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Episode 213 – Energy Vampire

Slam Tilt Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 35m·analyzed·Aug 25, 2023
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Slam Tilt hosts critique Stern's $13k Jurassic Park LE as cash grab; report tournament results and industry hires.

Summary

Ron Hallett and Bruce Nightingale discuss Stern's Jurassic Park 30th Anniversary LE ($12,999, up $4k from 2019 LE), which they criticize as a cash grab with identical playfield/toys but new art and cabinet design. They report on The Beast pinball tournament in Buffalo, visit to Fun Spot arcade in New Hampshire, and industry personnel moves including Zombie Eddie's full-time hire at Stern and Nick Baldridge joining Multimorphic. They also cover Tilt Bob's upcoming Road Trip game and INDISC tournament format changes.

Key Claims

  • Jurassic Park 30th Anniversary LE is priced at $12,999, an increase of ~$4,000 from the 2019 LE which sold for $9,400

    high confidence · Ron and Bruce verify the 2019 price and look up current MSRP; the $12,999 price is confirmed in Stern's listings and sold out on All Access

  • The JP 30th Anniversary LE has identical playfield and toys to the original LE, with only cabinet art, back glass art, art blades, and trim changed

    high confidence · Bruce explicitly states: 'The play field is exactly the same. All the toys are the same. Everything's the same.'

  • The new JP 30th Anniversary code has bugs, including a Raptor mech (two-bank) that keeps going up and down on Premium models

    high confidence · Bruce reports: 'if you have a premium, the Raptor, the two-bank thing for the Raptor just keeps going up and down' and confirms Pro models don't exhibit the issue

  • Stern has discontinued support for Spike 1 motherboards/note boards; games using Spike 1 platform cannot be repaired if boards fail

    high confidence · Ron states: 'The note boards. Note 8 or whatever is no longer available, so if you have a Spike 1 and it blows up, you're fucked.' Games affected include Ghostbusters, WWE, Kiss, Game of Thrones, Primus, Can Crusher, Transformers, Avengers

  • Stern added Insider Connected integration to Jurassic Park 30th Anniversary LE (not present in original LE), which accounts for part of the price increase

    medium confidence · Bruce notes: 'But it has insider connected that's the most that's where the four thousand dollars comes from. Oh yeah, the original one didn't have that.'

  • Zombie Eddie was hired full-time by Stern Pinball with benefits

    high confidence · Ron states: 'Zombie Eddie was hired by Stern. Yes. Full-time. Yep. He's got bennies.' Ron explains Eddie was doing many pinball projects independently.

  • Nick Baldridge was hired by Multimorphic, likely part-time, to provide tech support

    medium confidence · Ron: 'Nick Baldridge was hired by Multimorphic. That I would assume is more part-time because I think he has a regular job. He does. But he's doing tech support, I believe.'

Notable Quotes

  • “It's a fucking true blue cash grab.”

    Ron Hallett @ ~20:30 — Summarizes the hosts' criticism of JP 30th Anniversary LE pricing and minimal feature changes

  • “It's $4,000 more. It's inflation. It's literally $1,000 a year.”

    Ron Hallett @ ~22:00 — Highlights the dramatic year-over-year price increase ($4k in 4 years) as potentially unsustainable inflation

  • “So if your Ghostbusters goes, too bad. Just put it on the fire pile.”

    Ron Hallett @ ~31:00 — Expresses frustration with Stern discontinuing Spike 1 motherboard support, rendering affected games unfixable

  • “If it spread out more, yeah, it would be a problem. But it was cramped enough that you could actually get all...”

    Bruce Nightingale @ ~68:00 — Comments on the venue's streaming setup for The Beast tournament

  • “I have to thank Jason Zahler... Since he's the best player, he just dominated. So he wins the first two games, then bunches up the other three players. So I have a better chance.”

    Bruce Nightingale @ ~56:00 — Notes how tournament group composition by skill level benefited his competitive performance in Classics

  • “The play field, I remember, was worn to the wood in this thing. Now it looks brand new. Oh, how did that happen? Overlay, baby.”

    Ron Hallett @ ~82:00 — Discusses playfield overlay restoration at Fun Spot arcade for 1981 Black Knight LE

  • “They're going to hopefully get started building soon... they bought the lot next to them they tore down the place and they were hoping by now the new building would be up but i think it's going to start maybe a month or two months from now”

    Bruce Nightingale @ ~73:00 — Reports on The Beast tournament venue expansion plans with 60 additional pinball machines

Entities

Ron HallettpersonBruce NightingalepersonStern PinballcompanyJurassic Park 30th Anniversary LEgameZombie EddiepersonNick BaldridgepersonMultimorphiccompanyThe Beastevent

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern discontinuing Spike 1 motherboard/note board support, rendering multiple game platforms (Ghostbusters, WWE, Kiss, Game of Thrones, Primus, Can Crusher, Transformers, Avengers) unfixable if hardware fails

    high · Ron: 'The note boards. Note 8 or whatever is no longer available, so if you have a Spike 1 and it blows up, you're fucked' and 'So if your Ghostbusters goes, too bad. Just put it on the fire pile.'

  • ?

    event_signal: INDISC (Southern California pinball tournament) format changed from two separate Classics tournaments to single Classics tournament over two days; tickets on sale October 5th

    high · Ron: 'They announced the dates for InDisc... The tickets go on sale... October 5th. They made some changes' and detailed format change from dual-day classics to consolidated format

  • ?

    event_signal: The Beast tournament (Buffalo, NY) successful first-year event with ~100 attendees; venue planning major expansion with 60 additional pinball machines and new building construction

    high · Ron: 'very good show 100 people' and Bruce: 'they bought the lot next to them... hopefully be ready for August' for 60-game expansion

  • $

    market_signal: JP 30th Anniversary LE sold out quickly at retailers/All Access, indicating strong initial demand despite criticism

    high · Ron: 'And it's sold out on the all access' and 'Some vendors already are out of them' and 'people say they're selling them out like that'

  • $

    market_signal: Stern continues pattern of releasing unlisted YouTube links to game reveals before making them private, described as intentional FOMO/control strategy by hosts

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.287

0:00
Scene 12, take 809. Parker? Now, Butthead, say your line. Uh, Beavis, I am going to kick your behind. Uh-huh, uh-huh. You know, I like the part about kicking Beavis, but it's like, I wouldn't say it like that. I would just say, Beavis, I'm gonna kick your ass. Yeah, that's true. It's like, I've known Butthead a long time, and he's kicked my ass a bunch of times, and he always says, I'm gonna kick your ass. Not behind. That's fine. Say it however you want, okay? Let's just keep rolling.
0:32
Uh, Beavis, I'm going to kick your... Beavis, why did you do that? He said he was going to kick my ass! You idiot. You bungle.
0:55
Coming to you from beautiful upstate New York, This is the Slam Tilt Podcast, a show about all things pinball. I'm your host, Ron Hallett, here with my co-host, Bruce Nightingale. Co-host. Oh, damn it. I screwed up. You did. Oh. We just got to leave it in now because that shows that he screwed up again. I did.
1:14
So what is the real meaning? The real meaning is the other host, Bruce Nightingale. There you go. And we're going to have the belt, baby. The belt. Okay, before we get into it, because no one knows what you're talking about. This is episode 213, and we are back for a normal episode, a normal, vulgar... Fuck yeah episode. Although, you have to admit, the last episode, I left the Beavis and Butthead intro in. Of course you have to. I had to. You have to. It's the gimmick. It is the gimmick. I can't... Yeah.
1:47
But the belt, baby. We're bringing the belt. Yeah, so Bruce sends this thing over. He's having a belt made for Stop. Yes. So the winner will get an actual championship belt. Yes. And we're not showing pictures yet. It's all going to be a surprise. A surprise. The belt. Mm-hmm. Yes.

  • The Beast tournament in Buffalo drew ~100 people and was well-organized for a first-year event by organizer Jeff

    high confidence · Ron: 'very good show 100 people very good show uff did a really good job for the first year'

    • Fun Spot
    venue
    Jason Zahlerperson
    Dave Brennanperson
    Tilt Bobperson
    Raymond Davidsonperson
    INDISCevent
    Spike 1product
    Insider Connectedproduct
    Road Tripgame

    medium · Ron: 'they had it just with an unlisted link again, which people found immediately... and then it was out there for like 20, 30 minutes before they made it private. Why do they continue to do this?' Bruce: 'I think it's intentional... They want to get everyone foaming at the mouth.'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Nick Baldridge hired by Multimorphic for tech support role while maintaining separate regular employment

    medium · Ron: 'Nick Baldridge was hired by Multimorphic... I would assume is more part-time because I think he has a regular job. He does. But he's doing tech support.'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Zombie Eddie hired full-time by Stern Pinball with benefits; previously worked independently on pinball projects

    high · Ron: 'Zombie Eddie was hired by Stern. Yes. Full-time. Yep. He's got bennies.' Justification: 'Because he was doing so many pinball projects, why not just work for Stern?'

