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PNP 579- Ryan Barry: Liquidation Co Offered 100k for Haggis Inventory BUT Someone ALREADY bought it!?

Poor Man's Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·analyzed·Jul 23, 2024
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.026

TL;DR

Third party secretly acquired Haggis Pinball assets; liquidation offer of $100k rejected

Summary

Orby and Ryan Barry discuss the Haggis Pinball collapse, revealing new intel that a third party (possibly a shell company) has purchased all remaining inventory and assets, preventing liquidators from selling parts. The conversation covers community fallout, the ethics of pre-orders vs. play-testing, and speculation about whether key personnel like Marty knew about the situation's true state.

Key Claims

  • A liquidation company was offered $100,000 for all Haggis Pinball parts and assets but was told everything is owned by a third party

    high confidence · Ryan Barry reporting information from people close to the situation in Australia

  • The third party cannot be identified by liquidators, suggesting possible shell company structure

    medium confidence · Ryan Barry analysis of liquidation situation

  • In January 18th email, Haggis requested final balance payment for Centaur before the prototype was even approved by Planetary

    high confidence · Ryan Barry referencing specific dated communication that was shared publicly

  • Haggis did not partner with distributors in Australia, only sold directly to customers, leaving buyers with no creditor protection

    high confidence · Ryan Barry describing Australian market dynamics

  • Fathom Revisited playfields have been hit-or-miss in quality despite marketing as superior quality

    medium confidence · Ryan Barry discussing production reports from other players

  • A reputable Australian pinball community member offered $100k for the inventory but was unable to complete the purchase

    medium confidence · Ryan Barry reflecting on who made the offer

Notable Quotes

  • “The liquidators can't even sell the parts. And they can't even tell you who the third party is?...this screams shell company. If you want to close down a business without losing all of the assets, you transfer those assets to someone else or another company that you've set up.”

    Orby @ ~15:20 — Articulates the core accusation that Haggis Pinball may have deliberately shielded assets through a shell company structure

  • “They were taking deposits and full payment if you would have given full payment two days before that website went dark they would have happily taken it”

    Ryan Barry @ ~20:15 — Highlights predatory behavior of continuing to accept payment while the company was knowingly failing

  • “I think that he was probably just as blindsided as everyone else...I don't think that marty especially out of everyone in this situation would have touched this with a 10 foot pole if he thought that this is what was going on”

    Ryan Barry @ ~25:45 — Defense of Marty (Haggis co-founder) suggesting he may have been deceived by primary founder

  • “in January there was panic and that's when we started robbing Peter to pay Paul the milk definitely had gotten sour by then”

    Ryan Barry @ ~31:50 — Evidence that financial crisis at Haggis was apparent by January from their desperate solicitation tactics

  • “hashtag dead to me, I'm sorry. Like, he could start five other pinball companies. I don't want to see the dude again”

    Orby @ ~28:30 — Orby's visceral rejection of the situation/primary founder as a result of the collapse

Entities

Haggis PinballcompanyRyan BarrypersonOrbypersonMartypersonFathom RevisitedgameCentaur Beast EditiongamePlanetarycompanyPhantom Tilt Pinball PodcastmediaPinball Nerds PodcastmediaPoor Man's Pinball Networkorganization

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Haggis Pinball transferred all assets to unknown third party before liquidation, preventing recovery of inventory

    high · Liquidators offered $100k for assets but informed all inventory owned by third party who cannot be identified

  • ?

    business_signal: January 18th email requesting final payment for Centaur before prototype approval suggests financial panic and desperation

    high · Centaur not approved by Planetary yet company aggressively soliciting final payments claiming imminent shipping

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Significant sentiment shift from support to hostility toward Haggis; even defenders have given up

    high · Orby reports even supporters have 'gotten tired of defending this'; Ryan describes community embarrassment in Australia

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Haggis initially positioned as transparent, community-focused alternative to major manufacturers but failed to deliver on transparency promises

    high · Orby recalls championing company for promised transparency and customer service; company went dark with no statements

  • $

    market_signal: Direct-to-consumer model without distributor intermediaries left Australian customers with zero creditor protection

    high · Ryan Barry explains Australian distribution bypassed standard distributor channels, leaving individual customers unprotected

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.221

0:00
All get around, he's on the rebound Hear the sound of our buddy, oh lordy, it's Orby Pinball now to rejoice He's tugging pinball, craft beer and coffee Miffed with syrup and honey Almost a laugh with his family in a random tangent Stories of his boys He's on the poor man's pod network We're gonna get more listeners for the Pinball Nerds Podcast.
0:32
Coming to you from beautiful River Hibbert, Nova Scotia. Welcome back, Pinball Nerds, to episode 579 or 78, probably 79 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name is Orbital Albert, and I'm going to slow it down just a little bit because I've got Ryan Barry here of the Phantom Tilt Pinball Podcast from the Outback Shack all the way there in Australia. How you doing, Ryan?
1:04
I'm doing very well, Mr. Orbiter Albert. Orbiter. That's right. I forgot about that. It's been so long. I mean, basically he's been cancelled, so I guess I'll never be called Orbiter again unless it's you, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. I don't know if he's been cancelled, has he? Well, the truth shall set you free and someday one of us will know. I'm not going to bug him about it right now. I guess we'll find out in the future. He said the shows are on halt for like a month, but he's done that like every summer for the past 10 years. I've kind of done the same thing for a couple weeks usually, which to all the pinball podcasters listening, and even you, Ryan, you were traveling for a couple weeks. I didn't have a phantom tilt. The worst part of my day was every day I went to my inbox waiting for the new phantom tilt notification, and I would physically get down on the ground and cry, and I would freak out. because where is my Kimba? Where is my Ryan? I need you guys. Come on. No, I'm just kidding. You did say you're going to try to do once a week, and you all fell off a little, but it's summer. Fall off a little. You don't have hundreds of subscribers on Patreon that are going to get mad at you if you take a week or two off, right?
Kaneda's Pinball Podcast
media
Zach Sharpeperson
Deep Root Pinballcompany
Dave Muellerperson
Stern Pinballcompany
Jersey Jack Pinballcompany

community_signal: Marty's role in collapse remains unclear; speculation about whether he was deceived or complicit

medium · Ryan Barry defends Marty as likely blindsided; Orby withholds judgment pending statement; both acknowledge uncertainty

  • ?

    product_concern: Fathom Revisited playfields reported as hit-or-miss quality despite premium positioning and marketing claims

    medium · Multiple reports of playfield variability; company attempted to differentiate on playfield quality but failed in execution

  • ?

    business_signal: Possible asset transfer to shell company to protect founder assets while leaving creditors with nothing

    medium · Ryan Barry's analysis that third-party ownership structure suggests deliberate asset shielding; common in fraudulent closures

