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Episode 9 :: Mike Vinikour is back!

Electric Bat Cast·podcast_episode·1h 45m·analyzed·Dec 23, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

MXV visits Electric Bat; discusses Stern design process, reveals Bond skill shot, teases Godzilla update.

Summary

Mike Vinacore (MXV), a Stern Pinball programmer and designer, visits Electric Bat Arcade in Phoenix for the first time in four years. During an informal podcast interview, he discusses his role at Stern, answers fan questions about game design, shares personal interests in industrial music and wrestling, and reveals that James Bond will receive an MXV skill shot while hinting at a potential future Godzilla skill shot.

Key Claims

  • James Bond will have an MXV skill shot that was designed first before any rules

    high confidence · Mike explicitly states: 'It was the first thing I designed in the game before I came up with a single rule for the game. I came up with my own skill shot.'

  • Godzilla should have an MXV skill shot but it was never officially promised; Mike pitched one but it's up to Keith (Elwin's) team to implement

    high confidence · Mike states: 'I thought of one, and then I picked it' for Godzilla, later clarifying 'it's not my game it's keith's game so it's totally up to them' and 'I did throw one their way if they ever choose to want to put it in'

  • Bond Girl multiplier/smart missile button colors (pink and red) will be changed to be more discernible

    high confidence · Mike responds to fan question: 'We are changing one of those colors, so it will be more discernible that they're two different things. The red, we agreed that the red and the pink were too close together.'

  • Electric Bat Arcade has expanded from 13 machines (in 2019) to 60 pinball machines plus video games

    high confidence · Mike confirms: 'There were 13 pinball machines in the original electric bat' and hosts state they've 'gone from 13 machines to 60 pins'

  • Stern Pinball has a large support team beyond visible designers including mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, artists, bill of materials specialists (Gabby and Letty), and factory workers

    high confidence · Mike explains: 'There's an entire team that does all the stuff that you see on the LCD screen. Chuck Ernst leads that whole team. We've got Gabby and Letty that handle the bill of materials for every game.'

  • Mike recently had COVID, which delayed his Phoenix trip by one week

    high confidence · Mike states: 'I just got over COVID, which is why I had to delay my trip by a week, because I went to go get some medical tests done' and explains he contracted it from a kid coughing in an urgent care clinic

Notable Quotes

  • “We are changing one of those colors, so it will be more discernible that they're two different things. The red, we agreed that the red and the pink were too close together.”

    Mike Vinacore @ mid-episode — Exclusive confirmation of a James Bond game code/design adjustment based on fan feedback, addressing a long-standing gameplay complaint

  • “It was the first thing I designed in the game before I came up with a single rule for the game. I came up with my own skill shot.”

    Mike Vinacore @ late-episode — Reveals design methodology: skill shot conception precedes rules design on James Bond

  • “There's so many different people, all the sales and the marketing people, everybody that works in the factory to build the machines, the people that procure the parts. So there's a lot of people that you don't hear about. Sure. But their jobs, those games would never happen if it wasn't for them as well.”

    Mike Vinacore @ early-episode — Highlights invisible labor in game development; addresses fan question about under-recognized contributors to Stern games

  • “I have this inner battle happening in my head of, do I answer this question, and what's my risk of getting fired?”

    Mike Vinacore @ mid-episode — Reveals tension between transparency and corporate policy; humorous but reveals constraints on what designers can publicly discuss

  • “it's not my game it's keith's game so it's totally up to them you know but i did i did throw one their way if they ever choose to want to put it in”

    Mike Vinacore @ late-episode — Clarifies designer hierarchy and decision-making authority at Stern; shows collaborative but bounded creative control

Entities

Mike VinacorepersonElectric Bat ArcadeorganizationRachelpersonJames BondgameGodzillagameStern Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern Pinball migrated from Discord to Slack for internal communication, likely due to security/functionality considerations

    medium · Mike states: 'We used it at Stern very briefly, then we moved on to use something else' and later confirms they use Slack 'constantly,' noting 'Slack might be more functional for a job. It's probably more secure, too'

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern Pinball directly incorporating player feedback into design adjustments; fan suggestion from Discord user Hugh Jorgen prompted immediate affirmation of color change implementation

    high · Hugh Jorgen complained about pink/red button confusion, Mike responded with confirmation of change already in progress

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Designer with significant contributions (MXV) operates within collaborative structure where decision authority rests with primary game designer; can pitch features but cannot mandate inclusion

    high · Regarding Godzilla: 'it's not my game it's keith's game so it's totally up to them' and 'All I ever can do is pitch one to whatever team that is'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: MXV skill shot design prioritized at beginning of game development, but implementation (finishing) comes last, after rules and major features (wizard mode, weapon perks)

    high · Mike states about James Bond: 'It was the first thing I designed in the game before I came up with a single rule for the game' and 'It will also be one of the last things that ever goes in the game.'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Pre-pandemic, Mark Ritarelli and Mike Vinacore conducted educational panels highlighting the 50+ person support teams behind Stern games, not just the famous designers

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.318

0:00
Yeah, Hugh Jackman. He's been right in. All right. We're live, and I'm going to go ahead and introduce us.
0:08
Okay, are we good? Everybody good? Everybody has some signals and what have you? All right. From the low desert of the great American Southwest, this is the Electric Batcast. I'm Mikhail. I'm the showrunner and producer for Rachel's brand new blockbuster podcast called The Electric Batcast. This is Rachel Bess. I'm Rachel. And we are joined by a very, very special guest today from Stern Pinball, Mr. Mike Vinacore. Hello, everybody. I came all the way here from Chicago just to hang out with you guys and be on your show. We're grateful. We have some hot chocolate here. I got water, but it's all you got. It's Del Taco water. Del Taco water, yeah.
0:58
How do I drink this with a mic in front of my face? You need a straw. Oh, you do need, you need like a... But then I can't get the marshmallows. A metal straw. Well, you save them for the end, and that's like your treat for finishing the hot chocolate. Yeah. Let's see, is this thing right? Oh, I don't need that. What do I need? Here we go.
1:15
Mike, Mike, you're in Phoenix. I am, for the first time in four years. Yeah. What do you think so far? Oh, I love it here. First of all, it's winter back home in Chicago, so the fact that it was like 78 degrees and I kind of wished I wore shorts today was a huge plus.
1:32
The weather was just absolutely perfect. The scenery is nice. It's a good change of pace. I looked out and I saw a mountain. I'm like, wow, I don't get to see that in the sky back home because everything's flat. All I see is buildings. Right, right, right. It's nice to be back. The last time I was here was for ZapCon in 2019. That was four and a half years ago. So I was really excited to come back. And you guys have been asking me to come back for about four and a half years. Right, right. So I was glad I finally got to come out here, like the stars and the moons aligned, after a false start last week of when I was supposed to be here. Right. I'm glad you finally made it. Last time you were here, you saw the original electric bat. Yes. Which was tiny. Yes. And how many machines would you say were in the OG bat? I would accurately say that there were 13 pinball machines in the original electric bat and some number of video games in a bubble hockey. I am really excited to come see it tomorrow when we go over there because you guys have spent it twice, I believe, since my last trip. We have. And we've gone from, what did you say, how many? 13. 13 machines to 60 pins and then a bunch of video games. Yep. Yeah, that's really good. Everybody is really excited to play pinball with you tomorrow. You come into the Sunday event, which is Chewy's world-famous end-of-year bash, where Chewy gives out all kinds of presents to the boys and girls of the Arizona pinball scene. And it's one of the best days and nights in pinball. uh so you know that we're giving away one of those uh five hundred dollar stern lights tomorrow no i don't even have one of those and i work for tomorrow i would love to win that because those things are fantastic looking right and i could i could carve out some space in my house for that for sure even though wall space is at a premium right right uh so the the fans knew you were coming and they were going to open up with a few questions okay and by the way fans i i have a couple things to prizes to donate to the prize pool tomorrow as well very cool you've shown me a few of them yes and some of them are very special yes nothing you can you can buy online or purchase at a store nothing that we sell on the website this is this is uh something truly special and i can't wait to uh for the fans to see this um we're gonna we're gonna start out with a question.
Keith Elwin
person
Skinny Puppyorganization
Kissorganization
Chewyperson
Dwight Sullivanperson
Brian Eddyperson
John Borgperson
Mark Ritarelliperson
Chuck Ernstperson
Gabbyperson
Lettyperson
Hugh Jorgenperson
Punk Vaultorganization
Stranger Thingsgame
Foo Fightersgame

high · Mike explains: 'Before the pandemic happened, Mark Ritarelli and I used to do a panel at pinball shows...we would highlight the behind the scenes of Stern Pinball' with focus on 'dozens and dozens of people that work on those same games'

  • ?

    product_strategy: James Bond multiplier/smart missile button colors being adjusted from confusingly similar pink/red to more discernible colors based on player feedback

    high · Mike Vinacore confirms: 'We are changing one of those colors, so it will be more discernible that they're two different things. The red, we agreed that the red and the pink were too close together.'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Godzilla skill shot update rumored/pitched by Mike Vinacore but not officially confirmed; fans should not expect guaranteed implementation

    medium · Mike warns: 'don't go posting on Pinside, oh, yeah, there's one coming, and now the game's incomplete because there was never a promise that I would have one in there'

