of Thrones is one of my favourite just to play different tactics of course we've got the Iron Maiden L.A. Lord of the Rings Doctor Who Total Nuclear Annihilation I love a bit of John in the Monarch. And sitting right behind me is the brand new Deadpool Alley, which only arrived last Wednesday.
    8:45
    And apart from that, we've got about eight EMs and an ACDC and a few others. But, yeah, the hard... You just sold your Iron Maiden. Yeah, that's Jersey Jack's fault.
    8:59
    We'll talk about that a little bit later, maybe, in the flip-out section. But, John, how long did it take for Iron Maiden to sell? So I made and sold, I think it took about 30 seconds, posted it on our AA forum, which is our local Aussie arcade, and the chap I sold it to had just sold his about three weeks before and was having extreme buyer's regret. So we got a alert when mine came up and it rang me 30 seconds after I posted it and snapped it up. Okay.
    9:33
    That'll be you in a couple of weeks' time, I guess. Yeah, should we head to the pinball news? There's a lot of news to cover this week. Yeah, let's do it. And we'll start with code, because we love talking about code, don't we, Ryan? I do. I know you do. You hate it, yeah? Well, I hate it when you have to, you know, dive deep into little intricacies around it, like this score's 1 million and that's 1.4 million. I don't give a shit about that. But I do like code, and I like code updates. I like code updates that will enhance the game experience. And we had a massive code update this week with Kiss Code finally being released just over 12 months after its last revision.
    10:19
    And I counted how many lines there are in the release notes, right? Have a guess how many lines they've put there to note what's changed.
    10:33
    Uh, 100? More. Okay. 150? More. 200? More. 250? 267. Wow. Okay. So, just, like, think about it. That's actually just the title of what actually changed. The amount of code that went behind each one of those lines is staggering. This is a massive update. I didn't read what all of the updates were. I didn't have the time on my hands to read 260 lines, but I kind of thought, I wonder if this is a lot of code, because I did go down to a couple of details, and it seemed to be very detailed, and more detailed than normal. So I thought, I wonder if this is somebody else finishing off, because I think it was Lonnie D. Robb. And I messaged someone at Stern. I said, is this your work? and he's like, no, it's all line D rough. He's been working on it for a long time, and it's all him. So he started it, he finished it, it's all him.
    11:40
    Yeah, and look, the main things that have really changed are they said they've redesigned the wizard mode. There's now city combos.
    11:50
    Now, I did make a note of this. So if you do, like, depending on what you do, I'm not sure how it's going to work, but there's probably a city that's going to come up. So if you do left ramp, right ramp, that's Chicago. Right ramp, left ramp is Pittsburgh. Left orbit to left scoop is Seattle. There's 15 of them.
    12:10
    So there you go. I don't know if you want to know. Left ramp, right ramp, left ramp, right ramp is London.
    12:19
    This is interesting, Manny. It's really boring. But they've also taken away the ability to choose a city at the start of the game. yeah everyone wanted the city to do something I guess they could never figure it out to mean something or a perk from the get go so now I guess it's like I mean what other game does it is it Star Trek there's those hidden combos like we talked about it once there's Zulu and what was that the Zulu did you say wasn't it Zulu yep it was Zulu it's correct yep Zulu, Cthulhu and Mahilu and Bones combo. I know that one. Bone and combo. And I think they just give you points. I'm not sure what else it gives you, but I think this gives you something else. I don't know. It's in the show notes. If you have Kiss, you're going to enjoy this update because you've been waiting a long time. Everyone has been bagging you for keeping Kiss, and now there's only one pinball machine that left that people haven't sold the pinball machine yet, and that is Ghostbusters. Ghostbusters, yeah. I'm guessing that'll come out, I don't know, January, or who knows when it's going to come out, but that's the only one left that people have been screaming for. I'm sure everyone wants an update for every machine, you know, but we can't be all as lucky as the Metallica and those games that got those surprise updates. Yeah, look, and the only thing I... I mean, because, as I said, it's over 267 lines of things. What I didn't see was whether they've added anything to manage the gene head. so the reason why I say that is because a good friend of the show, Lucas he pretty much put up a post on Facebook saying the code is fantastic but the gene head is still a problem as far as ejecting straight down the middle there is a ball save on it yes there is, right and well done, there's a ball save, but But, you know, there should be the ability to somehow either reduce the power or angle the head differently. You can't do that. So you've got to compensate by having a ball safe. And that's still not fun. Like, it's actually not fun. When that happens and you go, well, usually you're hoping that the ball doesn't go up the side and then the ball safe goes off and then it drains, right? Because that happens quite a bit. but it's still a bit of a bummer for that to happen when you're in the middle of playing this game and it goes down the middle and you're like, okay, shit, now I've got to hope that my ball comes back.
    14:58
    Well, if it happens during multiple as well, I think it doesn't save. Well, it used to not save, and I'm not sure about it now, but it is a mood kill when that happens. I mean, I haven't played America's Most Haunted in a long time, and I was playing on the weekend, and that scoop hit the top of the spring shot or it shot straight down the middle, and yes, it was a ball save, but then, yeah, it kind of kills the mojo. And because of the ball save, it can also be a false ball save where it lands on the flipper, you hit it, it hits a post, then drains. You shouldn't really get that back, but you do.
    15:30
    So, yeah, that's Kidders. Yeah, there you go. Moving on. Next thing. So there's been an update on the Todd Tuckey book incident. Let's call it Bookgate.
    15:44
    Yeah. and I was talking to someone on the weekend and he said something really funny that the drama behind the book is probably more interesting than the book ever would have been and that's just a bit of a joke you know like no disrespect to Todd Tucky he's had a very interesting career but it's just ridiculous because no one really cared that much about the book before but now that everyone's airing the drama and I'm not going to go too much into it because I stopped myself from reading it Marty I read the whole thing I'm going to read it out. Okay. Well, let me just say my one thing then. It was like a 15-page response to the original email, and I believe at the bottom of the email, the guy said, you know, we're releasing for you from the contract. If anyone asks you about it, like, please don't go into details. You know, just be quiet and say that we've come to an agreement and you're not going to be part of the rest of the book. It was something like that. I'm not going to give a direct quote. Don't have it in front of me. I'm just paraphrasing. Now, Todd Tucky then posted that pretty much exactly on the thread. Yeah. Like, he was following the guy's instructions, right? Yep. And then the shit just hit the fan after that. So I'm like, what was Todd Tucky meant to actually do? Well, that's exactly right. And I think what really forced his hand was that when that, whoever that guy is, I think what you called him, like, nasty Canadian guy. Yeah. Not Jeff Schell, it was the other one. Yeah. And the guy had actually, you know, taken a whole paragraph out of the email when he was quoting the email. And Todd's like, well, if you're just going to try and edit some of that to try and prove your point, I'm going to show everybody everything. And that's exactly what he did.
    17:32
    And it was actually, you know what, I've got to tell you, it was really interesting because before that I was kind of like, you know what, I can kind of see both sides of this. Now I can't see both sides. like Todd was just doing what he does and yeah it's all just gone pretty bad so anyway there you go book date whatever yeah I was going to read the rest of it but I'm like I don't actually I read the entire thing and it wasn't like one of those popcorn moments where I was just like oh my god I'm loving this drama I was just really curious to know I guess the behind the scenes when it comes to it because like okay So I do lots of contract negotiations as part of my work, and it's very rare that it gets to such a state that it gets nasty. So this was nasty. So I was just kind of curious with my contract manager hat on just to kind of be a fly on the wall to see what sort of exchange would happen, and we got to see it.
    18:36
    Okay. So there you go. That's why I was interested. So it was fun. I mean, this is another opportunity to talk about Jonathan Houston's Kimball Magazine No. 5, who releases these things and they take a while, but it comes out with no drama.
    18:51
    Yeah, that's exactly right. Jonathan or Yonathan, he doesn't mind being called either. John, you probably have that. You're a collector of Kimball stuff. It's sitting there as part of my dietary fibre. today is. It gives me something to do. It's a very thick book.
    19:14
    Better than our... We got an update, didn't we, Marty? I kick-started the Stern book along with you. I got both of you. We got an update. We did get an update. We're almost cutting pinball updates now, saying, here's the latest update. Sorry, I can't tell you very much. But tell me another one. You can do the honours this week, then. Can you read out the update?
    19:36
    It just is, but there's no update. Okay. It says... No, this is awesome. It says, hello, Kickstarter backers, which is John and me. I think we're probably the only two people. It says, I know you guys are waiting for an update. I'm sorry we've been quiet this month, but I promise we have been making progress. This is just a micro-update to let you know that we'll be posting a bigger update on Monday.
    20:04
    Yay. What is it? Ryan? Just listen. This is a micro-update to let you know that we will be posting a bigger update on Monday, which was two days later than this email.
    20:20
    Just wait two days and give us the big bloody update. I think it's because they were keeping track of the... There was a pin-side thread and someone found a picture of him on a holiday or something and everyone started photoshopping him with stick holes saying, I'm wasting it, Muddy, and I don't know. That to me is funny. I don't like the nasty drama stuff, but when people start photoshopping people, that's when I'm there with Hulk on. Anyway, moving on to more important news. Yes. Monsters. Rumored title, but I guess we've seen almost the entire game, Muddy. So he's still a rumor.
    20:56
    There were some leaked photos. As is tradition, right? the day that Stern surprised us with the pinball machine, I mean, even Primus, like, no one gives a shit about Primus, but we still knew about it, you know, a month in advance. So, yeah, months and images leaked. It seems that Gazza, Gary Stern, was in Europe showing, I believe, a couple of distributors what's coming up for Stern, and someone snapped up some pictures, and then someone took pictures of those pictures on a mobile phone, maybe to not have any trace that, you know, who was taking the photos. I'm not sure, Marty. Yeah. So it's happened. It's pretty much the machine. So the feedback that I've heard, and this has been overwhelming about what they've seen, is that it looks just like Monster Bash.
    21:54
    Now, the layouts? This is what they're saying. Like, well, I don't know. People say, oh, yeah, it looks just like... And I actually asked, like, where's the... Do you mean the layout? And they said, yeah, because, you know, that shot, that's just like the wolf and that one's like... And I'm looking at this picture going, no, it doesn't look anything like Monster Bash. But you're seeing monsters, but that's the similarity. Okay. You've got two ramps. I think in the... There's a little thing that tells you the features, and this is the part that kind of confused me. You got three pop bumpers, a left orbit spinner, grandpa's trapdoor scoop. That's just a scoop, okay? That's just making it seem like it's a toy. Grandpa's trapdoor. Sculpted Herman torso, magnetized ball catch. So that sounds like Wolverine, but I'm pretty sure that's further up, kind of like where the Monster Bash Frankenstein's monster thing is.
    22:49
    But it's a torso, so I guess he won't have his whole body there, like Frankenstein. Left metal ramp, flap-up panel, right wire return ramp. What does a flap-up ramp mean? Does that mean that it's going up or down? Bicycle girl ramp. I hate those. See, I mean, from the picture, it doesn't really look like that, but I guess that's just a grainy photo.
    23:11
    Spot bash toy underneath coil diverter off ramp. Okay, I'm guessing that's what it is, yep. So it's bicycle girl.
    23:20
    Turnaround flip-up ramp. What does that mean? A turnaround flip-up ramp. Is that like... Turnaround flip-up ramp. That sounds like it's the one from Champ Hub.
    23:32
    Turnaround at 180 degrees, but I can't see where that would possibly be on the playfields. The other one is Dragula sculpted toy. You guys watched Munsters. What's Dragula? Is that like a rip-off of Dracula? No, it's the hotted-up car that you do around America in. Okay, yeah. It's a custom-made car. Rob Zombie used it as well. Okay. Left shooter, lane kicker. So it looks similar to the eject on Medieval Madness, where you kind of shoot it up the left, if you guys have the photo in front of you, and then you shoot it up the left, it will kind of hit the side of the cabinet, and then I guess it kind of, like there'll be a one-way gate there or something, and then the ball falls down, and then I'm guessing it will either save the ball there for some reason, maybe it's a multiple lock, I'm not sure, and then you can see it will shoot it back up around the orbit. So that's a feature. And the rest is just color-changing LEDs and hand-drawn art by Christopher Franchi, known for Batman 66, The Beatles, but missing there is his most famous art piece, The Hexagon. Guardians of the Galaxy. I know. So that artwork looks good. It's extremely grainy, so we can't see any details. You can just kind of see color blobs.
    24:50
    And does it look like it's got pop-up targets in front of the ramps? Did we say that? I don't think so. I think that's just the... Or are they just inserts? They're just inserts. I think they're just like flashing lights and clear inserts. So you know Dwight Sullivan will be involved when clear inserts are there because he's the specialist. All right. So my question to you is, do you think it's just like Monster Bash?
    25:14
    I think it... No. It's just maybe like a small amount. The torso dude is kind of where Frankenstein is, and there's a left and a right ramp, and there's a scoop where it is on Monster Bash, and it has orbits. I mean, how many games have a fan layout? Like almost every game. Right, right. You could say Lord of the Rings is just like Monster Bash. Yeah, it is. It's exactly the same. That sort of layout is that sort of layout. And as we've seen with Guardians of the Galaxy, it plays nothing like Metallica because the rules are completely different, so you have a different experience.
    25:52
    There are game instructions. I probably won't go through them because I think it's going to be more fun to actually play with them, but there will be a button called the Zap button, and there's a cool little thing, but there's basically super jackpots, and it sounds a little bit like Ghostbusters, but there's nine ways to light a super jackpot, and you can stack them. and the way I thought of it is, is it like the billion-point shot on AFM or the castle hurry-ups on Medieval Madness where you can cash them in or you can keep them building up and they're worth exponentially more, but instead of it kind of timing out like it does in those two games, you've got a button to cancel it and save it up for later. So a risk-reward super jackpot that builds there.
