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EP25 Jimmy Lipham My Journey Into Pinball

The Pinball Studio Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 1m·analyzed·Jun 15, 2026
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Jimmy Lipham recounts his path from 90s arcade kid to pinball mod innovator and Pinlights founder.

Summary

Jimmy Lipham (Pinlights/86 Pixels) discusses his journey into pinball, starting from childhood in 1990s bowling alleys and arcades in Florida, through building custom mods and software, to founding Pinlights as a consumer lighting product company. He covers his early experiences with pinball, transition to the hobby as an adult, work with manufacturers, and the evolution of his business from title-specific mods to universally applicable lighting solutions.

Key Claims

  • Jimmy started collecting pinball machines in 2008, with his first machine being a Space Shuttle for $250 from a church in Winterville, Georgia

    high confidence · Jimmy Lipham, directly stated during interview

  • Jimmy created a Pinball 2000 custom software rendition of Demolition Man around 2011, which is how he met Scott Danesi, Gerry Stellenberg, and early homebrew folks

    high confidence · Jimmy Lipham, detailed personal account

  • Jimmy and 86 Pixels launched Pinlights in April (year not specified, but context suggests 2020-2021) as an entry-level, diffused, slimline lighting product

    high confidence · Jimmy Lipham describing Pinlights business origin

  • John Papadiuk was the first pinball company person to reach out to Jimmy, offering an unpaid 'pinball apprentice' position requiring relocation to Chicago

    high confidence · Jimmy Lipham, personal anecdote

  • Gerry Stellenberg at Multimorphic called Jimmy after the Papadiuk opportunity fell through

    medium confidence · Jimmy Lipham, narrative account (statement is incomplete at end of provided content)

  • Pinlights now supports Spike 2 and Spike 3 natively, with ongoing development for Chicago Gaming and JJP systems integration

    high confidence · Jimmy Lipham, product feature description

  • Jimmy received a school note about his handwriting in kindergarten (circa 1993) because he was writing sevens in DMD style, inspired by Terminator 2 pinball

    high confidence · Jimmy Lipham, personal childhood memory

  • Jimmy attended college on a bowling scholarship

    high confidence · Jimmy Lipham, direct statement

Notable Quotes

  • “So I was always a builder. Right. So like the fun in my childhood was kind of building your own toys.”

    Jimmy Lipham @ N/A — Establishes Jimmy's lifelong design and building ethos, which explains his later career in pinball mod design and entrepreneurship

  • “My whole existence on this earth is, I guess, going to be known for trying to protect people from rainbow puke.”

    Jimmy Lipham @ N/A — Humorous self-characterization about his design philosophy of avoiding garish, overwrought lighting while still offering customization

  • “I'd flip out, too. And this is probably before all the shit hit the fan.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ N/A — Oblique reference to later controversy involving John Papadiuk; indicates community awareness of industry drama

  • “It turns out a lot of people were just looking for, hey, just give me some light, some even light, and where we evolve from.”

    Jimmy Lipham @ N/A — Market insight about demand for functional, understated lighting solutions over flashy RGB effects

  • “If it's right, it's because she packed it. If it's wrong, it's definitely because I packed it.”

    Jimmy Lipham @ N/A — Reference to wife Elena's role in Pinlights operations; indicates family business structure

  • “We would much rather integrate rather than reinvent the wheel.”

    Jimmy Lipham @ N/A — Business philosophy emphasizing partnership and ecosystem support over market consolidation

  • “What he was offering was, like, you can be a pinball apprentice. That sounds great until you realize that an apprentice doesn't get paid.”

    Jimmy Lipham @ N/A — Commentary on problematic labor practices in pinball industry; John Papadiuk's apprenticeship program lacked compensation

Entities

Jimmy LiphampersonElena LiphampersonGerry StellenbergpersonJohn PapadiukpersonScott DanesipersonCary HardypersonPinlightscompany86 Pixelscompany

Signals

  • ?

    personnel_signal: John Papadiuk, a legendary pinball designer, proactively reached out to Jimmy Lipham early in his homebrew career, recognizing emerging software talent in the then-sparse field of pinball coders (circa 2011-2012)

    high · Jimmy stated: 'I can say the first person to reach out to me would have been John Papadiuk' and 'at the time that was the only way that you could customize rules on a WPC game' was using P-Rock boards; scarcity of software talent made Jimmy valuable