    • 4:09
    So these are not for Mike. Oh, we're starting right here. These are for Mike. These are general questions. Thank you so much. I'll answer the general ones too, Emma. It's fair game. As long as the general question isn't, hey, what's the next Stern game or when's the next Stern game coming out? Or what's your dream theme? Those are things I cannot answer. So let's get right into it. This is for MXV. And if you don't know, that's Mike's initials. Yeah. And it's my professional name, basically, is MXV. Right. So we see this a lot on Sterns. They ship with your initials in there. Right, yeah. This is great. And there's the MXV skill shot. We'll get into that a little bit later. Okay. Because somebody asked a question about that. Okay. So this is for MXV. What factor of design slash building a machine do you think most people are unaware of that you think should be highlighted or made public? Wow, that's a really good question. So to back it up a little bit, before the pandemic happened, Mark Ritarelli and I used to do a panel at pinball shows. We did it two or three times, I think, that we would highlight the behind the scenes of Stern Pinball, but we wouldn't talk about like your Dwight Sullivans or your Brian Eddies or your John Borgs, the people that everybody knows. We would talk about the dozens and dozens of people that work on those same games that people don't know who they are or what they do. We got the mechanical engineers. We got the electrical engineers. We got the artists. There's an entire team that does all the stuff that you see on the LCD screen. Chuck Ernst leads that whole team. We've got Gabby and Letty that handle the bill of materials for every game. They have to track every single piece right down to every screw and washer on a game and how much it costs and keep that thing updated as things are being developed. There's so many different people, all the sales and the marketing people, everybody that works in the factory to build the machines, the people that procure the parts. So there's a lot of people that you don't hear about. Sure. But their jobs, those games would never happen if it wasn't for them as well. They're every bit as important as your play field designer, your lead programmer slash rule designer, or your rule designer like when I'd help do rules, or your sound man. All that stuff, all those other ones are just as important. Yeah, for sure. But nobody talks about them in forums and stuff. And most importantly, the accounting department. Yes, yeah, yeah. Because they're the ones that have to cut our paychecks. Right, right, right. Make sure this machine keeps running. Yeah, see, we don't do this for free. I mean, we like to get paid for our hard work. Because we all put in a lot of long hours to make these games. Yeah, yeah. Good deal. This is a really interesting one. This is, is this from Atomic Bob?
    7:07
    I haven't. We don't, we're not sure. No, I don't know who that is. Whoever that's from, they'll recognize it. And we thank you for your question. This is a good one. If you had to choose a wrestler to represent each of the last four machines you worked on, who would they be? Oh, wow. so this person knows you or knows of you jeez that's a hard one so is it like the ones that I had any machine I worked on because some of them I just did light shows and some of them I did rules and some of them, a couple of them I didn't do much besides like achievements but man, four wrestlers could they be from any era of wrestling I'm going to say yes we're not just limiting it from 1985 I'm trying to think the last four games I worked on. So one of them would be James Bond, which was my largest rule design role. I was the lead rule designer on that game. So that one would have to be like a main event, like top draw. So that's like your Stone Cold Steve Austin or your Hulk Hogan or the Rock. So pick one for that. And then, let's see, Venom is our newest game, and I helped out a little bit with rules, but not anywhere near the extent of Stranger Things or Bond. So that one would be more like a mid-card guy, right? But the work was still very important. I think Dwight and Brian will tell you that my contributions were very good when they asked for my help. So maybe Macho Man Randy Savage, because he was much more popular for the intercontinental level, but he was one heck of a great worker in the ring. Let's see. So before that, what was the game before Venom? Foo Fighters. I did Expression Lights on there. So again, I had nothing to do with rules or the design of the game, but the Expression Lights, so flashy, like eye candy. You're like the ring girl. But Foo Fighters is a newcomer. They still have ring girls? That's like a rookie, right? Not so much anymore because the women's division in wrestling for me these days is far more interesting than the guys' wrestling. like the women's matches and stuff there's so many great female wrestlers now like and their matches are actually more believable as of for me at watching than the male like the men's matches you know like so I actually prefer like at WWE I rarely watch it I always watch AEW but when I watch WWE the female matches are the best ones on the show well there's a lot of like top notch lady MMA UFC but for some reason they still have ring girls. I don't know why they're still ring girls. I mean, there's no ring guys. Yeah. No. The manager character in wrestling is like largely phased out in most places, although AEW has its fair share. Right. When I was into it, you had Jimmy Hart. Right. Who, by the way, bought me lunch last month when we were in Nashville. We went to Whataburger and he treated me for dinner. Did he, Jimmy Hart? I'm sorry, he went to lunch. It was dinner, yeah. I have a picture of him and me. It's on my Instagram. How cool. Yeah. And then Captain Lou Albano. Yeah, yeah. He's sadly gone. So I'd say, like, okay, so somebody more flashy. And not to, like, discredit the modern women wrestlers, so I don't want to use, like, a valet for my – so I'll use, like, just a more, like, flashy, flamboyant type of wrestler.
    10:32
    So, man, it would be like a – What's a valet? Valet is, like, when the women – like, the women managers were often called valets. Oh, okay. And they would come out with a wrestler, you know, like Elizabeth. basically, Miss Elizabeth. Yes. You know, that was Macho Man's wife for a while. But she was his manager. But now in modern terms, they refer to him as valets more than managers.
    10:52
    So like if the woman would come out, you know, and escort the man to the ring. Are men valets or only women? They could be. I mean, I never really remember them being referred to as that. But that's not to say that it wouldn't apply.
    11:05
    In today's world, it would certainly apply. Like anybody could be a valet. Like if I came to the room with you, I could be your valet, you know? Right. Okay. I'm sort of your valet. Yeah, you're my valet. Yeah. You also drive me around. I tell you where to go. I do drive you around. So flashier, I'll go with somebody more known for looks, like a flashy appearance. This is pretty old school, but maybe like a superstar Billy Graham or Goldust. I'll go with Goldust. The Jesus guy? Goldust? No, Billy Graham. No, no, no. He's a wrestler. So superstar Billy Graham was like a jacked up muscle dude with long blonde hair. picture Hulk Hogan before there was Hulk Hogan. Hulk Hogan stole most of his gimmick from Superstar Billy Graham. And the two are not related. He's not the religious guy. No, I would never put the religious guy over like that. I thought maybe the wrestler guy was doing a take on it. Oh, no, no. He comes in like the Bible is the thing and he's going to like it. There have been people that have done the Bible thumper type gimmicks. So that's three. Stranger Things, right? Stranger Things. So, again, that was my main event status. But I had to share the spotlight more because it was a three-man team. It was Brian, Lonnie, and me, and it was pretty equal. I did contribute a ton of the rule design to that, though. So that's more like a – So you guys are like the Rock and Roll Express.
    12:25
    Fabulous Freebirds. Okay. Because that was a three-man tag team. Oh, I see. So the Fabulous Freebirds was Stranger Things. Yeah, right on. And you never know which two you're going to get when it comes time to defend the belt. so there you go I like that yeah it's weird how I know so little great question for whoever answered that because you know I wish I knew who it was Gutter Ghoul I remember I'm almost positive I love to mix my love of wrestling with basically all of life yes you know my job Gutter Ghoul always comes up with fantastic questions for the pod and now we're going on to Derek Betts this is via email this is a good one okay he knows you are a music fan and so his question is how are you handling living in a post skinny puppy world skinny puppy and kiss calling it done in the same week was a lot for me to take in keep up the great work on the podcast it's the best so that's again great question I'm wearing a skinny puppy shirt what shirt were you wearing yesterday I was wearing a different Skinny Puppy shirt yesterday. And you know what? I might be wearing a different one tomorrow, too. That'd be awesome.
    13:44
    So it's interesting that both of those bands ended in the same week. Because when I was a kid in the 70s, Kiss were superheroes to me. I had the toys. I had a handful of the records. Not all of them, because I wasn't a hardcore record collector back then. But I loved records since the age of five or six. And Kiss was one of my favorite bands in the 70s. Kiss, then it was Cheap Trick, then it was ACDC. It was just weird timing that two of my most favorite band of all time and one of my all-time favorite bands called it quits within days of each other, right? After a 40-year and a 50-year career, respectively.
    14:23
    Excuse me. Okay. I'm all choked up thinking about the loss of these guys. Kiss was more than overdue. I think Skinny Puppy might have had a lot to offer, but I mean, those guys are in their low 60s now, and And you can't do that forever, and they hadn't done anything. The last time I shot them was in 2015, and they hadn't done a record since the year before, and they haven't toured since then or played a single show until this year. So it seemed like they were done anyway, and then all of a sudden they're like, yeah, we're going to do this farewell tour. I was grateful for the opportunity to see them three last times on this tour. I shot all three nights in Chicago. But most times your favorite band or even any band will typically get in a fight, call it quits, or they just decide they're done. And the fans don't get the opportunity to know this ahead of time so they can go say goodbye and have like one last hurrah. It was great for a Skinny Puppy fan, especially one like as big as me, to have an opportunity to be like, all right, this is it. I know it going in so I can really soak it in. And I was grateful I was given the opportunity to shoot all three nights here. So I could document it. And I got the best pictures I've ever taken of any of the times I shot them over the years. Where can people see these? Or can they? Yeah, they can. On my website, The Punk Vault. Okay. Which if you go to punkvinyl.com, P-U-N-K-V-I-N-Y-L, or punkvault.com will also take you there. All my pictures are on there.
    15:54
    And like I said, the best pictures I ever shot of them on any tour. So I was really proud. It was a great ending for me. like three nights in a row my favorite band the shows were fantastic so they went out on a real high note and i got to capture some you know the best images i've ever done of my favorite bands i will miss them but i'd rather them go out on top and leave a flawless discography behind and a perfect legacy than to like wear out their welcome which a lot of bands do i was just going through the catalog just listening to it yeah like you know beginning to end kind of stuff the other night. Man, good stuff. And we were actually looking at those photos before. I didn't tell you about any of these questions ahead of time. That was funny that you happened to bring, hey, check out my skinny puppy pictures. Yeah, yeah, because I didn't know if you saw them. I'm real proud of them. So much so that I went and had prints made of a few just to hang them in my home. And I rearranged stuff in the house to make room to put them in, like in key areas where most people will see them if they come over. For people that don't know, Mike and I, whenever we get together, like to talk about industrial music. Yeah, yeah. Or shared. I was a huge punk, I mean, still a big punk rock guy, but I mean, punk rock was what changed my life. But industrial music was a very, like a different spin on punk rock for me in the late 80s, early 90s. And that, again, life changing. And my favorite band is an industrial band. So, like, I have a huge affinity for that stuff. And I still listen to it all the time. It's, you know, it's awesome. Very cool. You know, one of our bartenders, her name is Dusty, and she just finished doing a little tour with the Darts. And when they were in San Francisco, they were hanging out with Jello. And I thought that was funny. She was just telling me that tonight. Oh, wow. That's awesome. Yeah. He's one of my punk rock legends, icons, you know? Yeah. My punk rock heroes. Yeah, Dusty's super cool.
    17:44
    She is a rock star and one of our bartenders at the Tiki Bar. Will Mike meet her tomorrow? I was just going to ask that. I don't know if she's working tomorrow or if someone else is. Maybe. Either way. Well, tell her to come hang out. She can come hang out with us. Thank you so much, Derek Betts. Thank you so much for being a friend. Your listeners have great questions, by the way. They pay attention. Yeah, I'm really enjoying these. Now, this is our friend from across the pond, Hugh Jorgen. Remember Mr. Jorgen? says, hey guys,
    18:20