    • 2:13
    Nah, nah. We said when we started out we would do once a week, and then that moved to once a fortnight, and then it just turned into whatever the fuck we feel like. That's what we should do. I don't know. If you've got the bleep button ready, I don't mean to swear too much on you.
    2:33
    Yes, Pinball Nerds Podcast, where a swear word's never been heard. Last one notorious episode. We just had our 15th episode, and it continued our streak of explicit episodes. We thought maybe we'd be able to reach a wider audience if we didn't do an explicit episode. you know maybe it gets out there to more people but we couldn't help ourselves i don't know you might it's a it must be a Aussie thing i i also think like honestly uh it's it really depends if you live in like the bible belt whether it's here in canada the united states i'm sure there's even certain places in australia where like how dare you have a swear word on right like whereas if where i live if i was walking by and i was listening to your show and i happen to be like walking down the street and you dropped a minor f-bomb even if there's someone with kids there No one will be like, oh my God. You know what I mean? Like every single movie on television that like every Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, your favorite actor, the EF bombs all the time. And if Arnold can do it, why can't we? Right. Are we not all just content creators? Is Arnold not just creating content? Is he not an actor? Do you know what I mean? So, hey, the thing is, I try to cut back on them basically because I do want to include my audience. And I do think from time to time, like you can overdo it. Obviously, like, I've had one or two podcasts. I probably swore more than I needed to. I've been trying to do, like, there was a show that was huge here in the U.S., and they swear, like, one F-bomb per episode. That's all to keep their PG-13 rating. They bleep it out.
    4:03
    But it's a very tasteful fuck. And if you pause just long enough, right before you say it, if you look at the person and you go, what the fuck were you thinking? you know if a good tasteful fuck is like better than been better than too many fucks if you're just all fuck this fuck that all the time it loses its beautifulness it's it's you know you haven't preserved no don't force it if you never swear in real life then it's going to sound weird as hell on on the podcast now that being said i don't do it as often as i used to obviously because i'm in my 40s now i'm getting old and i lost my my whole notepad here my five questions for Ryan Berry. But before I give you any questions, I have to thank you so much for that awesome gift box you guys sent me.
    4:50
    It had not one but two Phantom Tilt shirts and then not one but two boxes of Tim Tams. And my only beef was like, whoa, you guys forgot to tell me I had to slam the Tim Tam before I ate all the Tim Tams. It's possible I had a couple gummies and was really hungry and was like, oh, what are these things? I did save one so each person in the family could have one and see how good they were but explain to everyone listening what WTF is a Tim Tam Slam alright so Tim Tam Slam I fucking hate that name because it just makes me cringe but basically what it is you get your Tim Tam which is like a rectangular shaped chocolate biscuit and it's coated in chocolate it's got chocolate in the middle and you bite one corner off one end and then you bite the other corner off the other end and then you use that biscuit as a straw and suck up your coffee and then it like softens up and melts the inside a bit and then you eat that bad boy and it will be nice and warm inside and all gooey. Now imagine... That's an Aussie staple. Imagine if you just explain that and then I could tell you the review of how good it tastes. As a guy owning a coffee company, I would have loved that, but I had no clue what a Tim Tam Slam was. The closest to that I've ever seen here is we have Twizzlers, these licorice things. I'm assuming you guys have them. I don't know. But sometimes you'd stick that in like a Coca-Cola and drink your fuzzy pop that way. But then the inside, the licorice gets all freaking soft and yicky and, you know. I can't think of anything else you'd really do that with here. But I am sure there's at least one international specialty store in Halifax, if not two, that has some Tim Tams. I'm going to head there. I'm going to get some delicious angry alpaca coffee. I'm going to stick it in. I'm going to stick it in like sticking a fork into haggis as we pivot on to talking about those effers. We're not going to swear at all because nobody's angry about it. But let me preface this by saying I feel bad for everybody.
    6:53
    Nay, probably Damien, possibly Marty, depending on. Again, I don't feel bad for everybody else who worked at that factory who had no clue whether or not it was a full scam or whether it was 100% legit and they were just trying their best. Nobody will know except for the people near the top. So my whole thing is, until I find out the intentions of someone like Marty, it's hard for me to be like that mad at him, even though obviously I would assume there's things he could have done better or different. I just, I don't want to place false blame when maybe Marty was the only voice of reason trying to prevent Damien from screwing the whole thing over. We all don't know at this point, and that's why I'm trying not to make too many assumptions. and it's so boring. Everyone's like, oh, you have to be more measured. You have to be more level-headed, Orby. Okay, well, I'll be measure-headed and leveled. I feel really bad for every person who paid money to Haggis who isn't going to get their pen and I feel really bad for everyone who worked at Haggis who wasn't intentionally trying to hurt consumers. So that being said, you're on the ground there in Australia. Give me your feedback while I have a little bit of my oatmeal stout breakfast of champs.
    7:58
    Right, so I've got some information, some feedback from people that are pretty close to the situation.
    8:08
    I know an individual that actually offered the liquidators $100,000 for all of the parts and pieces that were left over from Haggis once they'd sort of cleared out their warehouse, wherever the hell that shit went. all those parts and cabinets and whether they've got CNC machines there, whatever they've got, pneumatic tooling.
    8:36
    And what they were told was that all of the assets are actually owned by a third party. Wow. Okay, this is news. Yeah.
    8:50
    The liquidators can't even sell the parts. And they can't even tell you who the third party is? I don't know if they can or can't, but to me this screams shell company. If you want to close down a business without losing all of the assets,
    9:14
    you transfer those assets to someone else or another company that you've set up. Maybe in someone else's name, more than likely in someone else's name. Are you saying that maybe David Fix owns it?
    9:29
    Are you saying David Fix might just own Agus Bimbal and we didn't know it this whole time? Yeah, I don't think that it would be anyone outside of the country. No, I know. But it would be possible. Or even outside of that family. Well, that's what I'm saying. It would be possible that a friend, a family member, a wife, a relative, a cousin, a nephew, a neighbor, an old co-worker could own the shell company. and somehow these could... I don't want to come to conclusions, but that does happen very often. So, I mean, we can try to protect ourselves and say, in Minecraft here, but can a bankrupt company sue you? I'm not sure. I have no clue. Hopefully not. Okay, good. Yeah.
    10:12
    Ryan, you're not worried about those types of things. Like, come on. No, no, I couldn't give two shits.
    10:18
    They can't find me. Good. They'll try. but they uh they certainly won't be you know getting in touch with my employer and trying to get me fired oh lordy okay that's a okay that's let's save that spicy spicy beef for a little bit later what like okay just to for you personally i saw you see say this in one of the chats like and i felt the same way as a canadian with pinball adventures someone was complaining about haggis and you said, look, mate, like as an Australian, I'm more embarrassed and upset about this and pissed off about this than anyone else other than maybe the people who spent the money on it. And you have every right to be because as an Australian and even as a Canadian, especially as a European, a big chunk of the money we pay for pins is shipping, like sometimes 20%, 30%, 40%. In the U.S., you can just drive to Spooky and pick your pin up for free.
    11:14
    Most distros offer free shipping. No, they do. So the thing is, we need to consider that. So for you guys, it was a godsend. You were going to have this cool company that was fun, that had a podcast where everybody knew, and you were going to get great new titles and cool remakes with added modes and that looked beautiful. Like, Fathom Revisited is, I would put it, one of the top ten most beautiful pins I've ever seen. And I haven't even ever seen it yet. I've only seen it on video. Have you actually seen or played a Fathom Revisited in real life? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I've played a Fathom, I've played the Celts, and both the games I played were great. It was so much fun, they were solidly built, I didn't have any issues when I was playing them.
    12:01
    But there's been all sorts of reports, it seems very hit and miss with the playfields. I don't know why they tried to go and reinvent the wheel by creating a different type of playfield. if they wanted to make a badass playfield that lasted forever, do one of these diamond plate playfields, you know, that they were doing for a little bit back there. Yeah, was it Bally was doing that, or Gottlieb, or, you know, what, early 80s, late 70s? Yeah, one of them.
    12:28
    But those playfields will last forever, and that's why they stopped doing it. So if you want to make a super high-quality playfield, do one of those again, and everyone would be pretty impressed and happy with that, you would have thought. But, you know, they had to...
    12:42
    do the whole new thing when it really wasn't needed. Other than that, it's like the fact that they are in Australia makes everything harder. The majority of your games are going overseas.