  • ?

    product_strategy: Pinlights pivoted from title-specific mods to universally applicable lighting solutions after recognizing market demand for entry-level diffused slimline lighting (gap between expensive/non-existent options and market need)

    high · Jimmy: 'no one's really doing any entry-level, diffused, slimline lighting type thing. Like the only thing that was available typically were Pinn Stadium's thin line' and 'that product was very successful in terms of, yeah, it turns out a lot of people were just looking for, hey, just give me some light'

  • ?

    design_innovation: 86 Pixels pioneered interactive backboard display modifications for classic pinball games (Twilight Zone, Tron, Theater of Magic), which have since been adopted by other manufacturers like Barrels of Fun (Labyrinth)

    high · Jimmy: 'that was something that our company 86 Pixels put out, and we did them for Tron, Twilight Zone, Theater of Magic' and host confirmed seeing similar implementations by other companies

  • ?

    design_innovation: Pinlights now offers granular control including color temperature adjustment, pulsing/strobing effects, rainbow modes, and native platform-specific integrations (Spike 2/3, planned Chicago Gaming and JJP support)

    high · Jimmy detailed new product features: 'you can do kind of pulsing or strobing effects. You can do rainbow effects. You can have rainbow puke if you so desire' with 'Spike 2 and 3 support' and working on 'native integration with Chicago Gaming and a lot of other JJP systems'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.185

0:00
Hello and welcome to episode 25 of the Pinball Studio Podcast. Today I've got Jimmy Lipum of Pinlights and we're going to learn his story and how he found this crazy hobby of pinball on this week's episode of My Journey into Pinball. But first off, let's mention the sponsors. Old Town Pinball. Do you need a new or used pinball machine? Head over to his website oldtownpinball.com. Also, the Electric Playground. Time to level up your game room with a new topper. Just check out their website, teppinball.com. And last but not least, Spooky Pinball. Order literally any machine left on their website. Just type in on your web browser, spookypinball.com to learn more. Anyway, welcome to the show, Jimmy. This is going to be a ton of fun, my friend. Hey, doing all right. Great to be here. I appreciate you having me. Hot day in Texas. Everything good out there? Yeah, it's hot down here in Georgia as well. I think we originally met on one of Keri Hardy's live meetups or something. I think so, and it's been downhill ever since. Yeah, where have you been at lately? We haven't seen you on there. I know, I know. It just happens. A lot of those meetups happen whenever I'm packing orders or I'm working on something, and I just forget. Yeah. It's really, I just forget. Yeah, it's a fun way to chat with a bunch of pinball people, and I finally got to meet you at TPF this year. That was cool. And I got to see some of your products on some of the games, so that was awesome. Yeah, I know. It was a great time. Which friend did you bring with you to TPF? There was somebody else there wearing the mask. Oh, the pinball studio stuff? Yeah. I don't know. My buddy Will was with me, but he was mostly in the tournament room most of the time. Yeah, Will. I remember meeting Will and seeing him. I think about 3 o'clock in the morning we all wound up in Keith Christensen's room. That sounds about right. Yeah, it was cool. I actually saw my Pinball Studio shirts on a few people, and I think they didn't know who I was because they may listen to the audio side of things. And I'm like, you're wearing my shirt, and they're like, look at me weird. Heck yeah, I gotta go get a hat and a shirt. I'm gonna buy some, so it's gonna be great. I'll hook you up, brother. Nah, man.
2:56
But yeah, we're gonna do your journey into Pinball today, and we want to hear your story of how you got into this crazy hobby.
Multimorphic
company
Stern Pinballcompany
Spooky Pinballcompany
Chicago Gamingcompany
Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
Barrels of Funcompany
Demolition Mangame
[name withheld pending review]game
Foo Fightersgame
Gooniesgame
Twilight Zonegame
Theatre of Magicgame
Cirqus Voltairegame
Stranger Thingsgame
Ghostbustersgame
[name withheld pending review]event
  • ?