    if you have Mike V on, then firstly congratulate him on his involvement with Bond. We do have him on right now. Congratulations on your involvement. Thank you, thank you. We love Bond. He says, what a great game. Easily my favorite game. Wow, that's high praise. From a Hugh Jorgen.
    18:40
    Man, I love playing that thing. If you could ask him If he could do just one thing and make the Bond Girl multiplier slash smart missile button either completely different colors or maybe a long press for multiplier and then quick press for missile. Pink and red are a little close in shades when you're in the thick of it and quickly press for one and get the other. I don't know how many times I've wasted a multiplier when I thought it was a missile. So it's funny you say that. I have this inner battle happening in my head of, do I answer this question, and what's my risk of getting fired? So I'm going to roll the dice and tell you this is an exclusive for this. We are changing one of those colors, so it will be more discernible that they're two different things. The red, we agreed that the red and the pink were too close together. So I won't tell you what it's changing to, but that will be changing. And really, you just decided that on the fly because old Hugh Jorgen wrote it. I bet Mr. Jorgen is going to be very excited to hear that. Hugh Jorgensen. Right. Thank you. Is that Al's nephew or something? Yeah. Oh, we're going to the next one. Number three.
    20:09
    This is from our friend Roland. He's a great... He was the drummer in Big Black. Really? Well, Big Black had a drum machine, and Roland was the drum machine. But they would credit the drum. They said Roland, drum. So they treated Roland like he was a band member, even though it was a drum machine. You know what's so great about this? This Roland, who... You'll meet him tomorrow. He wears Roland gear. Really? Like, yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, the keyboard folks. I actually turned them on to it. I was like, did you realize Roland is now a lifestyle brand? And he bought a hoodie, a shirt, and I told him there are socks available. So he'll enjoy that.
    20:51
    He wants your opinion on shirt wipers. The guys who play pinball who wipe the machine down with their shirt. This maneuver. You know what? I have done that in a pinch. And I'll tell you why. Because, like, sometimes, you know, I don't really play in tournaments, like, ever. but the same thing applies in pinball league, which I do play in one. Some people sweat a lot when they play the game.
    21:17
    There's a small handful of people that play in my league that bring a towel to wipe down the game. We sell one. Do you? That's super smart. We'll hook you up tomorrow. Okay, yeah, please. It'll make a great Christmas present. It's available on our website. Does it have a little hook where I can hook it to my ball? Yes, it's a carabiner. That's brilliant. Perfect. So I've done that in a pinch when I know that some sweaty guy. Greasy fellas. Yes. And I'm not going to call out anybody by name, but I've done the t-shirt technique, and it's better than putting your hands in a pool of sweat. Right, right. But then you have their sweat up against your stomach. It's true. Usually my shirt's long enough where I try to do the bottom so it's not touching my skin.
    21:58
    But, yeah, I mean, it's better than the alternative, but ideally you'd have a better. So we'll get you a bath towel. Yeah, please. You have a towel. Because it's gross. And I carry hand sanitizer wherever I go. So, I mean, every time I touch a game, like you guys will see me tomorrow. If I play anything, and I will, as soon as I'm done with a ball, if it's a multiplayer game, I'm squirting that stuff all over my hands because I tend to get sick a lot. And now in a post-COVID world, although we're never going to be post-COVID, but you know what I mean? Like, I'm even more, like, germaphobic than I used to be. Sure. We're all more aware of it. Yeah, yeah, for sure. We wish people would stop breathing on us. Yeah. I mean, I just got over COVID, which is why I had to delay my trip by a week, because I went to go get some medical tests done that my doctor ordered for something else. And some kid was in there coughing up a storm without covering his mouth, coughed right at me. And I can guarantee you, since it was also in the same room as the urgent care was, that the kid probably had COVID. 100%. And the timeline matched up where my symptoms were five days later. I'm like, man. Bingo, bango. Yep.
    23:09
    Good deal. Roland would also like to know your thoughts on bananas. And what he means by this is we have this long-running gig on our Discord where we talk about the ripeness of bananas and when they're good to eat. This is not a metaphor. Oh, no, no. I don't think there's any penis jokes happening here. Right, right. I get it. Do you eat bananas? Yes, I do. like so i'm not the i'm not as you guys i don't you've known me for a few years but you might not have come to the conclusion that i'm not the picture of health right like for example we went to in-n-out burger yesterday and del taco today right yeah so but this is a special occasion right but it is and i don't have i don't have either one of them back home and i don't eat a lot of hamburgers anymore back home i save it for when i travel right when we travel and you take is takumas exactly yeah like in fact that one i kept my promise like i'm not going back there until the spring because i went to kumas three times this year and you've seen been there now you know like that's too much of a blowout to do more that three times for me is pushing it based on my recent health history anyway but so i don't eat a lot of fruit and vegetables i should eat more and someday i hope to get myself more together but bananas is one of the ones is probably my favorite fruit. Okay. It's great because, like, you know, the potassium in there is great for when you're sore, too, and it's good even if you have an upset stomach, you know, it's very safe. So bananas is my favorite, and I like to make banana chips in my food dehydrator, too. I make homemade banana chips. Do you have a mandolin? I do, yeah. Okay, yeah. So I prefer the bananas if I'm just going to eat them and not make chips out of them to be more on the yellow side because they're sweeter. Yeah. And so they just taste way better, and they're a little softer. Right. The more green they are, they're crunchier. Kind of astringent. It sucks all the liquid out of your mouth. But if you're making banana chips, again, the sweetness applies. But you'll get crispier banana chips if they're more green than yellow. They're easier to cut. They're easier to cut, too. So I like them when they're mostly not green but not full-on yellow if I'm making chips, banana chips. but full yellow if I just want to eat them. Wow. Because the sweetness tastes better. If they're too green, it just tastes like, it's almost like the same as undercooked meat. You know what I mean? It's like I can taste, I'm like, it's not ready yet. I like my bananas tangy and hard. And you also like your meat raw. Yeah. Yeah, I like my meat, like I'll get a steak or a burger medium well. You're probably more of like a medium rare guy, right? I am. Yeah, so there you go. Good deal, good deal. Well, we can still hang out and have a good time. Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, by the way, I highly recommend, like, I have a food dehydrator. It cost me, like, $100. Yeah. And I add nothing to my banana chips. I literally slice them with a mandolin, slice them, lay them on the rack, and I dehydrate them for, like, 14, 16 hours. And then I just put them in a Ziploc bag. But the biggest problem is I can't stop eating them once I start. They're so good, and they're thin. So like the next thing I know I finish a Ziploc bag I like wow I just ate like seven bananas and banana chips I think I going to start doing that And the good thing is here in Phoenix I don think we need a dehydrator You just put them outside. Yeah. In the middle of summer, just like slice them up and put them on a cookie sheet in your driveway. We do have these mesh dehydrators. They're like it's like mesh all the way around to keep the bugs out. And it has little shelves and you just put them out. Oh, wow. You can also get food dehydrators at Goodwill for $2. And that's your most recent pinball news. Wow, there you go. What a great tip. You know, I don't think Roland expected such a great answer about bananas. Thorough. You went in two different directions. Yeah, yeah. And Roland likes to cook. I bet he's going to try bananas. There he goes. Home cooking tips with MXV. Yeah, good deal. Thank you, Roland. And we can't wait to play with you tomorrow.
    27:15
    We have another question from Discord from Caffeine Slug. That's Ben. So wait, when you say Discord, you're talking about the chat gimmick and not the famous punk rock record label that I collect, right? Correct. I wasn't even aware of that. Yes. Are you on our Discord? I am not. Do you use Discord? I don't use Discord. You should. It's great. We used it at Stern very briefly, then we moved on to use something else. Okay.
    27:40
    Like Slack or something? Yeah, we use Slack a lot. Yeah, Slack's popular. Yeah, we use that constantly. I prefer Discord. Do you? Mm-mm. I don't know why we chose one or the other. Probably RIT guys probably insisted on it. Slack might be more functional for a job. It's probably more secure, too, which would be huge for us. So anyway, Discord from the channel, not from the record label. Exactly. And I'm glad you asked me. But that would be cool if all these people were writing to us from Discord. Like, just not. I mean, I'm a huge Discord records collector since I was in high school. Like, it's one of my favorite labels ever. Okay. They put out Minor Threat and Fugazi. Oh, nice. The Teen Idols, Government Issue had a record on there. I purchased some of their stuff. We have some Discord. Yeah, Shutter to Think, Jawbox, so many great bands. I will buy blindly buy anything that record label puts out still to this day. Right. After we're done, we should probably go through our collection, and you could tell us which is mine and which is hers. All right. That would be a fun game, yeah. Let's do that. That'll actually be fun. The ones you sent are all mine. Yeah, yeah.
    28:51
    Very good, very good. Okay, so Caffeine Slug from the Discord. This is a good question. Are there any recent games that he, MXV, thinks should have an MXV skill shot but don't currently have one? And is Bond going to get one? Yeah, I will answer both of those. Godzilla and, yes, there will be one in James Bond. It was the first thing I designed in the game before I came up with a single rule for the game. I came up with my own skill shot. Very good. I would do that, too. It will also be one of the last things that ever goes in the game. Right. But that's fine because the missing wizard mode and the stuff that, you know, the specter weapon perks are far more important than another skill shot. Right. So, you know, we prioritize the stuff, and my skill shots usually come in last. You think Godzilla should have one. Is that what you're saying? I thought of one, and then I picked it. Can you tell us what it is? No. A secret. Yeah. Because it never happened. It hopefully will happen someday. I mean, I was told at one point it might get one. I mean, you know, they like the one I pitched, but, you know, it's up to them to put it in. And I hope they do because I was really proud of it. Okay. But, you know, don't go posting on Pinside, oh, yeah, there's one coming, and now the game's incomplete because there was never a promise that I would have one in there. All I ever can do is pitch one to whatever team that is. and in the case of that like i didn't have any design input other than some of the achievements early on on gonzalo so i can't be like oh you got to put in my skill shot it's not my game it's keith's game so it's totally up to them you know but i did i did throw one their way if they ever choose to want to put it in very good but uh interesting tidbit yeah yeah so that that is going to get some talk on uh pin side i mean you know it's going to happen well i mean it's not All of us will see it. I mean, at this point, it hasn't happened. It probably won't. But there was a point where I pitched one. That doesn't mean the game's not complete. The game's totally complete. That's my favorite game. I bought one. It beat Adam's Family for my favorite pinball of all time. It's Godzilla. Interesting. Yeah, so that game is pretty much perfect to me. Do you have one at home? Oh, yeah. Godzilla? Yeah, yeah. Premium. Premium? Yeah. And do you have an Adam's Family? I do. Yeah, I've had an M7 for like 25 years, I think. Wow.
    31:11
    Yeah. And neither one of those will ever leave my house. Bolted. Yeah, for sure. That's what the kids call it, bolted. But Bond will absolutely have an MXP Super Skill Shot. Oh, very good. Yeah. I'm looking forward to when it goes in. I might have redesigned it at one point because I thought of one I liked better than my original one. Yeah. But it will come. We love our Bond Premium. we just pimped it out with the new Art Blades. So cool. The Art Blades look cool. We put a shaker motor in there and we haven't opened it but we have a topper. Oh yeah, you've got to put that on. Yeah, tomorrow let's put it on. Okay, let's do it.
    31:53