  • $

    market_signal: Jurassic Park 30th Anniversary LE priced at $12,999, up $4,000 (~43%) from 2019 LE at $9,400; hosts characterize as unsustainable inflation at $1,000/year increase

    high · Ron: 'It's $4,000 more. It's inflation. It's literally $1,000 a year. Jesus fucking Christ.' Verified pricing: 2019 $9,400 → 2024 $12,999

  • ?

    product_strategy: JP 30th Anniversary LE features identical playfield and toys to 2019 LE; differentiation limited to cosmetics (cabinet art, back glass, trim) and new code with Insider Connected integration

    high · Bruce: 'The play field is exactly the same. All the toys are the same. Everything's the same' but notes new Insider Connected feature

  • ?

    product_concern: New Jurassic Park 30th Anniversary code contains bugs affecting Premium model (Raptor mech malfunction), while Pro model unaffected

    high · Bruce: 'if you have a premium, the Raptor, the two-bank thing for the Raptor just keeps going up and down, up and down' and 'if you have a pro, it sounds like you're good to go'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Hosts express frustration with Stern's pricing strategy and perceived cash grab marketing on JP 30th Anniversary; characterize as unsustainable business practice

    high · Ron: 'It's a fucking true blue cash grab' and 'is it $4,000 cooler than the original LE no... I think it's a fucking cash grab'