    community_signal: Jimmy Lipham explicitly rejects vertical integration/market consolidation in favor of partnering with complementary vendors (Pinwoofer, Muzzle Mods) and natively integrating their products rather than recreating them

    high · Jimmy: 'We would much rather integrate rather than reinvent the wheel' and discussed partnering with Dan Dean (Pinwoofer) and Muzzle Mods for under-cabinet lighting rather than competing with them

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Pinlights operates as a family business with Elena Lipham handling order fulfillment and day-to-day operations, indicating lean operational structure

    high · Jimmy: 'Elena, she's the one who runs all of the day-to-day order fulfillment and stuff like that. If it's right, it's because she packed it. If it's wrong, it's definitely because I packed it'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Shift from community resistance to 'rainbow puke' aesthetic lighting toward acceptance of diffused, subtle, controllable solutions that enhance without overwhelming the playfield

    medium · Jimmy describing his design philosophy: 'my whole existence on this earth is, I guess, going to be known for trying to protect people from rainbow puke' but acknowledges customer desire for options: 'You can absolutely just unicorn piss all over your play field. And I'm fine. I'm here for it'

  • ?

    industry_signal: John Papadiuk's 'pinball apprentice' program (requiring unpaid labor and relocation) represented problematic industry practice; Jimmy declined and incident illustrates talent acquisition challenges in pinball industry

    high · Jimmy: 'an apprentice doesn't get paid' and 'The requirement was that said Apprentice moved from Athens, Georgia to Chicago. Oh, wow. And I'm like, no.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Under-cabinet lighting frequently damaged during transport due to insufficient clearance (less than 0.25 inch) between cabinet sidewall and MDF base when using standard equipment; represents design/usability challenge in pinball industry

    high · Host and Jimmy discussed crushing underglow lights with pinball carts; host had destroyed Amazon lighting on Back to the Future; Jimmy noted 'less than a quarter of an inch of clearance' requiring 2x4 lifts on carts to avoid damage

  • ?

    event_signal: Trade shows like TPF (Pinball Flipper Expo) valued primarily for community networking and social connection rather than product announcements, indicating community-first culture in pinball industry

    high · Jimmy: 'I go to TPF to howl around with all of my pinball people. And that's what it's about for me' and host: 'I play very little pinball. And some of the competitive people try to get me to play in the tournaments. And I'm like, man, I just want to hang out with people'

  • $

    market_signal: Limited edition/premium games (e.g., Beetlejuice remake) command significant secondary market premiums, creating opportunities for collectors to recoup/profit on resale

    high · Jimmy sold Beetlejuice: 'It's commanding a hefty premium, and if you got a space that you can get something that you're just going to play a lot more, I don't fault anybody'

  • ?

    theme_signal: Spooky Pinball diversifying from dark horror themes toward mainstream franchises (Goonies), signaling market appetite for broader IP licensing strategies beyond niche horror appeal

    medium · Jimmy: 'I love to see Spooky doing a little bit more on the mainstream theme side, more so than just dark horror or whatever. I am very, very hopeful for what they're going to do on Goonies'