    The light shows that those guys did, Wason did most of the topper light shows for us and he did a really beautiful job on them. They really look good. Cool. Very cool. Right on. Thank you very much for your question, Caffeine Slug, and thank you for being a fan of the cast. And that's Ben, right? We know Ben. Yeah. Ben's a great guy. He's from Tucson. He operates in Tucson. Go see, where can they play Ben's games? At Catalina Brewing, I believe. Okay, in Tucson, Arizona. How far is Tucson from here? It's not super close. About two hours. Two hours. I know that one was one of the ones that wasn't close, whereas like Tempe and Mason, Scottsdale, they're all like- That's the valley, yeah. All right, we have another question from Atomic Bob on Discord. Our 17-year-old son will be off to college soon, and his dream is to someday work for Stern. His goal is to eventually become a game designer. Any advice on what he should focus on? Well, first of all, have a plan B. I would say that with any career. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Right now, all my eggs are in this basket. But my life path was very unique, and it's been talked about in all the shows. Well, give us the Cliffs note. So you were like a professional Mortal Kombat player that was discovered by Midway. Well, no, it wasn't even so much that. I was one of the best Mortal Kombat 2 players in Chicago, the Chicagoland area. And I met a dude at a punk rock show. it was a boat this band the bull weevils i met a guy at a bull weevil show named bill um who the only reason why i even met him because he was wearing a mortal combat t-shirt and that was at a time that you couldn't buy mortal combat merch anywhere right so i was and i'm even though i was shy and i don't like i didn't like talking to people i didn't know i went up to this perfect stranger and asked him where he got the shirt and it turned out he worked at midway games and i'm like well and i basically said well man i would love to be a game tester there i'm one of the best mortal combat players in the world probably and and i thought he'd just tell me, you know, screw you, go away. And instead he asked me for my number. He goes, yeah, I'm working on a game that we could probably use some testing soon. Give me your number and I'll call you. And he did. And that changed the course of my life. I didn't plan this career at all. So that's not how I recommend doing things.
    34:16
    Go to more punk shows. Right, right, yeah. And then, you know, 28 years later, saw the same band, met my girlfriend, Chris, who we've been together for almost a year and a half. so that ban indirectly changed or directly changed my life without them knowing it until like years later when I told them anyway but people these days are smarter and they plan things and had I had no ambition so if you're planning a career always if you want to be a doctor a lawyer a mechanic you want to be a game designer you want to be own an arcade have a plan B because things don't always work out right and even if it does you won't likely be in a job forever that's very rare I thought I would work at Williams-Palley Midway forever. And I worked there for eight years, and then they closed the thing down, you know. So, and that was really unsettling to me because I'm like, I really thought, I was young and naive enough to think, I'm going to be here for the rest of my life. This is awesome. It wasn't. And I had a lot of stretches of unemployment where, like, there were dark times. And I'm like, well, I don't really have any other good marketable skills that I could, like, keep the lights on with, you know. So I had to just grind it out and wait for opportunities because I was also unwilling to move to another part of the country or another part of the state. I'm not leaving my house.
    35:35
    But the first thing, have a plan B, but pursue your dreams. But you can't go to a school to learn how to become a pinball designer. And also, I have to answer the question with a question, what do you mean by pinball designer? Because there's a lot of aspects that go into that, right? I think he just says works at – oh, no, he does say become a game designer. Right. So if you want to be a play field designer like a George Gomez or a Keith Elwin, the best advice I'd give you would be like make your own game at home. I mean, look at the homebrew community, right? Right. Keith Elwin got a job at Stern. His resume was that Archer game. Yep. He built an entire game. Where is that game now? Jack Danger also. Jack Danger, similar. Yeah, similar. And a few other recent game designers. I mean, look at Scott Denise, right? He made TNA as a project he wanted to make for himself. He took it to shows, and then a company picked it up and mass-produced it. And now he's designed a few games, right? Right. So if you want to be that route where you're designing the play field, there's no better way than to learn SolidWorks and AutoCAD, but get your hands dirty and just build something. Also, you want to do that because there's a lot of people that say that they want to do this job, and then it's one thing to want to do it, and it's one thing to show people that I have enough drive to do it. Even if it's like, you know, a couple of steps, you know, below like a production level game, you're at least doing it. And you're like, oh, man, now I've learned about this doesn't work this way. I have to do something else and to prove to people that you would like to pay you. Exactly. Yeah. And also another reason I say, especially in this field, it's a very small field, right? If you were a computer programmer, you could get a job almost anywhere, right? Not just making games. You could write banking software. You could work for Google. There's so many different ways to do this, and you could be programming websites. But if you're designing pinball play fields, you can count on one hand largely the opportunities that would be there in the whole world to do that. So, but again, when I say, what do you mean by pinball designer? Do you want to write, do you want to program pinball machines? Right. Cause you know, largely the lead programmer is more often than not the lead rule designer. You know, there's exceptions to that rule, but as a, as a whole, that's usually how it works. Um, that's a, you're still a game designer, but you're also a programmer, right? So you're doing both. Right. Um, and that also affords you much greater opportunity. Cause like if the game thing doesn't work out, like I said, you could program anything, you know yeah um i also think sorry to interrupt i think it's important to do it because you may find when you get in to the literal nuts and bolts of it like this is not as fun as i thought it was right so yeah that's a good point i'm glad that you said that because it was in the back of my head and i sidetracked myself it's really important to everybody to know like from the outside looking in and i get this all the time especially when i was a game tester you know back in the video game days. They're like, oh, all you do is play video games all day. But they think that as the industry as a whole.
    39:10
    Grandma's boy. Right, right. So they think, oh, yeah, that's got to be the easiest job in the world. All you do is play games. And it's not. There's a lot of long hours and there's a lot of stress.
    39:22
    So it's not all fun and games. We make fun games if we do our jobs correctly. And there is a lot of fun and creative stuff. But It's a lot of hard work and a lot of long, grueling hours. And none of us are really getting – none of us are getting rich off of this. Like, I know a lot of these guys that are programming games could take that skill and probably make more money programming banking software or working for Adobe, right? Yeah. But we do this because we love it. But it is a ton of hard work. So those are all important things to know, but always have a plan B. but and then also when your hobby becomes your job it changes the hobby for you forever like you will never look at games the same right um i don't i work on the video game side of this business for almost a quarter century and i rarely play new video games the other than the nintendo switch i will likely never own a modern gaming console ever again what are you playing on this on the Switch. I was playing Zelda, largely. Yeah?
    40:29
    I tried to get into that, and it was too much for me. It was too good. Yeah, I need something more linear. Oh, yeah, see, I was telling you guys in the car earlier, like, I just finished Tears of the Kingdom, the newest Zelda, two weeks ago, and I still have this depression of, like, there's a void in my life, because there's this whole universe I was involved in running around and getting all these quests done and finding all this stuff. And now that whole thing is gone to me. It's over. The story's finished. Yeah, the story's finished. And I'm just like, now what? You know, like, I'm like, I feel like I got aimless. Like, I'm aimless. I'm walking around with no purpose in life. So you had to come hang out with us. So I'm like, hey, guys, can I still come visit? I need to squeeze it in another trip. But when your hobby becomes your job, it's now a job. and it will change forever the hobby and not necessarily for the better. I mean, I got so burned out on video games, I started to hate them for a number of years. And I never want to work on the video game side of the business ever again. Right.
    41:36
    Pinball, it's pinball or nothing for me. And I don't really have a plan B, which is, again, you should, but most people don't run into a dude at a punk rock show and your whole life changed within the course of weeks. But that's actually how Electric Bat got started, not a punk rock show, but it was just a random, hey, do you want to do this kind of thing out of left field. But all three of us have had happy accidents and creative careers. You did music, I did art, and you do video game creation.
    42:11
    Well, pinball now, but I did video games. Yeah, and it's very much when your passion becomes your job. You can make a very fun job, but the perspective is very different. So I think anybody that wants this career path should really try out this career path because you can do a homebrew. Yeah, for sure. And we happen to know these people, and the whole family is into pinball, and they're all great people. And Atomic Bob is an amazing carpenter furniture guy. So they have the technical skills as a family to make something like this happen. So it seems like that would be. Yeah, you should absolutely, especially if you've got that kind of skill set built into your persona. Yeah, make a homebrew. And then that will also give you an experience of kind of like dipping your toes in water of what it could be like. And then it will also, did you enjoy it when you made it? And can you see yourself doing that like constantly again and again and again? And also keep in mind that a homebrew, you've got no timeline of like, hey, yeah, you can take seven years. You could take 17 years, right, to make your homebrew. You have to make a game in a set schedule because the company needs a game. and they plan the whole thing. They put the whole machine behind that, right? Like the machine of the business, like all the resources and all the cost. And so you've got to start. And there's no stopping of putting it away until later. You've got a deadline of you've got to turn in a game to hit this production date. And if it's not fun, you have to make it fun. Right, yeah. And also be prepared that you need a thick skin when you're designing things. because some of your ideas are going to get shot down right yeah and like you could think you've got the greatest game in the world and then you you actually make it and it's not fun and then you have to go back to figure out why isn't it fun and how do i make it fun right um and that's especially if you're newer or if you have a fragile ego um it's a hard thing to hear when people like i don't like this yeah but you need to hear it if it's not fun but people you also need to consider the source. If somebody just says your game sucks and walks away, like, well, what does that mean? Tell me why you don't like it and then, so I can learn from it. Or you could learn from it when they designed it because that's how games get better. Nobody gets it right from the get-go. And some of the best ideas on paper, you put it in the game and then they're not that great and you don't realize it until you play it. That happened to Lonnie and me when we were on KISS, doing that big KISS update. We agonized over these things and talked about things for hours and wrote it all out of these designs we came up with when we were redesigning the modes and stuff. And we're like, yeah, this is going to be awesome. And then he programs it in the game, and then we play it, and we're both like, yeah, this sucks. And then we didn't take it, it didn't ruin our day. We're like, well, we got this one wrong. The game told us it wasn't fun. So now how do we make it fun? What do we do? It came up with something else, and then it turned out to be the thing, you know? Very cool. Right on. I'm sure Bob's 17-year-old son is going to love that. So basically, the first thing he needs to do is get an IP, right? He needs to talk to licensing. Don't even do that. You don't even do that. Just make a pinball play field with all the stuff on it that you can flip. I mean, and there's enough resources and equipment and stuff out there. you can buy all the stuff that you need from various sources and just make your own thing. Don't even think about a theme. Don't think about rules. Just make a flipping play field. So check this out. What I tell people, a few people at the arcade have talked about their dream of wanting to build some type of pin. Are you familiar with a game called Stall Ball? Yes. Right. Yeah, yeah. You all get in a single file line and you play the game. and then you like tag out when the ball gets held in something right yeah and i and i always tell them why don't you just make a stall ball game it'll be simple yeah with just a few scoops or saucers and and you know two flippers and uh i think that would be like a good start because you don't have to worry about a whole bunch of other stuff you know yeah yeah um i think it's also selfish you really want someone to make a stall ball game so we can because we play a lot a stall ball at the arcade. I'm 100,000% behind somebody pursuing their dreams in life. Like, you only get one go on this planet. You should enjoy it to the fullest, and you should do things that make you happy. And if you could turn that into a career, like, you know, I lucked into mine, but most people don't have the luxury of, like, absolutely loving what they do. So pursue it, but absolutely, you know, have a fallback. You know, have a plan B. But absolutely try it, because there's no, nobody's going to hand it to you. Like, you've got to go out and get it, make that mark for yourself. And these types of jobs aren't like go to school and get this degree and then show your diploma and apply. It does not work that way. It doesn't work that way at all. I mean, like, for me, like, I couldn't have gone to school to learn what I learned, you know, to do what I do. But I also have a very unique role in the industry. And at Stern, you know, which is a very atypical, you know, thing. and I grew into it, you know, like, but the other paths of, like, programmer, artist, you know, engineer, those things do have a path of going to school. And, you know, if younger me was smarter and was more motivated, maybe I would have gone to learn how to become a programmer, you know. Yeah.