    13:02
    And to be here and watch a company do something like that, it is absolutely embarrassing. It's disgraceful. I think that most Aussies are hardworking. You know, they hold integrity in high regard, you know, doing what you say you're going to do.
    13:22
    And being forthright. You know, we don't really keep ourselves too reserved most of the time. Tell it like it is. We are pretty transparent with most things. Yeah, tell it like it is. Call it spade to spade, as you'd say. Mm-hmm. and I think that just watching this whole thing unfold, slowly but surely, even the people that were the most in support of them have gradually just gotten tired of defending this when they're not doing anything to defend themselves. They're not saying anything. Even the people that are defending them now, how can you defend it when they haven't even released a statement? they were taking deposits and full payment if you would have given full payment two days before that website went dark they would have happily taken it wow I don't know it's a really shady situation where that wasn't shut down for a little while until they got things under control it was just a treading water sort of situation by the sounds of it. So are you stuck in the same dilemma as me or not? Maybe you've talked to more people on the ground there. My dilemma is, I honestly at this point, even if I saw Damien at a show in the future, I do not think I could talk to him or go say hi to him because he could feel how much I loathe kind of how he dealt with everything the last year and a half has been wrong. Because one of the reasons I championed Haggis was because they were the pinball company saying, oh yeah we're going to be doing weekly lives and we're going to be the most transparent we're going to get back to you sooner we're going to have the best customer service we're going to have the best play fields and I think part of the reason why Damien was saying they were going to have the best play fields is because a big point of contention back then was multiple I believe Jersey Jacks came out in a row and even one or two Sterns came out where there was tons of chipping and pooling issues and a lot of pinball content creators especially Kaneda himself were talking about this day in and day out like I actually just stopped listening to his show even back when it was free back then because of that because I was like I can't listen to chipping and pooling anymore you know I don't want this isn't a Sherman Williams like paint shop you know anyways uh I I digress but the point is is that like a lot of us I think at the time he was trying to differentiate himself with the play field and differentiate himself by doing by by like almost like you know when you go to like an artisan or a gastropub or like a really nice restaurant or whatever it is and they have like the big open kitchen and you're seeing all the chefs you're seeing you know you're seeing all the magic happen so to speak I think Damien wanted to be like that and then eventually the more things got screwed up and the more things didn't go the way he had planned the harder and harder it was to be open and honest about it and then you could kind of see the wheels falling off my issue is and I wonder if you struggle with this as well as I don't know how much of that I don't know what I'm assuming even a couple weeks ago Marty was hopefully thinking maybe they were still like was Damien stringing Marty along saying no no we're still just rescheduling or we're still just revamping or we're just moving to a smaller place we're going to be just like Dutch pinball you know like with Big Lebowski it might have taken a decade to come out but everyone's got their pins we're going to be the same as them and then we're going to revitalize and start a new company like did Marty think that was happening or was Marty along for the ride with Damien in the intention of yeah yeah guys send us your last deposits like that post you put up send us your deposit in full it's ready it's on the line we'll send it to you within two weeks just send us your full deposit like if marty in full well was writing that email and sending it to his friends and family who he's known within the pinball industry for the past year then obviously it's going to be really hard for me to like ever talk to marty again or like trust anything he says or be friends with him again right but i don't know how much of that so you're right until we get a statement we're never going to know but what is your gut feeling like are you feeling like marty kind of knew what was up i don't think that i don't think that marty especially out of everyone in this situation would have touched this with a 10 foot pole if he thought that this is what was going on and I don't think he would have hung around either to be honest he's very in touch with the pinball community he's part of the pinball community so you think Marty might have been surprised also you're not much more ingrained in the pinball community yeah I think that he was probably just as blindsided as everyone else. You can't say that you had no idea that what was going on because when you're in the company and you're asking questions like, how come we're not doing videos anymore? How come we're not doing content?
    18:13
    Are you getting answers? If you're not getting any answers, then you know that something's wrong. but I definitely didn't think that he would have anything to do with no I don think that he would have anything to do with this situation and how it was handled by just shutting everything down and going dark. That's crazy. No, and for me being Pinball's biggest super fan, or at least that's what I include myself as, because I'm certainly not a podcaster, even though I'm trying to be a little bit more, less of a blog and more of a podcaster. I'm working on it. But for me personally, it's going to be easier for me to sleep at night just being really furious with Damien and assuming that that what you said is true so I've heard it from you on the ground there in Australia for now until I hear differently from someone I'm doesn't mean I'm gonna like if Marty started a new pinball company tomorrow I'll be like yeah here's my money like of course not like I might be a little more hesitant with that sort of thing if he gets hired at another company in the future but I've always said play before you pay and if you didn't play the new centaur maybe don't pay for it and I get it I get FOMO was huge all the way through COVID and everything else, but I hope from now on, there's even other pinball podcasters who have bought pinball machines, played four or five plays, hated it, sold it, lost two or three grand. I don't want that for anyone in the industry. Wait an extra week or two, especially if it's a stern. Within a week or two, the pros will be on location. If you hate the pro, you're probably not going to love the premium LE. I mean, sometimes, maybe, I guess, but for the most part, if you like the look of it, if you like the sound, you like the callouts, you like the shots, they're going to be fairly similar, short of a different mech, right? So, it's like, I don't know where I was going with this, but put a bow on Haggis for us. Put a bow on Haggis for us. Like, for me personally, I'm going to have to think, like, I love Marty.
    20:00
    I'm going to have to give him the benefit of the doubt until I hear it differently. But, like, Damien, no way. Like, hashtag dead to me, I'm sorry. Like, he could start five other pinball companies. I don't want to see the dude again. I don't want to hear from him. You know, if we hear, like, do I think what Damien did was as bad as Deep Root and Robert Mulligan or Mulligan or Mueller, I don't know, whoever it was. Mueller, yeah. Bueller, Bueller, Robert Mueller, whoever. That guy doesn't even have to go to jail. That's BS. Do I think what his intentions were as bad as that dude who stole like $40 million? No, obviously not. But I just want to know where along the tracks did it switch from Damien truly believing, was it six months ago, was it a year ago, or was it like a year and a half ago when he was trying to get people interested in the centaur, right? So who knows? put a bow on it for us tell us your overall like a final give us a final thought maybe on haggis and where you're standing at this point i think that the the thing that gives you the most information about where they were at what time period is that email that we were sent that we shared on January the 18th when they were asking for the balance of a Centaur Beast Edition when Centaur hadn't even been approved, the prototype hadn't even been approved by Planetary on January the 18th. But they were saying that we're getting these on the line within the next few weeks. you're going to be getting your Centaur shipped out to you. We need to get the payment now so that we can get your Centaur on the line and shipped out to you. So you can't... They haven't even gotten close to finishing the Fathom production.
    21:53
    So I don't understand how, in such a cutback manufacturing system, you are running two lines of games what are you going to do stop Fathom production while you run a couple centaurs? I don't know so that's what tells me that in January there was panic and that's when we started robbing Peter to pay Paul the milk definitely had gotten sour by then 100% The fucked up thing is that Here in Australia We didn't have distributors Haggis wouldn't partner with distributors It was directly through them So you didn't have any protection Like Where you know if everyone Deposits going through a distributor Now when they've collapsed That distributor is a much bigger Creditor than an individual Customer or 10 individual customers. So they've got a much better chance of sitting higher in the ladder of who's going to be paid. They're a little bit better protected. But when they're not partnering with any distributors, you've only got individual customers coming directly to you. Thankfully, in the US, wherever the hell else they're selling games, they've got distributors that are hopefully going to have a bigger chunk of coin invested, and they're going to be further off on the ladder of creditors to be paid back if they can actually recoup any funds when they've got zero assets to sell off. Wow. It's pretty troubling. It's pretty infuriating.
    23:44