    • 3:04
    Did you start off like playing in arcades as a kid or was this something that like you found totally later on in life or were you a gamer as a kid? No, it definitely started in the 90s whenever I was a kid.
    3:19
    For as far back as I can remember, my family, we were always in bowling alleys and stuff. We were big bowlers, several leagues a week. Yeah. Kind of growing up there. And the arcade scene was very big. This was the early 90s, and so our bowling alley had everything from Millionaire to Space Shuttle to Adam's Family to just everything came through there. So I was always around, and pinball was always the preference. I actually really just stank at video games, couldn't really manage to put it together, but pinball always seemed to give me the most enjoyment for my money. That's awesome. Yeah, I was more into the arcade games as a kid, but I definitely thought pinball was super cool. Just the whole world under glass and just looking at the game through the glass was like so magical to me. But I tended to play more of the arcade games than I found it kind of later on in life. Did you continue to play like through through your whole like childhood all the way up to your adult life? I mean, I did, right? So anywhere where I could find a pinball machine, I would typically plunk quarters into it. So whenever I was a kid, actually, one of my earliest memories is the weirdest thing. So Terminator 2 had been out for maybe a year or two, something like that, right? So think about 1993-ish. I was in kindergarten and I remember getting a note sent home to my parents saying, you know, Jimmy writes his sevens very, very oddly. Like you need to sit down with him and have him practice his handwriting. And the reason why I mentioned T2 is that's how I would write my sevens was how, you know, that multi-segmented, like three segment seven that they would put on the early DMD games. Because I was like, oh, well, that looks cool. That was, I want my handwriting to be like that. Yeah. And so it and oftentimes, you know, pinball was such a big part of my life. My mom would bring home those boxes that they put copier paper in and I would cut holes, you know, on the on the bottom sides of those boxes because it's relatively the same aspect ratio as as a pinball, you know, play field. Right. So I would make, you know, pinball play fields out of cardboard. No way. And oh, yeah. So that was I was always a builder. Right. So like the fun in my childhood was kind of building your own toys. And so, you know, I had Rector sets and stuff like that, you know, where you're constantly, you know, in Legos where you're constantly putting stuff together. So that was a big part of my childhood. I played all the way until I pretty much got into college and I went to college on a bowling scholarship. So bowling and pinball were always really close together in my journey. So I was exposed to a lot of pinball right up until I got into college. And then, you know, college things happen and you kind of lose track and or memory of it. But, you know, it was a good time. That's awesome. A bowling scholarship. You're the first professional bowler I've ever met. Let me tell you, you know, it was fun, right? It was something I grew up doing. And, you know, my mom even worked next to the bowling alley. So whenever I would go to her work because we didn't have child care in the summer, I'd still wind up over there at the bowling alley. So bowling and pinball, big part of it. And then, of course, 90s mall culture, you know, pinball was still a big staple there. You know, we had an arcade in our local mall. So I played every chance I could possibly get. Did you have any movies? So we had like movie theaters and stuff that would have a pinball machine or two in arcades. Did y'all have that around as well? So the movie theater was outside the mall, like a different building and stuff. It was across the parking lot. And yes, the movie theater had a Circus Voltaire in it. I do remember that. And so I plunked a couple bucks waiting for my movie to start or after the movie or whatever and play some CV. Yeah, there was pinball everywhere in Florida. Did you ever dabble in – I know you did competitive bowling, but did you ever maybe attempt any competitive pinball play? Maybe I'm not the world's best player or whatever. That never really appealed to me. I also didn't know it was a thing until I got back into pinball. Had I known about Pinball Expo as a kid or any of the industry trade shows or anything like that, I would have begged my parents to take me there and let me run around. And, you know, kids today, you know, they got it great, you know, where there's, you know, just about every state, you know, has got some sort of pinball happening. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, just didn't know enough about it at the time. So never got into competitive playing, really. It was always just a kind of a retail thing until I, you know, started buying my first games. Yeah. Well, it's never too late to try out a tournament. Myself, I'm not a great tournament player, but what I really enjoy about it is just chatting with everyone. You know, you're in a room. It's like a miniature expo of your own because everyone's, you know, a pinball enthusiast pretty much in the room. Oh, yeah. We've got some local players here in the Austin area that do league nights, and I'll show up for those a lot of the time. Like the competitive nature of it doesn't really appeal to me. But yes, the people aspect of it is really, really nice. But that's the same reason we go to the trade shows.