    26:38
    Great. Yeah, great. Lastly, this is the pro. the Premium and Alley are yet to be kind of seen playfield-wise.
    26:48
    What we're hearing, Marty, is that the Premium and Alley will have a lower playfield. Yes, I have heard that. So the last time Stern did a lower playfield was... ACDC. That wasn't a good thing. Oh. It's such a waste of space. Yeah, why does it suck? I don't know why, but it just sucks. I'll tell you why. There's no points. I'll tell you why. There's no points down there. Yeah, eight is no points down there, so they have made lucrative. But they are little flippers.
    27:19
    All you're really doing is five shots and loot. Five shots is a lot for a little play field. For a little play field? Oh, come on. If you just fly all and chip flip, you'll hit all five. Nah. What about Stewie Pimble? How many shots are in that?
    27:38
    That just doesn't feel satisfying to me. No, I know. Yeah. Because it's so long. Costco has only got five shots, and being that gorilla down there is more fun. Yeah, that's true. That is fun. And that's kind of like slaving as well, but my understanding is that there will be another button on the side next to the button that you're, you know, the slipper buttons. So when you, you can apparently play the LOL play field, which is Grandpa's lair during multi-mole. so I don't think this will be I mean the bar is very low like as far as underplay feels yeah as far as ACDC I mean that's really what everyone's comparing it to like people aren't going to compare it to Big Lebowski and things like that like yeah but a 30 year old game like oh yeah yeah well but no but wait wait wait first of all don't you be dissing those 30 year old games but my point is this if 30 years ago they can make an underplay field like Black Hole and like Haunted House, right?
    28:47
    Surely they can do something better than what ACDC's got. Yeah. Well, we'll see. We'll see if it's mini flippers, we'll see if it's a mini playfield, we'll see if maybe it's somewhere in between. Maybe it's like Kroll. Kroll that's got the underplay field that's actually almost the full size of a pinball machine, but it's being magnified. Yes, that would cost nothing. No, do it, sir. You've got so much money. But I think the most annoying thing to put on a pinball machine is extra flippers on the side. People have enough trouble understanding pinball going up to it without having three or four flipper buttons set. I didn't believe it. When I heard that, I didn't believe it. I'm like, yeah, why would you do that? And even if it was during multiple, then why wouldn't you just make that flipper flip both flippers? It just wouldn't make sense. You just have it staged with multiple flipper presses. presses, but I've heard from everyone, but I've been wrong a million times before. Guys, guys, guys, guys. It's on the premium and it's on the LE. That's for the home use. It's for the home use. It's not going to be people in a pub going, oh, I don't know where these other buttons are. It's really for people that are pinheads that know this stuff, so I reckon that that's fine to do that. I don't like it, though. It's fine. The thing is, though, I mean, as long as they make the LOL Play Store better than ACDC, which they will.
    30:06
    I'll put money on it. A bit of big turd under the glass. It's going to be activated during multiple, and that's fun. I mean, I know Stewie's pinball did that, but it's not right in front of you, so it's like you have to kind of trap up the ball and then look up. It just doesn't feel right. When it's right in front of you,
    30:25
    these LEs, I reckon, are just going to sell out instantly. And based off the art, based off the theme, because old guys seem to love this thing and based off just something fresh with low play fields. And when it's that different, then people want it, right? Like, there's a lot of games that come out, like an Aerosmith or something. People say, ah, well, I'll get the pro for this one because I'm going to save five grand or whatever it is in Australia.
    30:52
    And I'm not missing out on much. But if you miss out on a really fun level play field, then it's not really the same game at all, is it? Yeah, no, exactly. And I like the idea of being able to play the upper and lower playfields, and it reminds me of Wizard of Oz, which we've all got, in that if you think about that upper right playfield, the house, whatever it is, tornado-y thing, right? When you get the ball up... Munchkin Land. Yeah, Munchkin Land, the twister thing. When you get the ball up there, it's relatively easy to get the ball looping around, and that's kind of okay. And you think, well, that's a bit of a waste. But when you have to do that in a multiball, that's when it's fun. And so that's why I like having the ability to do both. And when you have to do it during the wizard mode for Munchkin's thing, you have to loop and you can't. It's no-holds-flippers. Yeah, there you go. And that's when it's really fun. Yep, exactly. You can't cash in your jackpots. Anyway, I believe it's Dwight Sullivan. We don't have any confirmation. I mean, they're still not going to comment on it because I believe they're not going to release this thing until January. So this is the annoying part. Yes, we're talking about now. You're not going to hear shit about it for another month. So there you go. So shut up. Primus Pinball, right? So we've got a bit of an update on how Primus Pinball is selling, right?
    32:11
    Yep. I woke up in the morning and it's a bit weird because it's one of those websites where it doesn't hide the amount of stock that's left to add to the cart. So I just went to add hundreds of the cart and it said, sorry, you can only add 51 or something. It's like, okay, so they've sold 49. And I just checked before the show, and I believe there's still around 20 or so left.
    32:40
    But the weird thing is I checked the Pinside threads, and apparently it was only meant to be sold through Primus' website, Club Bastardo. I think that's what it's called. Sure. So, someone, some distributor has now emailed their customers in the U.S. and said, hey, I've got a hold of some and I can sell it below, you know, the retail price. Contact me for a price. So, is that someone ringing up Stern or Primus and said, hey, I'll take five or ten if you can give me a good deal? Or, I don't know.
    33:14
    It's a weird project. I mean, it's based all off hype. They want to sell them instantly and they probably thought they were going to sell them instantly. Maybe they missed the mark a little bit on the price, and they don't want those last, you know, 40 or so pieces, however many was left, to linger. They just want it kind of just sold, right? Well, I'm going to make a retraction from when we announced it, where I said, ah, bucket, there's 100 of them they're going to sell out.
    33:39
    Because I had looked at the feedback of the Stern Pinball Facebook page, and everyone was, you know, throwing fucking rotten bananas at them, whatever they do. But the day after we recorded, I thought, you know what? I'm going to go to the Primus site and have a look at the comments from the Primus reveal. Did you do that as well? I checked their Facebook page and it was a bunch of poor people complaining they didn't have enough money. Yeah. Pretty nice. But for us that are in the know, we say, I'm not paying for that which is just a re-theme of, whoa, nearly big juicy melons, right? We know the details. I kept saying, someone said, $8,000 for a pinball machine without ramps? Get fucked.
    34:26
    Was that one of the comments? It was something like that. But it was really, people were comparing it to games of the heyday. People were comparing it to things like Adam's Family. They're like, hang on, Adam's Family had a lot more in it than this. So even though, you know, we're saying that they're non-pinheads, non-pinheads have still played a pinball machine in their time, and they still have seen them evolve over time. So I think people weren't seeing the value. Unless that's that small Venn diagram guy that is into both. Who knows? That could be James. Well, no, I'm not saying people that are into pinball. I'm saying people that have played pinball. Yeah. Can I be controversial and say if I had a choice between playing Adam's Family and Woe Nelly? I'd prefer Woe Nelly. Oh, every time. Ah, guys. Let me sell my Adam's Family first, please.
    35:22
    Adam's Family is the best game that has ever been made. It's so much fun. And you should buy it for a really high price. Is that okay, guys? Both shots are really fun.
    35:37
    The scoop shot is the only shot from the wall. You have to light the scoop, Marty. You have to light the scoop.
    35:46
    Anyway, that's Primus. Yeah. It's about selling 100. I reckon it's got more chance of selling 100 than another game I know that got 100 for sale. Yeah, well, let's talk about that in Flipout. So this weekend that just passed, we had a massive event in Melbourne. John, you're from the northern part of Australia. How many hours' flight away is it?
    36:15
    Two and a bit hours, with another hour for time zone difference. Yeah. So you flew down for the event, and we had Jersey Jack himself come. October 1st, we were meant to be there. Didn't arrive in time. It was one day late. We had Mafia there. We had Magic Girl. We had Alien. We had the production version, two of them, Pirates of the Caribbean, the first time they've been in Australia, finally. We had Houdini. We had TNA. We had 60 other games. Did you mention Monster Bash remake? I don't know whether you mentioned it. Yes, Monster Bash. There's two special editions there. They flew them down as well. Wasn't there a limited edition there as well?
    36:53
    I don't think, no. I don't think it was. The trim, I think there were two special editions, but I could be wrong. One of them, I saw both of them, and one of them looked like it had a lot more lighting in it. But no. The limited edition has a different colour trim and it has the archiplier on the apron, on the lockdown bar. I forget Flying Turds was there as well. That's right. Flying Turds, we called it by the end of the night. But yes, we'll get to that. How did we feel the event went? You flew down from it, John. What did you think? Yep. I think it was excellent. You can't compare it to anything that's in America, simply because of volume, numbers, vendors, all that sort of thing. But I think around 50 machines, very many familiar faces, and from what I've heard, about 400 people through the door without being crowded. Overall, I'd give it a 9.5 out of 10 as far as enjoyability for anything I've been to in Australia. Yeah.
    38:01
    Look, I'm biased because I did help organise the event. Not going to take much credit because Wayne from Mr Pimble did most of it.
    38:13
    But I obviously thought it went really well. I did spend most of my time running the tournament, so I didn't get to see much else.
    38:21
    But as Ryan mentioned before, there were a couple of machines that we were seeing for the first time. Do we want to start with Bafia?
    38:30
    Yeah. I only got to play, I'm going to rely on you guys, because I only got to play one ball because the slingshot was too sensitive, which is just an operator adjustment. I mean, it could have been, I don't think it was like that out of the box, and it was just machine gunning, and I didn't want it to block, so I just turned the machine off. And I was so busy the entire weekend, not as busy as you, Marty, but I didn't get to play another ball on it. So I don't have anything in terms of... I probably had about 10 games I mean the good thing about the numbers that was there is there was rarely ever did you queue for a game as opposed to if you go to Texas or Fantastic and there's some new machines, you'll often be waiting in a line of 10 or 15 people. But I could go up to Mafia most times without a queue for a number of reasons, but I probably played about 10 games. Flipper problems initially, which were fixed by the excellent tech staff that were on hand, running around, fixing everything, and you've got three shots, maybe four. You can hit on the thing and chat to someone while you play and don't pay much attention to it, really. It's 100 games. People will buy it. Guess what, John? It's not 100 games anymore. I listened to the first 10 minutes of the Eclectic Gamers podcast, and they picked up a post when I found it on Pinside where Joe Newhart from Pinball Star, who's one of the U.S. distributors for it, they've changed their mind. It's no longer 100. It's down to 20. So literally they've already made 10. They're only going to make 10 more ever.
    40:12
    So does that make it more enticing? I mean, like, that's one-fifth of, you know, I think that's going to make people start to think, okay, well, if it's that rare, then maybe it'll hold its value a bit more than if there's going to be 100. I don't know.
    40:28
    It's what it is. It's better than Magic Girl. It hasn't got as good an art as Magic Girl, but it's better than Magic Girl. I would rather look at Magic Girl than play a mafia, I'm sorry.
    40:39
    No, and it was funny because, well, do you know what? It was actually, let's call it Death Row, right? There was Mafia, Magical Girl and Alien in a row of three machines.
    40:53
    Look, I did get to play Mafia. I'm going to be a lot kinder than John was. I actually liked the way it flipped. I got through a full game. I only played the one game.
    41:05
    I didn't quite understand the rules after only one game, but I understood kind of what I needed to do, where you do a couple of things and then that lights certain shots for hurry-ups and obviously the quicker you get them, the more points they're worth.
    41:20
    I liked the way it felt. People were saying, oh, I think there's something not right with it because the flippers are really weak. Well, no, that's the way the machines intended and that's what we saw in the promo video and it's how it played. It's a weird distribution of power on the flippers in that it's sort of weak, and then it's strong at the end of the flippers, which are usually different, so they must be using their own sort of mechs.
    41:54
    It's weird because everyone's used to, like, Stern games. That's right. They have just super-powered flippers. They're so strong. And then you even go back to a Stern Electronics game, and I rebuild the flippers, and I'm like, oh, why is it so weak? And Dave could be like, that's how all the old games were. Like, you're not hitting ramps or anything. You just need to get around the orbit. Like, that's the maximum power you need. If you hear any of the sounds, Martin, could you hear the sounds? No, the sound wasn't... No, it wasn't. It was like an alien. Alien was screeching the entire time, and the stupid spinner sound on Magicka as well. The other thing I was going to say about the power of the flippers is that, you know, when you look at a single level and we think about the back in the day and the flippers weren't that strong, well, William's flippers were strong. If you think about firepower, you know, they were really strong. Probably earlier EMs weren't, which I think this is potentially emulating, but the comparison that we've got today is TNA, right, which is a flat, sort of solid state layout with ridiculously powerful flippers, so that's the disconnect for people. People are expecting it to play like TNA, and it doesn't. It really is an old school sort of EM feel. which might be good for people that aren't very good at pinball right? TNA is very confronting for someone that doesn't have the flipper and the reaction skills that we have right?
    43:19
    Yeah I don't even think it's that. I think it's been intentionally made as an homage to EM games with some modern visuals I think that's really what they're trying to do but I got to flip out because I had to set up for the tournament I got there at about I don't know 7 o'clock Saturday morning and I saw Marthews for the first time and I sent you a message what did I say?