    And it's going to be an interesting, I guess, few months while those liquidators try to track things down and chase down a paper trail and see what sort of other action is going to come from this as well, depending on how much knowledge there was beforehand.
    24:04
    That's pretty much it. That's the summary. Thank you. No, wow. I really appreciate that. It's weird because I have a degree in business, and I swear to God, you just informed me and let me know about how... I thought about with the distros, you're protected because they may choose to give back some of your deposit, it or if not all of it hopefully in cash but if not towards future products or pins uh which is of course what uh zach and nicole did at flipping out so that was great so of course yes that is probably the best argument for buying through a distro i'm not gonna lie uh but i hadn't even thought about what you said when you buy a whole grouping of them as a distro you're now higher on the creditor list so there's a slightly better chance you get some of that money back even if it's cents on the dollar i'm still it's just rattling my brain you've just given like the biggest news that's ever been dropped on the pinball nerds podcast guys uh shout out to ryan make sure you go listen to uh phantom tilt if you haven't because this guy could have saved this for his own podcast and he was rad enough to bring it over here letting us know that uh basically at this like at this point as far as we know they're another third party perhaps a shell company perhaps not has purchased all of the remaining inventory and everything else from haggis we don't know if it's someone from where but it is possible it would be someone perhaps close to someone at the company and let's all hope not unless maybe i don't know maybe they're maybe a jeff teoles was like that's it guys i will and maybe it's moving to canada maybe it's going to be haggis canada next who knows jeff i'm right here on the east coast we have inexpensive uh factories it will be fun just move out here you'll love it uh i'll i'll build them every day in my life right here in the goat shack it'll be great um okay so i will say it's a it's a bit of a shame, sorry, just quickly, that the person who did offer this money to the Liquidators didn't get the parts because I know who they are. They're a reputable person. They're deep within the Australian pinball community. And I think that at least people with games would have gotten their parts if they needed some spares and that. So a little bit disappointing that that person couldn't get a hold of those. But hopefully they're... But the best case scenario is Marty went, fuck this, bought everything off them and tucked them away somewhere and then he's going to take it over or something crazy like that. Jesus Christ.
    26:27
    I'm praying for a massive happy ending to this. But, you know, it's very hard to not lean on the side of pessimism just by looking at the body of evidence that we've got. So, yeah. Fingers crossed for a good outcome. So what you're saying is either Ryan C. bought all the parts, and he's going to start his own beautiful company there out hiking in the outback, or Kaneda bought them all, and he's just going to drop them off his old penthouse onto the ground just to get back at Damien and Marty for calling him unkind. How dare you call... I would say maybe what Damien did was more than unkind. Oh, mic drop, hot take of the day. Okay, all right, let's move on. I've had to talk about negative, and I don't like, you know most of my shows, Ryan, you've been listening for at least a year and a half now, are most of my shows, maybe not 80%, 90%, but like more than half my shows, are they not primarily positive?
    27:27
    Yeah, sure they are. Okay, all right, he had a minor pause there, but here's the thing. I've been trying to make them more and more positive as I go, but at the very least, if they're not positive, are they at least from time to time funny enough to give you a tiny little chuckle here in the Outback Shack? Hopefully. It's definitely entertaining. Okay, thank you. Thank you. I've never listened to the show, so I couldn't tell you, but I listened to an interview show once, and it was horrible, but I tried.
    27:53
    Alas, I already heard it once. I don't need to hear it twice. So let's move on to happier times, better topics, because I want to just chug a drink, have a shot, do whatever you have to do. Shake it off. Yeah, shake it off. Shake it off. Oh, what are you drinking, Ryan? oh i'm on the tequila buddy oh it's backwards i can't read it yeah tell us what it is is it the good stuff oh it's just a jose quavo especial uh you don't even have the gold come on man i thought you made the good money there in the mining uh no i'm just kidding uh you and you don't get rich by spending it all buddy that's true hey i'm half dutch you you know that I figured you have a gin for Marty but whatever let's talk a little bit about I want to talk really quickly about tournament pinball how's your tournament play been going you haven't been playing too too much but where are you ranked what's your plans in the next year are you going to try to make it to one or two decent sized tournaments in Australia how's the tournament plan going because we used to be on a show called Triple Vuck and now it's just the two of us on Double Vuck we're both tournament players we can talk about tournaments whenever the fuck we want so i'm just curious like you know tell what's going on with your tournament play what are your goals you know that kind of thing my tournament play has consisted of uh vicariously living through all the folks that are down closer to civilization at the moment until we move down in a couple of months.
    29:31
    We're going to be, yeah, not in any tournaments, but that's going to change once we move back down to the major city. So what's your goal? Like, you want to, let's just, okay, just for the listeners, okay, you make slightly more money than me, okay? I'm not going to say how much on air because I don't want everyone to, like, be upset here. We don't want to, we don't want to make fun of people like me with above ground pools, okay? We don't want to money shame. No, it doesn't.
    29:56
    Draco Franchi just wrecked our above ground pool. It cost us $39. I teared for like a quarter second there. But hey, he had fun in it. And I did a backflip into it. You saw me land that backflip. We all know that was legit. That backflip was as legit as Haggis Pinball is. So, you know, that's how legit it is. But what I was going to say is, I want to know if you'll take on a bet. We'll start the bet from wherever you move to the new place. You versus me. Who can get a higher... We'll both... You're going to be living in Australia and I'm going to be living in the middle of nowhere, Canada. so you maybe have a better chance where you are than me, but let's see who can get the highest ranking in one year.
    30:35
    Okay. $100. I'm seeing about $30,000 right now. Well, yeah, it doesn't matter where you are now. You're going to live near society. My buddy Matt McGoffin, my best friend in all this world who played Maple Pinball with me two months ago, he was ranked 28,000th, and he's now 7,000th from playing in like three big tournaments. Wow. Yeah. so are you saying the biggest jump yeah no no no no no no no no no no biggest jump come on i think i might only have to play a couple of tournaments to get that no no no just one year from after you move there 100 bucks on the highest rank i'm not talking like 10 grand talking 100 but not even 100 us that's too much that's too rich for my blood 100 canadian payable at a quarter a day for a year.
    31:23
    Sure. That sounds like a good deal. Yes. What's the interest rate on that? We're going to be over your way next year. So why don't we say, by the time that we get to you, we'll see who's ranked higher.
    31:41
    You're going down! I'm no New Brunswick champion, but we'll see how I go. I might have to employ a coach and get a bit of a montage going. I'm available.
    31:56
    What if I coach you to beat me? It's not hard to win in New Brunswick. There's only four of us in New Brunswick. It's not hard to win. The one gentleman lost his hand in the war, unfortunately. So, you know, his skills, he's very good. Like, whenever we have the one-handed tournaments, he wins. Like, he always wins the one-handed tournaments. You know what I mean? But, like, two-handed, it's challenging for him. He's using the knee. He's using the ankle. Sometimes he pulls on that stub for the elbow. He does pretty good. Like, he can nudge. You don't think with an elbow stub you can nudge? He can nudge. So, no. Let's not talk about me. I'm glad to hear you. Do you eventually, though, want to, would you like to, you know, break into, like, the top? Like, my goal is to kind of break into the top 1,000 someday. Would you like to kind of get there at some point? Is that an aspiration for you? Or you just do it for fun. You're not that competitive.
    32:41
    Mate, if it happens, it happens. I get there and then I get carried away and then I drink too much piss and then my gameplay kind of goes out the window and it's more about just talking shit with the guys and ladies and the kids that are there and scaring them.
    33:01