    48:17
    Because that, you know, probably would have been a pretty good fit. I just, you know, I didn't know what I wanted to do. Right. And then by the time I did, like I happened into it, I'm like, well, I don't have the time to go back to school or the motivation. Yeah. And I also like I'm not good at math, you know. Same. So like I always felt like maybe I'm not smart enough to be a programmer. Other people disagree, you know, that know me, but I don't know. I went down the path I did, but if I could go back and do it different, knowing what I know now, I would have, you know, actually done better in school and high school. and I would have taken proper college classes to do what would have helped me like a programmer. I never had any art skills. So for me, it would have been programmer. It's important to aim high, and I think Bob's son should aim at owning a company like Stern. And settle for designing a game. Right, right. And then he gets what he wants. Right, right, right. What was the first machine you worked on at Stern? Batman. Yeah, Batman 66. Yeah. We have one, and great earner and fan favorite. I love that game. I think I mentioned this before with you guys. That one was special to me for a number of reasons. One, it was my first game that I got to work on at Stern. Two, I got to work on it with Lyman, and Lyman was the reason I got hired at Stern. And three, I have my name patented with Lyman for that game, for the channel-changing feature. And for people who are not familiar with the feature, what is it? So when you have multiple modes running at once, on the LCD display, there's a big TV with what's going on in the mode that you're playing. And then there's little TVs surrounding it that have the other running modes at the same time going. and I came up with the idea to change the channel with the lockdown bar button so you decide what's in the main screen because that will change what music's playing, what light shows are happening.
    50:25
    Why have I never seen that? I'm not that good. It's more of an advanced player feature. Okay, all right. And it's not explained anywhere on the screen like, oh, hold the button down the channel. I don't think we ever put any text on there. So if another, not just pinball company, but I guess any gaming company, if they want to use something like that, you get a cut. No, no. No, that's not how it works? That's not how it works. I wish. But first of all, nobody's done that. That's the only game that has it. Yeah. But yeah, it doesn't work. Sadly, it doesn't work that way now. But nobody can do that same feature in a game that's not Stern Pinball. because the patent belongs to Stern, but our names are on it. I see how that works. Yeah, right on. What is your favorite classic Stern game? I don't know if I could pick one. They're all so good. They are. We love them.
    51:24
    I'm trying to think because Keith Owen owned most of them at one time, and he had brought a couple in before the pandemic into the office when we were all working in the office still. and I played a lot of like Quicksilver, Nineball is really on my list. I love Sea Witch, you know, but I think Beatles was the better use of you know, like I like what George did to Sea Witch when we made Beatles. I love Beatles. Yeah, I love, love Beatles. And now you guys put the Sea Witch code into Beatles, right? Dean did that before he passed away and he actually done it sometime before and then it just never got in the game until later. But yeah, you can play Beatles with the Sea Witch rule set, like the classic Sea Witch rules. That's so cool. And that was all Dean's idea. It was a good idea. And he did that in his spare time. Like, yeah, that wasn't part of the design, but he wanted to do it. So he just gave up a bunch of his free time to put that in the game. Very cool. You know, Rachel's on the play field. Yes, I remember you told me that.
    52:31
    Yeah. So, So you're going to play in the tournament with us tomorrow, right? Or are you just going to hang out? I was just going to hang out. Oh, okay. When was the last time you actually played in a tournament? I played in a tournament at Lynn's Arcade when I was out there in August. And I didn't want to. I just wanted to go hang out. And Emoto paid for me to enter it Then they all peer pressured me and bullied me into playing And I ended up having a really fun time Yeah And I got way farther than I thought I was going to be I think I finished like fourth or something I didn't get anything, but, I mean, I couldn't believe I got as far as I did. Right. Aren't there games, like, set up super hard with, like, lightning flippers? Yeah. And when it was my pick, I was picking classics, which were not with lightning flippers. Just because I'm like, I don't want to play Modern Sterns because I got them all at home or at work, right? Right. Which is at home. but I wanted to play games I don't have access to. So I was picking the Solid States. They had a Beat the Clock, which I love that game. Oh, nice. You don't see those very often. You don't. We played at the museum back in the day. That game was so fun. I really wanted it. Keith was going to let me take his home and have it at my house, and I don't know what he ended up doing with it. Next time I see him, I've got to ask him. Yeah, where's that game? Yeah, I want that. Take that down. I'll take down one of my personal games and put that up to play. It's so fun.
    53:54
    But, yeah, I mean, I like most of those games. I don't know if I've even played every classic Stern, but Nineball is way up there. Quicksilver is way up there. Stars is pretty fun. I mean, I can't – you couldn't say name a bad one. They were all so good. Right now we have – at the arcade we have Stars. Yeah. Meteor. Meteor is a lot of fun too, yeah. And Stargazer. All great games. They killed it back then. They made such good games. Yeah, they're excellent. And just games that Arcadia grew up at, we didn't have any of them. So I only got to see them at other places. They had all the Williams games and stuff.
    54:38
    The old Sterns had already gone into the dumpster from the old operators back when they used to do. Oh, yeah. That's possible. but um man like i missed out on some of those until i was much older yeah and i see them at pinball shows i'm like wow these things are awesome yeah they're so great they're so great rachel really uh when i got back into pinball um when i was working at marco specialties she like was like play pay close attention to all of these classic sterns anytime we're at a convention and um yeah i've totally fallen in love with them um so i kind of have a question for both of you guys um and it's about uh the pinball industry and and where it is now um you you hear so much uh our arcades died right and they did um in the 80s because of console gaming because of home gaming and and you hear a lot of people still kind of talk about oh the the great days of the arcade But I look at today, and just in the valley here in Arizona, in the Phoenix Valley, the amount of pinball arcades that have popped up over the past five years will make your head spin. You have Starfighters, which they have 60 pins, electric bat 60 pins. And there are, I don't know, another five or six arcades. They have like 20. Yeah. Now, all of these, are they all like the barcade model? They're bars that have games? No. Or any of them like a pure arcade where it's just games and there's no alcohol or food? Like one of them, like Atomic Bob, who asked that question about his son, they have a mid-century, like a vintage store. And they also have now, I don't know, 15 machines, 12 machines. So there's no booze. It's a furniture store and arcade. Yeah, right. And Starfighters that I mentioned. That is a straight arcade. That's a straight arcade. Just snacks and drinks. No booze. tons of video games and pinball machines. And my question is, are the arcades back? I think they're back in a different way. Like the classic arcade of the 80s into the late 90s, like literally every single arcade from the 80s and 90s in my area, my area just being, I'm talking Chicagoland, so the city proper, and then on all the western and northern suburbs, like I live in the western suburbs, there is not one arcade left that I ever went to in the 80s or 90s or that we ever had used as a field test place. They're all gone. 100% of them are gone. The last of them went out. The last couple of holdouts were like FECs. Wait, I take that back. Enchanted Castle is still around, so there's one. That's an FEC. and if the fans don't know what a FEC is Family Entertainment Center so they've got Dave and Buster's so they serve food and possibly drinks a lot of kiddie gambling meaning the redemption games and big driving and shooting games like China Castle I don't even think has a single pinball machine they've had times where they've had them got rid of them, got some, got rid of them The last time I was ever there, there were none again. So I don't even really count it because it's not like it used to be. It's largely just the ticket games, the kiddie gambling. But now that's all been replaced with mostly barcades. But because the interest in pinball has gone up, and even classic arcade games saw a resurgence too, that now there is a market for arcades again. but the business models change either you pay the admission for a lot of these places and they're all on free play or they also have alcohol and food and the games, the attraction that gets them to sell more drinks and food but all of it together makes the experience and that's how they're able to survive. But you tell me it's different for you but you are in a bar. But for us, I don't think we've ever talked about this before but very much the bulk of our income is from the coin drop. The bar doesn't even come close to what the coin drop does. So we make a good amount in coin drop. Now, if there was no bar, the coin drop would be much, much smaller. Right, right. And that has also grown for you over the years, right? I mean, I don't know. I'm asking when you started versus now, five years later. Well, when we started, we didn't have a bar. We were attached to a bar. Yeah, yeah. So I'm not including. Okay. But I mean, like the coin drop, I mean, it has to have grown, obviously. Oh, yeah. I mean, we've quadrupled or more in size. Yeah. So the coin drop has more than quadrupled. But do you also find, like, that, I mean, clearly I had no help, but do you find that it's also necessary to be successful in your field?
    60:00
    Because you do a lot of leagues. Yes. You really like, you guys spend a lot of time making and running events that draw people in there versus just opening the door and like, here's a bunch of games, you want to play them, you know? Because in the old days that we were just talking about, all the arcade did was they had a room full of games and they would give you change for the token machine. They gave you a little belt thing. Yep. And then there was no people running tournaments or contests or anything. It's like we open the doors at this time, we close them at this time. we'll make change for you and we'll fix the games and they're broken. And that was the whole business. Sometimes, yeah. It depends on the place. But that was the whole business. There was no pinball leagues. There was no tournament nights. There was no Killer Queen League night. There was no whatever. It seems like, now you tell me if this is true, do you have to have these sort of events to really keep your customer base, to keep them engaged and coming back? Well, I think that that helps. I think that a lot of people that we see that open up arcades, barcades, are people that see the explosion of them and think it's very much an if you build it, they will come model, and it's not. We see those fail.
    61:19
    What Cale and I both care a lot about, because we're in it for the fun. The second it stops being fun, we have other things we can do.
    61:29
    Um, so for us, it's very much about community and we have these events because we love having all these parties every week and hanging out with these people that, you know, that are so interesting that we, you know, we, it's, it's, you know, we know so many people very well and we want to know what's happening and, and it's very much a big family and, you know, not in a cliche sort of way, but you go to the arcade, I guarantee if we go there right now there's 15 people that you know we know all about their lives hey great to see very cheers type of situation cheers but with like 200 people and it's very literally a family we've we've had people who have gotten engaged at the uh at the arcade people that want to get married there people have had babies and and rachel makes uh electric bat onesies for the babies. There's nothing on the website yet, but she hands them out. It's just for the players. If you're one of our players and you get pregnant... Let Rachel know.
    62:32