    8:45
    I don't go to TPF to see what Jersey Jack's going to launch or what Barrels of Fun is going to launch. It's like, no, I go to TPF to howl around with all of my pinball people. And that's what it's about for me. Oh, I'm the same. Like I go to these shows and I play very little pinball. And some of the competitive people try to get me to play in the tournaments. And I'm like, man, I just want to hang out with people and go out to dinner with people and just play a little bit of pinball. But yeah, it's a fun time for sure. Do you own any pinball machines? Are you a collector? Yes, yeah. I think I have 13, 14 games. They're all at various houses and different things like that because I cycle things in and out as I get room. My immediate game room can hold seven, I think, and that's about all I can put in there without it going into the workspace or whatever. And so, yeah, I started collecting back in 2008. So my first pinball machine that I bought was a space shuttle for $250. There was a church in Winterville, Georgia, that was getting rid of one that they had had in a rec room and did all the cardinal sins, right, of loading it in the back of the truck with the legs on, driving it down the highway with the legs on and the back box up. And, you know, somehow got it back. But yeah, I started, you know, started back in 2008. And I'll pick up a Pinball machine every every few years. My most recent one, the last one I bought new in box is Foo Fighters. And then I did buy the CGC Monster Bash remake, but now it's coming. So, oh, you got a Beetlejuice. Nice. I had one. I unfortunately sold it right off the bat. But it's an awesome game. I hope people do keep the games. Yeah, I had to let it go, unfortunately. Hey, it's commanding a hefty premium, and if you got a space that you can get something that you're just going to play a lot more, I don't fault anybody. Even if they're games that I had worked on in the past, I don't blame you for selling it. Get something that you're going to like, man. Spaces that are premium, they're not cheap, so get something you're going to love. I'm definitely starting to run into the space issue, and it's like I just built a new building about, I don't know, a year and a half ago, and I'm already out of room. And I run tournaments, too, and I love spooky games, but they're probably not the best games in the world for tournaments. Their light shows are freaking unreal, though. I love their lighting in their games. But, yeah, I'll get the next one, and hopefully that one will stick with me. If it is Goonies, that does excite me. Were you a Goonies fan as a kid? Absolutely. And I love to see Spooky doing a little bit more on the mainstream theme side, more so than just dark horror or whatever. I am very, very hopeful for what they're going to do on Goonies. Is there a theme that's out there that you would really like to see someone make into a pinball machine? Oh, absolutely. Roadhouse, man. Roadhouse? Yeah, with Patrick Swayze. Absolutely, man. You got to have a Roadhouse pin. Make it happen. Somebody get the license. I'll be first. I'm all in. I'm honestly surprised someone hasn't made a Roadhouse. I don't even think there's been a homebrew of Roadhouse. Have you ever seen one? No, I haven't seen one. Although, I mean, obviously, like the stuff that's happening with Big Trouble in Little China and, you know, a lot of those homebrews, man, those guys are tearing it up. They're really making some great stuff. Guy right up the street, he's the one that brought the Top Gun. Oh, I played that. Yeah, yeah. And it's all coming together really quickly. There's a guy doing the Pink Floyd Pulse kind of division bell tour kind of themes, pinball machine there, which is kind of cool, like, you know, great light shows and stuff. So there definitely are a lot of homebrewers doing themes that I'm super into. But as far as if I sat down and was like, all right, I'm going to do a game. What theme would it be? It's either going to be Roadhouse or the movie Hackers. I mean, at the end of the day, I am. I'm a huge Hackers fan. So nice. Yeah, I'm surprised you haven't ever built a homebrew, being a tinkerer and liking to build stuff, you know, throughout your childhood and building, you know, cardboard pinball machines. I have, actually. Oh, you have. But they're not technically homebrews. That's kind of the weird part, right? So the first game that I did custom software on was Demolition Man. I did a Pinball 2000 rendition of a Demolition Man, which is, you know, I just took the head off of a traditional Demolition Man and put the display on there and inverted it and then customized the software. Oh, very cool. Yeah, so I did that back in, that was like 2011 or something like that. And that's how I met Scott, Denisey, and Jerry Stellenberg and all the early homebrew folks. And then after that, I made a Wizard Blocks, which was the last Pinball 2000 machine that Pat Lawler was designing when Williams closed down. So I did that, but it's not technically a homebrew because I didn't design the Playfield CAD or whatever. I took the existing plans and built another Whitewood kind of deal. But I really do want to sit down and do just a custom bottom-up playfield design type things. I got several other things in the tank before that, but it's definitely on the list. And the folks that sit down and do that stuff, they just have my utmost respect. Yeah, I started a homebrew in January and I've hardly made any progress. These people must have a ton of free time because I have so much going on in my life that I just haven't found the time to do it. I got my cabinet, I got all the boards, started wiring all the boards up.