    • 2:12
    It's a championship belt. You're not playing in this, are you, Bruce? I am playing in this. I might be able to. That would look pretty bad if you're having a belt that's a slam tilt on it, and you are slam tilt. That's pretty bad. I am slam tilt. Actually, you're Slam, that's right. Exactly. I'm Tilt. You're Tilt. You're Slam. I'm Tilt.
    2:35
    No, God. What's that? Chip and Dale? Chip and Dale. Stupid Disney crap. And that was pre-crap. Oh, it was pre-crap? Oh, yeah, that's when they were good? Yes. Yeah. Oh, goofy. Ho, ho, ho, ho, whatever. DuckTales. Woo! Everyone loves DuckTales. Okay. Because I'm like Scrooge McDuck. I'm just swimming in my money downstairs. Oh, so much money. Yes, so much money. From our Patreon that we don't have. Yes, of course, the Patreon that we have don't have. I make tons of money. Look at me. I am making tons of money. I can afford a JP30th anniversary.
    3:12
    Oh, JP30th. Oh, is that a segue? That's a segue. Okay, so we'll just get right into that first. That wasn't what I had first, but we'll do that. I know, but it's just a clusterfuck. Cash grab! Well, it's a cash grab. I don't know if it's a – well. It is a clusterfuck. They did the thing again. Okay. So Stern releases a teaser trailer for Jurassic Park 30th anniversary. It's like, oh, okay. What's coming up? What's this? You know? Yeah. And then they had the full reveal video, but they had it just with an unlisted link again, which people found immediately. Ta-da. Yeah, and then it was out there for like 20, 30 minutes before they made it private. Why do they continue to do that? Stupid is what stupid does. I think it's intentional. I think it is, too. It has to be. They want to get everyone foaming at the mouth. They want, you know, like, here it is. Oh, we're taking it away. You have to wait now. Look, we have control. Yes. That's the only thing I can think of. I mean, they've done this multiple times. Yeah. But this is a shit show.
    4:20
    No, it's just a cash grab. It's Cash Grab Shit Show. How is it a shit show? Well, what is it, Bruce? What is Jurassic Park 30th Anniversary? What is it? It's 500 machines with the 30th anniversary badge and new side art. Oh, so it's a new LE. Yes, because you only get 500 of them. And people say they're selling them out like that. Oh, they are? That's what they said. Some vendors already are out of them. Well, they had, okay, so they released, it's Jurassic Park 30th Anniversary LE. They're going the JJP route with the. Yellow Brick Road. Yeah, the Emerald City Edition, the Yellow Brick Road Edition, the Roomie Red Edition. Oh, my God. Yeah, so they're doing this. But at least it sounds like they're selling theirs compared to JJP. Well, then you have, okay, so Bruce, I looked this up. Yes. What did you look up? In 2019, Jurassic Park LE, what do you think it sold for? $9,400. It was actually $899, whatever. So $9,000. Shipping with that, $9,400. Okay. How much is this selling for, Bruce? $12,500.
    5:37
    No. I thought it was $13,000. Well, I was thinking $12,500, but then the shipping is $13,000. I thought it was that, but maybe I'm wrong. It might have been $12,900. All right, hold on. Let me look. See, you're ruining everything again. I thought I had it like right in front of me here Yeah I did here it is So it is $12,999 Yeah so it's $13,000 No it's $12,999 Oh stop Stop And it's sold out on the all access like that Well yeah they only have a couple available on the all access I know So basically what it is It's a Jurassic Park LE It's the same as the original LE But with different cabinet art A different back glass and different art blades. Oh, and different trim. Different trim. The play field is exactly the same. All the toys are the same. Everything's the same. Yep. And it's $4,000 more.
    6:32
    It's inflation. It's literally $1,000 a year. Jesus fucking Christ. That's a lot of inflation. They've got to pay for that new location. Yes, they've got to pay for the new factory they're going to. Holy shit. And they're making these already. Yes. These are on the line. We're on the line. Holy shit. And don't forget, there's two ways to ship the game out to you. $500 standard delivery, which is curbside, or for $1,000, you get the handy. The handy. Do you mean this is from Stern? Yes. They bring it in and set it up for you. Ah, I think you mean the white glove. No, I call it the handy. The handy. Yes, you get the handy with it, too. Jesus Christ.
    7:16
    Well, to be fair, What do you think of the art? Oh, the art's beautiful. Yeah, I think it looks good. Yeah, I think it looks really good. But to be truthful, I never thought the – I always liked the cabinet art on the original. Yeah, me too. I think the Playville was the one that was – and that's mostly because they had the whole map thing. Yeah, I'm not – I'm very disappointed. It's a fucking true blue cash grab. Well, yeah. Well, there's more to it, Bruce. Oh, there is? There's new software. The problem is the software is available for all models, so it's really not like an exclusive thing. It's just – And it's already got bugs in it, so they're going to have another problem. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it's cool. They added all these different modes now. There's a co-op mode. Yep. There's a team play mode. Yep. They put – there's a bunch of new call-outs in there. But we got problems. Yeah, if you have a premium, I guess the Raptor, the two-bank thing for the Raptor just keeps going up and down, up and down. Up and down, up and down. Mine didn't do that.
    8:22
    You lucked out. I only played one game on it with the new code. Excellent. So, yeah, they're going to have to have a fix for that. Yep. But if you have a pro, it sounds like you're good to go. Yeah, you're good to go. And, I mean, it looks cool. I mean, all things considered, I think it's Elwin's best game, although Godzilla has sold the most. Godzilla, I think it's better. I like Godzilla better. I think the play field is a masterpiece on this. I like it. I just don't like the – I mean, the call-outs, okay, they're bad. Yeah, they're bad. And I don't like the way you're locked. You have to go step by step through the park. No. Well, you can choose which path via the truck.
    9:02
    What's wrong with that? It's just not a fun game. What did that mean? It's just like suck sticks. Are you choking on the truck? Suck sticks. he's so vulgar okay well you said we people didn't get it last week so they're gonna get double of it this week they're gonna get a fucking double load of it uh yeah a load they're getting a load of it so yeah but it has insider connected that's the most that's where the four thousand dollars comes from oh yeah the original one didn't have that yeah that's that'll be it now you have insider connected hey but luckily if you have a spike one game soon you'll have no more boards to be able to fix it with.
    9:43
    Oh, is that the deal where, like, was it? The note boards. Note 8 or whatever is no longer available, so if you have a Spike 1 and it blows up, you're fucked. You're fucked. That's really good. That's good commitment, Stern. Thanks, guys. So if your Ghostbusters goes, too bad. Just put it on the fire pile. What is Spike 1 games? Basically Was it anything after Walking Dead that doesn't have an LCD Yeah I think so So like WWE The Kiss Well that's right Bruce The greatest band in the world We're retiring again Again and again And again Oh god please And Ghostbusters Yes oh god Maybe that will blow up. Oh, so you're happy for that. Yes, exactly. Your Ghostbusters has become unfunctional. Great. Yay.
    10:44
    Let's see what else. Probably WrestleMania, too. I said that one. Well, what else do we have? Hold on. I'm just waiting for the list. I said WWE. Yeah, Bruce, it took like 20 minutes to boot his computer to start this. Yes, it did. It's just finally catching up now. Like, holy shit, I'm fucking old. You know, if we had that Patreon, Bruce, you might be able to afford that computer. Game of Thrones. Oh, that was Spike-1? That's Spike-1 also. Oh, I didn't know that. Primus. Oh, yeah, okay.
    11:12
    Can Crusher. Oh, okay. Transformers, the pin. Avengers, the pin. Oh, God. I don't think we're missing much here. Oh, the old ones there. Yes. Yeah, that's where they first tried it, right? Yeah. Yep. So we're not missing much here.
    11:29
    Maybe this is why they're, you know. Okay. Ghostbusters was a very good seller I know it was Game of Thrones is popular but yeah Sarasota Park LE new code is out new code looks cool it'll be even cooler when they fix it and I mean the art looks cool but I mean is it $4,000 $4,500 is it $4,000 cooler than the original LE no I mean there is inflation but damn I think it's a fucking cash grab. You love your Monopoly.
    12:08
    All right. Okay. Let's go back in order. Oh, fuck. I hate orders. The Beast. Luckily, we had a great tech there. The end.
    12:25
    Okay. I assume you're referring to yourself. Of course. In the third person. There's nothing weird about that. Nothing at all. Hot tip coil burned up. Hot tip coil burned up, and the GI lights died once on... What did I bring out there besides that? Dragon Fist. That was it. Other than that, my games held up very, very well. Yeah, it was nice. It blew up and burnt up, so a new coil got put in there, so the flipper was stronger than ever. Yes. yep we worked i worked on all the classic and women's division games all the other guys did the main tournament games uh we both qualified in classics we did we did we did and bruce finished higher than me in maine which he kept telling me fuck yeah my 19 entries to his like 47 entries but if whatever makes you happy bruce hey hey hey what where do we finish at the end i beat you you beat me even okay if okay that's a weird one so i finished higher than you in classics yep and i finished higher you and so according to the ifpa roles we were one and one against each other oh that that whole head-to-head thing that they do yeah head-to-head i miss those boys right so um we're gonna die good day it was a good show 100 people very good show uh jeff did a really good job for the first year. They think they had like six classics brought in for the tournament. They think they had. They're not sure. Well, I think they did. I wasn't tracking it. I was setting up games and just running them, you know.
    14:05
    Women's tournament was good. He was sorry. Women's tournament was good. And the main was really hard. I will say that. My best game actually was on Rush in the main. Yeah. For me, that's amazing. I had like 200 something million on Rush. That was one of my best games. Yep. That rush played pretty good. We stayed out at the beautiful Econo Lodge in Buffalo. Oh, yeah. Holy shit. Yeah, that place is pretty scary. I take my shoes off at some point, like, why are my socks black? And then I realized it was from the Econo Lodge floor in my hotel room. That was cool. Yet their TV there had, like, every channel imaginable. My roommate was humongous. Your roommate was humongous? No, my room was humongous.
    14:54
    Humongous. Yeah. How big was your room? I think mine was like 12 by 20. Oh, yeah. I don't know how to do math like that. That's why I'm a mechanical engineer. He's the IT guy. Oh, yeah. Sure. It's got to be. That's why his computer takes 20 minutes to boot and mine doesn't. Yeah. It's hard to segue into this to say like, oh, yeah, I play pretty good. Ron did play very good. He finished. Without sounding douchey. He finished second in Classics. And I owe it all to one game.
    15:25
    Dialed in. No, you don't owe it to that. Oh, 100%. Nope, you owe it to... So this is a pump and dump. So the first day, I'm pumping and dumping. And the second day, there's two days of qualifying. I got that right, yeah, two days. So the second day, I come in there in the morning, and the first 20 bucks of entries I put in all suck. no improvement on anything and I'm kind of in a shitty mood so I go over to the non-tournament section and I see oh there's a dialed in there and I played some dialed in and after two games I felt so much better Bruce I had a smile on my face I felt good about pinball again and I went over to the tournament to the classics area and finally started putting up some scores whatever bruce yes dialed in oh god i noticed you were the only one that played it the whole weekend oh literally nobody went over and played that game at all nobody not a single person nope okay on a friday and saturday because there's better games out there i did play some galactic tank force yes that's where i played mine and i got what i i got some kind of thing you got the creamsicle oh god i got the meltdown thing i think yeah you did i didn't hit the cow we had to hit the cow twice i wanted the methane i could not get the methane i fail no methane for me but uh yeah ron came in second thanks to a ruling oh ruling yes there was a question about the ruling and the uh since we haven't recorded a regular episode in a while we did the whole like ask your questions on facebook so this is number one it was the number one question yes um should we get to that later just talking about later but i will say a game for it oh okay a memory lane yeah god i ended up playing a lot of memory lane and actually i have to thank and i never thought of it this way. I have to thank Jason Zahler. Yes, of course. Because I was in his group.
    17:41
    I got through the first round, and then from then on, I was in his group. The whole time. The whole time, which I never thought of it this way. Since he's the best player, he just dominated. So he wins the first two games, then bunches up the other three players. So I have a better chance. I'm not completely out of it. I never thought of it that way, but it's simple math. And that's what happened. It was close enough where I was able to come through on the last game on a couple rounds and continue on. I got smoked in the first round. I didn't even touch. I touched one ball on Fireball Classic. Yes, our new favorite game. Yeah, I like that game. But I didn't touch one. I touched one ball for like three or four flips. It took a multi-ball and went with it, and that was it. that's the only thing I actually did that whole game. That got me two points. And then hot tip fucked me my own game. Oh, dry.