    It's just a thing. If it happens, it happens. I'll go in any tournament. I don't care who's in it. I'll jump in and I'll have a crack and I'll laugh at myself as I'm coming in fourth in every game. But, you know, every now and then I'll have a good one, and that makes you come back for more. It's like playing golf. You know, you can have all these bad games, but if you have that good one, then it'll keep you coming back. Yeah, or even sometimes you go play golf and you have a shit game, but you have one good shot. Like you hit one, like, 20-foot putt, and you just, like, you read it perfectly. That's the same thing in pinball. You could play a whole tournament. You play like garbage. You get three strikes and three turns, you're out. But then afterwards, no one's looking, and you get to wizard mode on Adam's family over there, And you're like, okay, it was still worth it, right? So it's just those little micro moments that you can enjoy. And the main thing with pinball for me, and it's a good thing but a bad thing, even especially if I had a couple wobbly pops, okay, a little bit of the, we call it Canadian canoe water here, all right? You have a couple of the old fizzies and a little bit of the moose knuckle sauce. And all of a sudden, the next thing you know, you're just, you forget you're in a record shop. And there's, like, children, like, shopping two feet away from you. And you're like, oh, fuck. Oh, sorry. Oh, my God. Oh, gee. Because you know what I mean? because you're like, I was one shot from Wizard Mode on Kiss the other day, and I screamed so loud that, like, even in a record shop with loud music, everybody's, like, 40 people at once just turned and looked at me, I was like, oh, sorry about that, and, like, they don't know tournament people, like, they don't get, like, they, they're like, just, what is this weird guy doing, he's jumping around, he's dancing, he's falling on the ground, he smells like, uh, wacky tobacco, like, what's going on with this guy? Anyway, sorry to all the children I scared at the record store, uh, I did apologize to some of the staff afterwards. I only broke three play fields and two back glasses, but it's all fine. Now, more importantly than tournaments, there's two new things I wanted to talk about, the two huge things that happened in your life. For those of them, people who have already heard Phantom Tilt will kind of know this, but everybody else, you just bought two things. I think they're equally impressive. One might be a pinball machine, and what is the other thing?
    35:02
    Oh, the other thing is a house. Holy cow. And I'll tell you what, in the Western Australian real estate market at the moment, that is probably the hardest thing you could possibly buy.
    35:18
    You can go in with the best intentions and offer a significant amount above asking and you're going to get swooped on by some investor that's coming in with cash money and you're out of luck. Yeah, so we lucked out. We got a place and we got, thankfully, a seller who wasn't interested in selling to the investors that came and offered her money. She came to us and we upped our offer and then we ended up getting it. We're pretty excited. Excited to be back close to our family, close to civilization, close to more pinball.
    35:55
    And then we'll be flying to work every week rather than driving. Oh, really? be exciting and we'll rack up those frequent flyer miles so hopefully we can get a bit of a discount when we do come to the U.S. and Canada next year. Wow. You showed me pictures of the house and I'll tell you what, my wife, she's a bit of a minimalist. She doesn't necessarily need lots of fancy stuff. You've seen our homestead here. However, if I showed her pictures of that awesome, modern, like simple but not overdone, it's not like a mini mansion where you're like 3,000 square feet. You know what I mean? It's a good size. It's beautiful. It's modern. It looks fairly new. The only thing was, the only thing I questioned, Ryan, what was the name of the town it's in?
    36:43
    Oh, I'm not going to dox myself. Don dox yourself Don dox yourself But can we just say this It rhymes with poop A lot of the towns around are named after indigenous places so whether it's a gathering place or near water. It's a funny name, just say that, it's a funny name. It was where the children were born. They're all sort of named after the indigenous terms for that. Yeah, it's a pretty funky little name, I know. It is a funny name. And don't worry, I won't be coming to knock on your door anytime soon. Well, I might. Who knows? Three to five years, kids are going away. Danielle and I sell the farm, so to speak. It could happen. Tell us about your new pen that I'm super jealous of, maybe more so than the house.
    37:35
    Yeah, so it's not a done deal just yet, but it's being teed up. We'll see. If we can make a deal, I'm going to get the cash together, but it should be a big Lebowski getting delivered to the pin shed that we've got set up out there, hopefully before the end of the year. So I'm pretty excited about that. I've got to play it a few times, and I'm pretty stoked for just the chance to own one, and especially the fact that it's got the exclusive Australian back glass on it. What? Tell me about that. The differences are there. Yeah, so in the background of the Big Lebowski back glass, you've got the Jesus. He's polishing his ball. Never fuck with the Jesus. The bowling ball, he's got a little kangaroo jelly hanging out of his pouch there. Oh, my God. And then I think it might be Sam Elliott sitting at the bar there and he's holding a VB, which is an Aussie beer, classic Aussie beer.
    38:46
    VD? Isn't that venereal disease? A sarsaparilla or something. What's that, mate? Sarsaparilla. I know he has a sarsaparilla in the movie, but did you say he's drinking a VD? Why would you want to drink a venereal disease? V. V. V. Oh, V. V.
    39:02
    Okay. Be like Backstreet's back. Oh, right. Down, down, down, down. It's probably the most iconic Australian beer, I'd say. Well, don't tell Fossets. We call it the Bushchook Emu Export over here in WA.
    39:22
    I love that. That's some ones you're going to have to try when you get out here. Is it just like a lager, pilsner, like straight up, like what, a bud or something would be here?
    39:34
    Yeah, just like a lager. I love it when you say it, a lager. I love it. It's beautiful. Okay, so we've talked about the new pin. We've talked about the new house.
    39:48
    This is, okay, it's a bit of a touchy subject, and we're not going to spend too long on it because I've already over deep dived into it so deep into my pool of gold. They're in DuckTales with Scrooge McDuck. We don't need to go into it too much, but I did want to talk, albeit briefly, more so as an intro to a more interesting topic about my stern freakout. Which has been deleted now, and somehow I didn't quite get canceled. I don't know. I almost got canceled, but not quite. I kind of pivoted, and I ducked, and I missed some arrows, you know. Semi-canceled, semi-canceled. That's okay. I don't mind being semi-canceled. I can now call my pinball podcast the Ellie of Ellie. I know one time you did your live stream, and you were like, no matter what I do, I only get 200 listens. And I'm like, a lot of times I don't even get 200 listens. So maybe day three, day four, day five, I'm like, oh, geez, maybe that was not a great idea. But go ahead and just give everybody your two cents on where we're sitting now. I've apologized a whole bunch of times. I've had at least two people, including possibly one person at Stern, say, you've apologized enough, just drop it, move forward. I kind of like to joke about it a little bit because I know people behind the scenes still razz me a bit about it. But tell me, as friend to friend, no one's listening, we're not on a show right now. Give me some advice as a guy who, you know what, did legitimately lose his temper because he was mad he wasn't going to get a rad jacket.
    41:07
    Mate, you're a human being. And human beings sometimes do funny things. And I think you should just own it. Mate, I think deleting it was the worst thing to do. You should just fucking own it. Oh, no. A couple people said that to me.
    41:24
    And I'll be honest. It's not something like you're being cocky about it that you lost your shit. But, you know, you're a human being. Everyone gets upset. We can all pretend that we weren't jealous about, you know, all the people that got to go and check it out. I mean, there's no way I'm expecting an email or a plane ticket over there to go and check out the factory. So I'm not too fussed. That doesn't really affect me. Not like I could go anyway because I work fucking 96 hours a week. Jesus, how would you care? Too much. I essentially think that, you know, you've shown that you cared, you know. Maybe it wasn't in the best way, but it was a human moment.
    42:12
    And, you know, there's no need to be ashamed of this. I sure as hell wouldn't be apologising to anyone. If that's how you felt at that time, that's how you felt at that time. And if you were, like, kind of playing it up a bit more, you know, just to, I don't know, if it was just to make yourself feel better, you know, and venting and getting it all out. But, mate, I just think you should own it. I would. Thank you. I mean, it's like my favorite character on The Office, everyone says, oh, Jim or Michael. My favorite character, of course, was always Andy. And, like, he had, like, a kind heart, and he was kind of funny. He loved singing. He was a much, much, much better singer than I, way funnier than me. But once in a while, he would just go like, oh, darn it. And he'd like smash his hand into the wall and like break the wall. And then they made him go to anger management and everything else. Now, thankfully, I mean, I have put my hand through a couple of walls, especially as a younger man. Not for a good decade or so now. But I mean, thankfully, as I'm getting older, you know, I can still go off my rocker and lose my shit. Thankfully, most of the time I lose my temper. It's jokingly. Do you know what I mean? Like I'm effing around with friends or family. And once in a while, they'll look at me like, is he serious? And that's my favorite thing because I like tricking my friends and I like tricking my family. And I consider my Pinball Nerds audience my friends and family. And once in a while, I lay it on a little thick. I was a theater boy growing up and I like to just, I play pranks. Like I grew up making jackass style videos, recording like skateboard videos. And we would wake each other up throwing like big giant handfuls of flour in our faces. And like we thought that was funny. Like, oh, you got pink eye now for the next week and no girl's going to talk to you at the frickin' punk rock club. But like, you know, anyways, I'll be honest, I was really, really, really annoyed. Also, I let myself fume over it for like a whole day and thought of a whole bunch of really angry, horrible, mean things that were just, you know, the negative, most rude sides of any negative thought I've ever had about being jealous of stuff. that being said I still think even you Ryan Barry if you are six or seven hundred episodes in and you're 10 years in you've spent thousands of hours of your life committing to this hobby and you lived an $80 plane ticket away from Stern and they invited 15 people who knew fuck all about pinball a month ago you'd be like guys I've