    43:53
    You said you were going to be kind to Marthew I think it was something along the lines of holy shit it looks worse in person than it does on the internet something like that I was really surprised I thought that it's vibrant, but what I guess I didn't really like was the flatness of the shapes, meaning large shapes with solid colours in it, not a lot of detail, but also the area around the flipper is sort of like a dead zone when it comes to art. Yeah, there's a lot of blank space, and we've been spoiled with Stern and JTP and all these great art packages that, even though there can be kind of like what we say is dead space on games, like in Star Wars or something, like all of that barren art kind of thing, it's not. There's still something there. Like there might be like an asteroid kind of like trail or something there. Yeah. But obviously it's nothing. It's just like a solid color. It's dead space. So my overall feeling on Mafia is I actually really liked the layout and I really, really liked the way it's shot. It's a fun game. For me, it is, and I'm going to say something controversial in front of you, John, I think it's more fun to play than Woe Nelly. Okay. We can agree to disagree. Yeah, we can agree. Yeah, for sure.
    45:22
    Well, the one more thing to add on that death row, as you called it, Marty, is that magic girl there that Wayne has been trying to sell for a while and people have kind of been making fun of Wayne saying, you're not going to sell it for that much now, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, he sold it for $25,000 US. So there you go. And he sold the Alien right next to it for $21,000 US.
    45:47
    Wow. I think that was Australian dollars, that one. Well, yeah, I don't know. It's still a lot more than it should be is really what I'm saying. Yeah. Not to Australians. It should be able to sell. They didn't sell it. One's going to the UK and one's going to Canada. So there you go. Well done to those people. And I've got to say, and look, maybe I won't say it.
    46:10
    Shall I say it? You can edit it out if you want. What I was going to say is that whoever bought that magic girl, why?
    46:24
    Why? Because you're a collector, laddie. Do you think they will give them a new play field when they reproduce it? No. It's a different company. Don't wait for that. Wait, wait, wait. It's different financials. Wasn't there some deal? No, there was some deal. You can't sell it to someone. Yeah, that's it. I think Robert Mueller's... Yeah. I'm not sure. Yeah, if you bought it direct, then you get compensation. If you've sold it off, there's no compensation.
    46:54
    So why is it... Good question. So why is it a good question when DeepRoot are obviously going to be releasing a fully working version? And I was having this conversation, I was scratching my head going, why would you buy it? And I guess, you know, some people have paid good dollars for prototype machines before, I guess.
    47:15
    Here's the thing, if you... Don't trust me? If you send it back to Deep Root and get compensation for it, then you no longer have that rare item, because when they remake Magic Girl, if they do, they'll make probably an unlimited amount, so it's no longer a special pinball machine anymore, whereas the prototype had this insanely stupid story behind it, and it was a miracle that people got the... It's a museum piece. Yeah. that is the best it will ever be is a museum piece really nice artwork we also saw Monster Bash remake there I know a bunch of people have seen it already and I believe people are getting them already in homes my review is that it's Monster Bash if you know what Monster Bash is the original, it's like that but better dark and better lighting but the animation on that DMD is extraordinary It's great. It has much better lighting. The play field looks mirror. It is so beautiful to look at. We actually did end up having Monster Bash in the tournament bank.
    48:27
    Yes, and I avoided it. Yeah, I wonder why. Because I played, like, three or four test games on the other one that wasn't in the tournament, and I couldn't get over 15 or so million. So I'm like, no, not playing this. Oh, well, you wouldn't have got much more than that on this one because we absolutely butcherized it. Yeah. So the other machine was the final version of Pirates of the Caribbean. I believe the container has arrived or is arriving. Today, I believe. Yeah. So everyone in Australia is going to be getting them. A lot of people in the US, sorry.
    49:04
    I mean, I only got to play one game on it, so I'm not going to give... I didn't get a chance to play it at all, unfortunately. I did. I heard John managed to play it. What did you think of it, John? Is it a kind of game that you'd want to buy? Let's hear all about this.
    49:23
    I spent a lot of time on it. I've been watching the Buffalo Streams with Kevin Manning playing, falling more and more in love with the rules set and what's in it. As we know, I'm a great Wizard of Oz lover. I probably played 30 games on it just to make sure but ended up buying the floor model that was being used during the flip out. Nice. Is that so you can get it immediately? Correct.
    49:51
    It's coming up on Friday. John, me and you were at Texas Pinball Festival and I remember we were playing games on Pirates and then we were playing games on Houdini and you're like, oh, I'm going to get Houdini. No, I don't like Pirates. So what's changed since then to do a 180 on both of them? The rules, basically. They developed so well, it was just too confusing when I first heard about it.
    50:16
    The triple spinning disc never did anything for me. Yeah, same. The single disc was fine. It's no loss at all, as far as I'm concerned, having the single... I think it's an improvement, to be honest. Yeah, I think it is. Yeah. And once I answered the rules and what we were going for, It's just a great shooting game. It is not a wide body in any way, shape or form as far as playability.
    50:42
    A lot of flow. It's pretty. Don't forget to mention that it's really beautiful to look at, right? We were lucky that we had good volume on it. Display is second to nothing.
    50:57
    Yeah, I absolutely fell in love with it. And got Jack to sign the AP. so looking forward to it my free Christmas gift awesome well done the second one sold well it's coming close by too so Wayne managed to sell both the ones being used on the floor okay that's awesome so I mean that's really for the event itself as a show that's pretty much all we really need to talk about except for the seminars so So there were some seminars. In fact, let's just briefly touch on probably the best seminar of the event, Ryan.
    51:38
    Yeah, we did a quick talk. It was fun. We weren't prepared at all, but we just talked about ourselves, which we love doing, Marty.
    51:48
    I even wrote down like spam the top 100 questions and all these kind of trivia things, and we just opened it up to the floor before that, And that was a mistake because people just asked questions for the entire time. Which was great, actually. Because someone said to me, you know, what are you going to talk about tomorrow? And I said, we really haven't kind of talked about anything that we're going to talk about. And I said, what we'll probably do is we'll probably stand up in front of a group of people and just start talking like we do each week. And that's kind of what happened. I was planning to come in on the first day for the Haggis talk, but I had to stay back and print a whole bunch of flyers and stuff.
    52:34
    So I loaded it up on Facebook because they were Facebook streaming it, and they had some technical issues with the sound. Something has changed. He said he did a test run and it all worked. Something changed. Anyway, I thought it was a problem with my Bluetooth, so I kind of pumped up the volume of my car, I wasn't looking at my phone. I just wanted to hear it. So I wasn't looking at how high I was pumping it up. And the trailer started, and it was kind of like, you can watch the trailer on, you know, they released it on their Facebook page. I'll link it in the show notes. But there's a point in the trailer where this bass kicks in, and if you're using little crappy laptop speakers or your phone, you won't hear it. But if you put on some good headphones, you'll hear this insane bass. And my car just, like, it was vibrating. Yeah, I almost crashed my car, so thanks to the Haggis guys for that. I've got to tell you, I did tell that story to Damien from Haggis Pinball, and he laughed hilariously at your misfortune. I just want to tell you that. Yeah. So the game's called Wraith Pinball.
    53:39
    It's hard to kind of explain what the storyline is exactly of the pinball machine, but I believe it's kind of about solving a murder mystery by raising the dead.
    53:52
    They haven't told everyone who you are as a player, if you're a member of the family or if you're an investigator or something, but it's a very dark pinball machine. It's not meant to be, I think, like a monster bash. No, it's a serious game because I'd heard rumours that it was going to be a horror-based pinball machine but like a really scary horror. Well, it's not a scary horror game. It's a creepy horror game where it's kind of disturbing and dark more than just out-and-out horror.
    54:28
    Yeah, I love the sound of it. Has it ever been done before in Pinball? No, I don't think so. No? I don't think you've ever attempted that. So each mode, I think, is a member of the family and you're kind of like trying to uncover what happened and who killed them and all this kind of stuff. So it'd be very interesting to see how that develops visually, because as I said, it's kind of uncharted territory in pinball to try and tell that kind of story, right? Yeah, exactly.
    54:55
    So Jersey Jack did two seminars, but I said I was doing the tournament, so I didn't get to it. But I believe you had a chat with Jack.
    55:06
    Yes. I guess the title of the show would probably be, you know, Jersey Jack. So what you've been waiting for one hour in, I'm not sure how far we are. I sat down with Stacey because you were busy running the tournament, and we had a little chat with Jack. I think it goes for about 25 minutes. We couldn't find a super quiet place, so I'm sorry if you can hear people talking in the background. It wasn't too loud in this little hallway, but we can roll the tape, Marty. Here it is. Okay, so we're sitting here with JC Jack himself. I'm Ryan C. and this is Stacy. Stacy B. Yeah. How are you going, Jack? This is your third year in a row in Melbourne, Australia. How's it been this time? It's great. G'day, mates. I love saying that. It's just the greatest thing. Yeah, I'm really happy to be here. It's a lot of fun. It's a great trip coming here. You know, it's only from LAX 15 hours and 14 minutes, but who's counting, really? How many frequent fly points do you have now? Lots. Probably this year I'll be over 130,000 miles in the air. So it's really great. I love it. So last year you bought the prototype of Pikes of the Caribbean fresh from Espo. This year we have the final version.
    56:22
    It's been a while, but the game is almost completely different because the code is now matured. You have the final mechs in there, different sounds, different animations. So walk us through what's happened in the last year at Jersey Jacks. Well, you mean, how long is this? Do I have to talk three hours before I have to stop? Or do you expect me to just... Let's do five hours. Five hours, okay.
    56:45
    So really, if I focus on Pirates just for the moment, you summed it up pretty well. Anytime you have a prototype game, things are going to change until you get to a production game. and really that'll be the last time that we show a prototype game without having a real game that's in production. It's a long time. People order them and they love the game and they're getting them and hundreds of them come out of the factory. Tomorrow the container arrives finally and we get to unpack a lot of games and people have fun with them. So it's really exciting to do that. What was the eventual lead-in time? Was it about a year from when you first showed to now? So, yeah, I think we showed it at Expo, and we started shipping games basically in July.
    57:36
    So it was a long time for the people that are hanging by their thumbs for the game, but tradition says people do wait for our games. But we want to shorten that period of time. So it was never the plan to take as long as you did to produce the game, because those were meant to be as final as they could be, but the spinning disc had to change and a couple of other things.
    58:05
    But in the end, Eric Mineira's comment on it, and you have as well, it's about the reliability of the game. Yeah, I think everything changed for the better, really. I mean, we've made a better game than what it was, which is what you want to give to your customers. The gameplay is amazing, and the rules, the action, the fun. there's a line out there to play them and the two games that are there that aren't in the tournament or anything like that they're sold they sold off the floor and Wayne sold like two or three other games between yesterday and today and that's aside from people that already ordered games that are waiting so he's happy I'm happy do you find that the hardest thing is to get we were talking about it before we did the interview that your games sell themselves when people play them so is the hard thing getting the game out there so that people can experience it. Because a lot of these games are going to private collectors and they might invite two or three of their friends over, but that's it, you know. I thought you were going to start singing the waiting is the hardest part.
    59:06
    That is, the waiting is the hardest part. And, you know, to shorten that up and show a game and people are able to get it in a relatively short period of time, that's really where we want to be. Do you have to look at what other companies are doing or do you just take your own line when it comes to that? No, this is something where we need to do what we need to do. Other companies, it's great whatever they're doing. I think pinball on every level, more pinball is better for everybody. But we have our own timelines and our games are really full of mechanical action, a lot of technology, and the rules are just amazing, and light shows and wizard modes and everything that our games are. and we're known for. So, you know, those things do take time to do them the right way. That's an interesting point because, yes, Jersey Duck machines have just, I guess, a lot of mechanical things in there. And I think I asked you last year, like, it's kind of a surprise that those mechanical things that you design and engineer don't appear on the next game. Like, you think, oh, my God, you've spent so much time making these resettable drop targets in The Hobbit, and I've got mine on site and it's very reliable.
    60:17
    Why isn't that in any other game? and the next two games don't have resetable job targets. So I know you've talked about the ethos of the company of wanting to kind of create new things and not repeat things, but don't you think that makes it so hard on yourself that every time you make a new mech... It's a one-shot. Yeah, it needs to be made by someone else and parts and stuff like that, which surely the next game will have some mechs that, you know, are in previous games. Yeah, I think, you know, you will see things like that in the future where we bring things, if it's appropriate for game design, whatever game designer wants to do it. There's a commercial with a faucet company in America where the lady is going to build a house, and she goes to the architect with the faucet, and she says, build me a house around this.
    61:06
    Sometimes in manufacturing, what people do is what you might do in your refrigerator. You open it up, and you look what you have, and that's the meal you're going to make. Right. We have a different palette, so it includes every color that possibly could be. So they start with a blank, you know, sheet of paper, as it were, and they think about what they want to create. Nobody has said to anybody yet, hey, you know, we have a whole bunch of spinning magnets that we have nothing to do with, and you better use them in your game. Yeah. We haven't done that. do you think the pinball community and the buying market appreciates what's in the games that you have versus what else is on the market? Because there seems to be kind of more of a shift at the moment where a game can sell almost purely on art and theme, but nobody knows what the code is. It might be a little bit more bare than normal. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but do you kind of look at that and say, oh my gosh, I'm spending all this money and creating these unique kind of experiences that people are just seeing artwork and saying, oh, yeah, I'd like to have that in my case. Oh, Ryan, you're going into controversial territory. You're trying to get me to step into a spot where... No, but seriously, when we started, part of the whole idea was to do things, as you say, that hadn't been done before. So that didn't mean that we wouldn't do, you know, a theme, if I like the license, I wouldn't go out and get that license and do it our way, right?
    62:45
    I think the consumer of any product is the king and the driving force for the success of an item. So if people buy something and they like it, you know, I like ice cream, and, you know, there's 36 flavors in the showcase. Sometimes I want Rocky Road and I want Cherry Vanilla and I want, you know, chocolate. It's good to have different flavors. People want, sometimes they want a really deep pinball machine with a lot of rules and a lot of things going on, and sometimes they want to just spell ABC. And that's why people have collections.