    18:44
    And that's, that's like horse. That's horse cock. That's pretty big. So that's pretty big. That's, that's going to be powerful. Yeah. No Phillies here. All studs.
    18:56
    And, uh, then we had magic and that just, uh, I could not do magic. I can do magic. So it wasn't strange magic? No. It wasn't magic like Olivia Newton-John? No, it was just dry, humping magic. Okay. So I was done already. So then I went to the main while Ron was playing. I got ahead of him with a couple games, so we all went one-on-one against each other. Oh, okay. Yep. I did have a huge game on Stargazer. Once I saw You Could Trap, I got to play this until I get a big score. You could trap, and it was just the stock ROM. Yeah. So finally, the last time I played it, I just built the bonus up insanely on ball one. So I'm getting like 400K every ball, whether I do anything or not. Yep. It's great. Yeah, that was not the good ROM to use for that. And you can't have it so you can trap everything that easy. No, you have to do Bruce. You have to do Bruce on that one. Or just me. Mine's not that trappable. Yeah. Mine's worse. Yes. Your flippers are pointed to hell.
    20:08
    So let's see. Classics. We had a number. First place was Raymond Davidson. Yes. Second place was that Ron Hallett guy. That douche. And third place was Jason Soller. Fourth place was Tim Tourne. Yes. Nice job, guys. And in the main. Well, let's get through them all here. Then we got in the women's finals, which you were the TD. I was. so we had Polly Vernon in first Donna Way in second Courtney Wetzel in third and Jody Stallman in fourth didn't she win something at Rochester at the world famous Rochester Pinball Collective yes where would that be Ron 349 West Commercial Street East Rochester suite number 2965 there you go we tag teamed that one yes we did with the belt with the belt let's see then there was the 3X tournament. You didn't make the main finals playing this. And I TD'd that also. Yes, you did. And repair. And first was Jared Lemankiewicz. Yeah, Lemankiewicz. He only had one strike. He was dominant. Brian Bauer in second. That Ron Hallett guy again in third. Douche. and Eric Russell and Ian Harrower tied for fourth. Yep. And that's Eric Russell, C-N-Y. Very important that you know that. And then in the main, we had Jason Zahler won, Aaron Rich in second, Carlos de la Cerda in third, and Chris Stevens in fourth. I think it went really well for his first time. Yeah. I think next year will be even bigger and better. maybe a bigger room because they're going to hopefully get started building soon building oh wait a minute they're building stuff they bought the lot next to them they tore down the place and they were hoping by now the new building would be up but i think it's going to start maybe a month or two months from now go through the winter and then hopefully be ready for August.
    22:17
    And it'll be another 60 games in there. Good God! Yeah. I can tell you one thing. It was nice and warm. It was warm. It was nice. This was a sweaterless tournament. A rare sweaterless tournament. And Bruce had shorts on. What does that tell you? Ugh. I mean, I got the guns out. Looked good on stream. My incredible physique. Everyone got to see it. dead silence.
    22:48
    Okay. Yep. The Castleman's pinballers, shout out. They streamed the whole thing. They did. And used a wired setup. Yeah, I know. Which... You should go wireless, God. No, I mean, he had not a single frame drop with that. I know, but still... If it spread out more, yeah, it would be a problem. But it was cramped enough that you could actually get all... Yeah, it reached everywhere.
    23:13
    Hey, that's what we did. back in the old days with big like 50-foot, what was it, USB cables? Yep. Back in the day. In my day, we had USB cables that transmitted the data. We used webcams. Yes. Let's see. So that was the beast. That was the beast. Can't wait for next year. It's already scheduled for first weekend, I think, in August. I got to see all Bruce's games on the way back. Yes, you did. You know, if I'd known it was that early, like I was, when I got to your house, it's like 630. And I thinking like I could just drive home and I be home You could have Yeah But I saw the wide body collection Yes the wide body collection Hurry hurry hurry hurry
    24:02
    Free fall. Cheetah 2. Electric Bulu. Big game. Mm-hmm. What else do I have here? The other thing I did that same week, I was off that week. Before I went to Buffalo, I decided to go in the exact opposite direction. And I went to New Hampshire, Laconia, New Hampshire, to visit my old stomping grounds at Fun Spot. Was it fun at the spot? Yeah.
    24:29
    They have definitely upped their game in the pinball category. I'll say that. They have, too. There was no way of going down.
    24:39
    Well, what they did, they brought some of the games downstairs and have this, like, pinball room. Yes. They had a James Bond there and a Mandalorian. They had not bought a new game since Monopoly. Yeah. They're right up front, and they're on Insider Connected and got a leaderboard thing and all that. And then the other games are ones that have been there forever, but they've been updated. Yeah. They have a Black Knight LE. I'm talking 1981 Black Knight LE. They made, like, I don't know how many hundreds of them. They didn't make a lot of them. The play field, I remember, was worn to the wood in this thing. Yes, it was. Now it looks brand new. Oh, how did that happen? Overlay, baby.
    25:22
    Did they overlay it or did they go for a new play field? No, it was overlay. It had to be overlay. You know how the overlays around the inserts, the black is really black, the circles? You can tell it's an overlay. Yeah, it's an overlay. Okay. They had the Playboy. The play field wasn't that bad to begin with, so that one was a lot. But the Kiss. Kiss! And I remember the Kiss. The whole square was all white. Bob Lawton, the guy who started Fun Spot with his brother, that was like his favorite game, KISS. So that was the one pinball machine that was always working because he would always play it every day. So it's still there, but it's got either an overlay or a new play field, one or the other. Nice. In there, yep. And it's got – they have – yeah, F-14 Tomcat was there. I think Pinbot was there.
    26:09
    Funhaus was there. you know, the more popular games that were in this section. Then upstairs, they still had games up there. Pinball machines. Every game I played worked. Nice. I went to the Pier Arcades, which are fun. I think they're the Half Moon Arcades, I think they were called. And the one that's right by the Pier is all newer shit, and the only thing, they have a Disco Fever. Ooh. I can't remember what the other one was. Oh, South Park. A South Park and a Disco Fever. Yikes. Yeah, I didn't play those. Then the Half Moon Arcade. They have all the same games I always had. They all work. Every one I played. And they all had Eric Stone's initials on them. Oh, boy. With, like, insane, ridiculous scores. Billions on Getaway. Billions. So, yeah, that was fun. I haven't been there in a long time. Actually, the issues I had were with the video games. double dragon it's like i want to play double dragon so i start playing and the guy won't move up he won't move up like okay i'll play a two-player game because there's two there's two different controllers and maybe the second player will work now he wouldn't move the other way oh great so you can go down yeah so so okay there goes that pole position was fucking weird really i someone's got to explain to me what they always had all their games there at the twin galaxy settings. So if you wanted to go for a world record, et cetera, that kind of thing. And if I remember pole position, the max speed on that was like two 32, 40, two 32 or two 33, something like that. Yeah. And for some reason, the highest, the fastest I could go was like two 25, but everything else, but everything else in the game was like, it thought it was at the two 30, whatever. And everything was working like the pedal work, the shifter worked, all that stuff. So I don't get it. If it was a setting or anything, I don't understand. But the thing is, because it was like that, you could not get pole position. You could do a perfect run and you'd be one second short. Yeah, you'd be one second short.
    28:27
    And also, Matt, if you crashed at all, you're done. You're done. Yeah. Miles will start taking out people. On the regular, yeah. When it's 230 whatever miles an hour, you can usually crash once. And maybe get eighth or seventh. No, no. I don't mean during a regular race. You can crash once and still be able to make it through. It's three laps. Yes. But the way it was set up, even if you were perfect, you only had a couple seconds left when you got the lap extended, extended. So, of course, I see this, and what do you think I do?
    29:02
    Play and play. Yeah, play and play until I get it. It's like, okay, I see it's technically possible, but I'm going to have to be perfect to get through this. So about 15 games or so later, I finally finished this stupid thing. Holy shit. Because that's just the way my mind works. But that was weird. I don't know what's going on. Now you see what I put up with people.
    29:23
    Well, the other interesting thing is they have the Pac-Man there that had the first ever perfect Pac-Man game by Billy Mitchell. And they always had his picture next to it. That's gone. His picture's gone. It's not next to it anymore. Yeah. Gone. I guess he's, yeah. He's getting sued by too many people at this point. So, yeah, they were going to, yeah, they just removed him.
    29:46
    Gone. Be gone. This is the woke culture now. We take you away. The woke? What does that have to do with it? He just, he got walked out. He lied, so he's woke. They all woke up. He's woke because he's lying? No, everyone else woke up that he's a freaking liar. Oh, they woke up, yes. And then guess what? He's gone. We changed history. like everything else in this world. He lied a lot. Oh, he did. Hey, but when you have the American flag on your tie, you can say anything you want, and most people will believe you. I got to play the actual Donkey Kong from the famous King of Kong movie that I was in. Wow. I got to play that. Well, I always play that when I'm there. And I stopped at that ice cream place. That's why I really like it. I'm going to stop at your ice cream place when I come out for Stomp. That's a good guarantee. No, the Guptles. Yes. I'll probably tell you. I'll probably tell you like I'm a half an hour away. I'm like, meet me there.
    30:41
    Please get something other than vanilla. No. Come on, man. Do you swirl? Yes. Okay. I'll do swirl. Okay. What else do I got here? Wow. That's only like two things we've gone through. It's going to be a long episode. It's going to be a long fucking episode. See, you asked for it, people. They did? They did. You asked me to ask them and that's what happens. Uh-huh. We haven't even got to that section yet of all the questions you asked them to ask us. I know. And I asked to ask to ask. Yes. Mm-hmm. Zombie Eddie was hired by Stern. Yes. Full-time. Yep. He's got bennies. Because he was doing so many pinball projects, why not just work for Stern? Yeah, might as well. Keep a good asset when you need it. Yeah. When you need it, which is like every game now. Exactly. It seems like it. Let's see. What else? Nick Baldridge was hired by Multimorphic. That I would assume is more part-time because I think he has a regular job. He does. But he's doing tech support, I believe, is the deal. I don't know why nobody's hired Dave Brennan. He really turned around American Pinball, and then, you know, he's a great person they could have hired at Sturm. So let's see. What else do I got here? I have a note about Tilt Bob, the guy named Bob who made Elf. His company's named Tilt Bob. He's out of Florida.
    31:58
    I guess they announced the next game. It's going to be Road Trip. I'm having Vacation America vibes on that. I'm totally fucking getting that fucking vibe. But we'll see what they can do.
    32:09
    Whenever that game comes out. Yeah. It'll be right next to Punny Factory. Oh, we got to see the art for Punny Factory. Yay.
    32:17
    You didn't like it? We were trying to guess all the different puns. Yeah, and it was pretty bad. Oh, you're so mean. I am truthful.
    32:26
    You're truthfully mean. Yep. Okay. Okay, what else do I got here? They announced the dates for InDisc. Yes, they did. The tickets go on sale. In October somewhere. October, yeah. October 5th. They made some changes, and I don't know how I feel about them. You going? Oh, yeah. Okay, see, so nothing changed your mind. Well, the thing is, I'm wondering if it's like a get more Whoppers thing. You know more about Whoppers than I do. Did you know what the changes are? No, I did not. Okay. So let's hear them. So InDisc, it's a major. What is it called? The Open? Yes, the Open. Whatever. It happens in Southern California in January. So the Hurricanes will be gone by then. The Hurricanes will be gone by then. Other things they changed, they would have two Classics tournaments, one on Friday and one on Saturday, with the finals at the end each day. Yeah. Just like Papa used to do. They're changing that. so now it's going to be just one classics tournament over two days so with one finals i don't know is is that maybe a whopper thing where because if the qualification is longer and more games are played it's worth more or something no i think they're maxing out at 100 so i'm 125 so you know maybe it's just too much work i just people getting confused i don't know confused i just like because they would have one set of games for classics one day yeah maybe it's It was too much work. And then the next day, they'd have a different set. Yeah, well, maybe it was too much work. I don't think. The thing is, though, they're still doing the classics match play. That's what they use most of the games for. They're still doing that. So I don't know if that's the issue. Maybe we need to get them on. Yeah, why are you doing this? And the other thing they changed is the classics match play, the target match play, which you basically play classics until you get to the target, what is it, 30 points? Whatever it was. Yes. The one that I finished second in. Wow, second again. Am I the new Josh Sharp? You are the new Josh Sharp. Except he's disappointed. I'm like elated. Wow, this is better than I thought I'd do. So it wasn't a finals thing. It was a target. Whoever gets a target first, it's over. They win. Now they're going to have a playoff. I think they need a playoff for that. That's why. That's for the points. So you think that's a whopper thing? That's a whopper thing.