literally like I quit my job making a quarter million dollars a year as a mining dude to come like support pinball because I love pinball so much and I want to be one of the only pinball podcasts that's doesn't isn't like I'm not paid by any distro. I don't get $500 or $1,000 off when I buy a Pro, which I've never even bought a new inbox bin, but if I did, no one's giving it to me for half off, which is good, because that way I can still sling my coffee and not have to worry about a Patreon and not have to worry about all that other stuff. But alas, thank you for your thoughts on that. That's going to bring me to, well, I'll say our second last topic probably, because I know we're getting real close here to 45 minutes, and what time, tell everybody there what time it is. I couldn't believe it's very late there right it's just ticked over midnight but i'm sweet but let me just before you before you move on to the next okay yeah yeah just say anger can come from you putting your expectations on someone else you know you're expecting other people to act in a way that you would act right you know maybe if you were in the position to make that decision you would do that you would invite that person who's done 600 episodes or whatever but you know that's your expectation man yes you can't you can't expect everyone to act in that same way because like we just said human beings do some weird things sometimes honestly that and that's the reason why i deleted it because it's like duder like there's like like carrie hardy didn't get to go he deserves to go more than me like bruce and ron like like every other pinball podcaster who's been in the game for 10 years uh and for the most part tries to be kind and get critical like myself it would have been rad if we all got an invite they couldn't invite everybody and honestly after seeing who they invited i was like wow that was actually a smart move by stern to invite who they invited and a lot of these people were kind of on the cusp of becoming pinball content creators and now since then they're fully committed and i'm glad to be getting people like retro ralph who get 80 000 90 000 100 000 views not even like i'm sorry i love you jack danger like my i'm your biggest fan but like not even jack danger's videos were getting 100 000 views you know and then Erica from Erica's Pinball Journey, I think what she's doing is really interesting. I could see her five to ten years from now being one of the largest YouTube pinball content creators. I simp hard for her, and same way I did with Dawn, same way I do with you. I am one of the only pinball content creators who pushes all new content. I've been doing that. I could name four or five big pinball podcasts right now that I was one of the first people to ever talk to and send you over there to go listen to them. Again, there's so few people listening to my show that it's not like I'm a pinball creator. I made the show what they are, but definitely that's part of what I do here is I kind of have like a, I know even Larry David from Curb Your Enthusiasm thought of himself as like a comedian's comedian because the other comedians kind of listened to him, but everyone else was like, that guy sucks. And like, he couldn't figure out he's kind of weird and awkward like me. And he has a lot of filler words and he's very contrarian. He likes to argue and get in beefs. I legitimately am the Canadian Larry David, which makes me the rudest person in all Canada, which sort of sucks being this rude. Like it's like, people don't like rude people like me. and I don't even like myself when I'm rude, which is why I usually stay heavily medicated. Now, recently, I've been going to therapy. I'm figuring out how to be more empathetic so I'm less like a robot and I can socialize properly. I'm getting closer to being more like a real human. I feel like I'm Pinocchio and trying to figure out how to make my nose stop growing, but I'm Dutch, so that's, alas, very hard. But I've gone off topic here. Let's thank you for all your kind words, and I agree with you. Me thinking that I deserved an invite was, like, Like, it's the worst of the worst of the worst. I'm not going to lie. A tiny bit of that might have been seeing Carrie Hardy go off and how many views that got and someone else going off. And, like, within that week, three people had three pretty ridiculous things on live streams, including Kaneda. And, like, they got off the charts views. Like, I counted the one live stream he did. He did, it was 27 F-words in one minute. So I was like, yo, that's more than my whole 20 minutes. That's more than my whole 20 minutes. You know what I'm saying? So anyways, I'm going to leave it deleted. I do think like, you know, you've got to think about, you know, they're not that decision to invite certain people isn't a judgment on who is important and not the pinball community. I know. Why did I think that? It's about who is growing and where the most growth will come from. Like the people who are listening to the Pinball Nerds podcast are the people who are deep in the hobby already. Yes. It's not sucking in new people. Yes, that's true. No, it is true. Yeah. You are right. No, you're right. Let's move on. A clear Albert like 10 minutes after that was like, do I upload this or don't I upload it? I was like, on one hand, it's probably the most entertaining and funniest podcast I've ever done. On the other hand, I'm going to burn a shit ton of bridges. On the other hand, I felt like awesome doing it. So, but yeah, let's move on. I'll never talk about it again except for right now when I'm going to say the crumble of Triple Vuck, alas, is the worst thing that came up with my freakout is a guy that, you know, I was good buddies with, Don, over there at Don's Pinball Podcast. We don't chat too much anymore, even though I harbor no hard feelings towards him. And if I do get to see Don at Expo, I'll be the first one to go up, shake his hand, apologize for being a doof, and offer to buy him a cider or something, maybe play a game of pinball with him. And that's cool. I kind of burn that bridge I get that, that happens when you choose to do something a little on, you walk on the edge sometimes you go over and I might have went a little over but that being said how come you were left out how come you weren't, you didn't do anything wrong that's why I thought you should have been carried on with Triple Vuck, no? Did you guys ever have that convo or anything?
    50:08
    Nah, not really I mean, I didn't want to I'm not jumping on one side or the other No, I don't want you to I'd rather not even do anything than jump on one side or the other. No, I don't want you to do that. I'm doing this show now. Tomorrow, I would happily go on Don's podcast and do that as well. Yeah.
    50:29
    I just felt bad for you is what I'm saying. I felt bad for you. Like, I felt like I was being a jerk. I felt bad for me, mate. The last thing I needed was another thing taking up time and making me stay up at midnight. You know, it's a challenge. All right. Fair enough. Well, I love Don, you love Don. I'm happy to do it. It was great fun for the episode. And you know what? Who cares? It's gone away. Have you ever had a big fight with a friend and then made up? Oh, yeah. All my friends. And how fucking good it feels afterwards? Yeah, yeah. So that's coming. And you'll have that awesome feeling. It'll get back. Maybe. It'll come good again. Maybe. I don't know. No, hopefully it will. Hopefully it will. You know what? We don't ever have to go back to being besties or whatever. but yeah, if we could just have civil respect, that would be super awesome. Not trash each other on shows or live streams. And I think that's what I want with all of my, I don't want to be the frenemies guy anymore. I just want to be more on the treat everybody with civil respect, be kind but critical, and don't try to make low blows to be funny because I'm good at that and I can do it easily, but I don't like doing that. I don't feel good about it. I think I can commentate in this hobby without any of those type of things. And do we have to be all positive all the time? Of course we don't have to be. You know what I mean? It doesn't have to be all positive all the time. But it also doesn't, you don't have to take every low blow that you can against Haggis or something. You know, it's just not called for. It's not needed. And certainly the last two topics basically are very entwined. The one is some people have been playing Kerry Hardy for his spot in Haggis going down. And I just want to be open and honest. any content creator, especially with a big audience, and your audience is saying, unbox it, yes, we want to see it. Kerry Hardy asked Haggis some of the hardest questions I've ever heard. Him unboxing that machine at TPF doesn't mean he's a bad person. It doesn't mean he agrees or disagrees with it. I mean, just if I was at a pinball show right now, and I saw Pinball Adventures over there, I would go elements. I would go try playing it, mostly probably to make fun of it, but I would try to have an open mind and see if it worked well and if the art was good. You know what I mean? So that's my point. It's just because I go over and I play elements and talk about elements, it doesn't mean I'm supporting the company. And there's been some rhetoric to that. So I wanted you to speak on whether or not, do you think Kerry Hardy is responsible for Haggis going down and he owes all the people who gave deposits an explanation for simping for them?
    52:58
    No, he's certainly not responsible for anything. I mean, if you're, let's just take a second and remember that we're talking about fucking toys here, okay? we're not talking about life or death situations yes it's a lot of money but I mean the people that are going at Kerry Hardy are doing it months after the fact where this has already been laid to rest and they now know that it's safe to go hard at that shit because Haggis is gone now they've got nothing to lose now they're not going to risk anything by going hard at it and everyone's going to agree with them so there's no risk there. There's no hot take. The same people, they're not having a go at Jeff Teolis for doing podcasts with Marty.
    53:45
    Why would you? Because that's fucking stupid. He's not doing anything wrong by talking to a guy. I don't actually remember them ever promoting Haggis on that show. You know what? Jeff and Marty rarely talked about Haggis on there.