    63:18
    So do you see that as something that you could possibly provide, spelling the ABC in a pinball game, or do you think that your place in the market is just for these, spelling the whole alphabet and then another alphabet? And then alphabetics. That's right, put it into binary. Right, we get into hieroglyphics. Yeah, we're not asking you what the next 10 days is coming up. No, no, no. You know what? It's their chance of getting a sim. You know, I never say never. Yeah. I'm not looking at Justin Bieber either. So, you know, I'm looking at, I would never box this into something where I say, well, we're not going to do that. You know, so. Why not? You know, there are some themes and licenses that we have that lend themselves to a simpler kind of game. And a simpler kind of game doesn't mean a game with nothing on it. and it doesn't mean a game with no ramps or no drop targets or anything like that. It just means it's easier to approach for a casual player. Not everybody is a tournament player. Not everybody wants 45-way modes, and not everybody understands all the rules and all that kind of stuff. So sometimes it's really important to just have an entertainment device, which is our pinball games, that appeals to everybody, where you don't walk up to it and you don't know what to do. You know, I want you to walk up to our games in the first play. I don't want you to see everything that the game does. I don't want you to see all the features, necessarily. But I want you to be able to understand what's at stake. Yeah, we talked about that with Keith Johnson, and he kind of said that, you know, he creates wizard modes so that if you have a new collection, you can get to the mini wizard mode every once in a while, but, you know, the Valinor or the Somewhere Over the Rainbow is the one that you have that one game where everything kind of lines up, and yeah, I guess I can say that in one way or another. So, you know, if Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel and then he put a sheet over it so that when you're, you know, in the halls of Basilica, you don't see it.
    65:18
    Who knows about that? All that work, all that energy, all that effort. You know, I'm not disagreeing with Keith, but my personal preference is if I really did something spectacular, I want you to see it. Right. I want you to see it. But how spectacular is it if you see it all the time versus if you only see it or have the lure of maybe never seeing it, but it's that one thing that you like to see? I had somebody, I was at the York show in Pennsylvania a few weeks ago, and a customer of mine from pinballsales.com came to me and said, you know, I bought a Simpsons from you, and I never got to the end of the game. And you're talking about 2004. For 14 years, if this poor guy didn't get to the end of his game and you'll see everything in the air. You've got to play that out. Yeah, I know.
    66:05
    That's a good saying. But, you know, it would be really nice if some of it was more easily achievable. And that's what convention was. Convention, when we do that in our games, is time play, not ball play, easily achievable objectives. And the player, young player, casual player, typically gets to see a lot more of the game. They're able to melt the wedge. They're able to, you know, do some other modes that you normally would have a hard time doing. if you're an entry-level player. Is Condemption getting a lot of play out in the States?
    66:37
    The locations that have Condemption games, like Hobbit and Wizard of Oz, we haven't done it yet for Dialed In, we haven't done it yet for Pirates, they get really good earnings on the game, and they get good response on the game. And we have customers that bought Condemption with Dongle for their home games. So what they do is they flip Condemption on where the whole bunch of kids come over for a birthday party at the house, and they can play the games, you know, so they don't have to go try to readjust everything on the game so that kids can play it. Have you got your Condention and Dongles, Ryan, so you can play the games? I did get it. Actually, when I went to the Texas Timberwolves Festival, I dropped by the Just Jack Factory, and I did get the Condention and Dongle, and me and Marty had a go on it, and we said we were going to stream it. So I still want to do it. We're going to stream Condention, because I don't think anyone, as much as you've talked about it in the past, I don't think anyone has actually streamed it. A lot of people are like, what is it and how does it work? So we've got to get on it. It's pretty cool. Especially when you go to an amusement center and there's physical tickets coming out of the game. 100%. Pretty cool. Yeah.
    67:41
    So, Jack, when you started Jetty Jack, five-plus years ago, how long has it been now? Is it almost six? Well, it was January 1, 2011. Okay. Oh, wow. So it went up to January 1, 2019. Oh, my second. Sorry. My bank is. Thank you. so what's in the pinball market because you're in sales and you know what customers want you know what they want to spend money on and what they're willing to spend money on how has that changed in the last well let's just say in the last two years because when Wizard of Oz came out it blew everyone away because there was nothing like that on the market I still don't think there's anything like digital games on the market but there was so much more choice before it was you and one other player, but now there's seemingly 10 other companies. I'm sure you've talked to the Haggis Pinball guys. Just starting out, I'm sure you're scratching your head like you guys have no idea what you're getting into. No, actually, I missed them yesterday. I was busy, and I wouldn't say that to them. I wish them luck. No, I'm not saying not to discourage them, but the saying is pinball is hard, and there's a lot of hurdles to overcome. what's it like now with that many people in the buying market you know I guess it's increased but there's so many more options so how do you market your company for the world out there? So you know typically and it's good that you point out what Wizard of Oz was in that marketplace at the time because there was nothing like it broke so many barriers and won so many awards you know we're designing games now things that we're doing that won't come out for a year or two years and where would the market be at that time frame, right? So always, you know, I borrow Steve Jobs saying, we want to give the customer what they don't even know they want yet. And that was a really important thing with Wizard of Oz and a lot of other games. I don't necessarily want to do what other people are doing. You know, people say to me, and I haven't said it at this show yet, but sometimes I get the question and the question and answer, how come you don't make a game for six grand? Really the question is... I asked you that last year, I'm sorry. Yeah, I have a bad memory. I know.
    69:53
    You know, so really the question they're asking is not that. The question they're asking is, how come you can't make your game to six grand? Well, how come you can't make a Maserati for 20 grand?
    70:05
    That's the difference. And the true answer, without sounding like an idiot, is I don't want to do that because other people are already doing that. So if I make something that's really stripped down and has nothing on it, and I try to go for a $6,000 price or something like that, there are other games out there, you know, maybe there's used games, that would be better than something I'd be producing brand new. So what value would there be in me producing a bad game that's at a low price that's not fun? You know, and the first and foremost ingredient that really needs to go into all the games is the fun factor. because nobody sits and says, okay, we need to make X amount of money on this next game. How do we do it?
    70:51
    It was never about the money first with my company. I said in the beginning to a fault that we're not designing games with calculators. We're designing them with passion. Unfortunately, some of my people actually took me at my word, and they, you know... What's the budget? But, you know, the passion has to be there, and then the product is really great, and then you price it in such a way. I don't want to see games continue to go higher and higher and higher, but I didn't want to see home prices or gas prices or things like that keep going higher. So the market and the economy is the driver. You as the consumer vote with your wallet. You decide what product you want to buy, and hopefully between all the choices that are out there right now, you can find a product that fits what you want to buy. Yeah.
    71:39
    You're going to get better jobs, right? You're not going to make a cheaper pin if you're listening. Well, you know, I can't make what we're making now for, you know, that elusive number. I would love to. But, you know, as consumers, I would love to go buy all those kind of things at a really low price. And unfortunately, we all know how to buy them. The thing is that the value is there when you compare it to what else is on the market for that price. So that's what makes it. You're really, that drum is going to get a hold of me.
    72:15
    No, you know, look, your perception as a customer is reality. I can say anything because I'm, you know, promoting my products, right? Well, that's the thing. A Maserati is only, you know, the car analogy that you're using before is only expensive because that's how much expensive cars cost. But if Ford came out and said, here's the Ford Focus for the same price as a Maserati, you can't say anything. Nobody would buy it because they want the Maserati. They want the status and they want to stay. There are customers out there that buy luxury products and they brag at how much money they spend. They don't brag at how much money they save. I mean, let's face it. A pinball machine is a brand new pinball machine. It's a luxury item. And we have a lot of luxury buyers that love pinball. We have expanded the market. We've gotten more people to buy pinball. the B games became A games and the C games became D games and you know so on as more people came into the hobby side of everything game operators are buying more pinball for the blockades and places FEC is really difficult because if you spend $6,000 $7,000 $8,000 on a pinball machine and it can do $100 a day while in pinball money that's great you know the redemption game next to it is $700 for the day and, you know, so the dynamic is difficult to compete with.
    73:41
    Do, I mean, you mentioned before that parts of the last game that you're going to show kind of in that state and the next one will be, I guess, a full production model and ready to go. So, yeah, you've talked in the past about the frequency of games coming out and, you know, it's time for Jersey Jack to release. I can't remember the quota. Was it maybe one every year or three every two years? Has that changed recently, or is it still the same goal? For me, ideally, I'd like to see one game every nine months. That's what I'd like to see. Because the cycle, our customers want our games. Our customers have no problem buying and ordering and paying for our games. We have opposite problem of a lot of companies that make products on planet Earth. We have a very loyal customer base that really humbles me, and I'm thankful for that. and they love our products. So I think what we need to do is we need to be better, and we are getting better. We need to be better at showing the product that you're going to get and shortening the time frame that you have to wait to get it. Now, look, if day one we have a production line running and we're building something and I show you the next game and miraculously over a period of X time we get 1,000 orders, we're not going to be able to ship 1,000 games in a week. You know, we couldn't even magically make believe that we're going to do that, right? We're not baking potato chips. But being better prepared for what we need to do from our supply side of our vendors and things like that, our supply chain, I should say, you know, it's a better thing. Pinball is still a very, very tiny little cottage industry, let's say, with a lot of vendors around the world. some vendors only have one or two customers that are in the pinball realm and we don't mean a lot to them. So we've worked very hard to develop new vendors, new relationships with people that can support what we do as we scale up to make more news. Have you got a good supply of pinballs in stock at the moment given the recent cancellation of production of pinballs? Really? I've heard of pinballs. After balls? Yeah. We use a company that's not in the industry. It's Nick Paul's.
    76:04
    You're fine. You're good. I would say, you know, I thought there was going to be some electricity shortage or something. I can't run games anymore on electric. But most contingencies we try to plan for. Unknown, unknown will always be the worst kind of information because you have no clue what hole you're going to fall into next. But I can tell you that we have a lot of inventory of a lot of things, including the balls. Great. So we have a lot of balls.
    76:32
    Where are you heading off next after this, Jack? I'm going to go on a visit to Japan. It's just a vacation kind of thing for a few days. And then I'm going to go home for a couple days. I hit the Seattle Pinball Museum on the 17th, 18th, 19th. They have a Christmas event going on, a charity event there. I come home for a day Then I go visit my dad in Orlando For a couple days before Christmas Then I come back home We have Christmas And December 26th My daughter Jen and my son-in-law Gary They're going to welcome a brand new baby boy So we're all excited That's December 26th And you know Before you know it Another year has turned And January is I'll be going to CES I'll be going to the London show You know This next year as well obviously Texas, yeah, that's all the way in March.
    77:26
    There's a lot going on before March. But you know what's really great now, if I go back to years ago, when pinballsales.com was my major focus of everything,
    77:40
    there were only a few pinball shows. You know, Allentown for me was a big show, and maybe York once in a while.
    77:48
    There was really nothing. If this week in pinball was doing a report, it could be this year in pinball. Yeah. Because there was nothing happening but the rank There was nothing going on You know Jeff right now with this week in Pinball he could rename the podcast you know his report to This Minute in Pinball Because every minute there's another thing to report. It's some other tumult or drama or great news or bad news or whatever it is. And it's a great thing for all of you. It's spectacular for me to see all the shows, to see all the mods, all the guys making all kinds of creative things to add on to your game. Have you seen the Winged Monkeys? I love it. Flapping up and down. I love it. You know, that's what it's about. It's about people's personal creativity brought into a game where no manufacturer, even us with all the toys we put on our games, there's always something else somebody can create to put on there, a different topper, a different light package underneath.
    78:49
    You know, the Penn Stadium stuff, I think, is amazing on a lot of games. Beautiful. See, all these things, what they do is they bump into each other and they cause more activity and more publicity and more people coming into it and saying, wow, I have to find out what's going on with pinball. We have a lot of influencers that have millions of followers on Twitter and things like that that are customers. And they write about their pinball machines and they expose that to millions of people. and while maybe millions of people can't buy the games millions of people could certainly seek them out and find them and play them and that's where we're at that's what's about great exposure like Roger Sharp talked about it and my wife's not really into pinball she plays Wizard of Oz at the end of games she plays I hear that all the time yeah I hear that all the time it's so great to hear and the other day I said do you know who Jeffree Star is and he's like of course I know who Jeffree Star is I don't know and he's like yeah check it out he's playing games and Wizard of Oz in the background and then like something clicks off in her mind like oh this person cares about it so maybe I should care about it I don't know it's a weird look on her face like I'm the weird one because I'm into pinball but because there's people out there that aren't weird that are into it you know what I mean you know it's funny my sister who's a real estate broker in Florida she tweeted him because she follows him and she said something like hey you know that's my brother you know did you know that she was like oh my god I didn't know that was your brother he's got such amazing games so you know social media It just makes the world be half an inch wide.
    80:24
    And it just gets everybody together and it gets everybody excited. And look, we're bringing more fun to the world. And I look at that all the time. And it's really, like I say, an amazing, humbling thing that we're all blessed to actually do this. How lucky are we to do it? So we just keep doing it and keep making great games and just keep more and more. Awesome. All right, Jack, well, you're a busy guy. We'll let you go. Thanks for lending me your time. Thank you. I appreciate it. And I hope to see you again next year. I will be here. I already told Wayne I'll be here.
    80:58
    You know, I love the weather. I love the food. I love the people. I love the experience. And really, the travel time to get here, it just melts because as soon as I get here... You listen to Roger Sharp on the airplane, right?
    81:10
    It's a 15-hour podcast with Roger Sharp next year. It put me right to sleep. I went right to sleep, you know, especially when he was talking about licenses and things.