    34:52
    See, I don't know. I'm not really into that. Well, well. I like the fact that it just ended. Yeah. But they know what they're doing better than I do. They do. That's for sure. So that's going on. And then Hotel Runes went for sale for three minutes. Yeah, not when they were supposed to. They fucked that up. Did you see that? Yeah, I did. Okay, so Texas Pinball Festival, they announced that they're going on sale for the host hotel, the embassy suites and they're going on sale at 10 a.m or what at 9 a.m or something like that it was on it was it a weekend no it was during the week week it was during a week it was last week yes i can't remember what day it was thursday i think it was wednesday or thursday it was basically they're going on sale was it 9 a.m central yeah so 10 a.m 10 a.m eastern so that's all i care about 10 a.m eastern all right and these usually sell out pretty quickly yeah And they've got plenty of hotels in the area that are close. It's nice to go downstairs. Boom, you're there. Well, and I bring my dad. My dad's hip is shit. So he walks fine for a while, but then he has to start slipping, and then it gets worse. So anything to walk less for him is good. Yes. So I'm in a meeting at work, actually, while this is going on, a phone meeting, a Teams meeting. and I'm there at about like an hour ahead of time. I checked the site and the link is there for the hotel. Like, huh. So I click on it and it says there's no rooms available. And it's like, huh? Like, did they, they sell out already? Did they like do it at a different time than they said? And I'm rereading it. And it says like the link will become active on this time. Like, okay, maybe it's just not, it hasn't become active, but I mean, I can click on it, whatever. so while I'm in this meeting at around 9 55 five minutes ahead of time for the hell of it I just like reload the page go in rooms available like oh cool so I got you know I go through I get my room I even change the dates because it defaulted to like Friday through Sunday and Thursday through Sunday and everything went through pay for confirmation there you are you're also like oh cool and then like later on in the day i'm reading or yeah they want it they went available like five minutes early and sold out in like two or three minutes yep and we know some people that they got in a minute or two ahead of time and and it was there and then it was gone yep damn somebody i would assume someone at the hotel reservation system screwed that up yeah probably i would assume i mean it has to be right i mean they're the ones doing it but yeah.
    37:38
    So typically, there's lots of pissed off people on Pits. I'm just bullshit! I'm going to go to my favorite pinball machine place! Oh, Jesus Christ. There's 20 other hotels around there. Yeah, and lots of them are cheaper, too. Yes, they are. Yeah. I just thought that was funny. Because I just happened to just reload the page for the hell of it. I don't even know why, because it's five minutes early, and then I saw it like, oh! Okay, cool. Well, hopefully this year when This Week in Pinball invites us down to host a show, you know. Oh, Jesus Christ. I do not want to host two FBs. Yes, you do. You do with me. No. Oh, it would be fucking awesome. No, it would not. Oh, it would be great. No, it wouldn't. You and me in tuxes? Boy, we fucking... No, Liberace tuxes. I have never worn a tuxedo, Bruce. Liberace tuxedo. I have never worn a Liberace tuxedo. Yes, I'm sure you'll be fluffy, Bruce. Of course, I'll be all fluffed up.
    38:34
    Okay. Let's see. What else do we got here? The other thing about TBF is it's so crowded. Oh, it is so crowded. That's why I have not had an inkling to go back there. It's getting California extreme crowded levels. It is getting. Like I said, I think I said this after. You said it last year. Well, I said it after this year that you walk in the room and it's like the sound hits you like it's unbelievable. It's like Jesus Christ. Holy shit. Crikey. crikey they need more room they need a bigger room yes they do uh what else do i have here oh there were so many tournaments last weekend oh my god becky look at her butt it is so big she looks like one of those rap guys girlfriends but who understands those rap guys i like big butts and i can't not love you other brothers can't damn not is it is it See, crazy. I love that song so much. Just the video. Put a problem thing in your face, you get stuck.
    39:37
    No, sprung. You get sprung. I thought you get stuck in the butt. She's wearing. I'm hooked and I can't stop staring. Oh, baby. I want to get with you and take your picture.
    39:49
    I'm sorry. Me being so horny. God, I can't believe they had to show that late at night on MTV because it was controversial. You watch it now. It is so tame. I know. It is so tame. It's just like he's standing on a big fake butt. I know.
    40:08
    Thank you, Sir Mix-a-Lot. One of the first of the Seattle, the wave of Seattle musicians. Yeah. It's literally Jimi Hendrix, then Sir Mix-a-Lot.
    40:18
    All right. Yes. District 82 had the Whopper Farming going on. Whopper Farming. The summer Whopper Farming. That's the one I will never go to. But I thought you went to it. I did. No, I wouldn't go to the summer one. The summer one because it's too hot? Too fucking hot. It was hot when it was in the fall. I could not imagine. I couldn't imagine what I saw and that Tom Graff wasn't there. I know. He had prior commitments. He couldn't run the rig. That was so weird. It was weird. Let's see. Let's look at all the winners. I've got to go through this quickly because they had like 30 zillion tournaments. So we're just going to go, I'll just say the beat. They had a beat the clock tournament. Winner, Josh Henderson.
    41:04
    Remember Josh Henderson? Yep. He's back. Josh Henderson, he was one of your kid prodigies back in the day. Yep. And he went to college in New England, and now he's graduated and he's back in Illinois. He's back. Back in pinball.
    41:23
    He's back. Back in pinball. And then there was the three-strike knockout event won by Josh Henderson.
    41:32
    Then we have the certified classics SPC. What does that mean, SPC? I don't know what that means, but that's your left off one. So add more points to the number one ranking. Then we had the eight-strikes fair strikes knockout won by Luke Noordihack. Congratulations. There you go. Then we had the Lucky 13 tournament won by Joshua Henderson. Wow. Good Lord. Then we had the finals for the main event, Jason Zahler.
    42:12
    So congrats to all the winners. Every week going to a different place. Jesus Christ. It's like so many. It's getting nutty. When we started in this, Bruce, there was no tournaments. Or if there was, there was like one or two a year. Yeah. Now there's one every weekend. Every fucking weekend. Or two or three in a way the same weekend. That's right, baby. To be the man, you got to beat the man. Woo! Okay. Let's see. We got California Extreme.
    42:39
    Mm-hmm. The women's winner was Anna Neal. Congratulations. There you go. Then we had the California Extreme Classics Finals. Winner, Nick Stein.
    42:50
    Then we had the California Extreme Main Finals. Winner, Luke Baxter. congratulations there we go we did our tournament stuff yay she's so excited yay uh we made this weekend pinball bruce we did did you see that not asking the hard questions slam till podcast talks with american pinball yeah no hard questions were asked smiley face but we enjoyed the conversation and came away wanting more of this from the american crew Yeah, I thought I was just trying for an easygoing conversation. I don't need to have hard, hard. People came up to me afterwards and said, you didn't ask about this and you didn't ask about this. I'm like, to be truthful, a lot of the stuff people said, like, why didn't you ask him about this? I had never heard of it. Neither have I. I was like, what the fuck? I heard of air balls, magnetized balls.
    43:43
    Yep. I heard about all that stuff. The stuff I actually experienced. Exactly. that's yeah but not the you know other shit and i was like i didn't know anything about this we'll get into that during the uh the ball bag because i got a message in there let's see what else do i got in here oh congratulations to the eclectic gamers podcast welcome to the club boys welcome to the club they hit episode 200 and since uh mr um creasel shouts me out all the time I figured I'd shout him out. Dennis and Tony. No, you don't say anything interesting, and you're vulgar and just utterly unrefined.
    44:26
    Fuck you. Exactly. It reminds me of A Fish Called Wanda. You're quite the Bulgarian. You're the Bulgarian, you fuck. No, that's why I did it that way. God, I love that movie. Oh, I love that movie, too. I apologize unreservedly. My favorite part of that scene is when he's apologizing. If you look outside, you see all the people just watching, like looking up, like what the hell is going on?
    44:53
    Okay. Let's see. I think that's it for the main batch of stuff. So do you want to do ball bag or the Facebook stuff?
    45:02
    Let's do the ball bag first so I can empty it. Then I can take all the Facebook in my face. Okay.
    45:13
    And those people who want to be on the podcast, we haven't forgot about you. No, we haven't. I still have a list of some names here. We have not forgotten.
    45:23
    So we have, this is from the bastard son of Pinbot. That is literally from who it's from. Bastard. Bastard of Pinbot. Bastard of Pinbot is going. It's a space.
    45:37
    Yeah. All right. And it's Bastard of Pinbot. Bastard son of pin bot at gmail.com. All right. It says to be read in an 80s robot voice. Okay. That's all you. Circuits, activate. Greetings, Ron and Bruce. I, the bastard son of pin bot, have fortunately or unfortunately been following your podcast for quite some time. Unfortunately. And have a few complaints. Allow me to ruminate. not enough praise for games with cool and unique layouts like the 1995 revolutionary game williams jackpot jackpot wasn't revolutionary i think that is the joke pop pop both of you are racist wow specifically covering one race the human race oh god i haven't heard many mentions of otherworldly entities, mythical beings, and of course, robots. However, Zach, the energy vampire comes on the show from time to time, so I'll give you that. The energy vampire, wow. He just sucks all the energy out of all of us.
    46:51
    I think we have a title. I'm writing that down. Energy vampire. Sucking energy vampire. wow does he mean that he's a robot that could be a considered a robot i can do that definitely i can but oh my god simply there's not enough tournament talk i find this section absolutely riveting and would like to add more we did more we did more they'll be like all you did was say who won that is not talking about tournament pinball watch it for nine hours on twitch there you go well i think some of the um facebook questions we have are directly related to tournament stuff that's why i'm kind of holding up that's why i didn't get too far into the stuff here to stew mcvicker whose name i misspelled like everyone does playboy launch party champion i would like to say this i see you i would like to personally challenge you to a competition on an electromechanical pinball machine I recently acquired a 1971 masterpiece that set on purchase for what you earthlings called Marketplace What a sucker Ron is for not picking this up. Stu, I await your response. And Bruce and Ron, please think about my suggestions. I am in your control. The bastard son of pinball. So what game did he pick up? I would assume it's Doodle Bug. Doodle Bug, which is the best game out there. that you fucking never got. Doodlebug.
    48:18
    Doodlebug. Wake me up before you doodle. Okay, so that was the bastard son of Pinbot. Okay.
    48:32
    This one, I don't know if you saw this one, but we had someone, this is from an anonymous donor, made a donation in the memory of Lyman Sheets for NAMI. Yep. Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone who did donate and has donated since. Hi, Bruce. I missed the chance to donate when you were doing the NAMI fundraiser. I donated now in Lyman's memory, letting you know in case you want to share with Penny.
    48:57
    She does listen now, so she has now known and found out, which is a good thing. Let's see. That's our card. Okay. This is from Chris.
    49:11
    Subject, the beast. The Beast. Hi, Ron and Bruce. Glad to see you this weekend. Congrats in Classics, Ron. Thought our game of Galactic Tank Force with the American Dream and Panther was awesome. With Panther? Oh. Okay, I played it with David Fix and Steve Bowden. So attached is a picture I took. Just for the record, you guys have the best general pinball talk podcast hands down. Keep up the good work. Thank you. Hope you enjoy the Crystal Beach Suckers. Yes. He had these. Chris had these. huge lollipops. I know, I was eating them too. That took like an hour to go through. To suck. I hate when I have to fuck in them play and then fuck again. Yes, it's a picture of us with, let's see, a seatbelt in the American dream, baby. David, that's how it's going, baby. Playing the Galactic Tank Force. Yeah, that's the only thing we didn't have. We didn't have Dave Fix in our interview. Yeah, we did not. But that didn't stop me from doing it. Not at all. I had to. I would have taken even more shit if I didn't do that. I know. Let's see. This is from Daniel. He says, Hi, Daniel. I'm still working my way through the catalog of episodes. Oh, boy. I think I found my favorite Ron slip-up. Ooh. Love those. Deep Throat Pinball.