    14:48
    I'm doing like a reworked, it's not a re-theme, but it's like a reworked layout, I guess you would call it. So I got all that scanned into a CAD program ready to cut on CNC and that's where I'm at.
    15:00
    Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, you're doing more than most. I mean, even just getting the toolpaths and all that set up in CNC is really difficult. Well, I didn't do it, but a friend did.
    15:12
    Well, hopefully you pick some of it up so it makes the next game a little less painful because, you know, there will be a next game. Like I couldn do just one theme or whatever There always more See I already thinking I like when this one done I retiring from homebrew Oh come on I mean, maybe I'll keep building them. But like I said, you know, so I do the podcast. I run tournaments and then I do just like a bunch of random pinball mods that I sell on pin side. And then I get a full time job and just, yeah, between all of that, it gets hard to like juggle it all. I hear you. I mean, that was whenever I was doing the custom software stuff. I mean, yeah, I would work, you know, full full day job, come home at five o'clock, five thirty or whatever, and work until two o'clock in the morning just doing game software, go to bed, wake up at six or whatever, go back to work and kind of do it all over again. You know, it definitely is really invasive. Yeah. In terms of the time sink. So I definitely hear you. Have you ever built any custom mods for any of your games that you didn't bring to market or anything? You just did it for you because you thought it was cool? Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's a lot that's there on the cutting room floor. There's a lot of polished turds.
    16:34
    I designed something at one point called the Smart RGB Flasher, which all it was was just an RGB Flasher that you could program patterns to. And this was out of 2016. And I designed it for, you know, WPC games that would plug into a traditional flasher socket. But you'd have, you know, a phone app or some desktop app that you could do custom light shows or whatever on it. You know, that put it on three of my games, never did anything with it. You know, I just just dropped it and went off and did something. Now people are going to be blowing you up like I want one of these crazy flashers for my WPC game. I know. Whenever we started doing those backboard display mods, we did the one, our first one I think was for Twilight Zone. Yeah, it was. It was Twilight Zone. Yeah, Kerry was telling me about that. Somehow I did not know you were involved with that. Yeah. No, that was something that our company 86 Pixels put out, and we did them for Tron, Twilight Zone, Theater of Magic, and that was a good bit of fun. But when I posted that to Pinside, I was like, okay, this is going to be another turd. It's not going to do anything, but I bought enough parts to make 20. Maybe someone wants them or whatever. And so thankfully, the reception was positive because otherwise, I probably would have stopped. I probably was like, all right.
    18:01
    I mean, they're damn cool. It was fun. They were fun to build. It was something to do with my newfound time in 2020 whenever I was working from home. Like everybody else. And I was like, all right, well, I guess I'll go into the garage and kind of tool on some pinball mod stuff. And that's kind of what we cooked up. But yeah, I think I've seen some other companies do some similar things since then. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's been interesting. I remember when barrels of fun put the display in Labyrinth. Yeah. On the backboard, you know, and I think Eric Preebke, the programmer on the game, had kind of been like, yeah, you know, we're doing something similar. And I'm like, yeah, it works. It works great. And sometimes people would ask, are you mad they did that? I'm like, no, it's not my bad in anything or whatever. Go nuts. And I'm glad to see people doing similar stuff or riffing on the idea. I think that's cool. Are you still producing those? That's actually kind of how our other our pinlights business started was because we're like, all right, I'm kind of tired of title chasing, like, you know, try like, OK, we got to do all this work, but then you're only going to ever sell it to Twilight Zone people. You're only going to sell it to whatever. Right. So we're like, is there a product that we can dump out our hours into that's kind of more universal, universally applicable? The WPC flasher. The goldmine, I'm telling you, someone get on it.
    19:31
    I think if Elena had to assemble those, my wife, Elena, she's the one who runs all of the day-to-day order fulfillment and stuff like that. If it's right, it's because she packed it. If it's wrong, it's definitely because I packed it. Most times she will not let me anywhere near any of that stuff. So it's been a wild ride. But, yeah, I think she would kill me if she had to assemble those damn WPC flashers, man. I think that's good.
    20:00