    81:20
    No, I love Roger. Roger is my runner, actually, for gummy bears and gummy worms and all things gummy that I can get at a show. Because what happens is that my wife knows how good the show is by what day I lose my voice. Yeah. So wherever Roger is, I say to him, what do you got for me? and he reaches into his bag of tricks, and he's got, like, gummy worms and sour patch things. Is that a possible license opportunity there? Oh, there you go. A gummy bear? You know that little tune that was on YouTube? No, I like the Swedish trick, but that might be, you know, the license. Give us an exclusive. All right, now you sound like Jeff.
    82:04
    Please, Jeff, please. I need to know first, though. I need to know first. Yeah, so Roger gave me the tricks of not being hydrated in Las Vegas by eating all the gummies and drinking soup and all of that. So he's got all the old, you know, remedies. Yeah, nice. Awesome. All right, Jack. Thank you, guys. See you later. Thank you. Bye.
    82:29
    So there we go, Ryan. That was Josie Chakwadari. What did we learn? Man, it was yesterday. I was like, was it yesterday? I've forgotten already. Let me tell you the one thing. And I will say, because I only heard, I listened to the interview today, but I did manage to speak to Jack, and I think it might have actually been before the chat or maybe a little bit after. And the one thing that he said was, Pirates of the Caribbean is going to be the last machine that they've ever produced where they release details about the machine well in advance. Yeah, so that's what he said. It's the last time they show a machine that's not a production model, which every machine they've done, I mean, dialed in worked out pretty well. They still changed some things like Einstein Theater, the Quantum Theater.
    83:23
    You know, Hubbert changed significantly. Wizard of Oz was obviously very early days. They need funding. And Pirates, obviously, with the spinning disc. So the next game you see from Jersey Jack, whenever that'll be, it could be next year, it could be the year after that, we don't know. It's just it'll be shown when it's ready to pretty much hit production. Yeah. So we did have a bit of a chat with her, and I wanted my hypothesis that I've sort of mentioned a number of times on the podcast, I wanted to put to him to just to see whether he thought, and I sort of said to him was, because of the size that you are and the fact that you're only releasing a game, well, let's face it, once every, let's say, 18 months, right? You don't have the luxury of having a factory that is constantly working and you don't have a factory that's full of parts. You've got to know the demand for your machines before you can actually start even purchasing items for them. So you've kind of got to get your brand out there to gauge reaction to know what sort of units you're going to move. and he absolutely agreed with me. So I think they're just in a different position now where they've got enough machines under their belt. They kind of know their market. They know what they're going to get, so they don't need to pre-release this information.
    84:44
    John, did you manage to catch any of the seminars? Yeah, I saw Jack's first seminar in particular, which is a sort of tour around the world of Jersey Jack distributors.
    84:55
    It's good. He's very entertaining. He's a very friendly chap and he's always welcoming to wherever he is. So I caught a few other seminars. The trivia seminar was good. I had to leave. I think they were glad I left because I was... You didn't study for a year for it. I didn't study for a year.
    85:16
    Managed to win a T-shirt and a hat with my rapid-fire answers before I left to start the tournament. The custom pinball... Who's the chap that did the Dracula? I saw his seminar on doing customer stores. That was very interesting. But generally, the seminars were well run. Oh, that would have been Tim Reid, right? From Hot Rod of Pins. Yeah. No, no, no, no. No, no. He's talking about our T-shirt designer money.
    85:44
    Him. Oh, right. Paul. Doing his... That's right. He bought him his Dracula. That's right. Dracula. Which is a beautiful machine. Yeah. But the seminars are fun. I know Wayne was a bit concerned that they weren't fully attended, but as Marty knows and Ryan knows, when you go to these shows, the seminars will vary from a couple of people sitting in on something they want to see to a full house. Yeah, we had standing room only on ours, so we were one of the fortunate ones.
    86:16
    Oh, that's right. John, you were there. That's right. You were standing, weren't you, just to, you know, stretch the legs? Stretch my legs? Yeah.
    86:25
    Look, the thing of it is, it's interesting because Flipout, this is its third year, and it has gotten bigger each year. So, you know, when you've only got an event that's over two days at this stage, and it was going from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., effectively, even though I think it was 10 to 6 on Saturday, that's not really a lot of time. So you're either going to spend your time playing pinball machines or you're going to go to the seminars. and I think some people struggle to do both.
    86:57
    Yeah. Can I give an honourable mention to the food that was served? My gosh, the meals at that place were fantastic. Yeah, the Blackwell Hotel was great. Yeah, Wayne sponsored finger food throughout the day as well, so no-one went hungry. Yep. We've given it a good enough plug. Yep, well done. We are definitely doing it next year, so... Later, when we talk about our week in pinball, that's when we're going to talk about the tournament. Yep. So the last bit of news this week to go through, it's been a big news week, is the, this is a little tournament piece, guys. Yeah. The WAPA changes for 2019. So basically what this is for the non-tournament people is that you get these magical pinball tournament points called WAPAs, and how much a tournament is worth is dependent on the format, how many people are playing, the strength of the players, et cetera, et cetera. They've done some tweaks, Marty, to the TGP guides this year. This year, sorry. Yeah, so pretty much we're being affected. I can't help but feel that Josh and Zach Sharp are targeting us because we've made fun of them ever since we've been doing this podcast. So the fair strikes, so the shit strikes that you do, well, they've been added. so yeah so basically the way it runs now is that I have to count how many four player games how many three player games how many two player games I've played that night and it's a random amount each time so it's been as low as I think 52% and as high as 72% based off five strikes tournament with the average number of people I get now it's like it's about 64% no matter and I messaged Josh Sharp and I said hey this is not really fair like because the first tournament I ran I was 72%. So he's like, oh, that was like a one in a million style thing. And I was kind of excited because previously the three-strike tournaments that were being run, and John, I know you run a lot of them at the Grotto.
    89:05
    You were running the 1-1-0-0 method. So the top two people, sorry, 0-0-1-1. Top two people get no strikes. The people who come third and fourth get one strike. and if you play like a three-strikes tournament on that, it's very easy to get 80 plus percent TGP because the way they were calculating it was off the best case scenario, right? So if they run like a million simulations and one of those times it lasts like 12 rounds or something, then you're getting 12 rounds worth. Now they're running the simulations and they're getting the average amount and they're basing it off that. So you can get lucky and play a shorter tournament and it's worth more. You can play a longer tournament and it's still worth the same as a short tournament.
    89:56
    Does that make sense? No, but it doesn't matter. Yeah, it makes sense, but I still don't care. The last one is Flip Frenzy, Marty. Yeah, so as it says in the notes here, other people know it as Pinball, Pinball, Pinball. That is the worst name ever. I know that was the original name, but just... We abbreviate everything in pinball. No one says Attack from Mars, they say AFM. So to say pinball three times in a row is very painful for me. Yeah, I would go PB times three.
    90:29
    Or just flip frenzy. Just flip frenzy. PBB. Or frenzy, we're now calling it. So we knew this was coming. The format would be graded based on the average number of matches played by all players in the field as opposed to, I think it was the maximum, was it?
    90:48
    No, it was whoever came first. Whoever came first, if they played 25 games, it was worth 100%. If they played, you know, 13 games, then it's worth, you know, 50-something percent. So if you saw on the flip friends you ran on the weekend, Marty, the average was, I think, 16.5. So that's what it'll be graded as. I guess round it up to 17. Is that good? it's more fair no but what I'm asking you is like because I've that's not being nerfed it's just no I was just trying to work out with the flip frenzy that we run and we'll go into it later was that like an average of 16.5 is that like a large amount of gains or is it a short amount of gains for a flip frenzy you need 25 to get 100% TGP normally over 23 hours yeah to do that in 3 hours I mean you guys pretty much get 100% every time in Queensland So I'm not sure how hard the machines are fed up. Probably no ball save, no rubbers on the outlanes. They're all standard. They're all standard, especially in Netherworld. So Netherworld's every month, and we'll always have 20 to 25, 26 games in three hours. With ball save.
    92:00
    How? A lot of people will know the format. They're cheating. Well, they cheat, no. They know the format that well, and if someone's doing extremely well on ball one or two, they will plunge the next two balls knowing they can't catch. Yeah. Okay.
    92:19
    All right. Well, that's the Whopper changes. We'll link that in the show notes for some more stuff, but it's basically only for tournament directors, which probably makes up about 1% of our finish year money. Well, so there was one other point on that as well. It says the official IFBA Championship Series finals will now receive a 25% boost to Whopper Points awarded. Yes, so ACS next year will be worth 25% more. Yeah, so there you go. Cool.
    92:47
    Design money for social media watch? It certainly is. And if you look at the show notes, what's the first thing we're going to talk about?
    92:58
    Roger Sharp? Roger Sharp. You're going to look at my show notes? Slam the tough left. Okay. I was very proud of my gag when I did that. Okay.
    93:15
    So Roger Sharp shaved off his mo, his iconic mo, and people were absolutely outraged. Ron from the Slamtail podcast said that this is not an outrage because he's done it before. We don't care, Ron. We're making a big deal about it now. We weren't podcasting back then. We put up a poll on our Facebook page, and it receives, what, geez, like double... 157 votes, like double what we normally get. Yeah, and we've got a shitload of listeners, Marnie, but not everyone's on Facebook, not everyone wants to vote. People wanted to vote on this, and Marnie, I'm not sure about you, but I had a look at all those motherfuckers that voted Babyface Roger, and did you notice that almost all of them have babyfaces themselves?
    93:58
    The people that were voting that they didn't like Roger's moustache, I think don't have the ability to grow a moustache yet. Yeah, fair enough. So 87% of the people that vote male want him to keep the moustache. So that's pretty overwhelming.
    94:16
    So we reached out to Roger and we sent him these results because we don't want to shame him or anything, but we just want him, because he might not have his finger on the pinball podcast pulse, but he needs to know what people think of his moustache. So we got a response, Marty. We do. Let's play it now. Ryan Martin, I did not expect or imagine that this would be such a hair-growing experience in terms of my mustache. I guess I've let down the pinball community But I guess I've also inadvertently let down my own face, if you will But it was interesting to see that I still had an upper lip And also appreciate the fact that the picture from IFPA 7 when I was much younger Doesn't necessarily match up as well with my recent IAPA picture but I promise that the mustache will be back it will be in full bloom I don't want anybody to be worried or concerned hoping it will be thicker more epic I know my wife Ellen would like it to be black like it used to be I think that those days are gone so here I am just trying to do the best that I can with what I got guys take care pinball community not to worry your old Roger will be back bye I actually went for a couple of hours but you edited it down I edited it down he just is just the greatest person in pinball he just really is like he obviously yes he's a legend and he's done so much and you know blah blah saved pinball whatever right he's actually just a freaking awesome guy. Yeah.
    96:22
    So what else do we have in social media, Marty? We've got... Wow! Did you see this? You can read the title, Marty, if you want. You may read something. Get jizzed on pinball. Yep. Did you see that? Did you see the rounds? I think so. Okay. There's a little pinball machine that kids can play. Oh, yes! They don't get jizzed on. It puts those water at them.
    96:51
    Squirted. Squirted in the face. Okay. Anyway. That's really actually inappropriate. Okay. The person who shared it, which is a female, okay? So that was their title. So this is not me. This is not me. Anyway. I'll link it in the show notes. But basically it's a little demo machine that squirts you in the face when the ball drains down your... Is it called the out-hole genre? Yeah, no, it's called The Center.
    97:17
    The Center Drain? It's called The Center. Thank you very much. Just thought we'd bring that one up. The worst question to get wrong. Yeah, thank you. Zombie Yeti is continuing to ignore Pinside by making a t-shirt bagging Pinside. That was very interesting. Scott Denise has a new feature coming out on TNA where he'll introduce credit dots, which isn't advanced but I don't think any of the I think he's using the skeleton framework I don't think it supports that so he's had to add support for that manually.
    97:53
    Paul Jones is Wait, wait, what the fuck? What is it? Credit.reacher You don't know what a credit dot is, Marty? Of course you don't know what a fucking credit dot is, Marty. Technical guru.
    98:06
    John, you know what a credit dot is, right? Yeah, if you have any error on the machine and it's detected it comes up as a little dot next to the word free play. or if you have. I've never seen it because none of my machines have problems. Ah. Well, there was a credit dot on one of the machines during the tournament, Marty. Oh, you would have seen that. Anyway, moving on, it's Paul Jones. Paul Jones, Australia's number one player. We still haven't had him on the show, Marty. I know what's going on. I think it's too cool for us. But basically, I got an image sent to me today, and it definitely wasn't from Paul Jones himself, Well, he is featured in a magazine. There is a monthly magazine called... Sorry, I have to open it up.
    98:51
    There's a monthly magazine called Smith Journal, and everyone in Australia, you can go and buy this now at your local newsagent for a measly $13. And there's literally a page called How to Win at Pinball, and it's tips from Jonesy on how to play pinball. in a magazine. I'll send you the picture later, Marty. What sort of magazine is it?
    99:15
    I don't know. It's called Smith Journal, and the front cover of it is just a car door. So I have no idea. Okay, there's a little blurb here. It says, Sinkers, Adventurers, Makers, Writers, Inventors, and Cards or Canvases. So that's all that's on the front cover. So I don't know what this magazine is about, but there's literally a two-page spread on how to play pinball. and the pinball they're playing is called Creep Fighter. Is that a real pinball machine, Marty? I don't think it is. No. So it's called Creep Fighter, and there's a picture of a girl kicking a guy in the head.