    I talk to you guys on the regular because we've been such good friends for now a number of years, but I also very closely follow your guys' social media posts, and it's very clear in just looking at the posts, even if I didn't know you guys as well as I did, that your whole community thing is very evident in your posts. Like, every time I see posts from you guys, you know, I'm like, man, it just looks like there's always something fun going on over there. And there's just, and there's always, I'm like, also, I'm like, there's always a lot of people hanging out there. It's like, it reminds me, in a modern sense, of how my arcade just games was in the 80s. You know, like when I was in junior high and high school, how, like, everybody just would go hang out there and play games. Yeah, you knew if you went there, You were going to see people that you knew. There were no cell phones. Right. And people would come there looking for me because they knew I wouldn't be home. And more often than not, he's probably at the arcade. If they called my house, I'm like, well, just go to this game. He's probably there. Or you even just call there, you know, and ask for him. And people did.
    63:36
    It's like the arcade became my answering service also. But, I mean, and I made so many friends at my local arcade. And I see that kind of thing. Like I said, it just shines through on your social media posts. I'm like, I bet there's a lot of people there that became friends at your arcade. So many. Oh, 100%. And then they become regulars because now you've got this community of like-minded people. Let's go hang out and play games at the bat. For me, everybody's like, hey, let's go to just games. Yeah. And it really goes further than that. Now we'll see groups of people, and we'll join them.
    64:13
    We'll go do different things. like we'll leave the arcade and go to a comedy show together and then in the night playing pinball. I mean, it really is becoming a true family. It's a lot of fun. So it's not just, I guess what the other version of answering that question is, it's not just a matter of holding like, oh, we've got nine IFPA tournaments this month or something. It's not just holding the tournaments because we could put those on the calendar and have someone run them. nobody would care right it's it's like just the involvement of everybody and and that sort of thing but then on the flip side i do and i've talked about this quite a bit as well i think that there's such a strong desire to have more analog in your life um you listen to records i read books you make music i mean these are all like and and so many people you know you just have your phone or your switch or um what you know you got your computer job it's it's really like kind of feels like a biological need to like do things yeah physically do things so i think that pinball specifically but like going to a place where you matter to some some people and doing something physical is is just a a very important thing at this time so right yeah also like um it's a great way to make like lifelong friends i have friends i made i met at when i was in junior high school early 80s i made friends at just games you know we met at the arcade and became friends that are still some of my best friends to this day you know in my mid 50s so i mean like that I can't stress enough the importance of a place like yours for bringing people together to form friendships and relationships. That kind of stuff, like you say, you can't get that on your Switch. I can't get it on my phone.
    66:20
    I can't get it in most places these days. That place where I could go and hang out with these like- Guaranteed, I got something in common with somebody that's at your arcade. because we're both there because we like games. We're all there because we like games. And then, like I said, that's a great way to meet people that could become some of my best friends for the rest of my life. And it gives you something to do because it's weird if you were in a dating scene or something and you're trying to, well, go to a bar and hang out. Well, okay, all you can likely be doing is sitting there.
    66:49
    It can be very awkward, right? If you're in a room full of games, you can play games and not talk to anybody. Right. But then if you happen to see somebody cool, I mean, dating, friendship, whatever, just meeting people in general. It's funny that you mention that because didn't you just have someone get in touch with you who wanted to do a pinball speed dating? Yes. I had forgotten about that. That's actually a really clever idea. Yeah. I'll tell you. So for most of my life until recently, I was a very shy person. And back when I was like in junior high and high school, like I was extremely shy. I was more like an outcast. I was like a punk rock kid in a time that punk rock wasn't accepted or it was frowned upon. And people would pick on me for that. And on top of the fact that I was like a video game and pinball nerd. But when I was at the arcade, it gave me more self-esteem because I was good at games. And that was like, this is my domain and this is like my turf, basically. And it helped me make friends where I might not have made these friends in any other place on the planet. like certainly not at school like uh the my friends that were one year older than me that turned me on to punk rock i like was very intrigued by this whole punk rock thing without even hearing the music just by the look of these kids when they started dressing punk rock i'm like they look like how i feel like this thing might be for me but i was too afraid to talk to them i'm like they're gonna beat me up or they're gonna pick on me right because you know they're a year older than me and I'm like shy and timid kid. But those guys came to Just Games regularly. And so I started talking to them because they're in my arcade. Like this is my home. And then there's some of my best friends and they turned me on to Punk Rock and that totally changed everything about my life. I wouldn't be sitting here if it wasn't for Punk Rock because that led me to all the things, all the paths, my forks in the road. I started that with Punk Rock and Just Games. So, again, it's a great way to meet people where you have some thread of commonality that you guarantee. Like, we like games. Maybe I'll talk to this guy or this girl that I wouldn't approach at a regular bar with no games or on the streets or at a concert even.
    69:10
    It's awesome to be able to meet people in that way. For sure, sure. When I first got into pinball in high school, I lived in a very rural area of South Carolina. And we had some arcades. We had like an Aladdin's Castle, I believe. Like in the mall. Yeah. The mallcades. We had barrels of fun. I've heard of that one. Yeah. And you actually walk through a barrel to get into it. Yeah. But in high school, we would play arcade at a sandwich shop, and then we had a really shady video poker place that had pinball. And so around Adam's Family, Twilight Zone, Judge Dredd, Indiana Jones, all that good stuff. And we were playing like Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct. instinct um and then and so now i've moved here and see all all all of these uh pinball machines and these great arcades here i'm seeing more pinball machines on the streets now than i did then is is that true nationwide or were there more pinball machines on the street back then i think they sold more pinball machines back then right i felt like back then there was more ones and twos, like in convenience stores, bars, restaurants.
    70:36
    And now there's more, from what I see, more clusters, but you're not going to go to a Circle K and play pinball for a while. Right, right. I would agree 100% with what you said.
    70:52
    Pinballs had the ebbs and the flows or the ups and the downs. and you know when I started playing pinball there were no video games yet it was like 5 or 6 whenever I could reach the buttons and then the video games came in and I watched the arcade that was 50 pinball machines because that was all that was or maybe some of those EM you know like driving game or whatever those things all started slowly trickling out as these new video games came in like your Space War, your Space Invaders your Pac-Mans and so I watched those games go from 50 pinball machines to like, you know, for the many years towards the end, or even in like the earlier 80s, you know, they had like maybe six or eight pins at a time, and they would rotate them out when they would get new ones, because the video games were hotter. Right. And then in the 90s, like pinball saw a big upswing, you know, around the time of, you know, Adam's Family especially, right? Best-selling game ever. um but even still like the video games were like 85 percent of an arcade but you'd still see pinball machines at bars and now you still see that but it really depends on the where you're at i'd say major metropolitan cities there's probably more pinballs and bars than there have been in probably 20 years but you go to like more rural areas and it's probably few and far between sure yeah yeah There was a period where I grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, where we didn't have – I thought pinball was done.
    72:27
    After your Adams family, the run of Adams family, Indiana Jones, all those good games, they all disappeared. We didn't have any more arcades. I had no idea pinball was even a thing, and my friends didn't either until I ran across Marco's Specialties. and I started working there and I was like, holy crap, there's still a company making these machines. Yeah. And that would be Stern. Stern, yep. Yeah.
    72:54
    Yeah, so that was really exciting for me and then now here I am. How has the pinball industry changed since you've been in it? But, you know, we've talked about on the street side, but how has the inside, how has the industry changed since you've been in it? Well, the biggest thing is so many games get sold to people to put in their homes. And when I started in this industry, that was unheard of. Like, only, like, the rich people, like the really rich people, might buy a brand-new-in-the-box pinball machine and put it in their house. Now, like, everybody buys new-in-the-box pinball machines and puts them in their house. Right, the LE. Everybody wants the LE. Yeah, but even the pros and the premiums, too, of course. But, yeah, like I said, when I worked at Williams, like, owning a pinball machine seemed so like a foreign concept to me, even when I worked for the company. Right. And then when I got my first one, which is my funhouse, I got it in a trade from one of my friends at work. Traded me his funhouse machine that he got for working on it. And I'm like, oh, my God, I have a pinball machine in my house. And then within a year, that turned into, like, five. and then within a couple of years, I had no more room left. I had 25 of them or something. How many do you have now? I have 19, I think. Wow. And it's about to go back to 20 because I'm bringing home my Stranger Things next week. Oh, very good. And then next week when I go back home. The new run. You're getting a premium? Because I slept on it too long when we first ran them. And I always wanted it because up until Bond, that was my largest rule design role. Or any kind of design role at Stern, right? Yeah. But yeah, that was my largest rule design role until James Bond. So that game is very special to me. I'm very proud of it. And I really enjoyed working on it with the fabulous free birds, you know, me and Brian and Lonnie. Our strengths as a three-man team really complemented each other. Were you guys familiar with the show? Oh, I was a big fan of the show. And we all liked it.
    74:57
    But I was ecstatic when we got that license because I love the show so much. Yeah. Okay. And it gave me a great excuse to go back and watch it a few more times. Right. Well, did you guys like watch it together and get ideas? We watched some popcorn parties. No, but we all watched them numerous times. And, you know, I travel a lot because from doing all those pinball shows. So I was watching them on the plane again, you know, for the third, fourth time. And I would just jot notes on my phone as I was watching them of like things I thought could work in a mode or whatnot. And the other guys did the same. And then we would get together for daily or multi-weekly meetings, a couple a week. And then whittle down. We'd put all of our lists out. And then we'd all talk about everything. And then we'd make a list of the lists of what were the strongest things. And then we'd kind of funnel down from there, drill down from there. And that went on for a long time. Very cool. Is the design cycle the same amount of time since you've been in Timbal? Yes. Yeah, that hasn't changed in my time at Stern. I don't remember what it was at Williams. It was probably less, but the games were not as deep, nowhere near as deep and complex then as they are now. Right. Hey, can we pause for a second? I need some more water. Absolutely, yeah. But I'm trapped in here. I don't want to knock this over. Oh, no problem. Will you just fill this up? Yeah. Yeah, let's take a short break, and we will be right back. And we're back through the magic of motion picture and Hollywood. What were we talking about? We were talking about the design cycle. The design cycle, yeah. It hasn't changed at Stern since I've been there, but I think it was shorter at Williams only because, like I said, the games were not nearly as deep and complex as they've become over the course of time. Wow. Because, you know, we sold them all to operators, and they would operate them in arcades and bars, and they didn't need to be that deep, you know. People weren't spending all this money to put them in their home and keep them for many years, you know, or forever. Right. Planning them as a savings or retirement account.
    77:06
    Yeah, you know, so they have to be deeper so people don't get bored of them so fast. And it just kind of naturally evolved to that, you know. And when I look at a rule set to Adam's family and then look at James Bond, it's like night and day in that course of almost 30 years. I guess a close to 30-year difference, I guess. Now that you're here in Phoenix, I know you were very excited to come out here because we have some of your favorite restaurants. And in fact, in some parts of the general Phoenix metropolitan area, you might have them all next door to each other. Isn't it great? It is so great.
