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 Myth of syrup and honey, hopes to laugh with his family And a random tangent, stories of his boys He's on the poor man's pod network We're going to get more listeners for the Pinball Nerds Podcast. Coming to you from beautiful River Hibbert, Nova Scotia. Welcome back, Pinball Nerds, to episode 604 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name is Orbital Albert, and we are hot off the twippies last night. Now, there was some trouble down there in Texas. I'm not going to lie, the wormhole was not devoid of worm poop. There was a little bit of shats to tread through, but the good news is, about 20 minutes through, of a little bit of lag and a little bit of audio issues and a little bit of internet issues, they figured it out and they did have to relaunch the whole thing. But you know what? Streaming is hard! Anyone who tells you streaming is not hard has never done it. I only did maybe about 20 or 30 streams on the Pimble Nerds podcast Twitch channel back in the day and every single time I thought I had it perfectly figured out and I knew what I was doing and I couldn't possibly make a mistake someone in chat would tell me oh you need to turn this up or you need to turn this down or you need to angle this better or there's too much glare or there's not enough light or the sound quality is not great or I can't hear the game loud enough and this is without trying to do anything as complicated as Jamie and the whole crew over there at the wormhole were trying to do. They were not only trying to go to do like a man on the street thing with a separate camera and a separate audio and a separate feed with Ian there, Doc Monday, if you will, of Nudge Magazine. Great job done by him. He's hilarious. Also, you had not one, not two, but three different audios to worry about right there at the desk with Erica. No, not Erica. Sorry, my bad. Erin, the science communicator, I believe she goes by. Erin was there. She's also big into pinball, not just science, of course, but she was there with Retro Ralph himself, who won an award. Congrats, Retro Ralph, for the best new content creator. I did vote for Retro Ralph, and I do believe he deserved every bit of that award, so congratulations, Ralph. But I do want to be open and honest with you guys. There was some issues, so we're going to talk about that. We're also going to talk about, and I'm a little bit late to the game. I had some time off. I've had not one, but two different sicknesses. Seems like everybody in my house, seems like everybody across North America right now is getting some type of stomach flu, some type of sinus cold, some type of bird flu. I don't know, hopefully not the bird flu. I probably took that a little too far there, but some type of something, right? A little bit of something. So we weren't feeling good, but, and I also did get to go away for Valentine's Day and my wife's birthday down to Fredericton there, down to Flippins. Not only myself, but my wonderful wife drop target Danielle also played in the tournament with me my buddy Joe Selvaggi drove up all the way from Kitchener Waterloo area so thank you Joe to do that of course not just to see me but also his daughter who was there playing shout out to Kat who uh kind of talked him into coming all four of us played in the tournament I'm gonna save that to the very end as per Franchi he doesn't like the personal stuff so I I save that for Ron later Ron all right so not just Ron from Slam Of course, he probably turns off a rating around that point, if at all. I hope you still listen, Bruce. I know, Bruce, you've said several times, you listen to every show, but could you be like Franchi and endure all 604 episodes of Orby? Probably not, and that's okay. Seinfeld, I love Seinfeld, but even by, it's like my favorite show of all time, bar none, maybe The Office, but even The Office, season eight, season nine, you're like, eh, by the time Michael Scott left, same thing. So am I in my Season 8, Season 9, or am I really just in Season 4 and 5 and I'm about to peak? Who knows? I don't know, but let's get right into it. We're also going to talk about Dragon Gate. That's right, the dragons. Puff the magic dragon lived under the glass, and once in a while when the node board went out, he looked like he's smoking a bong. no, don't worry, there was actually no fire they say where there's smoke there's fire, but not always especially not when you have a vaporizer the safest, probably best way to ingest any type of devil's lettuce but also for that poor little dragon under the glass, this poor little guy down there don't worry, if there was even one video of this thing catching fire, it would have gotten the most views you've ever seen, none of them are catching fire but some of them of course, again this is a little bit old news I haven't been with you guys for a couple weeks. I missed y'all. Did you miss me? Probably not. Maybe. Hopefully. Alright, let's get back into it. Let's go back to the Twippies. I am going to talk about that little detour that the road trip pin went on for my last one. I might have been overly positive, but to be fair, I only had these beautiful pictures on Nap Arcade. I did not have any video, and let's just say my ideas and my thoughts, much like the game and much like the public's opinion on road trip, have gone for a little detour, a little old 180, shall you say, but we're going to save that for later on. Let's get right into the Twippies. That's the big news of the day. Now, I could not find that all of the numbers have been published, but thankfully I reached out to Colin, and he was kind enough, as busy as he's been in this last week, to let me know that I did get 144 points in the Twippies! That's right. I should have this pulled up right now, but to the best of my knowledge, I got somewhere around 20 first place votes. I'm guessing they're worth like three each or something, and I got like 14 second place votes, and like 24, maybe it was 24 first place votes. Yeah, that would make more sense. 24 times 3, 82, something like that. I end up with 140 some odd points. I don't know yet if that's like 28th of 28 pinball podcasters, or if it's like 15th. I don't think it's much higher than that. I doubt it'll be your fifth favorite pinball podcast, I'll tell you that, because, you know, Kaneda and I, won the same number of Twippies this year. We tied with zero. That's right. And listen, I always cheer on the little guy. You know me on the show. I've propped up every small new pinball content creator, every new podcast to come out in the last decade. Every new Twitch channel. Every new live stream channel. I tell you about all of my favorites whenever I can while I pump up the little guy. And of course, I was going for anyone but Kaneda. Not necessarily because I'm frenemies with Kaneda. Also because I just didn't want to hear him say for the next year seven times, Twipio. He talks about it more than anyone else. So thank you, thank you, thank you. I don't want to give Kaneda too much credit or too much time here. All I will say is, Kaneda, I was watching the live stream last night where Chris2Cool4Schoolress had the biggest meltdown I've seen him have in a very, very, very long time. And his poor wife Brenda was trying to save him. It was very entertaining. The only problem was the hundred or so of us, he was keeping a hundred people watching him have this meltdown. This was pulling away from the Twippies. And I could actually, because I had the Twippies open on YouTube through Wormhole on my giant television. Then on my little small laptop, I had going, so I could chat through Living With Albert, which is where I did my McDonald's challenge and a couple other cool challenges. You guys could always check out on YouTube, Living With Albert. but just like how it's spelled, just like how it sounds, no G, just living. But sorry about that. My washing machine likes to sing a beautiful little song when it finishes, which I love. But as someone with hardcore ADHD, I find it very distracting. So I did want to shout out everyone who helped do the twippies between Colin, I know Erica of Erica's Pinball Journey helped with like marketing and advertising, communications, social media, probably all that type of stuff. Retro Ralph did a great job as a host. Poor frickin', I could see him sweating there. Poor frickin' Jamie from Wormhole. It's fine. I wanted to just grab him and be like, bro, just finish. It's all good. He kept saying, like, am I going too fast? Am I going too slow? Boy, I'm sweating a lot. And it's like, it's kind of, you know, I did host a TV show for some period of time. You kind of just got to forget about all that and go on. Like how I just mentioned the washing machine. Probably shouldn't have, right? Squirrel. I'm not suggesting that I could have done any better. I'm just suggesting like he was squirming quite a bit and I just felt so bad for him. I just want to give him a big hug and be like, you're doing great, buddy. Keep pushing on. Like I know Jack Danger and Emoto had to push through like technical issues. Um, it's, it's really, really, really, really hard. There might be an argument for pre-recording it next time that there could