    99:55
    Anyway, and there's also a picture of a guy holding the pinball machine by the side playing pinball, and it says, Tip 4, learn to nudge, and there's a pow coming from his pant region. So not the pinball machine. So I think he's getting a bonus in that pinball machine. Okay, guys, guys, guys, you ready? Okay, here we go. I've got something for you. I'm going to send you a link to an article, right? Yes. I'm just Googling the magazine. Oh, yep, yep. What I want you to do is go here, new message to John. Got it. Is pinball making a comeback? Okay Okay, so this article This is the Smith Journal Is Pimble making a comeback? What I want you to do is just have a quick Oh, I'm sorry What the fuck is that? Oh Hello Batman 66 Should we tell people what this is or should we let them see it themselves? We've got to link it in the show notes you have got to read this article.
    101:14
    Please. I never do this. When people tell me to go and search something, I never do it. Please click on the link in the show notes. If you don't know what the show notes are, go to our website, episode 72. Click on the page and see what they've got. Just be so obvious. Just scroll down and you'll see something that doesn't fit. I think they've Googled the picture to put in there. What?
    101:36
    Can you see it? What is that? Don't tell me what it is. Okay. I don't... Is that real?
    101:45
    I'm looking at Tina Turner's gaping mouth at the start. Sure. Okay. Yeah. Anyway. That's hilarious. I'm saying that because... Love you, Jonesy, but... The Sith Journal. Now, when you get Jonesy on, is it true or not that he called his daughter Indiana? Indiana Jones. He told me that. I'm not sure. He was drunk, so I, not drunk, but he had a few. I couldn't tell if he was taking piss.
    102:20
    Yeah, no, I mean, it's a cool name. It's just, no one would name their kids after Indiana Jones. That would be silly. That would, no, I would never do that, mate. It would be really bad. It's not a small man. lastly we have Jeffree Star who I believe is a cosmetic guru I know who Jeffree Star is so Jeffree Star first of all started as a recording artist but probably what he was most famous for was he had the highest amount of followers ever on MySpace believe it or not I thought that was tequila tequila No, it was Jeffree Star.
    103:04
    And look, he might have been beaten at some stage and only released one album and then started a cosmetics line and now has a studio and does all sorts of production as well. And the interesting thing about Jeffree Star is, well, there's a couple of things. So Jeffree Star is very androgynous, right?
    103:28
    And meaning that if you were to look at him in some of the photos, you'd say, well, that's a woman. Or is it a man? Well, it's not a... Yeah, she's hot. He's a man that's got a very androgynous feminine look, has got a billion followers on every bit of social media that you can find, and, yeah, just a really large following and has just cracked the social media code from MySpace days forward and was on the deadflip stream. Because he has a couple of pinball machines. Yeah. Really into pinball money. Like, not pretending to pinball. Like, really into it. I would say not necessarily the best player, if I could be honest. You've got to pay a lot of pinball to do that money. And when you're running, like, a thousand companies... Like, yeah, when he's making a billion dollars on other things. But you're right. Like, really into pinball. and, like, you know, what's his name? Jack. Jack the Deathly? Yeah, whatever his name is, you know. Was sort of just, you know, talking about certain trivia or features of a machine. Jeffy Star was right back going, oh, yeah, and like this and this. And even Jack was like, shit, how do you know this stuff? He's like, I'm really into pinball. So you could really tell.
    104:53
    And he's on Pinscience. Yep. He definitely listens to our shows. He's going to vote for us on the Twippies. Thank you, Jeffy Starr. You're amazing.
    105:02
    But, yeah, I watched the stream. Absolutely thoroughly enjoyed it. So, well done. Should get him on our show one day. Jeffy Starr, come on our show. Because the amount of... What's really important about talking about this is the amount of exposure that Pinball got and Dead Clip got was huge. I mean, I think he has something like 5,000 people watching that stream. yeah and as I mentioned in the Jack interview it was that moment where I asked my wife if she knew who Jeffree Star was and she said yeah why you know what why was he talking to me about Jeffree Star and um you know what I mean like it's it's you know what seems he's not a normal person you know he's obviously a you know celebrity and he's a entrepreneur but if he's into pinball then it seems more normal than if I'm a tipping boy and I'm her husband. You know what I mean? I do. Anyway, the last thing which I didn't put in the show notes is the Beatles got streamed by a couple of people. So Buffalo actually I think was the first one. Buffalo member Rudy ended up filming it, and I watched a decent amount of that. I didn't get to watch the Cousin Brucie one, which was the Stern official stream that they did in New York, I believe it was. but Beatles have been popping all over the place there was an event in London like a pop-up Beatles store where people could play all weekend if you want Beatles footage it is now out there if you want to watch footage to decide whether you're going to buy the machine or not it's there and I've talked to people that have played it and they love it they're not absolutely in love with the price but they really enjoy playing it because you can move the shot you can understand the rules it's very easy to play the game And if you want to play one, come up to Time Zone in Queensland because they're getting two. Yeah. Is that on the way already, John? Yeah, we're going to stream one. We're getting one in Melbourne and we're going to stream it as well.
    107:03
    I've watched a bit of the stream and I think that it plays better than it looks on a stream. What does that mean? Which stream did you watch?
    107:16
    The Buffalo People one. I just think, because it is a flat layout, and it's not necessarily the fastest of games, I think it's fun having to actually play the game and use your skills, as opposed to watching somebody play a game. Isn't that every pinball machine? No, no, no. This is why I'm calling this out, because, as you know, I watch a shit ton of pinball streaming, and I can kind of gauge whether something's exciting to watch or not. That's what I'm saying. It's not exciting to watch. It will be exciting to play. Okay. That's what I'm saying. Cool.
    108:00
    There you go. Let's go to slam the top 100, 100, 100, 100. He's slamming the top 100, sorry. So, lastly, it was Martin, Embryon, Ryan, Blackout. You didn't put the results here, Marty, but I'm pretty sure Embryon won because everyone knows what Embryon is and no one has played Blackout. Ah, look, I don't think it was that.
    108:20
    I think it was because the gift you gave me was epic. Beyond anything that you've ever posted before. It was the best. But now, let's time to... Actually, what is our real opinion on these games? Embryon, do you like it or not? I've only played it once, and I did feel like it was too wide. That was a real opinion. Yeah, it kind of is a bit wide, but I did say last week they did make use of that space as opposed to some machines where they've got things out on the side that really are pointless.
    109:01
    And I was actually being really honest when I talked about Blackout when I said it's actually a good game. And so sorry, Axel, because I know Axel's got it. It's actually a good game. I actually quite like it because I love Williams of that era. But there's just nothing remarkable about it. It kind of is a bit of a bitzer of Williams machines at the time.
    109:24
    John, are you joining Marty's team or my team, or do you want to reverse us? If you don't want to offend me by choosing Martin, I can generate a random number which will choose the team. The rubbish games you're choosing. You're right. We can't just do 100.
    109:43
    Yeah, and don't blame us. Blame people that have voted for these on Pinside. It's their fault. Yeah, it's true.
    109:49
    I'll just listen and ridicule both of you. How's that? No, you've got to join in. You've got to join in. I'll go with Ryan. He needs more help. Yes.
    109:59
    He really does. You know, I'll admit that I didn't actually have me on the plate blackout. You can tell. Oh, I know. You go, oh, yeah. I just went to Axel's and played it. I know you had. Right. Please generate a number from 100 to 200.
    110:17
    Coming right up. 195. Atlantis. No. Atlantis. Have you played a drum, please? Have you played it? Atlantis. I'm just going to look it up.
    110:35
    I don't know. Let me tell you what. I have played it. Please generate a number from 100 to 200. Okay.
    110:51
    122. Sorcerer. Yep. Like that. Yep. So that's me to go first. Ah, fuck. Let's do this. Can we just get this done? Yeah, and I'm going to do this straight away, because I don't even have to look anything up. Sorcerer. Love. Love Sorcerer. I tell you what people will say, right? Well, I shouldn't even say this because you don't even know this, Ryan, but some people can say that it's a bit of a one-trick game, which is effectively hit the left ramp and get to multi-ball and then get to multi-ball. And that can be one of the strategies that people have done for tournaments, but a lot of games from the 80s today don't work well in tournaments, so I'm calling it out. But what I'll tell you about Sorcerer is the art package on this is spectacular. Just one of the best art packages. I really do like art from this era, but one of the games that really stands out is Sorcerer. I really like the layout. I love the curved row of stand-up targets to light Sorcerer. You've got the spinner on the left as well, which you've got to get. But with this game, really, you can play the long game, which, as I said before, is just ramp, ramp, ramp, or you can get your playful multiplier up and then start getting your jackpots, and that's how you really blow it up. It's got three flippers, so two bottom, and it's got this little flipper up on the right where you've got these targets that if you get them down, the value keeps going up and up and up and up, and it can be really quite lucrative. The sound package on this is absolutely stunning. Just Williams of this era, This is one of the best they did. There you go. That is Sorcerer. John, you can talk about... I understand. I understand Sorcerer. No, we want you to talk about Atlantis, right? From everything that you know about it. I'm reading disgusting reviews about Sorcerer. I'm ready to unleash that hate. Atlantis. I've got a soft spot for EMs at the moment. I've got about eight. I'm restoring. The simplicity of them and the way they play is appealing very much to the younger player.
    113:01
    You look at something like... This isn't an EM. That would be close enough. Keep going, John. Please go. Give me some material.
    113:13
    The simplicity will encourage players to have a crack at it. It is an EM. What are you doing? You looked up the wrong one.
    113:25
    1985. No. Is that the wrong game? Is it Atlantis? No. Oh. No. Okay. And that's your argument. Okay. Right. Is it now time for my rebuttal? Right.
    113:38
    Edit, edit. I'm not editing this. Oh, shit. Which game did you actually choose? Atlantis. The one that's 195 on the pin side is top 200. Oh, that's dumb.
    113:56
    Oh. The EM Atlantis is a wonderful game. This dude is shit. Just put the nail in the coffin. Go for it.
    114:08
    So, there's a very good reason why neither of you know Atlantis. It is... It is just... It is an awful, awful, awful game. for the pitchers yeah you know guys I'm telling you now Ryan can come in and try and do the anti-vote like oh you know I never win so give me a vote because you know down with Marty he sucks blah blah blah I just want you guys to understand Atlantis people don't talk about Atlantis because it embarrasses the pinball community it's almost like it's the shame of pinball why is it in the top 200 at all because it's the gag vote people are doing it just for shits and giggles right it is you know what even the flyer says discover the wealth of Atlantis oceans of profits waiting to be found Fuck off Why is the girl in the fly Got a big pile of poo Just below her I know And she's got massive tans This is An awful Oh Ryan I know you've never played it You And clearly John's never played it If he's talking about an EM After he's Googled it Probably one's good Yeah This game is just Terrible Oh Well I was gonna Talk about And how horrible it is But jeez We're in a bad position here because of John. Jeez, John. Chose the wrong team.
    115:55
    So you know what? Just vote for me for shit seats. Just for the lols, okay? Not the anti-vote because Marty sucks. Just do it to prove that this fucking segment is done and dusted. And if I win, we will kill the segment forever, okay? So if you don't like the top 100 anymore and you vote for me, I'm going to do a sexy gif because there's a sexy girl on the trans light, so I will do it. What is she doing? There's a girl in the middle. No, she doesn't know what she's doing. It means I can do a sexy girl gif. We're money with sorcerer. We'll get a failed magician or something. Some stupid wizard. No. You know. Everybody, I want you to look up. Okay, all the women. I want you to look up the back glass of Atlantis. And you tell me. You tell me that it doesn't. That it doesn't look like a chick riding a giant cock with a foreskin. so that's so okay let's move it on and for the dad joke of the night how do you circumcise the whale How do you do that Send down four skin divers Oh
    117:09
    Wow, you've just really taken this tone right down. No, you haven't. It was always fucked. All right, what do we do this week in Finmore Money? Oh, do we want to talk about the Melbourne Silverboard Tournament?
    117:24
    We do. But I'm going to... Let's ask somebody that was there as a participant. How did you feel the tournament that we put on went?
    117:35
    You think it was me or John? Talk to John. That software is amazing. I'm not sure about the user end, your end, but from our end, man, that was good. That's the Carl DeLangelo Never Drain software. Yeah, Carl DeLangelo.
    117:52
    Yep. How good is that? Like, you can actually cue yourself up. Extraordinary. Yeah. There was obviously a bit of a learning curve at the beginning because, you know, we were all learning this on the fly. It was just like, okay, it's live now. What do we do? We all had to work it out.
    118:08
    But, yeah, there was a lot of stuff that we had to do behind the scenes. But from a player point of view, it worked well for you, I'm imagining. Yes.
    118:20
    Ryan? Yeah. Well, I came in maybe one or two hours into the tournament, and I think the way you said you were going to do it, Marty, is you need helpers, and you can help out for an hour, and then play in the tournament. And I said, oh, well, I'll just help out straight away since I'm late. And it kind of became pretty apparent because of the – it wasn't chaotic or anything because it was very well organized, but I needed to play and cue myself in the queues and help out the entire time as well.
    118:52
    and it worked out really well with the queuing system. Some of the queues were pretty long. I'm guessing you didn't have crazy amounts of time to play the games before the meeting. Not at all. Because of the nature of it. Yeah, so, you know, you could always get on Alien Poker with a couple of, you know, just two or three people, and it was a short game, whereas Terminator was, I think, about an hour long wait, so that was like do or die. Like, if you did bad... There was 13 people in the queue. Yeah, 13 people at one stage. And, Marty, there was eight games in the tournament. I think, Marty, you put scores on seven of the eight, and the one you missed out on was six. Okay, yeah. So I managed to just squeeze in all eight games, and I don't know why, because I've been playing absolutely horrible pinball, but I had a good run on every game except Strikes and Spares.