    77:51
    Del Tacos are in pretty much every gas station. Yeah, which we just learned that tonight. Like I've never seen or even heard of a Del Taco in a gas station. But tonight, the three of us discovered two of them within 10 minutes of driving in a car. Insane. We didn't even know this was a thing. Yeah. We didn't stop either one, by the way, just so you know. We went on to the third very fancy one where there was a guy losing his mind yelling at everybody. I was really worried that it was going to escalate into some sort of gun violence. We saw a public freakout. Yeah, yeah. And it got ugly. So we had the first night, we had your favorite. In-N-Out Burger. And then we did Del Taco. Yeah. And then we are going to do some Waffle House. We have to, yeah, yeah. Maybe tomorrow before the tournament. That would be good, yeah. We could get up early, though. Again, provided I'm feeling okay. But so far, so good. So I think we might be okay. We'll see what tomorrow brings. The Waffle House. We can push it. Yeah. I'll see how many times can I roll the dice before trouble happens. The Waffle House phenomena is new to me.
    79:01
    Because when I met you, you were all excited about Waffle House. And I was like, what's the big deal? I grew up around literally hundreds of Waffle Houses. And we have none in Illinois. You have none. I thought everybody had Waffle House. I wish. Did you know Georgia has more Waffle Houses than any other state? No, but I believe it. Yeah hundreds and hundreds of them So wait here some interesting Arizona trivia that pertains 100 to you Rachel especially My first experience I always was aware of the Waffle House And when I was dating my ex-wife and when we were married, we took a couple road trips near St. Louis. And we stayed across the street from the Waffle House that she refused to go eat at with me. And at that point, I had never eaten at one because we don't have them, right? my very first Waffle House was in 2019 when I came out here for ZapCon. What? I'm not kidding. I remember because I told you I went to the Waffle House and now I'm in love. That's what I told you. And you're like, you never had it before? I'm like, no, I finally got to eat at one. Because again, I got vetoed twice on two trips to the same place with my ex. And the one meal at the Waffle House, I fell in love. And then every time we ever traveled, when you guys worked at Marco, So if it was at a place that had Waffle House, I had to go every day. Sure, sure. And that was just a regular place for me to eat, especially when I was on the road touring with the band. Yeah. That's what you did because you're traveling late night. They're open. They're open 24-7. That and Huddle House. I never heard of that before. Huddle House is similar. Yeah. Maybe they don't have waffles, but they have everything else. Yeah. So that was a... So I learned about Waffle House from professional wrestlers. Because when the wrestlers are on the road, because they travel all year round, like, again, it never closes. They do a show, then they're going to go hit the next town.
    80:58
    There's not a lot of options, especially late at night or early in the morning. So they would often hit Waffle Houses. Maybe that's why there are so many fights in Waffle Houses. Maybe. That's like the tradition. yeah wrestlers i've never ever witnessed a fight at a waffle house but you've seen the videos on the internet um i also don't go to the waffle house in the middle of the night like i'm not the drunken bar i close the bar crowd where you know at two o'clock you get kicked out because the bar is closed and i go there to sober up and fight you know like i go to the waffle house like for breakfast or lunch or maybe an early dinner, but I'm not going at like 2 a.m. So I'm not privy to all the weird, sketchy bullshit that happens. Can I say bullshit on the show? You can actually say whatever you want. Yeah, that sketchy bullshit that everybody is like, well, why would you go eat there? I'm like, because every time I go, it's normal people are in there, and the staff is beyond friendly, and they cook my food perfectly always. Very respectable, yes. You know what's funny? When you mentioned that professional wrestlers turned you on to Waffle House, and you talk about, well, of course you did, because you were in a touring band. It makes you think about all of the professions that you think are glamorous, and you find out that, like, really they're going from Waffle House to Waffle House, sleeping, like, five guys to a room. And that was largely the wrestlers, especially in the territory days, and even throughout the 80s, even WWF days, you know. Like, those guys were on the road constantly. Like, they'd make the show, and then they'd get in the car and drive to the next city. And they could be driving for 10, 12 hours, and they're piling however many can fit in the car, and they all share a room to cut down on the cost. And, yeah, you're going for the Waffle Houses from wherever you can because that's about your only option of where you know what you're getting, and it's consistent and good. I mean, their food, I think, is fantastic. Yeah, we did the same thing as a touring rock band. We would eat mostly at gas stations. and back then gas stations did not have the healthy options you have these days right so it was horrible for like the hot dog rollers you know yeah hot dog rollers yeah maybe some beef jerky right yeah potato chips um these were staples of my like uh teens and even very early 20s right like you know just being a young guy with not a lot of money sure um you know i would eat gas station food or you go to a concert and then afterwards you're starving. Right. So you go to 7-Eleven or you go to a gas station and get, like you say, beef jerky and a hot dog that's been sitting out there for 16 hours. You'll be on the road for, like, sometimes two weeks at a time and you have to find a laundromat. You share one room with, like, six guys and so you're fighting for a bed. God, I'd hate to be the last guy to use the bathroom in the morning in that scenario. I mean, really, even like the second or third is... Right, yeah, it's like you've got to be first. Your constitution can't pull that off after a certain age. Like, that's why, like, touring is a young man's game. That's why, like, the old bands, like, break up, or they only do it when they're on, like, tour buses. Or you're Brian May, and you can just fly the jet. Yeah, or you're Iron Man, and you own your own 747 or whatever, and you fly yourself to every city. The best part was we had a per diem, and that was all the money we had. It was like $4 a day. Something like that. And then we thought, you know what, if we pooled our money together, we could get a bag of weed and then get a loaf of bread and some ham and then eat on that, but then we'd have something to smoke. But then you'd have the weed and you'd need more chips. You'd be even more hungry. That wasn't a very financially smart decision. Right, right. Yeah, so, well, I mean, here I am now. You're also 19.
    84:58
    I was very lucky to do something like that very young. Yeah, so the three favorite places all, you know, within sometimes a few feet of each other here. You guys have it made. There's also Whataburger, which people care about. Yeah, it's not very good. I mean, so it's better than your McDonald's or your Burger King, but it's pretty underwhelming. But I now have a new soft spot for the Whataburger because Jimmy Howard, the mouth of the South, bought me dinner at Whataburger last month. How did you meet him? Okay, so I did the multi – I always mess up this name. I'm sorry, David. The Music City Multicon. Okay.
    85:33
    David Kerrigan and his wife put on this. It's a really nice show. It's got like full of games plus pop culture stuff, comic books and toys. In Nashville. It's in Nashville, Tennessee. Yep. So this year, and it was just last month, it was in the beginning of November, I guess. Yeah. You know, they did the show, and they had a bunch of, you know, like wrestling legends. So they had the Mouth of the South, Jimmy Hart. They had the Million Dollar Man, Ted DiBiase. They had Mike Rotunda, who was like, he's also known as IRS. they had Scott Steiner and they had Ron Simmons who I work, Ron Simmons worked one of our wrestling shows for one of the two companies I worked for he was one of the nicest guys I ever met of a legend, he was awesome so I got to say hi to him again so the first night they had a VIP dinner for all the special guests so I was sitting there and had dinner with Ted DiBiase and Jimmy Hart and then farther down the line was Ron and Steiner didn't go and Mike Rotunda, but they were sitting too far away to engage in conversation. But Troy Smith and I had talked to Ted DiBiase and Jimmy Hart most of the dinner because we were all sitting right next to each other. The next day, all those guys all left and left Jimmy at the show, and Brent from the Broken Token podcast goes, I was talking to Jimmy Hart, and he comes up and he goes, hey, I need to ask you something real fast. Come here. so I walk away from Jimmy Hart to talk to Brent and he goes hey somebody told me that like Jimmy Hart wants to go to Whataburger and get something to eat well you know do you want to take him I'm like yeah I'll take him are you kidding me like I don't even like that place but I'll go just to hang out with him and talk wrestling some more you know and so I came back I'm like Jimmy I hear through the grapevine that you want to get some Whataburger for dinner and he goes yeah yeah I'm like you want me to take you I'm like I'll drive you over there I got a car. I'm like, he goes, yeah, yeah, that'd be awesome. I'm like, all right, I'll even treat, because I was just going to, you know, make Stern pay for it. Sure. And he goes, no, baby, I'll treat for you. I'm like, really? He goes, I would love to. He goes, be my honor. I'm like, wow. I'm like, okay. So I'm like, so we got in my car. We went to Whataburger, and then he bought me dinner. And he was the nicest guy. Like, we were just sitting there, like, shooting the shit about just our lives in general, not just talking wrestling. How cool is that? He was asking me about what I do and whatnot. And then I was talking about all kinds of stuff. But it was like two, you know, it almost felt like two old friends. And I just met him the night before. And he was the nicest guy. And then some of the dudes that worked at the Whataburger, they recognized him. They didn't know his name, but they recognized him from seeing him on TV or whatever. Did he still have the mullet and the sunglasses? Oh, yeah. And he had the megaphone. You're kidding me. He left it in my car. Like, he didn't bring it in the restaurant. But, yeah. And so. Wow. And he ordered with that. And they were like, you know, one of the workers was like, can I get a picture with you? And he was happy to do it, you know. That's amazing. But then they took a picture of the two of us, me and Jimmy. And then I posted it on my social media. But, yeah, he was super awesome. How cool is that? I didn't really like the Whataburger. It's okay. Like I said, it's better than McDonald's or Burger King or Wendy's. Who has the best burger? Oh, well, if it's fast food burger, you've got to distinguish. Oh, okay. It's in an Outburger without a doubt. There's not even a close second. How do you feel about Five Guys? It's terrible. What? It's over-priced greasy shit. No, sir.
    89:13
    There's one a half mile from my house, and I wouldn't go there if you bought it for me. Five Guys is an amazing burger. And their fries are garbage. What? They're like a greasy bag of slop. Those are the best fries. They're fresh cut. You can email us.
    89:29
    Join the Discord. The coolest thing I'll say about Five Guys is they've got the Coke machine of the future where you touch the screen and you can put any flavor together. Anything. I would get raspberry Coke and grape Coke, but I don't drink pop anymore except on extremely rare circumstances. Birthdays. Not even that. Like, if I go to Dog and Sud's Root Beer, which is way out in Grays Lake, it's about an hour north of me, they make their own root beer. I'll drink it there. That's about the only time. Yeah. So, like, now Five Guys has nothing for me. Okay. I'm not going to waste a burger on that one. Because, first of all, we got Kuma's Corner. So if I'm going to... We talked about that on the podcast. Yeah, I took you guys there. It was amazing. Yeah, I took you guys there. We had a burger with chicken and waffles. Yep. And that's not like two separate things. That's all together in the burger. It's all together. Burger, chicken, and waffles. And you're a big Italian meat fan. Thai beef. Italian meat. Italian meat is something totally different. Yeah.
    90:32
    Different show. That's a whole different show. We have a place. Hugh Johnson. Yeah. We have a place right down the street here. Luke's of Chicago. Luke's. We're going to try that. We're going to get a wet sandwich. Yeah, yeah. A wet Italian beef. Yeah. We'll see if it really is authentic or if it's just a total work. I can't wait to see what you think. Yeah. Because the locals seem to love it. Today we saw an ambulance when we drove by. Yeah, that's a little disturbing to me. I'd like to hope that maybe, well, somebody could have been there, eaten there so many times that they got a heart attack. I would certainly know things of that nature.
    91:10
    We've all done so many pinball conventions together. Yeah. Can we come up with a consensus of which one is the best?
    91:21
    No. Because they're too different, right? I will tell you my favorite one is probably the Texas Pinball Festival because it's so big and there's so many fans there. And they would do the Twippy Awards and they do the whole autograph session. Like, they really do it up right. It's a well-run show. It's a really well-run show. It's a really nice area. There's an In-N-Out Burger one mile away.
    91:43