be an argument for that. Trying to do it live is just so challenging. Like, I don't know. I would like to think maybe IE pinball, like the people in all of pinball who probably have the best chances would be like IE Pinball, Fox Cities Pinball, maybe Backhand Pinball. They just, they all have so much experience with like huge live tournaments and like switching the volume over to go to like, you know, instead of Ian Jacoby as their man on the street, it's usually Jeff Teola's doing the here, there, and everywhere type interviews and stuff. So maybe one of them could try to do the Twippies. I do think Wormhole could try to do it again and do even better next year. And I will say this, once they got their feedback, apparently there was like whatever internet they have there in Texas. Apparently it went down right around the same time. I don't know if it was that issue, if it was more on house issues. I know even when the internet was working again, and I did also kind of feel bad for my buddy there you just heard six minutes ago when I started this, Glenn the Skateboarder, who did all of the music, all of the music for the Twippies, which were great, the sound, the like the announcer call outs, all that kind of stuff. He did a great job with that. I did kind of feel bad because I would have to keep turning down the television over and over again every time that Glenn came on because it was so loud. And the commentators were, especially for the first like 10 minutes when they came back, were very, very quiet. And then all of a sudden Glenn would be there introducing the next category. No, Glenn, you sounded great. The music was wonderful. The dynamic changes between the two sort of sucked, but I think they figured it out. So if you absolutely are someone like me that like audio issues bug you, maybe jump to like 10 minutes into the wormhole. One says, we're back and it's working this time or whatever the second one was. So there was some confusion with all of that. Again, Colin definitely has never done anything like this before. So I put like zero on Colin. You know, he's trying his best. Jamie had practiced it many, many times. I was there for several of the practices. If you see Jamie doing wormhole interviews, he's dealing with people with several different microphones and audio ends and his editor does a great job of pairing those up and making sure the sound quality is good i saw wormhole do several tests uh they did several tests and mock um excuse me i need a little sip i need a little thip here of diet pepsi as a canadian i'm not supposed to admit i'm still drinking it but hey we had it in the fridge i'm not i'm not throwing it out i've seen people throwing out and pouring out like thousand dollar California wine do the tariffs and stuff. It's like, yo, I'm not that rich. I'm on the poor man's pinball network. I'm not that, I can't be pouring out. Like, I'm sorry if I have any good craft beer here, I'm not pouring it out. Like maybe I'm going to attempt to try a bit harder to buy more Canadian, but like, oh, anyways, let's not talk about tariffs. We were talking about how good the Twippies were. So let's go back to that. So I would say the moment when it all changed for me and I was like, yo, these guys are killing it. I guess this was Colin's idea. so shout out again to Colin of the Kineticists. But they had the idea to bring in Eric frickin' Stone, and my guy killed it. It was so funny. Even Drop Target Danielle just gave me the smile, the nod, the high five, and they call it the Shawinigan handshake, but the Americans probably won't know about that one. She gave me the thumbs up. Let's say she gave me the thumbs up. And Shawinigan handshake sounds bad, but it's really not that bad. Jacques Rétien gave it to a, well, he gave it to a, you know, a really nice reporter back in the day. So you think Canadians are nice? Go look at that prime minister. Less nice than the one we have right now, his son. Anyways, neither here nor there. It's very hard to not talk about politics right now. And I'm trying to not mention parties or specific people, but let's get back into congratulating who we have to congratulate. But first, I do want to put a little bow on the deal with Canada. What really bugged me, Chris, if you're listening, I don't care. I hope this doesn't put me back in the enemy boat. it probably does and I guess I mean if it does it does I'm just going to be honest with you bro instead of you giving your flowers to your buddy Kale from Electric Bat congratulations Rachel and Kale who win I think they're very deserving of it now do I think that maybe some of the votes you know to people they're having at the tournament saying by the way guys before after during the tournament I don't think they were buying votes or votes or getting people in Brazil or anything like that both Kale and Rachel seem way too moral ethical and like stand up awesome people to ever do something like that. So I really think the chance of that happening is extremely low. However, what I do believe might have happened is they might have just said, hey, if you love us and you love our podcast and you're a local player to us, we'd really appreciate your vote. And who knows, maybe they did have a laptop open. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. You know what I mean? What I do think is immoral or unethical is, oh, asking, get your grandma who doesn't listen to my podcast to vote. And I even had one person once say, oh, do you want me to sign up with multiple emails but no no no no no no no like i said on my show if you like my show and it's your first second or third favorite and to the 20 or so of you that voted i was your favorite can i just talk to you for a second thank you it warms my freaking heart to think that of the 400 or so people that typically listen to the show which i am the le le le no other pinball podcast gets so few listens as me. Maybe no other podcast on planet earth with 600 episodes gets so few listens. So you're really listening to the limited, limited, limited edition of the Nerdio. So to the 20 or so of you who are nerding out on me hard and I'm somehow in your top three, that's incredible. Because my goal is just to be everybody's fifth favorite pinball podcast, as you know. I know I'm never going to have the best sound effects. I'm never going to have the best microphone. I'm never going to have the best interviews. I'm certainly not going to stay on traffic or on traffic. See, I'm not going to stay on topic or never use filler words ever again. However, to Kaneda pulling away a hundred people, like there was like 175 people, but then he, he actually was so entertaining at a certain point. I wasn't even, I had the TV muted there because I was like, it's like a, it's like a train crash or a car crash. And like, you know, even as a driving instructor, I had to tell my students often, I would grab the bottom of the wheel from the passenger side. I would tell them, please don't look over. Keep your chin up in the center of the lane and look far into the distance. And I had to do this. Imagine if it's your first time driving on a major highway, say on the 401 where I taught a lot of students, 14 to 18 lane highway, largest road in the world. Look it up. Most traffic per day. Okay. Going into the GTA, GTA, Greater Toronto Area, or Tirana. And some of these students, they've never driven on a road faster than 50 kilometers an hour, so like 30 miles an hour. And all of a sudden, they got to get up to 110 or 120 to squeeze in between all these transports. And there quite often is accidents, especially on that part of the road. It's very prone to accidents. There is some like evil name for it called like the, not like Tornado Alley, but like something like that, like Accidental Alley from London to chat them on the 401. So a lot of accidents there. And new students, quite often, there'd be a car in the ditch or a wipeout or a snowstorm or whatever. And I've got to tell them not to look over because if they rubberneck it their first time driving, A, they're going to let off the accelerator and we're going to have a truck so far up our freaking butt we can smell their shats from last night, right? And their poo 10. Or they're going to go out of their lane and then we're going to wipey wipe. So that's my issue with the whole problem is that... Anyways, oh, Franchi was in chat last night. Speaking of the dog waking up and being a jerk, Franchi was in chat last night. He's like, Albie, are you following me? He doesn't call me Orby, which I kind of like. But he's like, Albie, are you following me? Because I was in the Cary Hardy chat with him, post-Cary Hardy winning pretty much every award. Jaws or Cary Hardy won every single award, right? And then, on top of that, I was in the chat with him, obviously watching the Twippies. And then, on top of that, if you could maybe just put that by the kitchen thanks honey Draco Franchi woke up from his nap midway through the podcast what else would you expect but anyways I think Canada was really pulling away from the enjoyment and the fun of people watching this And you could see the Kaneda people coming back and bitching moaning complaining on YouTube And it like dude for one time once