    50:29
    I think I was doing Macho Man or something. Oh, no, no. It's not Macho Man. I was probably doing Hogan because I remember... Deep Throat. What's his name? Who's the Deep Throat guy again? I'm forgetting his name already. yeah it's it's good it's better for everyone i can't remember his name that's a good thing but my voice for him was hulk hogan yes so yeah so good so good thanks for the laugh guys p.s if you could clip that and put it on your latest episode i bet your new listeners would love you for it or maybe they just need to go back and listen to this one on their own great episode guys what episode was it okay i would have if you gave me the episode and the time code otherwise i don't know what episode it is and i'm not gonna look for it god no i'm sorry because there's so many episodes. Oh, wait a minute. No, subject. It's right in the subject line. Doofy me. Episode 130. But still, you didn't give me a time code. You only got three hours to worst. Oh, God. No. I can't listen to myself. Everyone knows this. I don't listen to the podcasts. After I'm editing them, they're done forever. They're put in the vault. We got a lot of stuff in the ball bag. We got... This one's from Austin. It said, if it wasn't already, the Slamtail podcast is officially part of the Nielsen ratings media study yeah i recognize this form too i've filled these out before yeah he's a nielsen family and he he felt a typical day how many hours of radio do you listen to and then he put what he listened to podcast what's your favorite podcast slam till podcast we're in the nielsen's baby we have a rating of at least 0.01 0.00001 What was the one joke? I watched a lot of those old Dean Martin roasts. You ever watch those? I love those. I recommend those highly. But there was one, they were roasting Don Rickles himself. And they had Bob Newhart. I love Bob Newhart. And he had a joke that, I want to get this right. He said something like, Don Rickles' latest program had a minus five rating. They asked 100 people, five of them, they didn't have television sets. But they said if they did, they wouldn't watch his program. There you go. So he had a minus five rating. All right. Let's see. We have Please Stream Stomp from Scott. Don't care about IE California Lake Nonsense. Oh, my. Okay. We'll stream it. We're going to do the golden stream. Oh, God.
    52:58
    All right. Here's the one I was saving. Here we go. It's from Joe. Hi, Joe. Let's see. At least you guys have the foresight to see that you would get some hate for this episode, meaning our last one. Yes, we agree to that. We like the hate. First off, I'm surprised AP agreed to do this podcast, seeing you didn't seem to be fans of their product. They must be desperate to sell some units. Way too many softball questions. Where were the questions about the price gouging on SE? Give me a break. They can't give a percentage about code completion? Why not? I agree with that. I asked that question. Maybe because they have no clue about anything. Also, the BS around that they didn't have any issues in regards to the targets before. Did they test more than five minutes? Anyway, this episode aside, I enjoy your podcast. I like the last line. Yeah. But wait a sec. I have a rebuttal to that question right there. Did they not test it more than five minutes? I'm going to give you one right back at you. Okay. Rush scoop. That is true. Done. That is true. At least the rebounding didn't destroy a play field.
    54:01
    but you know, all companies have fuck ups all. Okay. Let's, let's, let's open the curtain here. Let's, let's go behind the curtain behind the curtain. Ron, stop touching me there. Oh God.
    54:14
    So originally, yes, this episode was supposed to be in March. This was supposed to be when the game was released. This was supposed to be basically March, the week of the release, the week of the release. And honestly, as you stated, You were surprised that we did this, being that we don't seem to be fans of their product. We were surprised. Yes, we were surprised. I honestly think they would have done this on the Super Awesome Pinball show. Yes, they would have. They would have done it on Zaps. But ended the show. Yes. And Dave Fix knows you. Yes, I've known Dave for 15 years. For 15 years. At least. So I think that's where it came, because if you listen to our podcast, Beavis and Butthead intro, Steel Panther, F-bombs galore. Yeah, we're watching. Glenn saying, you know, slam tilt, fuck yeah at the end. I was just, I was honestly in shock that they would even do that or want to be on our show. And to be completely honest, our listenership is not at the level of a lot of other podcasts out there that would have gladly done this. Of course. We know a lot of the people there. We know Dave. That had to have something to do with it. We know Dave, we know Steve Bowden, we know Chris Franchi. So three right there out of six. We were ready to go, and then it just fizzled out. Fizzled out. It really did fizzle out. I thought, we're done. You kept asking, and then it stopped around April, and we figured, okay. No big deal. We're not going to worry about it. That's why we were saying in March, we have a special episode, something we've never done. We've had Timmy. We've had Stern on. When we had Timmy and Dean Grover and Raymond about Led Zeppelin and all that. But a lot of those, they were people we knew long before they were even with the company. We got in their jobs, you know. Oh, yeah. I forgot about that.
    56:06
    But in this case. We were like, at that point, we were like, it's six months down the road already. The game's been out for five to six months. All of a sudden, at the end of July. All these questions have been asked by other things. They get in touch with Bruce or David Fix. Like, okay, we're ready to go. We're like, huh? Huh? Like, you still want to do this? Like, okay. And we were fine with it. And I took it as an opportunity to do an actual professional interview.
    56:36
    I had it in my notes. I was going to ask about the targets if they didn't bring it up because that was the main thing that I knew about. Yeah, we all knew about that. And that's why I had the open-ended question. What kind of problems did you have during that? And then they brought it up. we've had other people ask us about did dave fix tell you not to talk about something and no no not at all but they didn't even ask to listen to it or for edit or yeah we asked them like do you want to listen to this afterwards and nope i took as an opportunity to have an actual professional podcast i had all my questions i didn't swear once bruce didn't swear and I took this opportunity to see that we have our software that we use now, our clean feed software, and we're doing multi-track recording. I'm actually paying for this product now. Ooh. And we had, what, seven? Yep, seven people on. Seven, including us, and with different… Levels and everything? Yeah. We went from someone on their phone to Franchi, who still has his podcast mic, so he sounds better than we do. So I have to deal with all those different levels, all those different qualities, trying to make each track sound as good as possible. Most of them were not on mute throughout the entire broadcast, so I had to do massive amounts of cleanup and cutting and fixing. And I've said before in some of the Cluster Vox and some of the other things that they were like my editing masterpiece. This was my editing masterpiece. It sounded really good. I'm proud of this edit. To get everyone sounding that way with all the different levels. Hey, and if anyone thinks they can do better, knock your socks off. Okay. I'm going to be honest. I'm going to be the asshole here. Fruits always gets the full attack mode. I do. Guess what? If you don't like it, oh, fucking well.
    58:24
    We're lucky enough to get these guys. Well, it was also never – we're going to sit there and just say like, oh, what the fuck? Why didn't you do this? How can you not have tested that further?
    58:34
    Why is all this happening? We never did that to Keith. we never did it to other people so why is it all of a sudden we do it to one group did we do that for rush did we do like what's with your scope yeah what's with your scoop the scoop sucks what the fuck why did you let this go out we never did that no we didn't do that to let sure we bash them when they're not on the show you see exactly that's you know like led zeppelin we didn't say gee your fucking shot sucked you only had one fucking turn shot i like the way that shoots. You like the stand-up where you can bounce it right back? No, the pro sucks. I like the premium. Yes, exactly. Oh, yeah, that's terrible. Yes. But did we say that to them? No! We might have. So it's not like we didn't do softballs. Go fuck yourselves. Wow! And that's what I love about all you. You fuckers.
    59:22
    Guess what? I'm very proud of what we did. And thank you, Joe. I'm glad you enjoy our podcast. And don't worry, we will continue to bash things. Yeah, we always fucking do. Like the Jurassic Park LE? Fuck yeah.
    59:39
    Okay, so that was the ball bag. And now we're going to go to Facebook to answer your questions. Give it to me in the face. God, you literally are going full vulgarity here. Yes, I am. Why? Why does everything have to be so vulgar? I'm pent up at work. Oh, okay. You're pent up at work. So Bruce asked, so what do you want us to talk about this weekend? Holy shit. It wasn't this weekend, but it's close. Yeah, it's close. We're Monday. Bruce was sick. It showed. It showed? It showed on my body. I was like, ugh. I thought you were going to say it showed in the toilet or something. No, I was just like, I went to bed at 6 o'clock or 6.30 last night, and I woke up at 3.45 in the morning, and I'm like, I got to go to work.
    60:26
    It's sick. There's the yawn. I'm already tired now. It's 7.30. All right. I want to know. This is okay. Here we go. This is from Robert Pires. I want to know how much Ron loves hugs. He loves hugs. Hugs are his number one thing in the world. It depends who hugs me. There, I'll say that. Let's see. And have the two of you ever had to share the same bed on a pinball trip? No. Yes. What? We did. Bruce doesn't even remember. I love it. No, it wasn't that memorable. I didn't feel anything poking me in the back, so that's good. I remembered it.
    61:04
    I don't even remember what trip it was, but it was you, me, and Senior, your dad. Oh. And you had Bruce Senior like on his own, like, no, having my own bed. So I had to sleep with you. Oh, my. And I was in the center. And Bruce Senior, he snored as loud as Bruce Junior. Really? Well, consistency is number one. Yeah, and I was right in the middle. So I was like full stereo.
    61:31
    Stereophonic. Yes. So Bruce has erased it from his brain, but it is in my brain. Yeah, it's very traumatic to me.
    61:39
    I wonder what show that was. It had to be a show. Probably had to be Expo. Expo or Allentown. Something like that. Yeah. It wouldn't have been Allentown because I'm always in Allentown with my dad. Yeah, so it had to be Expo maybe. Yeah, it almost had to be Expo or maybe Texas, like an earlier Texas? Maybe. Maybe? Maybe. We only went to one. Oh, no. So Raymond Davidson asks, Jurassic Park 30 with co-op.
    62:03
    The co-op's great. The code's great. We love all the programming except the part that was broken, but I'm sure we'll be fixed soon. Yeah, but we don't like the price.
    62:14
    That's fucking just, ugh. Let's charge 33% more than we originally did. Let's see. I'm going to save this one because this could be a longer discussion. Okay, Andy. Andy Cushman asks, how not to set up Stargate for tournament play? And Zach was confused by this, I think. I guess in Stargate, there is a setting. It's like a guaranteed play setting. Yes. So you set it. And it was something like $125 million. It was like $125 million. So if you don't get $125 million, it will keep giving you ball saves until you get there. Yeah. And that setting was on. Yep. I didn't set that game up, thank God. So obviously we think that should not have happened. Yes. And at the RPC, it does not happen.
    63:00
    Nico says, yes, well, no doubt you'll be talking about how Ron finished second at the Beast Classics and Jason Zoller's Jack's Open incident. Yes, Jack's Open. So now we can talk about this. Yes. All right. This is from my, this is what I experienced. And one of the only times ever I actually watched myself later on the stream, this whole sequence, just to see what the hell happened from that perspective. Because I had no idea what was going on. We're in the Classics Finals. It's me, Raymond Davidson, Tim Tourne and Jason Zahler. And in Game 2, which was, what was Game 2? Do you remember what Game 2 was? Was that Memory Lane again? Memory Lane. Memory Lane again. It was the three in a row, yes. Raymond won the first game, which was. Oh, 8-Ball Deluxe. That's right. We were on the Zoller picked it. He loved this bank. So memory lane, going into my last ball, I'm last, as usual. I think I was last. I wasn't doing good. I came back, and I passed everyone but Raymond and finished second, thus securing the win for Raymond. Is that a TV show? Everyone but Raymond? Oh, okay. That's bad.
    64:11
    Then Raymond tells me, thanks, Ron. You just won me the tournament. Like, oh, no problem. And Jason Zoller was suddenly in second.
    64:20