    I'm going to put an order in for some tonight. Oh, wonderful. So tell me the story of how this whole pin lights business came to be. Well, you know, it was kind of an evolution thing, right? So I had mentioned, okay, you know, we're tired of doing one-off kind of mods. Let's do something that's a little bit more generally applicable.
    20:22
    And, you know, that got us thinking. And the evolution of that beforehand for the, you know, what got us into making mods in general and doing, you know, direct-to-consumer product was because before that I was working in the industry. And I was like, all right, well, kind of tired of going from contract to contract and getting a game out the door. And then, you know, I'd like to have something that I make that's a little more direct to consumer. Then it was the, well, crap, all right, you know, what's something we can make that's more generally applicable to every game? And then we started thinking, okay, well, you know, no one's really doing any entry-level, diffused, slimline lighting type thing. Like the only thing that was available typically were Pinn Stadium's thin line. Yeah. And then we launched in April. And I remember I walked up to Kerry and I said, hey, Kerry, we're probably going to do this thing, man. Like if you want to take a look at these games down here, you know, let me know. And, you know, he's been a very big supporter. And, you know, we're obviously thankful. But, you know, that's really kind of how it started. It was mostly just like, all right, can we fill this gap in the market? But then also, can we do it in a way that's not intrusive, that doesn't ignite the stigma around rainbow puke or you're blinded by – my whole existence on this earth is, I guess, going to be known for trying to protect people from rainbow puke. But it's been fun, and that product was very successful in terms of, yeah, it turns out a lot of people were just looking for, hey, just give me some light, some even light, and where we evolve from. Yeah, I've got them on pretty much all of my Stern games except Stranger Things is the only one I don't have it on. I probably am going to put it on. I was like, Stranger Things, you know, it's creepy, gloomy, dark. Yeah, it's a mood. But at the same time, you got the purple flasher, and I'm like, ooh, that might look good with Stranger Things already having the UV kit, too. I do have a question. Have you ever heard of anybody tying that to the UV kit and just having an insanely bright purple between the Stern kit and your kit? Yeah, we've actually even had folks email us and say, hey, can you make us a custom set with some UV on it that also just ties into Stern's UV? Can it just amp up what Stern's UV kit's doing? I'm like, yeah, sure, no problem. And so, yeah, we've done that for folks. Most recently, somebody did that. It wasn't even on a Stranger Things. It was on a Foo Fighters because they were like, hey, I put glow rings all over the place on this Foo Fighters, got lime green plastic protectors. I'd really like you to, instead of, I don't need any play field GI. Can you just deck out the light bars in UVA? And I'm like, yeah, sure, no problem. Here you go. That's awesome. Yeah, and I really like how easy they are to install. Your kits are almost like self-explanatory. You know, you got GI and then you got your trigger for your flasher. And I tend to always go with the shaker motor. I like the shaker motor. Other than on my Ghostbusters, I think I'm using like one of the flashers to like the ghost trap or something. I think you had told me to like use that originally. Yeah, so Stern's kind of interesting, right? Because Stern kind of posts really into the Spike 2 era of games there. They stopped having quote unquote flashers. And like they'll pulse their flashers as regular LEDs and then they'll just, you know, kind of amp them up whenever they need to. So they're using them for both, you know, general kind of play field effects and flasher effects, which, yeah, when you tie our lights to that, it makes your game kind of look like a rave party. It can be a little dumb looking, right? And so, yeah, we started doing those shaker connectors for people because we're like, hey, this seems to be a little bit better balanced that's not so, you know. I feel like it works well with most of the games because, you know, it shakes and then you get a lighting effect to the game shaking. It seems like it's timed well for at least most of my games. And I can't wait to try the new set out. Do you want to explain any of how the new set works? Yeah, sure. I can touch on that. I mean, the new set is a lot of what you're used to, the same thin line kind of pinlights design, but it's got a bunch of colors and effects and different things you can run. You still have your color temperature that you can dial in if you want to, but you can also run all one color. You can do kind of pulsing or strobing effects. You can do rainbow effects. You can have rainbow puke if you so desire. You can absolutely just unicorn piss all over your play field. And I'm fine. I'm here for it. But we're developing more native integrations, like plug-and-play stuff. Like right now we've got Spike 2 and 3 support. We're working on support for native integration with Chicago Gaming and a lot of other JJP systems. Probably JJP, though, is they have like five different systems. I think the only pinball company that has more systems is probably Spooky because for years there, Spooky was like, new board system for every game. And so those will come, but there's a lot more kind of peddling to do on our part. But