Kaneda even said for months if I don't win, it'll be because I didn't hardly barely ever ask or mention it. He only mentioned it maybe like twice in a week leading up to it. So it's like, dude, first of all, you said you didn't want to win again. Second of all, some people who even think you have the best pinball podcast would just not vote for you because you're too mean, you're too rude. And frankly, if you do win, you're just going to say it over and over and over and over again. And nobody wants to hear you brag about it for nine months. We'd rather, I don't really think he's ending his show. I mean, the guy does not need an extra award over the six twippies. He admittedly, like he said last night, makes $3,000 US. That's $5,000 pure profit because there's no expenses other than his tax, right? So he's making like, he's clearing like five to six K Canadian a month. That's never mind. That's if everyone only paid the $7.50 Canadian I paid or the $5 American. Tons of people are paying like $30, $40, $50 a month, even some paying $100 a month. Right? So, like, honestly, I don't make $5,000. I can show you guys my taxes. I do not make $5,000 of profit a year through my collectibles company. It's maybe getting close to that. And or the collectibles cafe and or Angry Alpaca. Like, I just don't. I probably am able to like save myself four or five thousand dollars from having each of those companies by adding to my pc or drinking my own coffee that saves a lot of money and you know I do get to have a part-time job for my son where I can pay him some money and work together and we do make some good money for like eight weeks in the middle of the summer but all those bumper months I'm lucky to break even like if I do 250 in sales after I pay Owen is 50 for the day and everything else, it's like, I'm lucky to maybe break even. So what I'm getting at is that Kaneda makes probably between two and a half to four and a half thousand dollars pure profit, like he bought his microphone years ago, you know what I mean, off of having this show, and yet he's canceling his show. He said last night before he left, I'm done, that's it, I'm done, and then his Facebook went down. So I'm sorry, I'm unsubscribing. When I'm done this show, I'm going and unsubscribing from Kaneda, and if he doesn't want to do public shows anymore, That's his prerogative. I haven't really been enjoying the shows that much. He hasn't really been saying he does talk. He does. He does call out companies, which I do appreciate. I don't think he does it in a very constructive, kind way, which, yeah, that's how he gets a lot of listens is from being contrarian. But if you listen to my show, I can be constructive, have criticism, and be kind and compassionate, and care for the designers and the creators of the product. At the same time, let them know, like, hey, yeah, like the same way I just did about the Twippies, okay? It was bad. It was messy. It was a mess when it started. The sound was all over the place. You were cutting in and out. There was lag happening all the time. The videos were starting. we heard the winner of the wrong like they they mentioned the winner of the when they were supposed to say expo was the winner they actually named the the owner and proprietor of expo who actually won the community award later on um carrie hardy did win a lot of things so i feel like i feel like i and i think even carrie hardy would be okay with this i think almost maybe not canada but everyone canada would probably be okay with this uh i think if you win in one category it'd be really rad if they gave it to the person who got second in the other category do you know what i mean just I I you just don't want to see like Kerry Hardy went like three or four times in a row now did I vote for Kerry Hardy in several of those categories of course my guy is like super duper duper interesting uh it makes probably he does he does maybe perhaps the best job of all the content creators of making content that is like fair but funny and that's so hard to do because you either go you go over the line and you're too rude and mean you you think that you hurt relationships with people who work for companies or even other pinball nerds who don't want to hear you being quite this critical. And then on the flip side of that, you know, on the flip side of that, really what ends up happening, I hope that my, I hope that my computer is, I'm getting, I'm getting a pop-up from McPhee right now. Let me just cancel this right now. I hope that overall, what we learned from this Twippies is that nobody is perfect, Hobity is nerfect. And honestly, if you try to do something like this yourself, what most likely will happen, okay? Oh, I'm just loving this right now. If you try to do something like this yourself, what you will most likely figure out yourself is that it is extremely, extremely hard to do and that you're going to run into some issues. And if you run into some issues, I hope that you yourself can say, I want the person judging this to be open and honest and give constructive criticism. I do think they did a lot of practice, but I do also think if Jamie and Wormhole decide to do the Twippies again, they'll probably do an even better job and research it even further. And I think that they will have figured out whatever bugs they ran into. Now, at the same time, I did see people like my buddy Don there of Don's Pinball Podcast. He was live streaming in between. a lot of other people I'm sure were live streaming in fact Don could see other people watching Don's stream and the Twippy's stream at the same time in the same room so I don't know if it would have helped to have asked absolutely everybody to make sure to just be on like don't be on our wifi network I don't maybe that is something they did Jamie made a joke about his insider connected auto updating if I were them especially if you could do it with the push of a button I would have had a dedicated router just for that one if possible or maybe even like an easier thing to do is just tell all the machines, the insider connected machines, have them turned off of auto update during that time. Because this is too important of a time to have auto updating. But that being said, I'm done being critical. I'm happy for everybody. I think everybody there had a blast. I get that some people in chat would have been annoyed and given up after 10 or 15 minutes. I get that. And if you're one of those people, I don't fault you for that. I'm not judging you for that. I was annoyed. I think if I wasn't a content creator, I might have just said to my wonderfully patient wife who was sitting there going, okay, like I don't mind watching the Twippies, but like what's going on? Like are they, even my son Owen said you better check their social medias. Is it going to start again? Hayden was looking around on Wormhole on YouTube and he ended up finding that they were live streaming again or else I wouldn't have known. I didn't see the comment till later from Jamie that they were. So I'm sure that hundreds and hundreds of people will watch the uploaded link today and go and do that because from, you know, and even go 10 minutes in if you don't want to have any sound issues. But overall, overall, I think it will go down in history as a learning experience. I'm hoping you can be like me and take the positives, which were, the Eric Stone thing was hilarious. Doc Monday, Ian Jacoby of Nudge Magazine did a great job. It was really nice to hear from Aaron of Fast Pinball. It was really neat to hear from, well, let's just go through the winners real quick here, okay? I'm going to have a little sip here because my throat has been sort of sore, so I couldn't even partake in any drinks last night while watching the Twippies. I had a couple gummy bears and a couple vapes, but don't worry. All the gummy bears, they were 100% multivitamin gummy bears. They're the only type of gummy bears I have. Well, you know, that and Flintstones vitamins, but they keep you growing. How'd that song go? That was so catchy, that song for the Flintstones. All right, no singing today. We have to congratulate people. Let's try to go in order here. All right. So I don't know if it's in order, but custom game of the year winner, Happy Gilmore. That was with Reby Hardy, the wrestler. That's right. She was there getting into an Uber at the same time, but she did live accept her thing. Saw got second. Glenn Glenn Waechter and his whole team over there did Saw. They got second. The third place was The Greatest Showman. I do think the Happy Gilmore was really cool, but I think Saw had more custom music and just a little bit, I think it was just one tier higher maybe than Happy Gilmore, so I might have given it to Saw, but Reby has a way, way bigger following, so I get, again, this is very similar to what Kaneda was upset about against Electric Bat, just the following, the following there probably, and so this, we have to remember, this is a public voting thing, it is a bit of a popularity contest, test okay do you think that like the year that i only got like four votes votes do you really think i was the worst pinball podcast okay don't answer that probably yes but like hey i got 144 points this year i'm smiling i'm grinning ear to ear the only thing i'm more excited about was how well i finished at the last flippens arcade tournament which i'm saving for the end but let's get through these the greatest showman also beautiful just looks like really cool like retro olden days theme. I know that won best in show at a couple shows, so congratulations to all three. Happy Gilmore, Saw, and the greatest showman of them all. Homebrew of the year, Tony Hawk Pro Skater. This one I legitimately think should have won it. The gentleman came on there. He was actually interviewed by Jamie just before me or just after me. Got a hell of a lot more views than me. Go watch that if you guys haven't watched that. That was so fun, and I was pretty nervous for the first bit, but I came around about halfway through. See, everybody a little bit nervous at the start. It's normal. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1, it probably was the most innovative homebrew I've maybe ever seen. Definitely the coolest theme. We need that soundtrack in pinball. I mean, other than like the Barenaked Ladies, the Tony Hawk Pro Skater soundtrack, like come on, who else do we need? Maybe Radiohead, but I'm probably the only pinball nerd that wants Radiohead. Who knows? uh second in this category for homebrew of the year was friday the 13th also incredible beavis the butthead with the toilet paper roll they're so incredible so incredible now my only question was when it runs out of toilet paper do you actually have to lift the glass and go back in there and replace it and if you replace it do you put it with the toilet paper going forwards or back behind uh the opposite way i don't know i don't know that's a question for the ages remember to put your toilet seat down that's all i'll say all right best online community group winner, Pinside? Do you mean last place is Pinside? It seems like, is this the most toxic winner? No, I'm just kidding. All right, Pinball Enthusiasts on Facebook, I love that one, I use that one a lot more. In fact, I made a comment the other day on Glenn himself, Glenn the Skateboarder, his own post about which drugs to use for pinball machines. Funny enough, Glenn, I've already written most of this episode. Don and I are teaming up, Don of Don's Pinball Podcast. I already mentioned this, I'm sorry it didn't come last week I've been holding on to this for a while him and I do a top 5 rad and one bad that is coming very shortly very shortly but pinball enthusiasts I'm like the rising contributor bad so yeah I'm having fun on there but Glenn did ask what drugs do you use and I think a lot of people like John Borg put I do Smarties that's the wrong answer John Borg that's why you're not winning pinball tournaments now I know why you're getting Borg Borg Borg Borg Borg no the right answer is a mixture of tons of different stuff I'm still doing research on it I'm actually going to be ordering lion's mane very soon just to give you a little tidbit a little tad bit into the type of things I'm doing I make sure for sure when I'm playing a pinball tournament for the first few rounds that I'm maxing out almost almost to the detriment of my poor little Dutch heart, okay, my little cheap heart, I am maxing out my taurine for the day, I'm also maxing out my caffeine, I'm also making sure I got ample sleep for three or four days leading up to it, and I do a lot of other supplements that help me in the days, the weeks, the months, even the hours, and even the minutes of doing it, that actually help me as an older person, which help me with memory retention, which help me with awakeness, which help me with alertness, which helped me with hand-eye coordination, which helped me with, you know, basically staying alert to be able to figure out which shots you should be going for at any given time. And also, not only that, leading up to the tournament, which, well, I'll just say which sense you can use to help your brain actually, and there's scientific evidence behind this, retain and remember more of the rules. Do you ever like watch so many pinball videos or read about all the rules and then you go to play a game and you go oh my god what i don't even remember like i don't even remember how to get in the multiball or lock the ball you know can that happen yes does it happen yes does it need to continue happening at such a high rate absolutely not and that's how some dude at almost halfway to 90 years old somehow won the new brunswick pinball championship last year and got third place this year mind you so it wasn't just a total total fluke all right now let's get back into this. Number three on the list is Tilt Forms. I haven't used it much, but I know it's less toxic than Pinside, so if you're looking for like a... And don't get me wrong, I do go into Pinside, and I have enjoyed it in my day, but I don't spend too, too much time on it nowadays, because it's kind of like an echo chamber of... It's a lot of negative Nancy's and Debbie Downer's on there, that's all I'll say. All right, now let's go into the next award, Best Tournament Indisk. Thank you. Hands down. Next would be the 24-hour Battle at the Sanctum. And thirdly, the Dutch Pinball Open. As a Dutch guy, I've got to go to that. Shout out to Indisk. I'm surprised the Flipo Tournament from Expo wasn't there. And a couple others. So many awesome tournaments. I'm surprised Pemberg wasn't in there. Let's see here. The Stern Insider Connected. Best service, best app. Hands down. Knew that would win. Pinball Map, use it as well. Match Play Events, use it as well. Shout out to all three of you. We're starting to get into the nitty-gritty here with Best Convention, Pinball Expo, then Texas Pinball Festival, then Pintastic. I wanted to go to all three of those, but with everything going on in America, I'm not sure. And this is not a political thing, but with so much financial instability happening, especially where I'm in one of the poorest counties in one of the poorest provinces in Canada, can I really, do I really, should I really go spend extra money and borrow money off my mortgage, my second mortgage, to go on a trip to the United States when, you know, things are like kind of scary here right now financially. Like if these tariffs would deeply, deeply impact almost every member of my family and honestly, it would deeply impact tourism when we get a lot of dollars from that for the market. For the few thousand dollars I actually do bring in for this household, those could be in jeopardy as well. So honestly, I'm not going to lie at this point until we get a little bit more economic stability. Any American trips are even, I can't, I'm not even going to Maple. I just had to break into my buddy Matt two nights ago. I said, dude, with everything that's happening, like my son could lose his job. My wife could even lose her job or get her hours lessened. They might not get the pay increase they were promised last year to get them close to a living wage. Like, who knows? Who knows? Definitely I'm not going to make his money. Like, people are not going to be traveling and spending as much of their extra money with all these fears right now. And honestly, a $26 or $27 bag of organic coffee, it's not a necessity. It's just not. I'm sorry. Says the guy drinking from a $2 bottle of basically 99% water with a little bit of coloration and caffeine. Diet Pepsi. All right, let's keep going. Best interactive mod, Atomic Godzilla 2, King of the Tapa. Okay, yeah, okay. That was a pretty cool one. The subway building mod for Godzilla. That was also incredible. The Big Lebowski Hollywood Lanes. Actually, that was my favorite. The Big Lebowski Hollywood Lanes was actually legitimately my favorite. Non-interactive mod. The Pin Snake. Best OEM topper. Pulp Fiction, of course. Best aftermarket topper. Attack from Mars topper. I actually kind of agree with that. I would have to go look at that category again. Best launch of a game. Jaws. second best launch avatar battle for pandora i don't see that's so hard to say i mean jaws people didn't like jaws originally i was one of the og who loved it go back and listen to my five rad and one bad about jaws and i was like holy shats i was the first per everyone else was saying they think it's keith ellen's worst or second worst i said no way this is way better than aiq way better than iron maiden and i still think it is and i think most people now finally have came around agreed with me. I'm not right all the time. I was also one of the few Pinball Podcasters who loved Toy Story 4, but maybe I just got lucky the night before and had a wonderful night and maybe I was just having a good day. Maybe I had eggs, toast, bacon, cheesy egg omelet on a keto bread sammy like my wonderful wife made me today. And I'm in a great mood, so it's hard to be constructive or have any criticism. But, Battle for Pandora, wow, $100,000 video and they couldn't get first? Most improved game, Elton John, I was another person who said not only is Elton John perhaps the most beautiful pinball machine ever made, I mean it only needed slightly more glitter, but I also said like that code if it comes around it already has sweet shots it already got more flow than Niagara Falls after a torrential rainstorm right so it