    I was in third, and Tim was in fourth. So the final game is on Jack's Open. Single player EM. Tilt will end game. Yeah, tilt ends game. And I had no idea how to play it until someone explained it to me. It has four lanes at the top and then a bunch of targets underneath, like the whole row of targets thing. It's got, like, levels. If you hit the two Jacks, then they all reset. And if you hit three queens, they reset. And you hit whatever, and they all reset. I don't know. Are they worth more each time they reset? Yes. Okay. I wasn't sure about that. I think so. I think they are. You think they are? It jumps up a lot. So they may not be. But the value of the drop targets also is determined by how many lanes you have up top. If you get three of the four lanes, you want to get three out of the four lanes. Because if you get the fourth lane, they reset. They reset. And then your drop target value goes back down. Yes. Jason's player one, and he has a good game. Anything over 100K was good.
    65:15
    And I watched it back, and he just seemed to be in a bad mood that game. I don't know why. Maybe because he wasn't going to win, and that was predetermined. He was pissed. I don't know. He gets like 100K. The ball drains down the middle, and then it's hard to tell from the stream, but basically he need the coin door. Yeah. He just need it. Like hit it with his knee. And it basically engaged the start button. So it just reset. Like you hit the player. You started the new game. So then Adam Becker comes over to take the score, and he's looking at it like, uh, what happened here? What happened? So they had to go back to the replay. They saw what he did. And then the whole discussion started about what happened. You know, why did it reset? Did he tilt? What did he do? Should he be DQ'd? What's the ruling? And this is going on while Raymond is playing.
    66:07
    So Raymond gets like 80K. I don't know any of this is going on. This is how oblivious I am. I'm off the side. I'm not watching them play.
    66:15
    Then when it's my turn, at this point, Adam's not in the area. So I'm like, am I supposed to go? Yeah, he's talking to Josh. Yeah, he's calling the Chicago office. Yes, he is. I.e. Josh Sharp to figure things out. Well, he had what he thought the ruling should be, and he was confirming it. Confirming it. Josh. Meanwhile, I'm waiting. I think I even went over to the streamer area, and I'm like, they're icing me. They're icing me. And at first I thought it was something that happened during Raymond's game. And then Raymond came over like, well, what's going on? And then they said Jason had a tilt or something or whatever. At a certain point, Adam just tells me, go ahead. Go ahead. So I still don't know. What's going on? Well, I know it's Jason, and they're talking about whether he gets a zero or not. That's all I know. So now I'm walking up. So I'm like, do I actually have a shot at second place now? I play my game, which was awesome. The first three balls are complete shit. I kept plunging the same lane. Remember how you want three of the four lanes? And I'm plunging the same one. Then finally, ball four, I plunge one of the other lanes. And I still have a shit score. Ball five, I get the third. And I actually start hitting some draw targets. Score goes up in a hurry. I get like 70-something K. So then when I'm done, come off there, and they decided on the ruling, which is Jason gets a zero. And the other thing is Jason actually came over and said, like, yeah, I need the coin door. Yeah, because it was just like a slam tilt. Yeah, but I think it just engaged the start button because it was literally like you just hit the start button. It was acting like a slam tilt because you can do that to anybody and say, hey, look, it reset. He resetted the game. Yeah, and I guess the idea is if that hadn't been streamed, you would have gotten – Because it would have been like, oh, you know, yeah, it reset due to his action. Yes, his actions. And it cost them about $400. Yeah, then Tim comes up. So now it's a whole different ballgame. Now me and Tim are fighting for second. And Tim finished 500 points short of me. Yep.
    68:23
    500 points short. And I got second. And Jason got third, even with the zero. And Tim got fourth. But, yeah, he cost himself $400.
    68:34
    And Ron was very happy to take it. I was very happy to take it. And the win. I can say I beat Jason Zahler. That head-to-head thing that you were talking about earlier on IFPA, it's going to be a win there for me. It's going to be a win. Is it legit? Probably not. But, hey. You'll take the win any way you can. I'll take the win any way I can. And I think he won the main tournament, which was, how much, the $2,800? Yeah. How the hell he went? He won almost $4,000 for the weekend. Yeah, exactly. So it wasn't too hard. He wasn't hurting. But, yeah, that's what happened. From my perspective. So I watched the stream back and it was funny. I'm playing and no one was paying attention to my game. Everyone was just talking about what the ruling was going to be. So they're like completely ignoring me.
    69:16
    That's typical. I'm always ignored. Yeah. Okay, so that's that story. Yes. Mike asks, Italians and their positive influence on society. Yes, they do great pinball machines, Mike. I love the fucking bastard. Zacharias are awesome. Yes. Us Italians rule. He is the Guido Torpedo. Did you know that? The Guido Torpedo. That is his nickname on Pinside, the Guido Torpedo. But it's great to be able to just grow any facial hair look I want immediately. That's one of the benefits of being Italian, having the best food. In two hours, you already got a 5 o'clock shadow. 5 o'clock shadow, yeah. The best food, the best mob films. Well, all the mob films, pretty much. Unless they're about the Russian mob. They seem to be popular, too. I thought you would have had definitely a Godfather. I'm very disappointed. You're going to lose your Italian card. I'd rather have a Sopranos, Bruce, and I could keep my Italian card. Wow. Yes. I always like Sopranos.
    70:19
    Let's see. I would like to hear about the Beast and things to try if your classic MPU-200 randomly locks up after a while of being on. Well, first 5 volts, make sure that locking up sounds like a CPU or losing 5 volts. But it wouldn't lock up if you lost 5 volts. It would just reboot. It could be a PION, PIO out. Something's locking it up, causing it to get confused. So I'd be checking the logic, the RAM chips, and the PIONs. The first thing I check on any stern of that era, I just go to the rectifier board and check all the voltages. Yep. But if you had a – it wouldn't be locking up. It would reboot. It would actually start to count again. Yeah. Doesn't the five – what is it? It comes in from the rectifier board. The five volts generated. Doesn't it go to – it goes to the driver board, right? The driver board. And the driver board generates the five volts to – Yeah, back over. The 43 volts off the rectifier board makes 5 volts for the CPU.
    71:22
    Yay, that's your tech talk right now. Yeah, Daniel says the more tech talk, the better. Well, there you go. There you go. We're working on – wait, you know what we have at the RPC, Ron? Oh, you have it. 50. And it's a game? It is Rotation 8 Rotation 8 We have new games at the RPC also you can just go to that Come on This is Rotation 8 It deserves a bigger come out There's only two in the world on location. There you go. One is at RPC, and one is in Michigan.
    71:56
    Are you sure about that? Yes. I've seen it. On location. Currently on Pin Slide and other things, yes. The pinball map. It's only two. It actually plays all right. It's basically 8-ball. It's 8-Ball. Which I like. Rules are 8-Ball and everything. Yeah, rules are 8-Ball. So if you played 8-Ball, you can play this. You can play this. And it rotates and everything. You've got the four players all working. I like when the game's over. It rotates around like it's showing you, hey, you got this. Hey, you got this. Hey. Yep. Pretty neat. And we have new games there also. We have… The Yawn. Yawn Fest. You can't miss the yawns. Lately, I've been yawning, so this is perfect for everyone. So by yawning, you mean you have… We have aliens. aliens oh god alien it's alien yeah alien it's terrible it's not terrible i love it it's fucking a dog shit game no you're wrong completely wrong you could not be more wrong yes i can i cannot be wrong on this one you know why since 1981 williams made a beautiful thing it's called lane change guess what game does not have lane change on it a lot of the newer games aren't doing lane change anymore for things like skill shots and stuff i like that skill shots for anything oh come on it's a dog shit game oh you mean avengers that doesn't have lane change for the in lanes i don't care about the in lanes i don't really care about that because that's rolling over all right and it does change when you hit can we just say this is wrong and move on no alien is dog everyone post on the book and call the face and say that alien sucks Alien is great. Alien sucks moose balls. The construction sucks and the computer fails all the time and all that. All of it. I'll give you that. But the game itself. It's a flaming piece of shit. If another manufacturer made it, I would totally get it. Flaming piece of shit. Just tell Bruce he's wrong again.
    74:00
    Lately, I've been knocking it out of the park. We make shitty games. We earn the title of shitty games. Okay. It's terrible, that fucking game. Referencing an 80s commercial, no one will know what you're talking about except me. You got it, baby. Except for Guido Torpedo will. You watch. He knows about John Houseman? Yes.
    74:21
    What was that product for? We don't something, we earn it, or... We earn it. It's, what is it? It was a... It's like something from finance company. Financing, Smith Barney or something like that. Yeah, we don't something. Then we earn it. We earn it. Sean asks, why there hasn't been more pushback from Godzilla owners about no way to get the extra mode unless you have a Stern topper. Some people can't fit a topper, don't want the topper. On locations, few operators are going to add a topper. So the exposure of the mode will be relatively low. Personally, I would pay, say, $250 to $300 to get the mode, no topper. Why wouldn't Stern do that? They want you to buy the topper. They want you to buy the fucking topper. Spend the money. Be stupid like everyone else. Be stupid like Ron and get the topper. Yes. And the best thing is I have this wonderful mode. I haven't yet to play it. I haven't played the mode the topper gives me. Wow. I'm sorry. I suck. Loser. Yeah. But basically, yeah, store wants you to buy the topper. Yes. The only reason they got away with it with, what was it, Jurassic Park, that they gave you the mode that supposedly was going to be the topper only It's because Jurassic Park didn't have It's not connected originally I guess that was the deal Jeff Rowe, top 50 least favorite games No No, we're not going through that Let's go back in the old days Let's see Jurassic Park 30th anniversary Obviously any pinball repair Oh, that was one thing We went through that Any pinball repairs that you couldn't fix and eventually gave up on Yes, one I have And I've talked about it before, Buck Rogers Well, it was Buck Rogers, so he said it's not worth it. It was in 84 where you had no help. It's just a piece of shit. And a piece of shit game. I sold it. Mine is more like games I couldn't get adjusted the way I wanted, no matter what I did. My Bram Stoker's Dracula, I could never get the launch to always go around perfect and hit the drop target every time, and it drove me nuts. I tried everything. if stern announces an elo pinball and dwight is coding are you buying no really really that is so mean it's the truth that's so mean bruce you know what it'd be like he he would actually have like the elo of starship probably come out of the playfield and just start blinding fucking people like fucking no tomorrow like laser beam show and i'd be like this isn't fucking fun it's a very expensive jukebox it would be that's how much i hate dwight well no let's let's you hate his coding i hate his coding he's terrible at coding ever since williams he just gone like i like flashy things i like flashy things in your eyes solve oh wait a sec let's try multipliers on the playfield all the time. Sold! Okay, Bruce.
    77:23
    That's one person we'll never have on the show. Oh, I like Dwight. Why do you have to hate? You can do an interview with him with Zach. We can discuss how awesome Star Wars is. Oh!
    77:37
    You mean like we did with AP? Oh! Oh, worse. You'd be all like girlies. Yeah, we love Star Wars! We do! No, it's great.
    77:49
    The opinions stated here are not the stated facts of every other person living in this world. I think the stuff he's going to be doing with Venom is very interesting. I think that's going to be interesting, but I don't know if it's going to be a hot seller. That's what I feel.
    78:03
    Oh, man, the next one. Same question. If Beavis and Bud, Stern is doing Beavis and Bud and Lonnie is coding. Oh, no. No, I see this beautiful thing with fucking Bond. Bond is a fucking train wreck. Everyone's like, it's growing on me. It's growing on you because you spent $12,000 on it, and if you try to sell it, you're going to get $9,000 for it. It ain't growing on you. It's called fucking. I love how everyone's like, the code's coming along great. It's getting better. Everyone seems to, you know, everyone's saying how much better it's getting, but there's Bruce. It's total crap. It's total crap still. You still get cock blocked. It's terrible. Terrible. The one thing Lonnie could have, like, oh, wait a second. I'm making this whole code. Wait, Dwight made a cock block with lightsaber battle. Let's do that. That's the best thing going. Everyone loves that mode. No, we don't. Q mode is a piece of shit. If Stern did Beavis and Butthead, yes, I would get it. Even if it's like, hit the couch more, you know, three times. Okay, now hit the couch five times. Okay, hit the couch seven times. I'd still do it. Nope. No. Not for – Not even ELO. Oh, so – okay, wait a minute. So if Lonnie did ELO, you're out. If Lonnie did ELO, totally out. Okay, who the hell at Stern can do the game where you would actually be in?