    119:47
    And that put me in. I think it was 70 people playing. that put me in fourth position and then I managed to, with one minute spare, put my second game on strikes and spares and got a decent score and I qualified second.
    120:01
    That was pure luck because some of the games I'd never played before, like Terminator 3, and that was a fun learning curve, but it was such a long game and I think I learnt the entire game just from that. But yeah, the tournament was good. The qualifying day went pretty smooth. Yep. Were there many extra buy-ins? I mean, I did my eight games and managed to squeak in about 11th or 13th or something to get in the finals. But I'm wondering, was there a lot of buy-ins? Yeah, there was. Okay. There was. And so qualifying, you know, it started at about 11 o'clock and probably by about – and this went till 7.45. So it probably started at about 2 o'clock people started doing buy-ins. So I think that was enough time for them to get all their games done. And then the buy-ins started coming, and they came thick and fast. Yeah, because people flew down from Interstate to play in the tournament, and I guess they're like, well, hey, I'm sitting just outside the finals. I'm not going to give up now. And when I saw people kind of queuing up on Terminator for a second time, I was like, you bastard, I haven't even played yet. So I'm not sure what they do in Indisc if they set up the machines kind of harder. So even if there is a big queue, it doesn't take crazy amounts of time. But I didn't know that you can't queue yourself on two machines. I thought you can kind of queue multiple and then when you're ready, you can cancel the other ones. Because it was hard sometimes because, you know, like you could see who was in the queue, but you don't know if they're going to have a good game or not. And you queue yourself in one and the other line would... You know, like when you're at a shopping centre and there's like multiple lines for people to go down, you're like, you keep on guessing, should I be in this one? Should I be in that one?
    121:48
    But it's easy enough to cancel the software when you see that. You can always scroll down, see how many are in front, realise you've still got eight, and there's two waiting for Alien Poker. Just pop another game on that. The difference is I was helping out the entire time with scorekeeping from the moment I arrived there. So it's not like I can queue myself on Terminator and then go play Pirates of the Caribbean for an hour. It was being there, watching people play for that whole hour. So, but that's the scorekeepers. Yeah, look, as I said, the main issue that we got had was that, you know, we had to bump all the machines in in the morning, and some of the machines were right at the back. And so there were 65 machines there, so we had to wait for them to all come out. By the time we got it there, and, you know, doors were opening at 10. So I think we got the machines set up probably at about, I don't want to say 9.30. that was actually like the machines there, right? And I had to have the machine set up before I could actually even start setting up the streaming gear because we needed to have power and we needed to know where they were. Like, I didn't even know where these machines were going to be located really till the day. So we didn't really have that much time to toughen up the machines. And I knew that Terminator 3 was a long playing game, but I just it was one of those priority moments was like shit do I spend time now researching it and toughing it up or do I actually just spend my time getting this tournament ready by the time everybody turns up and that was kind of where the priority went obviously learning for next year we do need to get access to those machines a lot earlier so we can play them time them toughen them up and then have them ready We also had some machines that didn't actually work. So Phoenix we had kept resetting.
    123:48
    We had a tech come over, fix it. It would then do the same thing, would do it again. So we ended up taking it out, and it turned out that the power that was going to it was, you know, from a power board into another power board into another power board. So it wasn't getting enough power to actually really keep the machine on. so we had to do all those kinds of adjustments on the fly and we did. So it was still good. We got the bank happening but during the day there was obviously some machines that were still problematic. Xenon? Well, yeah, so Xenon was a problem so we took that out and replaced that with one of the Monster Bash remakes. Alien Poker. Did we take that out?
    124:33
    Yeah, we did. But it was still qualifying. And we replaced it with Harlem Globetrotters. Yeah. But the good thing is that we got to stream a lot of Monster Bash remakes. So all the videos will be there. They're now on YouTube, so you'll be able to watch them forever. So that was day one, qualifying. And then after that, we did a Flip Frenzy.
    124:56
    Yep. So it was the first time, I think, in Australia that you were using the new math place, by the way, from Andreas. Correct. And yeah, I promised to help you out, Marty, and I didn't.
    125:10
    No, because you're... Yeah, I admit. And it's because I know that I'm going to be running Flip Frenzy tournaments all the time now at Pinball Paradise, and it's literally my only chance to actually play in a Flip Frenzy because we talk about it all the time. Here's my counter to you. Yeah. Right? Yeah. I was running this Flip Frenzy. So you said, come to pinball paradise and run the Flip Frenzy with me, so then you'll know how to run the software. You'll know how to run the tournaments. So I did that for you, but you didn't do that for me. I found you a substitute. Not the same. He was better. He was better, but you absolutely weaseled out of your promise. I just wanted all our listeners to hear. It was never a promise. It was a promise. Marty, have you qualified for the Australian Championships? Have you travelled all around Australia to get whoppers for Australian Championships this year? No. I'm ten whoppers short, so I need the whoppers for that. I couldn't care.
    126:21
    Promise is a promise. I never actually promised you, but I'll take it. I am a... That's fine. Now I've got to edit that twice. Anyway, so Flip Frenzy was an absolute hoot. It really was.
    126:42
    There was so much noise and so many people having fun, and I just got so much feedback from people, and it was predominantly people that hadn't necessarily done a lot of tournaments. In fact, so many people, it was their first tournament they've ever done, and we've said this so many times and we're going to say this again. This is the best format to introduce people into competitive pinball. Hands down. Yep, no waiting or minimal waiting. The average queue time was three or four or five minutes max and you only have to queue after playing two games in a row. So you don't have pretty much any downtime and you're playing against a lot of different people and the fun thing for me was that It was forcing me to play these games that I would have never stepped up to and played to begin with, including Silver Spider. Oh, not Silver Spider. My very first game of Finsley was that stupid lap game you put in. Oh, Flying Turns. Oh, God. Well, I did make this as an announcement at the end.
    127:48
    There were two machines that every time people got assigned to them, the look on their faces was just priceless. And Daniel Johnson, I'm calling you out because we did intentionally send you to Pistol Poker every single time. No, we didn't. It's random. I'm sorry, man. But just Pistol Poker and Force 2. Those two machines, every time it was mentioned, people would just roll their eyes and groan. And, like, oh, my God. I'm just going to get quick on any of them, so I have to look these games up. What about you, John?
    128:32
    No, I'm in the first. No? Well, there you go. So, Ryan? Yeah, no, the game for me was Silver Slugger because I got put on that first. Like, literally, you're ready, set, go, you're playing. And I made the crucial mistake in Flip Frenzy is trying to size up the opponent you're playing and saying, okay, this will be a quick game, so let's just hit a couple of shots. And not drain or anything, but not give it your full attention. And this person had, I'm not going to mention his name, but he'd never played pinball before and was very new to it and doesn't know how to trap up. And he beat me on Silver Spider. And I wasn't upset. It was just like, okay, Ryan, you need to concentrate. And I think I put on halfway through the same game with Richard Rhodes, who is one of the best players in Australia. And I kicked his ass on it. It proves that. And it was nothing to do with my flipper skills. It's just the mystery hole. I remember I hit the mystery hole, and it said, this ball is now locked. I'm like, okay. And then I hit the mystery hole again, and it said half a million points. I'm like, okay. But I hit the mystery hole again, and it was like, instant multi-ball.
    129:39
    And then I think he got mystery two or three times during his game, and it gave him nothing. And, you know, hey, that can be almost any game during, you know, that's in how to tournament mode. but it was just funnier that it was happening on Silver Slugger. Yep. Well, you know, spoiler alert. So we all know Walt Dickey won Flip Frenzy. He had 13 wins, 3 losses for a net result of 10. But we suppressed the results, so people can't see actually who won until the end. And I had a bit of a sneak peek probably about, I reckon it was by about 45 minutes to an hour before it finished. I actually didn't want to know. But Richard Rhodes was in front by a country mile at that stage, right? Just because of the amount of wins that he'd had at that time. He just then had shit machine after shit machine. And people were just beating him. And he was just like, you know what? The good thing was, I think he was looking at going, whatever, I'm just focusing on the finals tomorrow, because that flick-benzy finished at midnight.
    130:54
    Yeah, when you have that many players, you can't always have the AAA finals. You know, when you have 60-something people playing, I can't remember how many were, but yeah, I was put on some weird games I've never played before. I can't remember, Knight Rider or something, and in various conditions, I'm sure if you played a meet one before you say, oh, it's fine. But it was fun. And the great thing about Flip Frenzy as well is what John mentioned before when they play in Queensland. Like, you have to make a judgment call. If someone is absolutely walloping you, you know, is it in your best interest to try your best to beat them but then waste an extra 15 minutes or plunge your balls away and move on to the next game? And my second last game was dialed in. and I got a decent score, it was about 400,000 on my first ball. And I said to the person playing, I didn't really know his skill level, but I kind of watched him kind of not knowing how to play a mode and he played a very, very long ball and ended up with 50,000 or so. And I said, I'm going to play with my balls away because I'm confident that I'm going to... I didn't say it that way, that would be rude. I said, I need to play one more game because I feel like I need one more win. so you keep on playing you try and catch me but I'm going to punch my balls away and he got pretty close but couldn't do it I then went and with one minute left I had to play my last game which was Terminator and the guy I was playing against just had the absolute game of his life and got close to 100 million on Terminator so all of that was for nothing because he's win minus losses now so that's the fun of Flip Frenzy that was your punishment for not helping me out so thank you to the gods that did that Hey, I'm running one in seven days, Marty. Would you like to come and help me out? Yes, Ryan. I will absolutely. I promise I will help you out.
    132:47
    Anyway, so that was with Frenzy. That was good fun. And what else can we do, Marty? The next day was the finals. Finals? A Division Finals was for the top 16. B Division Finals was for this following eight people. Yes. Who won B Division, Martin? Ted Woods won B Division. so it was great and again B Division was really competitive as well the next day we had butcherised those machines so all of them had had the rubbers taken off all ball saves off modes were turned up hard things like dialed in didn't have the kickback on and it was two lots of the bob targets to get it back up we did that because it was what we should have done the day before effectively, but we had a whole day of watching it on the stream to see what was playing along and what wasn't. So people came in, and it was really good for people to see them play competitively on these now, you would call them, competition-ready machines.
    133:53
    And yeah, B Division was hotly contested, and Ted Woods was the winner. But you two were both in A Finals, is that correct? Correct, yep. How'd that go for you? Momentarily. Yeah.
    134:10
    I got to drive the bus, and I've never been in a tournament that allowed me to do that. So because I finished second, as long as I made it to the final four, I would always be choosing the games. So I chose the games I was comfortable with. I wasn't comfortable at all with Harlem and Strikes and Stairs. I know the rules, but I know the rules well enough that if you don't get B enough, you're pretty well fucked so I didn't want to keep it as a chance so I played more of the modern games and I managed to win three out of the four games to get down to the final eight and that's when I just started playing absolutely horrible people and I just couldn't hit my shots I actually played pretty bad in the first round but I don't know how I managed to win three games but I still managed to be in the hunt when it came down to the final game in the final eight. I think I just needed to come second, so either force a tiebreaker or get through, depending on the result. And I chose Terminator, and that was the only game I changed from the round of 16 to the round of eight, because I took out AFM because I couldn't hit any of the shots, it's a remake, etc. And I just had a horrible game on T3, and I watched myself pick Mystery and get a light kickback, which was already lit, and someone else get the mystery and get multiple, which just moralized me. So that was you, Marty, getting back at me for not helping out at the frenzy. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Again, you can put it into one of my moments. But, yeah, no, I deserved it. I didn't play well, but that was my aim, to get to the top four after qualifying in second. But I came seventh, and I was pretty happy with that. Yeah. I was happy to get to the finals. That was my aim. Unfortunately, I had to fly out early, so I was sort of deep inside, hoping I didn't make it to the next round and then have to say I'm forfeiting. Not that I didn't try, but the four people I played with were all very good players. All the A-grade players were very, very good, and we had fun and a lot of camaraderie. And I got knocked out in that round, so I ended up coming 14th, and it was good. I enjoyed it. It was a great tournament. Mate, when you did Guardians, I forgot to ask you this on the day, Did you just change everything to extra hard, or did you go in manually and change settings?
    136:36
    Manually and change settings. But there was a mix of machines. Myself and Stu, we came in early, and so I didn't do Guardians, I don't think. Okay, because Guardians was the hardest version of all the software settings, and it was weird because some of it was written down, but things like lane changing, with Guardians, if you've played it before, you know that you can change the two left in lanes together. You can't change the right in lane because there's only one, and the two top lanes you can change. Use the flipper to get your shop multipliers up. It was disabled, so you could which is just not pointless, but it was just like, holy shit, that doesn't need to change.