like second place is Foo Fighters third place is Labyrinth okay Labyrinth uh Labyrinth could get better but that would be only if they got an aftermarket Jennifer Connelly back glass cabinet and mech that played with the toy because she's the star of the movie let's be honest childhood fantasy crusher or not come on like this girl is the star of the movie. It ain't David Bowie's five seconds he's in the movie twice. It is legitimately... Honey, someone's in the driveway, so I'm guessing the DOGSs are going to bark soon, but maybe they're just on a Sunday drive and they're going to turn around. All right, let's look at some other winners here. Best art package. This one I strongly agree with, and especially Owen does as well. Avatar, the battle for Pandora. Gorgeous art. Was her name Leah, I believe it's Leah, she was on the live stream. It was really nice to meet her and see her. She seemed a little nervous, but also she seemed very grateful and very thankful. She said she's never won an award. She also thanked her partner who like, she said it was just such a big project. I mean, in comparison to everything else she's done, yeah, this is huge. Like this is huge, right? So congratulations. I hope we do see more of her in the future. She did a great job, even though maybe Avatar is not their best seller, that's more so to it missing any mechs that actually like, you know, touch the ball or go near the ball or interact with the ball. Kind of like the mechs are over on the side watching and being separate from them, right? But anyways, let's not get too much down that path. Second place was Godzilla's 70th anniversary for art package. Wow, that is gorgeous. And the Uncanny X-Men took third place. Now, what did I watch that Jack Danger won? I think from the Danger Room. So congratulations to Jack Danger. It was nice to see him there. I haven't joined a live stream with him in a long time, so it brought back a lot of nostalgia just seeing him there with a row of pins in the background. Shout out to you, Jack. You should be proud and excited, and I'm sorry, especially from the one and only Negative Nancy himself. Kaneda seemed to be leading the strike against Jack Danger, which is so crazy because Kaneda was the one for years saying he's so sick of fan layouts and boring layouts and not interesting shots and no flow and why can't any designers take risks. And now we're seeing magic under the glass of having... I get the code isn't there. I get the call-outs aren't that awesome. They're kind of lame a little bit. I'll admit it. The call-outs are a little bit... They're not... Lame is... See, that's taking it too far. Let's rewind that. They're mid. They're a little bit mid. They're not incredible. They're not horrible. I've heard way worse. I've heard way, way, way better. I mean, in comparison to recently what we've heard from so many companies, yeah, they're kind of mid. So what? The artwork is obviously not mid. It's freaking incredible. Arguably, I think it's probably second here. I'm sorry, I don't think the Godzilla 70th deserves that. It's beautiful, but I just don't think it's enough different from the first one to deserve it. I think Uncanny X-Men is by far the second most beautiful one of all of those. And of all the pins that have came out probably in the last year or two. So, anyways, sorry, I had to step up to plate for my boy Jack a little bit. I'm just kind of sick of hearing people hate on that just to hate on something. It's not fair. it is a game I'm sorry I will probably always like X-Men better than Mandalorian and definitely better than Stranger Things I've shot those two things only a couple times each but I don't like the shot so it doesn't matter what happens with the code on those games they'll never get up to even X-Men even with the code it's at now probably I haven't played X-Men yet so let's move on moving right along with the awards here all right best animations Jaws okay I could see that I mean the Avatar ones, I don't know how much of that they're making up. The Metallica remastered ones are also just like incredibly vibrant and fun and interesting. I think Avatar might have maybe deserved this one possibly, even though I get why Jaws won it, because not only is there custom, all the animations are custom that are coming up, but those animations are also, like you know when you're playing the 3D game, I guess people would have that at top of their head. So it kind of makes sense that Jaws won and I ain't mad at it. All right, let's move on here. Best sound package, Metallica Remastered? I don't know. It feels like that would have the least amount of work. Second, Jaws. That would have a lot more work. Third, Pulp Fiction. See, I don't know. Like, I mean, me personally, I'd probably vote Pulp Fiction there just because I love that movie. I love those songs. They're so nostalgic. They seem to be worked in just perfectly to the code. but then again Jaws has all that all the custom call outs and they brought in um what's his name from the thing Mr. Holland's Opus there all right best play field layout Jaws okay yeah second place Uncanny X-Men there you go Jack third place Pulp Fiction I don't know about that for Pulp but maybe okay Jack Danger innovation of the year Uncanny X-Men I totally agree with that second place Flip-Lock I love Flip-Lock from the start it was part of the top five I do believe in the top five rad and Jaws Revenge the challenge mode I just mentioned that so that's also incredible like with the 3D and everything else is so neat and the fact that you can choose 3D or not game of the year Jaws second place Pulp Fiction third place on Candy X-Men okay I don't know I'd have to see the whole list all right and I bear in mind I haven't played Pulp Fiction either so best publication cheers to Jason Knapp of Knapp's Arcade I thought he would win second was Nudge and third was Kineticist. That sounds right. Those three are my favorite three. I go to those three the most. I'd say from like a visual standpoint, Nudge freaking kills it at that. Just looking cool, fun, hip, keeping it fresh. You know what I mean? Especially just with fun articles, fun to read, really cool pictures. Kineticist is like, Colin's really doing his own thing over there. He does Song of the Week, which I love. Like, dude, I got to message you more often when I love your Song of the week. About half of them I've never heard of. And I listen to a lot of music. That's pretty cool. Also, Colin shouts out four, five, six pinball podcasts usually each week. Not mine that often anymore, which is totally fine. I haven't done anything really, probably. I haven't done any cool interviews or anything like that really since, well, I haven't done any since December 23rd when I did the Santa episode. Which Colin was kind enough to be part of. Thank you. Also, over and above that, you know, I just I haven't done much content recently so but thank you so much Colin for doing the kineticist I love those weekly updates even Matt Owens I believe is like doing deep dives on scoring of the machines and how to play them and stuff so that's really neat he's kind of getting his own niche and a shout out probably to more so Nudge and the kineticist if you ever wanted me to write as long as I could write under a ultra ego or whatever you call that with writing there's a name for that as long as I could write under that I would probably do it because I'd want I'd want to have some weird, wild, especially a nudge. I'd want to have some weird, wild and wacky articles that have nothing to do with Albert Agar. You know what I'm saying? Hit me up. Y'all got my phone number. I don't have your address, Ian, but I think I have your email. All right. Breakout creator of the year. The winner, the Flipside podcast with Retro Ralph. I totally agree with this. Retro Ralph has short, concise, like this man, even when he does a podcast live with no editing, uses no filler words, he's super professional. Look, is there a little bit of Win Schilling in there? Yeah, but you know why I don't care? Because he also is straight up and honest with you when he doesn't like something about a game. He just says it a lot nicer than Kaneda does or me. That's all. You know what I mean? And that's okay. He doesn't love that the code hasn't been updated in X-Men. He's kind of upset about it. He doesn't love that the code hasn't been updated, and maybe I'm mistaken. Maybe he was talking about John Wick, okay? And I think He sold it to John Wick because he wasn't happy with it, his LE, and he wasn't happy they lost some money with it, and he said that before as well. But at the same time, he still loves pinball way more than arcades, and I know this because my guy can get like 50,000 to 100,000 views when he does a big video or review about a new arcade, and he maybe gets like a quarter of that or less on the podcast, right? So obviously if it was just about the views for Retro Ralph, he'd still just be doing all arcade stuff, but it's not. My guy is passionate about pinball, and he also loves playing in pinball tournaments. So for me as a pinball podcaster, it's like, it's down to like three or four of us, like Jeff Teolis, Bruce and Ron on Slam Tilt. I guess Travis, does Travis Murray