    But, I mean, and the weather is perfect that time of year. I mean, it's got so – there's so much going for it. And it just draws just a massive crowd, you know. Right. And they really treat it like the big deal that it should be, which pinball is a big deal to us. Is that the biggest show? It is. I believe it is. Biggest, certainly the biggest pure pinball show. Is it bigger than Northwest in terms of number of games, though? Northwest, I feel like, has the Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show. I feel like that. That's tough because the layouts are like one's longer and narrower, but it stretches forever. tpf has like way more booths and like more featured people and things but i feel like northwest may have more games more actual games to play yeah i'm not sure and then so but then we were talking earlier about like the people in in the portland show and the tacoma show are very it's a very diverse and and cool crowd i like to go to expo because that's where we like to see all of our industry friends yeah expo is super fun even though it's far from my favorite show but it's the longest running one and for me it's like the high school reunion type show. For me it's the industry reunion show. I'll see Ken Fedesna who was my boss at Williams Valley Midway. He was the vice president there. I absolutely love Ken and I typically only see him at Expo and once in a while we might get together for lunch in a small group of us that used to work underneath Ken.
    93:13
    So that's a big deal to catch up with. Or guys like David deal who I only see at the Tacoma show and if he comes to Expo. Guys that don't live in the area anymore but are colleagues or industry friends of mine. So Expo is great for that. I like every show for a different reason. And I can't... None of the ones I go to, they're all great. There's not a bad one in a bunch. But I like different... There's different reasons why I think they're great shows. Have you guys done the Houston show? Oh, I love that show. God, what a party. Again, yeah, that one is very unique. It's like a pinball and video game show by day. Then around dinner time, it becomes a nightclub. It's a concert. They have these fantastic artists play. He typically gets a lot of the same ones every year, and he could do that for the rest of our lives. And that's Keith Christensen. Yeah, Keith. He could book the same acts every year, and I will never get bored because that Atari Mac guy is a genius. Yeah. And then the JG and the Robots is really awesome. And the Harp Twins, like, they're not my cup of tea, but they're still super entertaining. So cool. They do Zelda music. Yeah. So they're very entertaining. Have you seen them, Rachel? No. Oh, yeah. I am the one person here who has never made it to Houston. It was always a conflicting show. This year it's coming in, it's going to be in October this year. Right. Okay. So that, for me, backs it up to where there's three shows in a row. It's like Houston, Portland, Expo. So I don't know why I moved it a month early this year. I'm sorry, next year. It's not this year yet. It just happened like last month. It was last month. Yeah, I went to it. I always have a fantastic time at this show. Okay. Yeah, I've gone like, that's my fourth time, I think. So we were in Austin when that show was going on. We thought about just going over. You should have. It was awesome. Yeah. We were excited about playing a pinball tournament at Pinball's. in Austin.
    95:13
    I've heard of that place, but I've never been to Austin. They're like 70 machines. We didn't ever make it out there. But the TD was in Houston.
    95:21
    Actually, the whole pinball scene was in Houston. So it was just us and we decided to go to a comedy show instead, which was nice.
    95:30
    I really love going to all the shows and I go to more now than I've ever gone to. I think I do about 12 a year. but man it's become one of my favorite parts of my job um and there's just such a because every city every one of those shows has such a good community right around those shows like the crowd is fantastic i love meeting people and talking to them about the games and answering their questions and playing games with them when they ask um that's such a treat for me you know like when you first got in the business were there this many shows no it was like expo in california extreme Yeah, and that was it. And I never went to California Extreme until I started working at Stern. I always wanted to go, but I was too cheap to go there on my own dime. Like, I'm like, all right, so I didn't know anybody in the area where I could stay, so I would have to fly out there, then get a hotel, then buy the tickets to the show. And it just seemed so cost prohibitive to me. Not that they're overcharging, but for me, especially in various times, like, that was like a big outlay of cash for me. Sure. And I had things I would have rather spent the money on. We all know what those vinyl things are. And just my bills and whatnot, but yeah, largely records.
    96:46
    So I didn't go until I went for Stern, and then I'm like, I regret not going all those years before. Right. Because that show is awesome. Plus, I love TJ and Ken, so the best part of that show is getting to hang out with them. You know, and but again, and there's so many great games that you only see there. Yes. That one's really special for seeing rare, unique stuff. That's right. Video and pinball. At one time when I was there, they had two kingpins side by side. Yep. And I think that year you entered me into Ken's the World Championship. Oh, the Panic Park. You almost died. They almost killed me. Yeah, those people fight over that game. Oh, it was insane. There's video somewhere on, I think on Marcus Specialty's social media, but I took down the reigning champion and then went into just an absolute battle with the guy who ended up winning. I got second place. But then I went to the hotel room and passed out. Yeah, like he was sweating in a way that made me think he was having a heart attack. Like something was not right. This wasn't just like a normal. I've over-exerted myself. It's, I need to be, like, horizontal now. It was crazy. Was it California Extreme where I met the Little Flippers for the first time? I think so. Well, you know, like the Moretti family? No, it was, no. Or was it Southern, I'm sorry. No, no. Or Golden State. Golden State, yes. I mean, that was a highlight because I love that family so much. Yes, yeah. It was so good. And Anna, she's my favorite kid and all, pinball. Like, it's such a fun time to get to hang out with that family, like, at that show. That one photo, and I don't know who took it. I may have taken it, but where she's taunting you. Oh, yeah. It was so great. It was awesome. And then Marco made a banner of her, of Anna and me playing pinball. And I still want them to print me one of those. I want to hang it up at my basement office of, like, the two of us when she challenged me to a game at one of those shows. For people that don't know, Anna at the time was maybe six. She was six years old. And have a stool because she was only about three feet tall. Yeah. If even that. I mean, she was tiny. And she was a good player. And she is such an amazing character. She was trash-talking me the whole time and really animated when she played. And she beat you. And she beat me, yeah. Like, legit. Yeah. Like, I wanted to throw the match and I couldn't. I mean, I didn't have to. Right, right. She put up, like, over $100 million on Iron Maiden. Like, I had to actually work for her. And then I didn't, it wasn't like I took a dive. Right. And then she rubbed it in my face when she saw me the next time. I beat you. You know, I love that kid. That was so great. Yeah. That was a really fun show. Yeah. Last year, was it last year or this year? Maybe it was last year. Like, she hung out in our booth the whole time and made me play Switch games with her. Like, we were playing, like, Super Smash Brothers and stuff. How cool is that? So, yeah, it was so much fun. Wow. Just to really grow up and have seen this. And I hadn't seen her in three, almost, it was like three years. Because of COVID. So, like, now she was like nine years old, you know. Wow. And then, you know, I saw her, I saw them twice this year, you know, at the shows. And, you know, it's such, again, it's such a treat. Like, things like that, like, make the job for me, you know. It's like, I meet this wonderful family and they're, you know, Mike and Katie and their three awesome daughters. And they're just such genuinely fun, nice people to be around. Super cool. They just sent us some stuff for tomorrow's tournament. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, and I don't even know what it is. They came out and visited.
    100:27
    Yeah, they are. They're great people. Yeah, they're wonderful. If you're in the area, go to Flipper Room. Go to Flipper Room, yeah. They're such awesome people. I love them. Are you, any shows coming up for you and Stern?
    100:39
    Not this calendar year. I'm done, but it starts up again in March for me. I mean, Stern will have a presence at other things that they do early in the year, like CES. They always do CES, right? But I don't get to do that one. So for me, the next year's tour starts in March, and there's a lot of shows in March. I think I might be doing one every week for the whole month. Wow.
    101:03
    Good times. Yeah, yeah. You're the guy on the road now, on tour. I am, yeah. I always tell people, like, I'm on tour for part of the year as part of my job. I love it, though. It's great. It's exhausting, but it's worth it to me. It's fun.
    101:21
    It's a lot of long days, but like I said, meeting the people and, you know, being able to talk about our games. And the company having that kind of faith in me to go out there and represent the company means a lot to me. You know, like they have that kind of trust in me and, like, they value it. So, you know, I'm honored to do it, you know. Yeah, yeah, right on. Good deal. Well, it's getting super late here. Oh, wow. Yeah. It feels like we were just at some gas station del taco. Right, right. And now here it is like four hours later. We watched a guy get the police called on him. Yeah. It's probably time for the wrap up. I think we'll quickly mention the sponsors of the show, Marco Specialties, who you work with still. Yeah, I travel with them a number of times a year, and I love them. I always refer to Marco as my second pinball family or my traveling pinball family. There you go. I consider them. So, yeah, I love that group. Love those guys. Check them out at marcospecialties.com. They sell everything pinball. Get your parts.
    102:29
    What was that new thing you just got? The pin jack. Those things are awesome. They brought them to a show, one of the shows that we did, and I'm like, man, I need to get some of these. I still need to get some of those. We have one. You can play with it tomorrow at the arcade. And special thanks to Game Room Goodies, where they supply us with all of our games. And actually, we have a lot of parts for us. We love those guys. And last but not least, Stern, Insider Connected. Man, we love an Insider Connected. I love it, too. Yeah. I'm sure all your listeners know that we released the app fairly recently yes, we've been using it and we've been telling all of our players to use it it's a lot of fun, and what's really cool is all of the time sensitive missions all the quests there's a bunch going on this month as we speak, I think there's at least a couple still running I got sick and missed out on a big chunk of them because I was too sick to even go in my own basement I missed all seven days of Bond. They had a bunch of cool Bond stuff. I missed the whole thing because I was down with COVID and I couldn't have the energy to even go to my basement to turn on my Bond game just to scan it. I'm like, I can't do it. Sadly, I missed out on all those badges. Good deal. There's a lot of cool stuff happening this month with that. Love that. Check out, go into the Apple App Store or the Google, what do they call it, the Play Store. Download the app. I don't know anything about those. There's all the green text phones It's like, those are beneath me.
    104:04
    Search Stern Pinball Insider Connected and download that app. Create an account if you haven't already and get connected. Make sure you're logging in and tracking all your scores and seeing how you're comparing to your friend's scores. I think we're going to take off. We're going to get some sleep before the big tournament tomorrow. I think we'll put a five guys versus in and out poll in the Discord. I would love to know. So join us on Discord.
    104:34
    Send us an email at electricbatarcade at gmail.com. Ask questions for us, Mike. I don't know. We may have a chance to do one more podcast with you before you leave town. I'll do as many as you guys want. I mean, you know. Maybe we'll do one from the arcade. You guys know where to find me. I'm in the room right across from yours in your house. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good deal. Well, thank you for joining us, Mike. It's been an absolute blast. Thanks for having me on again. Like I said, I'd do this any time with you guys. I love you guys. And I love doing this stuff, too. So it's a real treat for me. Right. You have the best stories, man. We love it. Thank you. Good deal. I'm sorry my voice is kind of blown out. I was sick for a week, and then we've been talking so much the last two days I've been here that I blew out what was left of my voice last night when we stayed up way too late. Like talking, not on camera. We should have been recording. We should have recorded that, too. That was really juicy stuff. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you guys should have heard what I revealed last night.
    105:32
    Good deal. All right, well, thank you for joining us, and we're going to take off. Right now, the bats are out. Mike will show you the – The secret handshake? Yeah. Oh, wait, I think we did this at – Yeah, we did it last time. Yeah, we did this before. All right, Mike. Yeah, thank you. Bats out. Okay, we're out. Appreciate it.