    137:19
    Hitting Groot, I don't know how many times you have to hit Groot, but a million times just to get the lock in, and then someone went for that strategy, got the third ball locked, ready for multi-ball, and I was like, okay, you still have to lock another ball, because it was on the hardest setting there was. So that was all about playing modes, which people soon realised, but I was a little bit too late. So are you saying to me that by making that game really, really difficult, it made it not fun at all? Is that what I'm hearing? Yeah, that's what I'm hearing. That's what I'm hearing. No, no, no, that's what I'm hearing. No, that's what I'm hearing. I've ruined the whole tournament is basically what you're saying okay if you buy tickets for I've changed my money you're not allowed to buy tickets actually that's against IPA rules I'm not even allowed to no but look that was you know what it was a number of reasons one of the things that was a challenge obviously throughout the whole two days there was timing because we were at the mercy of a lot of other things that were out of our control. Sounds like a bit of an excuse, but it's actually just a reason. And as try as we might, we just tried to get everything as on time as possible. And so we just, we brutalized those machines just in the essence of just getting people through. That's the best. Hard games are the best, Marty. No one will disagree. The hard games are the best because it means you're playing more pinball. No one likes waiting around watching other people play pinball. Nobody. No. Well, it was fun. I'll tell you what was really interesting. I didn't know what the result was going to be, but I knew something would happen with Terminator 3. What I made happen was I made multi-ball worth absolutely bugger all. Because during qualifying, all people were doing was multi-ball, getting bazillion scores, and that's all you had to do. because there was no points I didn't know what people were going to do besides that but and I didn't really even tell people that much I just put up a sign that said multiball is now hard so people just went for other things and it really highlighted other parts of the game so it kind of reminds me of the changes they make to Metallica where all of a sudden you know crank it up is what people go for as opposed to multi-ball because you've made that shot too hard. Are you talking about assault on the... Yes. Oh, I forgot to call it assault on the vault. People were going for assault. Yeah, lighting the in-lanes, then shooting the left orbit. That was a good strategy. Yep. And it was just good to watch. People sort of just worked that out on the day when they realised that multi-ball just wasn't worth going for. Yeah. Well, people just combo ramps all day on that thing. It's just in the perfect spot on the flip or another thing. Yeah. the Hoopers were a bit weak, but they just seemed to, like, people weren't missing. And that's what happened wrong on that last game is I missed the shot from the game. I know. Yeah. So I look forward to playing that game in the future again because that was pretty fun. Anyway, so the winner of the main tournament, Richard Rhodes, came first. Simon Peel was second. Brian Schleeps was third. And Andrew Ferguson was fourth.
    140:42
    There was a total of about, I think, $3,000 in prize money, all up split between A and B at Flip Frenzy. So there was some good prize money to be had for this event. Cool. Yeah, it was only for the top four, right? You don't have a check waiting for me, do you, Marty, for coming sevens? No, I just, you know, have an invoice for, you know, time in lieu for you having to help me at the Flip Frenzy tournament. I shabbed you dinner, gin. Come on, mate. Okay, you can harbor it. You can harbor it for a while.
    141:16
    So there you go. That's all I was going to say. It was like, the thing that was stressing me probably the most was getting all the streaming gear up and running and effectively I was waiting for this mega HDMI capture card to arrive and it arrived 3.30 on Friday afternoon. I had to go up to the post office and pick it up. And so... With no delivery on Saturday, which you should mention because in the US I think sometimes they deliver on Saturday. Correct. So, look, it actually was delivered to my house in the morning, like at about 9.30, but I was called into work on my day off. So I went into the office and when I was in the office they tried to deliver, so they left a calling card, had to wait for the truck to go back to the post office and picked it up. But I tell you what was really good is that I just put this thing in my machine. Thank you very much, Stacey, for helping me work out how to do that. And it just worked. It just worked. So I prepared everything for this moment for this card to work. If it hadn't worked, the whole thing would have been fucked. So it worked. There was this, as we sort of said, you know, we're talking about it before, a lot of things that we had to learn on the fly. We had to learn Carl D'Angelo's DTM, the Drain's Tournament Manager, on the fly. We had to learn the new Flip Frenzy Match Play software on the fly. and I had to learn all this streaming stuff on the fly. And as far as the player and the viewer goes, it was just, I think it flowed really well and it was pretty seamless and it was a pretty good experience. Behind the scenes, because you were part of it and you were in the messenger group, it was freaking mad chaos behind the scenes getting everything running.
    143:02
    And so that's kind of why some of the timing was out. But, you know, overall, I think it did, it went really well.
    143:10
    A few people to thank, obviously, yourself and Stu and Luke and Stacey. And probably the star, I will say, of the whole thing was David, who did the commentating on the stream. How did his voice not run out? In the US, they'd rotate people around, but it was just him the entire time. I was like, wow. It was like five hours on Saturday and another four and a half hours on Sunday. Just non-stop. But just the enthusiasm, the attention to detail, the observations, the interaction of everything that happened for the Melbourne Silver Bowl tournament. I've had a lot of feedback on a lot of things. but David doing the commentating on the Melbourne Silver Bowl tournament stream was the one thing that people have unanimously said was the highlight. It just was. It was just so great to watch and listen.
    144:13
    So I do encourage people. I put the videos up on YouTube so we will link those in the show notes but definitely a big thank you to David and also thank you to Tim Chapman as well. He sort of came into some scorekeeping as well. I don't know, other people that I can't remember as well, Ryan, to thank. That's just on the day. Wanted to give a massive shout-out to Carl D'Angelo. His software was just perfect. Did not miss a beat. And I was sending him notes saying, you know, is this kind of stuff straightforward? What happens? He goes, yeah, it's straightforward. And I'm like, oh, okay. It was straightforward. Click a button, it does it. It talks you through everything you need to do, and everybody really enjoyed that. Obviously, Wayne from Mr Pinball putting on Flipout, that was just a great event. Scooter from Zach's Amusements for coming out as well, bringing a lot of stir machines. That was awesome. It was great to see them on board. Obviously, Jersey Jack coming out was amazing.
    145:13
    But, you know, honestly, 70 people in the main tournament was a phenomenal effort. So I was just so pleased to have so many people involved in the tournament. So there you go. I hope I've covered everybody. If I haven't, I apologize. But thank you. You're all amazing.
    145:31
    Cool. Anything else this week, Marty? Done? That's it. Really quickly. I'm so tired. All right. Really quickly for me. Lethal Weapon 3 is in the house. And it is the best, worst game I've ever played. It is... Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. Leo, what? Leo, okay.
    145:52
    I can't stop playing it, but it's so shit. It's just the worst game. I'm just going to keep on playing it until I actually don't like it anymore. But it's fun to play it because it's so bad. And the rules just don't make, like, we talk about inserts making sense on pinball machines. Nowhere on all the writing on the playfields does it say, hit the drop targets down twice, start multiple. Nowhere.
    146:18
    Unless I've got, like, a prototype paper or something. Marty, you'll have a bit. guess what song he chooses. What do you think? You're not allowed to tell us, Ryan. Well, I would pick TNC Music Factory every day.
    146:32
    Yeah. Every single time. The other two just don't really count to it. Absolutely. What are the other two?
    146:39
    There's the theme. The theme song and something else. Was it like ZZ Top or something? Yeah. ZZ Top, yeah.
    146:47
    I just can't believe the rules just don't make... You know what is really weird? When you hit something, there seems to be a delay in the animation happening. You'll hit this skill shot and you have to wait. What seems like an eternity is probably only half a second or a second. You're like, did I miss it or did I get it?
    147:06
    Do you know you can have shooting on the video mode? The video mode where they hold up either a gun... Oh, yeah, the ice flash. Yes, yes, yes. Someone told me that. The guy who dropped it off. We don't know how to... When to shoot him. I don't know.
    147:20
    Yeah. You wait until the ice flash? Yeah, so when the eyes flash, you shoot. And when you shoot the orbits and it's ready, and then when the eyes flash, you can shoot up to 6 million or something.
    147:31
    It's a very random game, but anyway, it's good fun. Last year, I got my Iron Man this week, and I think last week I said that I wanted to change the spinner sounds. So when I got it and I played it, I'm like, yeah, the spinner sounds good, but I don't want those gunshot sounds. I was like, wow, what's a game that I really like the spinner sound in? And I'm like, TNA, because there's two different Iron Man sounds.
    147:56
    You know, when you get him up, the different spinner sounds, kind of like super spin almost. So I'm like, TNA. TNA has that amazing spinner sound, and then it changes to super spinner. It's very satisfying. Maybe it doesn't fit with the theme perfectly. So I messaged Scott and he said, hey, man, like, you know, I know it's a big ask, but can I have the WAV files for it? And he's like, I'll do you one better, Ryan. I will make a custom spinner sound for you. You'll be the only person in the world that'll have a special Scott Denise Iron Man spinner sound. And I'm like, cool. And I went to bed and woke up and the file was there. And I played it. It sounded amazing.
    148:33
    And then I put it in the pinball machine and I fucked up because I used the Iron Man firmware and not the Iron Man VE firmware, which is different. I have to ring up someone from South Australia. Con, thank you very much for helping me out with that. And it sounds horrible inside the table machine because it sounds nothing like what it does on the computer. And it's like, wow, how hard is it for these sound engineers to actually get the right sound out? Because when you play on your computer, it's this clear, crisp sound. When you inject it in the game and there's music playing over it and I don't know what I have to do. So it's going to take a long time to figure it out. So I might do it after the tournament because I've got a million other things to plan for my big tournament at my house in two weeks. But, yeah, I will have a custom sound from Scott Danese. Thank you, Scott Danese.
    149:23
    Hot water, sorry. I will be at your house. Yes. John, you're flying down, and Marty, you won't be there, but it'll be a good day. We'll be running the Fliss Frenzy.
    149:34
    Is that it, Marty? Anything else that happened in your week involving water? Ah, okay, yes. And so right before the show started, my wife started complaining that the hot water wouldn't work in a certain part of the house. Jeez, I've forgotten about it.
    149:51
    And I went to check it out. I couldn't figure – the hot water – I've got two hot water systems. One's like an infinity system, so unlimited hot water. One's this really old system. It's making a very weird noise, and I'm like, I don't want to fuck this up. Call my father-in-law because he knows everything. We opened it up. We had a look. seemed to be like leaking and the pilot light was out. So you turn the gas off, did the pilot light, you know, did everything. And then it started to make this really weird noise. And this was kind of like underneath at the bottom, you know, of this device. It started to make this really weird noise. So what do you do when someone makes a weird noise? You have a look at it. So I kind of stuck my head right there and woof, like a massive ball of flame like from a movie just came and shot directly into my face. and I was like, oh, my gosh, can I still see? Like, that was, like, directly into my eye, and it was like the fireball was, like, about 30 centimeters by 30 centimeters, a foot by a foot, and my hair was singed out, like, a decent portion. Luckily, I have a lot of hair. My eyebrows, I feel my eyebrows singed. Luckily, I've got really thick, bushy eyebrows, and then I walk inside, and my wife is like, your eyebrows are gone, right? Oh, no. I've got like maybe one or two millimetres worth of eyebrows on my right eye now. But luckily I have my eyesight, so just a word of warning to everyone.
    151:17
    Don't stick your face next to something that is potentially going to blow up in your face. 15% of people never grow their eyelashes back. Okay. Just as a medical thing for you. I've got very, very thick hair, so I think I should be good. hopefully, fingers crossed, otherwise I'm going to look very weak for the rest of my life.
    151:39
    Yeah, there we go. There's an email, but I don't know if you can read it. Yeah, let's just quickly read through the email. This is from Rowan. Hi guys, what a superb job you did on the Flipout 2018 tournament. Of course I'm going to read out this email, Brian. I absolutely loved it and we're back next year. The setup of machines was amazing and all machines were working extremely well and if there was any issues, promptly attended to by the techs there who did a great job. Thanks to you. Also, no body odour issues from anyone within whiffing distance from me and the entire tournament, which I hear is a major problem in other countries. So well done on us Aussies on spraying a bit of the old Brute 33 on before playing each day. I'd love your opinions on the Monster Bash remake machines, as they're absolutely eye-popping gorgeous and played super. Would love to get one of them, but the $12,000 or $13,000 Australian price tag is the killer. is it worth a bang for buck in your guys opinions or better wait and see what the monsters from Stern and the Jersey Jack Willy Wonka looks like so anyway great event on the weekend, loved every minute of it stream was great to watch as we said so big things up so there you go Marty I just got a message from someone just to put some randomness into the podcast read this out to Marty please in Harry Potter, in the Harry Potter universe, couples who take polyjuice potion can swap bodies and then have sex to see what it's like from both perspectives. Interesting, Marty. It's true.
    153:10
    What's polyjuice? Polyjuice potion turns you into the physicality of the other person. Only for a short period of time. You need to keep drinking it to be able to stay the form of the other person.
    153:25
    So if I drank my wife's juice and then she drank my juice. Your polyjuice. Can we just say polyjuice and not say juiced?
    153:34
    Alright. It just sounds better when you say polyjuice. Okay. Right. And you can try out that birthday present I gave you Ryan as well. Yay. Yes. I stopped it. I passed it on to somebody else. Yes.
    153:48
    Okay. Let's just say if someone lasts three hours in the podcast they deserve to hear some trash. John bought me a cock ring for my birthday. Thank you, John.
    154:01
    It wasn't. It was a ring you wear instead of a wedding ring while you're playing pinball. Just studs on it. That's it. There you go.
    154:08
    So, great. Yes, we are Head to Head Pinball Podcast. You can catch us on our website, headtohead.com, no.au. Head to Head Pinball, isn't it? Yeah. I'm tired, Marty. head2head4.com right yeah we don't want people going to head2head.com you don't know what that's going to be gay 69ers all over the place oh for sure leave that in um subscribe to our patreon give us money because we spend it on ridiculous things and you will see how ridiculous that thing is sometime this week um and what else we do money uh we're on you subscribe to us write us random reviews on facebook and tell us how good we are, but only five stars. There's one mother effer who did a one-star review. How dare you? We know why. Called us babies or something or something. I don't know. Anyway, whatever. Preschoolers or something. Which we are. Yeah, so it's your five stars.
    155:12
    Yeah, Stitcher, Google Play, never Spotify. And also I want to give a big shout-out to our good friends over in the UK. You probably know pinballinfo.com. so I've got a message from user there Tux just letting us know that next weekend or probably this weekend now is the first birthday of the UK's largest pinball club which is Flip Out London so there's 10 guys that own and run the club apparently Matt Vince is the leader and the scene over there is growing so well done everybody and here's to another year and yeah we'll see you all next week Thank you very much, Dr. John Cosson, for coming on. Thanks for inviting me, and thank you for a great weekend at Flipout. No worries. Thanks, mate. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next week. See you. Bye.