even still play in tournaments? I don't know. Tom, I guess. Okay, so there's like five of us of like 50 people from 30 different podcasts that actually play in tournaments. Wizards and something on TPN. So there's a couple more. I'm sure I'm forgetting about a few. but many of the new pinball podcasters don't really play in tournaments, and it's neat to hear Retro Ralph kind of coming up through the ranks. He's not like a top 100 player like a lot of them. He's probably just like me, like he's decent. Speaking of decent, I did actually go up another 300 spots on FBO, which was awesome. I will talk about that in a second. Let's finish these awards. Second place, dude, where's my code with Joe Cervino, the dote himself. He made a big announcement about Billy P Pinball. Make sure you go watch that, and the date and times for the D-Jennies. Is it the 22nd? No, because that was recently. I will announce it in an upcoming episode. It is coming up. He announced it. But the Digenis is coming up. Billy P Pinball is maybe okay, which is the most important thing. But go watch it for yourself. Third place is my boy over there, Ryan Barry and Kimba. They got third with the Phantom Tilt Pinball Podcast. Ironically, I voted for all three of these. Legit, not lying. I really wanted to vote for Erica as well, but she hadn't had content out for a couple months. Who else is like new? I know there's Vic and there's Kong and they're providing some new content, which is great. There's a couple other new live streamers. There's a lot of new people and there's a lot of good content. But to me, for my money's worth, yeah. I gotta go listen to Dude, Where's My Code? But I've heard everything else Joe does and I have promised I'm gonna do that. I'm trying to do No Spend 2025. So I'm trying to see if like, maybe for like a late Valentine's Day gift, my wife might grab it because it's only two bucks a month. It's the best deal on the internet. Go subscribe to Dude Wears My Code. Already five, six, seven interviews on there for you to listen to. Also, go hit up Phantom Toad Pinball Podcast. His last interview was with the person who did The Sound for Dungeons and Dragons. I want to give you guys a full update on that. I believe I started, but I haven't finished it. So I will give you guys an update when I finish it. I need to go ahead. It's reminding me now to go back and listen to it. I do apologize. don't be mad at me Ryan Barry uh but Retro Ralph I've listened to every second of every episode he's ever done and because it kind of vibes with me because he's by himself he's talking about going to tournaments he's talking mostly positive I mean to be fair my first 100 pinball podcast people said I was so positive they couldn't listen to it anymore so you know give him 100 episodes or so he might honestly people might say what they say about me is that I'm too constructive I'm too critical, right? That's what they say sometimes. Then other times they say, I got rainbows coming up my butt and I'm too positive. So who knows? All right. Best video content creator of the year, Kerry Hardy. No arguments. Flip N Out Pinball stream. Love it. Joel and oh my gosh, his cousin, his brother, his cousin. The guy who loves Magic the Gathering. I don't know why I forget his name. Maybe he talks a lot less than Joel. I love him. I love both of them. They're both great. I like that they opened the packs. I've promised a couple times going to send them some Pokemon. They said they would do it on camera. If Pokemon Pinball becomes a real thing, I'm not just sending you guys some packs. I'm sending you some expensive packs. I'm going to get you a Prismatic Evolutions. I'm going to snatch you up a Surging Sparks. I'm going to grab you a 151. These are $20 to $30 packs each. I'm going to fire some down to you guys to open on the live stream, and I hope you pull some PSA 10 Charizards and sell them for a few grand. Wow, I had my biggest week in Pokemon sales. That's the other reason I didn't have a podcast for you. I did $1,680, not including my commissions. You know, it's way less than that after commission. Some of them I had to play up to 30% commission. Some of them I had to pay $3 per card, and they were under $50. But I'm getting over $1,000 back Canadian just for the cards I sold through eBay, through a large consignment site that we use here in Canada, but I think you can use them in the United States as well. Very safe place to buy from, called Slab Sharks, S-L-A-B. the word sharks check it out i don't have any cards on there now but i'll probably have cards on in a couple weeks i sold out of every psa graded card i have on planet earth i got three more in today and that's all i have and i think like a month ago i had like 45 or 50 so things been going well pokemon's been hot that reminds me if you're listening to this right now email me at angryalpacatea at gmail.com if you have any Pokemon. I would love to buy them off you. Or, if you really want to, you can just send them to me. I'll give you my info, okay? Even if you're listening right now, if you don't want to sell them, you want to give me a nifty little tip. I have not asked for any type of money or any type of Patreon or anything since last July at my birthday. So, Box245, River Hibbert, H-E-B-E-R-T, like the end of my name, Nova Scotia, B-0-L-1-G-O, box245, write Albert Agar on it. It will get to me. Surprise me. Send me some Pokemon cards. I don't want your sports cards. You guys keep them for you or sell them locally. I don't want your comic books. But if you have some Pokemon cards, as long as they're just not really recent base cards is like anything hollow or better hit me up i'd love to have some and if they're more expensive cards i am paying up to 100 ebay prices for modern cards in decent condition okay guys a hundred percent so like the most expensive price you're gonna see people paying on ebay is how much i will pay you like recent comps of up to a week okay so please if you have a modern or semi-modern collection of Pokemon, please, one person reach out to me, your friend, your family member, your co-worker, now is the time to sell. A collection I could only pay you like $50 for six months ago, I can probably pay you $200 for. A collection I could only, so on and such forth. $1,000 for, I could pay you $4K for now. I don't know if I can afford a $4K collection right now, but I can't not afford it because prices are going through the roof. A card that I bought for $48 that I thought would grade a 10, grade a 10, it just sold for $375 Canadian. Okay, a Charmander from the 151 set and a PSA 10, the illustration or art rare as we call it here in North America, doesn't matter. The point is, if you have any Pokemon, you're listening to this, please reach out to me. If you have me on Facebook under Albert Agar, you can message me there. If they're expensive cards, I'd like to see pictures of the back. If they're just like three to five dollar cards, I will pay you probably full eBay. I just need pictures of the front. That's it. That's all. So please, at least one person listening to this, you've thought about it, you've been sitting on cards for a long time, whatever. Your kid went off to college, university, they don't want them anymore, they're taking up space, they're collecting dust, you'd rather Orbi have them. I will talk about every collection that's sent to me for free or that I buy right here live on the podcast as a personal thank you to you. And I'll tell you this, if you have some cards that you think might grade well, my youngest son Owen is one of the top pre graders in the entire province. If not, maybe even the East coast of Canada. If we grade any that come out tens, if I get even one 10 from your collection, I will kick you back like a 10 to 15, maybe even 20% commission, depending on how much a car sells for. If the car sells for like, we have to pay $30 Canadian to get it graded plus, right? So it's like, yeah, if it's a really old frickin' Charizard hollow, yeah, I'll give you 20% no problem because it'll probably be worth a couple grand depending on how it grades. But anyways, there's my plea. There's my ask for the day. Hopefully you guys remember this. You can always email me at angryalpacatee at gmail.com. I don't check the Pinball Nerds Hotmail hardly ever, so don't message me there. I won't see it. Or you can personal message me under Facebook under Albert Agar. I prefer the email, especially if you have lots of pictures. But that being said, either or is fine. Or just send them to me in River Hibbert at Box 245, River Hibbert, Nova Scotia. Only Pinball Podcaster, self-doxing, because no one would actually drive here to visit me. You want to drive here to visit me? That'd be great. I'd love to see you. All right, let's get back into the twippies. Oh, my gosh. Okay, first place, The Electric Backcast. Second place, Canada's Pinball Podcast. Third place, Loser Kid Pinball Podcast. Wow! I honestly am shocked that the pinball show wasn't in there, but Zach nor Dennis asked for votes and honestly, especially Zach's been very critical of everyone who's done the Twippies since him and Greg posted it, which to be fair enough a lot of them were not nearly as good as when they did it and