    54:00
    Sorry, may I say that again? Oh, sorry. I was just saying that Jeff and Marty rarely even talked about Haggis on final round. I think they tried to avoid it like the plague.
    54:09
    Yeah, it's not even a topic. But if you're following that logic, then Jeff, by doing a podcast with Marty, is doing something wrong. He's promoting Haggis because he's got something to do with Haggis on his channel and he's got a big following.
    54:28
    It doesn't make sense that we're all adults. We all make the decisions for what we spend our money on by ourselves. And, you know, Kerry Hardy just unboxing and showing us the game, if that really tips you one way or the other,
    54:49
    I mean, then you're really already leaning towards buying one anyway. You're that person who gets a credit card for a free high five when you go to the store or something. Would you like to apply for a credit card for a gummy bear? I'm like, is it a special gummy bear? Maybe? No. Okay good Well that good Jeff Teulas does more for the pinball hobby than pretty much anyone I freaking know That guy works so hard travels everywhere does comedy Like he just is so good for the hobby that like for even for someone to even think that like it is absolutely ridiculous to me and i know that if i had the opportunity to even do an interview with uh anyone from deep root back in the day i would have done it i'd like to think i would have asked them the hard questions people say they'll ask you the hard questions but once you're actually there interviewing them i'll tell you this it's a lot harder in person i i've had hard questions written down and got to the end of the interview and wait said oh wait i forgot to ask ryan barry the hardest question of them all um uh no i'm just kidding i'm trying to you know smooth into our our very last one here i did want to talk very briefly about it and then never again the whole canada situation which you mentioned at the start we do not know if when or how someone actually did go after his job even though he did mention that in the live stream he's now said contrary to that so we don't know which is true if he was lying or telling the truth, but he definitely said a certain pinball company went to not his employer, but his employer's employer, and tried to get him fired. And I'm just saying, if that is true, that seems to me to be a low-down, dirty, not rad move at all. Because me as a pinball content creator, I don't want to think that if I do something wrong, you're going to affect my family life, my income, my friends, that kind of thing. And to be fair, look at my Stern Freakout, which is why I mentioned that ahead of time. that one thing that I did did affect me and that's why I took it down because I want to do things in pinball that positively affect me and the pinball community so I know Kaneda is very negative and has been very unkind and rude and mean to people but can we at least all agree that if someone did really go after his company that that was that wasn't very cool no mate it's you can love the guy or absolutely hate him but there's a couple things you don't do you don't fuck with someone's family and you don't fuck with the way that they put food on the table. You know, words are words. Amen. You know, if you're really trying to go and affect someone's way of making a living because of some shit that was said on a podcast, what the fuck are you doing? It's like, I don't know who the pinball company rep was or whoever the hell it was, but it's almost as bad as, you know, getting fucking people like Dave Fix who send cease and desist to people or threaten to sue fucking people. Mate, if he's spending that much time doing all that shit, it's no wonder you're fucking putting out games like barbecue. Yeah, use some of that time to come up with a better theme. Come on, man. Bring back Beer Fest. That was your big hit.
    57:49
    Good God. It just tells you all you need to know about how that's run and why we're all questioning what the fuck is going on over there. because you're wasting all your time bothering yourself with what people are saying on podcasts to, what, a few hundred people.
    58:10
    Here's the thing, Ryan. To me, it doesn't matter how many fucking people you're talking to. So the top video game people on Twitch, they can have, it doesn't matter if it's Kai Sinat or iShowSpeed or who's the Fortnite guy, Ninja. And they're playing with 40,000 live viewers, 50,000 live viewers. if chat keeps going you gotta try this new video game you gotta try oh it's so good you gotta try it it's the best ever and he goes over and he tries it and he goes i i he tries it for an hour he's like yeah okay i'll try the game he's trying to like it he's trying he's like i just don't guys i personally don't like this game if y'all in chat like it you guys can like it by him saying that will get clipped it will go on to tiktok it will go on to every every other social media platform will say oh my god ninja said the new game like fortnite sucks and literally that company will be out millions and millions of dollars. We're talking these video game companies make more in a day than all the pinball companies on planet Earth make in a year. Like they're a laughing stock to them, okay? And so if you went out to EA Games or whatever, like the people who own like Grand Theft Auto or Fortnite or what have you, Ubisoft or whatever, and you said to them, you know, well, this reviewer said he doesn't really like the new graphics or he doesn't like this or that. They're not going to go after his job because if they go after his job, he now reports that and then all the other twitch members would go i will never even review a game by this company ever again i will never talk to this company i will never support this company and i hope all of us in pinball do the same fucking thing if we find out that it was american pinball or if we find out one of these other companies is going around trying to fire people i hope to fucking god we never support that company again you think i slated american pinball before watch what the fuck happens if i find out it's them but i hope it wasn't because i love David Fix and I was so excited to meet him and interview him. I was even offered an interview with him a while ago and I said, David, there's nothing going on. When you announce Cuphead, I'll have you and the designer of Cuphead on. Or when and if you announce it, because he didn't confirm it, so I'm not going to say that. I don't want to get sued for F's sakes. But here's the thing. In the Minecraft world, I was offered an interview by someone very close to the company, got their phone number, their information, and I basically said, I don't want to talk to him right now, I know what David Fix is going to say. And he went on Pinball News Magazine, whatever, and he said exactly which was nothing for two hours of basically being a showman, a carny at a carnival, and he said nothing, and there was nothing good that came from that, and what he should have done is spend, you know, five minutes of those two hours getting a proper microphone. Because then we could have actually heard what he was saying. But I'm not going to be, I don't want to be rude, this is what I'm saying, I'm trying not to be rude or mean, I'm trying to be nice, I'm trying to be even-keeled, and I'm very bad at it, but I'm trying to be right in the middle. You can't say all that shit, and then you go, Oh, I'm going to be positive. I'm going to be nice. I'm going to be... Oh, my God. My Bluetooth turned off, Ryan. Do you know how bad that is this far in? I am so sorry. Here's the thing. I'm going to try to turn it back on, but everybody go listen to Phantom Till Pinball Podcast. It's coming back on, I believe. Somehow, we talked over an hour. My auto thing turned on. I'm bringing you back, Ryan. I'm bringing you back. I did go on a big rant here, so let me try to... Here we go. I'm connecting. Guys, I'm bringing Ryan back all the way from the outback. Okay, speak again, Ryan. Let's see.
    61:18
    All right. Hey, Ryan's back. Okay, sorry. I was going to say about the next three games from Stern that I've got 100% confirmed. Wait, did I cut out there?
    61:28
    I can't believe they're coming out with My Little Pony and Golden Girls in the same month. Yeah. Tell me your thoughts on the Canadian sitch. Sum it up for us all.
    61:41
    Look, yeah, I think that we've said it all. You know, you don't mess with people's way of living off of, okay, let's stop for a second and think, do we really think that what is stopping sales is things that are being said on a podcast or the actual gameplay and themes that are coming out? Let's just be realistic. if you're going to go on a podcast and just talk about how you're right and everyone else who disagrees is just wrong and doesn't know what they're talking about, then you've got to start to look inwards when the sales don't go up. Because when everyone's saying the same thing and you're the one going, nope, I'm right,
    62:26
    there's something off balance there. Yeah. I hear it. It's been a tough week in pinball between like this and, hey, we had no news for months. So actually, you and I picked a good time to just chill out, because when a new game comes out, I'm going to be there. Boo, boo, boo, boo. You're going to be getting a top five from Orby. You're going to be getting there. And I honestly kind of want to go back to what I was doing before. I'm not going to do your daily dose of pinball, but I would like to do two to three shorter shows per week and get closer to kind of being like that. Tell everybody why they have to come join Phantom Tilt. Tell them what product they should buy of any of them on your merch store. Give us a little shout-out on the way out. or if you have anything else you want to talk about, anyone or anything, go ahead. This is your floor before we close her up.
    63:12
    Mate, look, nobody has to listen to us, but if you do, I think that you'll have a good time. It's a bit more of a conversation more than just listing off the news on Nap Arcade or Kineticist. But, you know, we'll sit back, we'll talk about what we've been up to and what's going on in pinball as well as what we're doing and what we're looking forward to coming up as well. But like yourself, we're trying to get a little bit more laid back and not so, you know, structured and rigid. Just trying to chill. You know, you can come and check us out on Phantom Tilt Pinball on Facebook, Instagram, all that stuff.