    79:28
    Timmy. Oh, Jesus Christ. Timmy! Okay. And maybe Tanya. And a couple of – I want Keith to do it. Keith, ELO, now. Make it so.
    79:40
    Make it so, number one. He comes on the show. I hate that shit. That's one of the worst music ever. Oh, you're banned from the show. Get off. Make it show number one.
    79:53
    I got a strange magic. Okay. You could even have the... Don't bring me down. Yes. All right. Last one. Hey. All right. This is from Corey. Hi, Corey. How you approach setting up your machines for tournaments, both at level zero and the fabulous RPC. I worked with Andreas to get an open source project started for suggested tournament settings by game integrated into match play. And I feel like you both would have strong, well-thought opinions. I hope so. I think Zach would, too. Zach always has an opinion about everything. That he does. well he would say they're facts because they're always right god that is too fucking true oh no uh game set up steep but not too steep fair tilts not over dramatic that was the one thing i didn't like about how we set up the beast a little bit i thought the tilts some of them were a little too i think some of the pulled rubbers in the classic session section were a little like really did you have to do that that was not me stop saying that every time it's something that I wasn't. I wanted to leave the rubbers on freaking. You wanted to leave the rubbers on. On Dragon Fist. But no, they wanted Bear back and said no. No, we're dry. You get fisted dry. So, yeah. What was the, what's the one with the pitchfork? Oh, tried it. No, I did that. You know the reason why? So that was the worst one. Good job. No, the reason why. You made the in lane and out lane. So when you hit the in lane, it would just drain anyway. No, I did that because every time, every place, if I rolled the ball down that very slow, boom, bounced over. Every time I did it fast, bounced over. I tried to take the rubber off. It actually got better with the rubber off. It was nonstop in the lane. So you didn't have an out lane. It was two in lanes then. That game would have went on forever. And I didn't want that. That I did. And I am very proud of that decision. I am very proud of removing my rubber. I'm very... No, removing the post. Oh, that's right. You removed the entire post. You removed the post, damn it.
    82:12
    I like tried. I have one. It's in the storage pile. In the storage pile. I got Gomer piles all over the place.
    82:21
    Tournaments, it's like... I would say... I always do no bonus rollover if you can. No multipliers rollover if you can. You have to. because if somebody bolts out to a fast score in the beginning, they just keep on getting that bonus. It's almost impossible. Make it even. Make it so you've got to play your game. No extra balls, of course. Sensitive slingshots. Strong flippers. I go to some of these tournaments like, really? Did somebody just pull this out of a storage bin and just the flipper just doesn't even do anything?
    82:59
    There's a lot of things. You've just got to think about the rules and the setups and everything like that. know your games, know how they play, know how long they take. Have a good player play them if you suck. Yeah, somebody who plays your game could be really good at pinball and move it around and bounce it around for 20 minutes, and then you're going, oh, I thought it was hard. It could be hard to you, but it might not be hard to a lot of good players. But Corey runs tournaments, so I'm sure he has that part. Oh, I guarantee he does. But what I'm saying is the tournaments that usually do the best, So the ones that they know their games. When you have Pentastic, which is coming up in just a couple weeks, actually, the Sanctum crew will be bringing all their games. These are the game. Their games. They have them at the Sanctum. They know exactly how they play. They know how to set them up. They know their games. Where it gets rough is when you have people bring games in. Yeah. And some people bring games that are just not tournament ready at all. They're going to last three hours, and then you're going to be inside the whole day. Yeah. One thing that Bruce said, the most important thing, and this is a Papa thing, the most important thing you can do to your game to make it play harder, sensitive slingshots. Yes. That is like the number one thing. Yeah. For Stomp here, there's going to be games that play longer than others. I mean, I'm not saying a bastard. Don't go the other way where you just make them so freaking hard. Yeah, that people aren't going to want to come back. It should play fair for a good player, but you can't go by like, I want this so if Eric Stone plays it, plays everything forever, that it will be short. Because then it'll be so hard that no one will want to play in your tournament because it's just so ridiculously cruel. Or they'll go to another game and make those games playing longer while this one's sitting there doing nothing. That's the key. You've got to balance them out. But you don't want people to be on it for 20 minutes. That's the key. For the new sterns, set up the slingshots at max. As Zach would say, set the flippers at max and the pop bumpers at max. and set all your multi-ball ball savers to five seconds. Or nothing, really. I don't even like ball savers. I'm not doing the full Sharp Brothers no ball saver thing. I don't mind that. Actually, I love when they put bigger rubbers on sometimes for ramps. Oh, so you can't hit them? Yeah. Or I do like where you modify lane guides or lane rails where it's going to not be all consistent. Yeah, that's like an indisc staple. Yeah, that's an indisc. Where they somehow made it so they used teed off. Yeah. Which is amazing to use that because it has a feed that just like you can just trap back to the flipper over and over and over. But they made it so, I think they cut the wire for him. So it was just, it came off wicked fast. Like, oh, I guess you can't do that. Like I did with Stargazer. Mine, you cannot trap the ball, really. Yeah, because your flippers are pointed directly down. Yeah.
    85:57
    If you put them straight up, they're almost exactly straight up, but they're still strong. It's just how you set up your game. You make it so it's not sitting there. Because honestly, that Stargazer at the Beast, people were just catching it, rolling it over, shooting, spinning. And that's not even fun, too. And there was long playing some of those people. I was like, holy crap. The line would be three or four, and I'm like, ugh, let's go play something else. know your game know what you need to do to make it tough not too easy not too hard middle is the best and a middle with a little toughness would be even better middle with a little toughness there you go you've heard it here middle with a little toughness i will say at level zero the games are played so minimally i'm almost i almost treat it now it's like a tiny pop-up facility where it's just like just tournaments happen and then the games hardly get played otherwise.
    86:58
    That's how my house is. You know, I only, last time I think the games were on before you came over, you saw it, some of them were having problems, but it was league and some of the games weren't even there for my last league, so. Another thing I would say is be careful. I know at times people are like, I'm going to have this game in a tournament, so I'm going to do a full shop job and wax it up and everything like right before the tournament, you've got to have a break in time. Yes. Number one, to slow it down a little bit. Number two, to make sure there's no issues. Yes. When I had my Bram Stoker's Dracula, when I shoved it out and it was completely done, the first couple, I don't know, 20, 30 games I played on it, you'd hit the ramp and the thing would just fly off the wire for it because it was too fast. I had to play it to a certain point to get it to slow down a little bit. Okay, now we're in, I call it the happy zone. Get it in the happy zone. yeah but don't like just right before the turn like i put two coats of wax on this thing it's gonna be great no i hate when i go clean machines and i put a wax on there and then it's like a couple days you know and even though we have people play our games sometimes the wax just makes it a little faster like holy shit what the hell happened or the funniest thing is my i have an original AFM and if my kick out starts loosening up a little bit oh yeah it just goes wild it goes all over the place it goes all over the place and then I know okay let me get back underneath there I already I got a couple sets of of uh toothpicks and some of my screws there and it's still you got to be like Zachary's like oh that feed is too consistent and then it'll be something else Oh, that's too inconsistent.
    88:41
    It's one or the other. Guess what? It's one or the other. I'd rather be inconsistent than catch. No, it's whatever Zach wants. It's correct. No, it's not. Not at all. Let's see. I think that's it for the questions. Wow, we did them all. We did them all. So am I going to get Alien Star after I give you countdown? Oh, God. Yeah, I posted a picture like beginning preparations for stuff. Preparation H. neil actually has this is that clear-coated i'm looking at the picture it's like man i should start taking pictures for for games because the angle i took it at it looks all shiny and it looks great and it's like it's not it's it's a very worn shitty play feel ridden hard wet and put away so now you see how people can get duped easily if you took the picture at the right angle i'll be like wow look at that that's pretty that's pretty okay i think this was a sufficiently vulgar podcast um fuck yeah back to the usual levels yes fuck yeah ah okay what else do i have a very parent blah blah plugs um should i get into the plugs are we done i think we're done or do you feel like we're done i feel like we're done i feel like we're done you know we've we've done some work you know we've we've shown our love to everyone and we got love back from our fans who wanted to get questions answered and i feel okay about myself. That's right, baby. You are a true American. The American dream. Love you, baby. Come on. Yeah, baby. All right. What did I do? I sang. I did Dusty Rhodes. I got to check these things off that people ask me to do. Make sure that I do. So we are the Slamdell Podcast. That was episode 213 you just listened to. So don't forget, I am also on another podcast. Right, Bruce? It's called... What's it called, Bruce? I don't know. The Silver Ball Chronicles. I even had my T-shirt on for him to get asshole. He did. I put both T-shirts on. Bruce wore a Silver Ball Chronicles T-shirt. And a Slam Tilt T-shirt. Yes, he did. The Mrs. Pin Slam Tilt T-shirt. Hi, Pins. Hi, Ms. Pin. Hi, Steve. I'm a bonus. Then Isaac, Pinball Princess, et cetera, everyone in the world. I kind of stopped the other plug I was just doing. What was I talking about?
    90:59
    Oh, yes. Silver Ball Chronicles. which can be listened to on the Pinball Network. New episode coming soon. Whenever Mr. David Dennis gets done editing it, I don't think I can say what it's about. I think it's a secret. You can say it to me. Nobody listens to this. Nobody listens.
    91:19
    So thanks, everybody. Yes, don't forget we have a website, slamtilppodcast.com. All our links are in the upper right-hand corner. Send me all your goodness of your ball bags messages. Okay, including a link to our Twitch, which we will be streaming. Stop, which will be occurring September 23rd. Yes. Is it? It is September 23rd. 23rd, yes. This weekend at RPC, we have, this Saturday, we have pre-Death Ball. And Sunday, we have Death Ball at Zach's house. There's still a couple spots available for Death Ball. Death ball. See the great collection of Zach. See the one time that his house will actually be somewhat clean. Somewhat clean. Yes. And we're still waiting for a pinball machine. We're still waiting for a pinball machine. What are you waiting for? What does Zach have on order? Ruh-roh. Do-be-do-be-do. It's been in the warehouse for five days. Oh. Oh, wait a minute. Warehouse. Like, not the factory. Like, the shipping place? Yes. In Rochester for five days. Well, go pick it up. We don't have a vehicle big enough with the box. And when we take it out of the box, it's still too big. Really? For our vehicles, yes. You can't fit that in a CRV in a box? You can't fit that? No, not only you can't. Only you can stop forest fires. I've seen pictures of new and boxed sterns, like in box. On mine. Why not? Because of the hump. Hump? Oh, the hump? Hump? It's too big of a hump. Hump. Oh, the hump. you can write us at slamtailpodcast at gmail.com that's slamtailpodcast at gmail.com yes we do answer all emails as you just heard and I think that's it now I've got to turn my air conditioning on it's actually hot in here for me Bruce wow that's really bad I can't have it on or you'll just hear it during the whole podcast because I care about audio quality unlike some people my AC is nice on I'm very comfortable right now Yeah, yeah. And I can hear all the paper crinkling or whatever the hell else you were doing earlier that I have to edit out now. What, this? Hold on. Yeah, that. What the hell is that? What are you doing? Nothing. Don't worry about it. Yeah, you're making my editing suck.
    93:37
    I hate you. Okay. Thanks, everybody. Until next time, say goodbye, Bruce. Goodbye, Michael J. Smith.
    93:52
    Can you boogie? Can you slide? Hold my mind You can boogie If you try Hold my mind Guaranteed to keep you alive Meteor! Level Zero! Clusterfuck! George Takei Tim Bowles Bruce Isles Tournament Talk Car Holder Cheetah Xanadu Cash Grab ELO Ball Bank What You Buy It Game You Love Game You Hate Tournament Talk Pinball Princess Sir Oh my
    94:53
    Oh, my. I wonder if he's a relation to Michael J. Fox. Maybe, maybe, maybe he might be Michael J. Fox's brother. Oh, my, my. That's a great porno name, Michael J. Cox. No, Michael J. Cox is definitely a good porno name. That's a great porno name.