I said that multiple times so I would agree with them At the same time had they even asked for votes once or twice they would have been top three probably first to be honest they probably would have been first because I think they have the largest listenership um electric back cast either did a better job asking in person asking through social media or just I mean to be honest any operator in North America and probably honestly the world should be listening to the electric back cast because of how good it is for operators when and especially newer operators. You have to remember, there's not just like hundreds, there's thousands of small little operators that have anywhere between one, two, three, to up to 20, 30 games at different locations, who by them listening to the trials and tribulations of, I mean, I don't even listen to the, even Bruce and Ron on Slam Tilt, when they start talking about fixing pins, I just, I just tune it out and skip that part. But when they're talking about it, they're talking about it through the eyes of an operator, and because they're talking about it like a business owner, myself as a small business owner, I find it intriguing. So I love those lists, even though I don't ever plan on operating pinball. I mean, maybe. A couple. Small. All right, guys. We got to get into the other two topics. Sorry, I swallowed an ice cube there. Kind of like Franchi. My dog loves ice cubes. Don't even have to buy him dog treats. Just give him an ice cube. Five minutes of quiet. beautiful all right content creator of the year kerry hardy pirate princess jess who is that okay i will look at pirate prince i've never heard of that person honestly uh third place flipping out stream so here might be a case of either a pirate princess jess is like on tiktok and instagram and big through that stuff or like youtube reels that i've never seen which could have happened or pirate princess just could just be a big influencer who also likes pinball and has a big following and just ask them to vote kind of like with Reba Hardy right because I said I don't necessarily think that Happy Gilmore is better than Saw it certainly isn't as custom didn't have as many pinball people working on it so on and such forth maybe it is better I haven't seen Saw and Happy Gilmore in person so I don't know I don't want to judge but what I'm suggesting is maybe and I haven't looked her up but maybe Pirate Princess Jess just has like you know excuse me, 10, 15, 20,000 people that follow her. And maybe that's why she got more votes than the Flip N Out Pinball stream. Because I'd say most pinball people probably watch more of the Flip N Out Pinball stream with Joel and his cousin as opposed to them, right? So, community member of the year, Rob Burke. Second place, Josh Sharpe. Third place, Michael Grant. Shout out to all three of you. Great community members. All help out a lot. Draco really, really, really wants to come out here and hang out with Elowen, which happens when Elowen's on the couch with me while I'm recording. But wait, why is Elowen allowed to be on the couch and Franchi has to be out in the kitchen? Franchi will jump up on me, jump up on the microphone, want cuddles. Lunatuna Elowen Agar is a pro. She's watched me do like 450 of these 600 episodes. She knows when I'm recording, stay away from Dad. He's over there. He's chilling. He's recording. Don't bug the man. All right, let's keep going on here. Best locations. Jackbar, Logan Arcade, Asheville Pinball Museum, Electric Bat Arcade. Wow, they won two awards. Shout out. Next Level Pinball Museum, Dutch Pinball Museum, Netherworld Arcade, and right here in Canada, the Neon Ranch. Shout out, ladies. All right. Pinball Planet in Ohio. Is there a lot of these? Oh, Best New Location. Okay, Best New Location, Planet Pinball. Must be new. I haven't heard of it. Second is the Kickback Arcade in Wisconsin. Third is in the Unranche of Canada. There you go. Canada, we've made the top three. That's awesome. All right, so I'm going to close this so I don't get more distracted for now. Shout out to Colin. Shout out to Jamie. Shout out to Glenn, Aaron, Retro Ralph, Jamie, everybody who went there, Aaron from FAST, all the sponsors, everyone who sponsored. Shout out to all the winners. It was fun to be part of it. I'm glad I was, I would like to see the rankings. If I had to be like really egotistical and have a big head, I'd love to say I got like 10th or 11th, even though I'm guessing it's 15th. Hopefully I didn't get 28th. I don't think I got 28th of 28, but who knows? There's so many newcomers doing great podcasts that sound better than mine, that have better, maybe not better intro music than mine. That's the one thing I got. and maybe they're not on networks as rad as the poor men's pinball network here um i wonder how foghorn leghorn and crafter sally did i hopefully hopefully they got some votes i know that they get lots of listens quite often their shows get even more listens than mine so hopefully they got lots of votes um shout out to them for it's just the two of us here keeping it going i still have hope that maybe the ray ray show will come back even for a once a year show or maybe try multiball right with Tim the Lion Man Lee maybe we could hear that come back again of course also with Rachel Risto I do have to have Rachel on the show I do have to have Tim the Lion Man on the show I do want to before the year's out I'll say it right here I got to get Drew Neen on there because even Kaneda said last night maybe the nicest thing he said hey what happened to those guys where they've been what are they doing no it wasn't Kaneda see it wasn't that negative Nancy it was Kerry Hardy and Kerry Hardy my guy he had a couple drinks he was having fun though I think he was worried he was gonna like slur his words too much and Kerry Hardy you didn't you slurred your words just enough I don't know I didn't watch the end of it I was getting too tired myself but I had a great time at the Twippies and I gotta talk about it how quickly can I talk about the fire that I already mentioned earlier Stern has let everybody know that the reason the node boards are going out is because the length of the wire harness you all thought wire harnesses are boring they kind of are. The wire harness isn't quite long enough. That's the one thing you want to get right is the length of the wire harness before you send it out because it can cause problems like this. And I will say this, the Ford, was it Pinto? The Ford Motor Company in the mid 80s, I believe early 90s, they had a car with a really bad design feature and if it got rear-ended the whole car would explode. Ford recalled these cars faster than me eating a James Rees's peanut butter cup with caramel at the bottom, okay? They pulled these suckers back fast. They never put out a car again with those issues, but yet it's been proven. And they will talk about this. If you go to marketing for college universities, some people say it doesn't matter if you have a degree in marketing or advertising, Albert, it won't help you do pinball podcasting. Phooey, here's proof is in the freaking banana tapioca pudding made only here in Canada yo I will tell you right now Ford did not recover from this for years and years and years people still after this kept saying you don't want to buy a Ford car you want to sell your Ford Ford after prices went for less so I think honestly it won't be as bad like you know no actual pinball machines exploded but if I had to guess if I could if I worked at Stern's marketing department I would look at the dip of sales for 72 hours after all that information came out and I tell you that tail of the sales which was already going down would have dipped I guarantee you not just 10 20 probably 30 maybe 40 perhaps 50 percent and then you'll never ever know when it when that tails finally start to come back when they announced they had a fix for it and it wasn't that big of a deal still you'll never ever ever know not for five years not for 10 years you'll never know how many more would have been sold because that was right as they came out and we often see a big bump in sales rate stern is so quick at sending out the pinball machines for multiple reasons but one of them is because they know as everyone sees the live streams and the unboxings it wets their whistles and makes them go okay now i gotta get one and you'll see a big bump in sales for a couple days after they all come out well stern would have seen the opposite instead of a big bump in sales from the le's trickling into the premiums and the pros they would have seen a big dip especially in the le's which makes them the most amount of money so this was a very costly mistake in a year of financial instability with tariffs with steel prices going up with most most of most american steel of course comes from canada most american lumber especially the high-end stuff used in canadian maple like in playfields and high quality playfields comes from canada so you know even if the tariffs don't go to 25 like we originally thought and it's just 10 on all the steel which is a big portion of a pinball machine and a big portion of all the components and stuff that goes into it no matter what no matter what and