    63:50
    But yeah, it's not a big deal. Like I said, we're talking about toys here. You know, let's just have fun. Let's enjoy it. Let's not take ourselves too seriously. Let's not try to fucking sue people. you know, let's just, uh, let's have a good time. Yeah. Uh, I've never been sued nor have I ever sued anyone and I don't ever want to. So let's just keep it at that. Let's just, uh, let's say in my, this whole show is in Minecraft today. Probably, uh, I don't live in Nova Scotia. Ryan's not in the Outback shack. We haven't doxed ourselves. Um, hopefully Glenn, the skateboarder doesn't mention River Hibbert in the, uh, intro song there. Um, do you, I want to know just, I guess I'm sorry if you have to go you have to go but last very last question just name for me like I'm just curious a couple you don't give me a top five because I didn't I didn't worry about this but just name for me a couple of other pinball podcasts that like you just can't like if they come up in your feed and you're bored at work that you have to listen to oh my okay all right I'll if if uh the pinball party podcast is on Jason chuck that on yeah oh I love it. That dude is probably the closest in the US to an Australian that I can get. That guy is very... I can relate to him very well.
    65:09
    And also Wormhole Pinball. Their interviews are super interesting. Yes, thank you. And the last one is...
    65:20
    Whenever the Wedgehead Pinball podcast does a Die on this Hill, of Die on this Hill where they defend what's generally believed to be a bad game. Okay. I'm always keen to hear about that. Dude, okay, okay. Sorry, say that one more time or send me a link. What's it called? Because I think I listened to it a long time ago. Wedgehead?
    65:43
    Yeah, Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. Okay. I think they're in Oregon, maybe. Frickin' hipsters up there in Portland. but they do their regular shows and chat and they also do a show every now and then called Die on this Hill I'll die on this hill where someone will come on someone will be the guest and they'll defend a game that they love unironically but is generally thought to be not a very good game that's awesome well you gave a shout out to all three different levels of Pinball Podcast so that's really cool I love that so much And are you like me that you, do you like drift around a lot when, like do you watch a lot of Twitch for live streams or is it hard with the timing of Australia to watch tournaments?
    66:31
    It's hard with my attention span to watch tournaments, but I'll sort of prefer to catch them afterwards and then I can sort of scan through and look for the games that I like to watch playing and the people that I like to watch playing. if I am on Twitch it's usually well over here it's 6pm on a Monday Wednesday and Friday I think it is and the dude's name is EnterYourInitials on Twitch that guy he has the best set up for interacting with his chat that I've ever seen on a Twitch channel the guy's got a Nerf gun up on top of his game where if you want to You want to spend your little bits that you earn. Or not bits, when you spend your... The points, channel points. Channel credits or whatever they are. But you can fire the nurse gun at him while he's playing. You can switch up the flippers. You can give him two tilt warnings. You can do all this sort of stuff. Why, you can give him tilt warnings? In there just to sort of mess with it. Yeah, they are super talented. They've set up these games to be hooked in so that you can actually affect the game. You can redeem what's called an upside-down game where he has to wear these glasses that make everything look upside-down and play. I love that. It's a good time. I fucking love that. That's so funny. Yeah. And he just put up a score. Into your initials. Yeah, into your initials. Just put up a score on good old Ninja Turts. And wasn't it like a billion or like 800 million or something? Was it Ninja Turts or a different game? He just put up a really high score. I think, oh. On a tough game. It might have been, I'm not sure. But an incredible player. He plays a lot of games. Incredible player. Very, very good player. Very good player, yeah. Have you ever watched Laser Loss or Laser Lose?
    68:26
    I think I've dropped into a few. I've definitely subscribed to him because I get the notification when he comes up. But it's usually when I'm at work. Yeah, he streams like crazy times. But he does really good too. Maybe not even as integrated as like a Nerf gun shooting at you or giving you tilts, but he does a really good job. You can pay a certain amount of biddies, and he has to take his Cheetos, and he has like chopsticks, and he has to eat some Cheetos or something or whatever snack he's eating. His is also very like, it looks more like kind of like a gaming channel on Twitch. You know what I mean? Like very interactive. So check out Enter Your Initials. Check out Laser Lose. Check out all three pinball podcasts that Ryan told you about. Thank you guys so much. Last question of the day. Give us just a one or two sentence review. of the Angry Alpaca Coffee. I sent you and Kimba there out in the Outback.
    69:12
    I've only had one. I haven't tried the other one yet. What the hell is it called? Some Good? Some Good, the East Coast Dark Roast.
    69:21
    Yeah, man, I love that stuff. That's my style. I love a dark roast. I like a Colombian-style coffee, and I feel like that is pretty close. That's about as close as I'm going to get. Out here, it's a little bit tough to get the good quality stuff, but either Angry Alpaca or the Black Rifle coffee that we can order from the States as well, that's usually pretty good. But to the listeners, don't order from them. Order from me.
    69:50
    I'm trying to ration it out, you know? It's kind of funny that you said that. I know Tim the Lion Man Lee, one of the tribe members here on the Poor Man's Pinball Network, of course, he said the same thing. He would wait until him and his wife were home on a Saturday together when they could actually make a pot and enjoy having a couple cups throughout the morning when they're both home and sitting down. They didn't just want to make it when they're rushing out the door. We're just going to chug your coffee when you're running somewhere. It's not as important. Hell, once or twice, and I swear to God, if a pitcher ever comes saying this, Ryan, and you try to blackmail me, that's it. I will never have you on the show again. But one time I did have a Tim Hortons coffee. Okay, I did. I spit it out right away, but I did do it. But don't tell anyone because it was disgusting. It tastes like ashtray water mixed with dirty feet. But I still drank it. I didn't like it, but I drank it. But alas, we've gone off topic. It wouldn't be one of my shows if not. I told you half an hour. We went like an hour and a half. But I hope the listeners loved it. If you guys loved it, go support Ryan. Go support me. Go support all those small creators we talked about today. And whatever you do, stop suing people. It's pinball. It's a toy. Let's go play. Let's have fun. It's okay to be critical and say, hey, I don't want to lose three or four grand when I buy a new inbox pin. But at the same time, if you love that theme and you hold it for a couple of years, you're probably going to break even. And who cares if you make money on a toy? Most toys degrade in money. So, and that's okay because we're playing with them and they're toys. Anyways, Ryan, I love you. Stay on the line. We'll chat for a sec after this. But last words to the listeners. I will say, yeah, just if you need some emotional support while you try the Vegemite, I will stay on and I will walk you through the ratio of butter to Vegemite on your toast and just be here for you. Okay. You can watch it live, and I'm going to be gagging and everything else. I might even get Danielle to report that we might have to put that up on the Pinball Nerds Podcast Facebook page. But just tell me this, because I Googled it. For, like, me not living in Australia, I was reading about it. It's like a mixture of vegetable. It's like, okay, but wait, it's a whole bunch of minerals, nutrients, and vitamins all together. But when I opened it and I smelled it, and I don't want to be crass. Anyone, step away now. Not safe for work. Whatever. When I smelled it, Danielle and I were on this beautiful cruise up in Alaska, and we got to try this delicatessen-type meal where they bring you weird stuff, and I swear to God, the Vegemite smelled identical to dehydrated yak cum. So I just, I don't know, man. I couldn't eat it. I was like, oh, no, that's, oh, no, that's too close to another smell. No, I'm just kidding. It tasted like koala testicles.
    72:28
    You need to. What is it? Just tell us what it is. Look too deep into it. Don't think about it. What is it? You've just got to get it on your toes and try it. You might actually like it. Is it meat? It's super salty. Is it meat? What is it? Is it vegetables? Is it what? Is it meat?
    72:45
    I don't know. Nobody knows what the fuck it is. Is it spam? But it tastes good. Okay. You just shut up and eat it. All right. That's what we get told as kids. Shut up and eat it. Fine. I'm saying you a can of spam. Spam is squirrel, possum, and muskrat. And you will eat your spam, Ryan, and you will love it. And I won't even tell you the other mystery meats in it, because then you definitely wouldn't, but no. Stay on the line here with me. Pinball nerds, I love you. I'm in love with you.
    73:10
    Shout out to Nudge Magazine. They just did a really cool article talking about tournament pinball and how we can make it more viewer-friendly. That's a topic I'm in love with, and I've talked about three or four times. There is no right or wrong answer, but I'll tell you this. Having great people doing commentary will help. That's one thing I think that will really help. So anyways, I'm going to do a deep dive on that in a bit, but I am gone for the next two weekends straight. I might be taking a little mini Orby break, but if there's news, you know me, I'll be back. Make sure you go visit Phantom Tail Pinball Podcast. And until next time, say it with me, Ryan, if you know it. Remember to eat, sleep, and breathe.