we'll know what maybe it's just a bluff charge maybe the tariffs don't actually happen in that case there's there's still some there's still some aftermarket shock damage just like with the ford pinto that i talked about but it can be limited if he's just bluff charging and the tariffs don't come through the tariffs come through this will be stern's worst year since the early 2000s. It will be JJP's worst year ever. It will be Spooky's worst year ever since maybe starting when they lost money. It just will. It's going to be that. It's going to be that. European companies are screwed because of it. Canadian companies are definitely screwed because of it. American companies are going to be less screwed, but probably still have a lot of issues up the supply chain. We've heard George Gomez say before that a pinball machine has like the second most components to any sold product on planet earth other than a car so when you've got that many different countries making that many different parts mostly of wood and or steel you're going to have tons and tons of issues with the cost of said product so i don't want to go down a political route i just want to be open and honest and it was the worst thing that could happen to stern at the worst time when dungeons and dragons was going to see a big bump all the way in all the le's which would have bumped the premium and pros we saw the opposite happen so please next time just like shipping out x-men do not ship out x-men till you fix the shooter lane issues do not ship out and i again i don't want to be called a negative nancy or debbie downer but if they ship out these machines without being a hundred percent for sure there's nothing like the ford pinto it's going to explode and backfire on them a couple weeks later it would be better to be late stern it would be better to be late because you cannot recover those lost sales x-men sales will never be as good as they would have been if x-men was released now instead of six months ago with further code which i can't wait for the new code i do think the next code is going to be incredible i don't think jack is abandoning or leaving and i don't think he would ever do that to one of his babies we already saw that he got first second or third place in three or four different categories at the twippies it's a beloved machine it might take a year or two to recover to the codes better until the shooter lane issues are figured out but look at Star Wars I was playing it this last weekend and I picked it almost in every round I was allowed to pick I picked Star Wars because even though it has one of the worst shooters out there like for those of you don't know the newest Stern Star Wars okay there is only one Stern Star Wars but the the newest Star Wars pinball machine to be made has one of the worst auto plunges in all history it goes down the write-out lane like 50% of the time, sometimes more on certain machines. Now, thankfully, Dylan did a great job there at Flippin's Arcade. It doesn't happen on that one that often, but it still happens once in a while. And look at it. It's still a beloved machine that earns well, and I think the same thing will be said of X-Men once we think about it in a year or two. So let's give Jack Danger the benefit of the doubt for now. Let's give the entire coding team working on it, the benefit of the doubt for now. Stern is not the company that abandons its machines. Okay, they're just not. They've updated code so many times from so many pins from so many years ago. And at the very least, they'll fix it when it gets remastered. All right, that was kind of a joke. But what else we're gonna talk about road trip? Okay, I'm going to be quick with this one. Road trip. Stern did put out the fire, but is it too late? Kind of. But I'm glad they did put it out. So I think if you have an LE, you don't need to worry about it. If you're buying the premium, it was a premium and the LE that had problems with the note board. So, but if you're, hey, if you're still worried about that, just buy a pro. As if you needed more reasons to purchase a pro. Okay, I'm going to have one little sip here. We're going to finish road trip. I'm going to talk about the tournament. I'm going to send y'all on your way. so I did praise road trip because I thought that mech in the very middle looked incredible what I didn't know is that it would be near impossible to hit the ramp shots some of the shots have physics that look near impossible um most of the video that we saw was of people bricking it I don't know if that was because they're not great players or because they hadn't played it before they hadn't found the shots or because the flippers were too low but wow, I almost take back everything I said about it. I mean, I said I didn't love the art. That I agree with still, but wow. After seeing it shot, I think this thing's more of a dog than Alice, and I think Alice is the biggest, worst dog other than ABBA and Blues Brothers that's came out in maybe the last five years. And don't you even be thinking Space Hunt. No, no, no. Space Hunt is way better than Road Trip, even just Space Hunt. No, uh, Mike. Okay, anyways, uh, yeah. So, I think that Road Trip will not sell 500. I do like, the number one thing that I like about it is the fact that they're not taking deposits. I do think if you're a location, it's kind of weird and quirky. So long as they can prove to you those ramps are hittable, the geometry is okay, and the code's better. Again, I would wait to play before you pay on this one. It looks like the code's at 0.29 or something. Like it's not going to get to even playable to be fun there's no animations yet there's no this thing is a long way from working the thing in the middle was working very very very rarely listening to the gentleman talk about the pin I was even less excited about it they seem way too cocky and honestly undereducated on how hard it is to run a pinball company so do I think they can knock it is this going to be like the better version of pinball adventures where they can knock out one or two pins per month sure is it ever going to be like I don't think it's as good as Ninja Eclipse and everything they're doing over there right so I don't know I kind of take it back I kind of maybe I was being too positive Jason Knapp did a great job with the pictures it's sound everything sounds the art doesn't look good but like the mechs look really cool tell me that the mechs in Road Trip don't look way more cool the shots aren't more innovative and interesting than say like Avatar like let's be honest you know what i mean uh even honestly depending on who you would ask like probably even mandalorian or even perhaps stranger things so i am excited as hell to someday perhaps maybe get my hands on playing road trip but i cannot i can't i i can more than ever encourage you to please lord god wait till the code is done wait till you shoot it maybe wait till you shoot it you know not at a show when the power can be up and you can actually hit the ramps because it either is a brick fest with bad geometry or we were watching some of the worst pinball players we've ever seen play it because it looked unshootable kind of like my voice is unlistenable right now the frog in my throat is back i've said all i have to say i i'm very appreciative of the twippies canada if you're listening i'm sorry you had a meltdown last night i don't know why your ego is so big that making you know three to four grand a month off just talking to a microphone isn't good enough when 99 of pinball podcasts make zero or lose money including myself so you know i do i feel kind of bad for canada a little at the same time i think like yo just gotta chill like as soon as he could see himself like like going down people kept writing in chat like dude just just say congratulations to rachel kale and just end the live stream his wife kept saying just end the live stream you should just end the live stream don't take down your channel don't be a bit because then people like me are just going to go unsubscribe to you right so it's like anyways i i don't know i don't know where that's going if canada never comes back i yeah i probably will eventually miss them i'm not going to miss them for now like he's just too lame too rude sucking off too many people making too many negative nancies if canada just didn't live stream it last night and he came and talked about it today and said like cheers to you guys but I was also kind of upset about it and mentioned all those reasons no harm no foul but in the middle of the show to be such a negative Nancy Debbie Downer that you're leeching off over a hundred listeners all at once that should be enjoying the twippies when they were going well at that point and for you not even to say hey I'm glad they figured everything out it's going better I don't know It's not rad. It's just not rad, dude. So, you know, if you are someone who wants to hear the truth about every single solitary pinball release, in a constructive criticism way for someone who's not associated with any distros in any way, shape, or form, come and listen to me here, Orbital Albert, your fifth favorite pinball podcast. Until then, remember to eat, sleep, and breathe Twippy's Pinball.