yeah, it's great. So far, the customer response on that seems to be very positive. They like the product. We're still squashing bugs and refining everything. But yeah, if you want, just check those out and we're here to answer any questions. Have you ever thought about like any other like external lighting on the cabinet, how people are doing like underglow and the back glow on the wall and like tie it all into your whole system? Have you ever thought about maybe dabbling in that or is that something that doesn't really interest you? No, it definitely interests us. We had talked with other folks like Dan Dean over at Penwoofer, and I believe Muzzle Mods also makes under cab lighting tracks or whatnot. And so our deal has been, okay, well, we don't want to recreate that sort of thing, right? So if there's a company out there that's already got badass speakers and badass speaker lights and under cab lighting or whatnot, great. Well, let us drive that for you. Like connect it to our systems because we'll bring the interaction. So to answer your question, yes, it interests me very, very much. But what we're doing instead is like, hey, let's go lift some of those other guys up that are making some really, really cool products and natively integrate it. So sure, you can still go to our website and be like, hey, I want undercab lighting. We'll ship you undercab lighting, but it's probably going to be a pinwoofer system or it's probably going to be something that Muzzle has made, which is fine because we want to support those vendors.
    28:29
    We would much rather integrate rather than reinvent the wheel. One thing I'd kind of like to see is, I don't know if there's even a market for this, but I've definitely ran into it, is, you know, people make homebrew toppers for their games or they'll buy a cheap aftermarket topper and it's got an RGB light that just blinks all the different colors. I always thought it'd be really cool if it could like tie into your system and at least mimic what it's doing on the game on the topper. So you get a little bit better light show than blinking red, blue, green, yellow. Stay tuned. That's what I'll say. I am kind of scared of the underglow. Like I saw Spooky just did a like one of the did you see the circle like woofer speaker light that they just came out with? I use a pinball cart to move games all the time and I feel like, you know, you may run into crushing those. Yeah, it's really a problem because you have to make sure that the lighting track is recessed enough so that the cabinet sidewalls, so that it's recessed underneath. Because there is about just less than a quarter of an inch of clearance between the bottom edge of a cabinet and that spoil board that's on the bottom, that piece of MDF. And, you know, yeah, it's really difficult a lot of times to get a light track that's thin enough for that if you're just using stuff that you buy on Amazon. You know, those extruded light tracks that everybody uses. Yeah, they're going to get crushed. And so on my pinball cart, what I do to also try to avoid that, because I do have under cab lighting on some of my games that is recessed enough.
    30:07
    It's, you know, behind that cabinet wall. Right. Well, so what I do a lot of the times is I'll put two by fours on my pinball cart. So it'll lift it up from the sides of the cabinet instead of pushing up against the MDF on the bottom. And it tends to keep it. But yeah, what a pain.
    30:23
    It's the crap we do. My dumb ass would go and crush it. So I did put some crappy Amazon lighting on the bottom of one of my games. I think it was Back to the Future. It was like right when I first got in the hobby. And then I went and bought me one of them pinball carts and I like instantly destroyed all the lighting. It like shorted out like the lights went crazy. So bad. Oh, that's yeah. Yeah, that's that's just sad. Have you ever worked with any pinball companies using your products or anything Oh yeah So after the Demolition Man thing after I had done the custom Pinball 2000 thing people started kind of taking notice because they were like oh because there weren that many software guys in pinball Certainly at the time, like 2011, 2012, it was really kind of a barren landscape. And so, yeah, I can say the first person to reach out to me would have been John Papaduke. Out of all the people. Right? That was the, you know, but when you're, I don't know, naive and you get a phone call from somebody that has designed your games that you love, right? I grew up playing, well, that Circus Voltaire in the movie theater, the Theater of Magic that I'd plunk quarters into nonstop. Absolutely loved Theater of Magic on location. And, you know, you're kind of awestruck. You're like, oh, my gosh, like this guy. Oh, yeah. I'd flip out, too. And this is probably before all the shit hit the fan. Oh, yeah. No, it was. But it didn't take long to smell. You're like, okay, you know, there's nothing necessarily nefarious here. But, like, what he was offering was, like, you can be a pinball apprentice. That sounds great until you realize that an apprentice doesn't get paid. Yeah, that's kind of exactly what that sounded like. And the requirement was that said Apprentice moved from Athens, Georgia to Chicago. Oh, wow. And I'm like, no.
    32:21
    So that, you know, that didn't pan out, you know, and thankfully we, you know, ran away from that opportunity and then ended up getting a call from Jerry Stellenberg at Multimorphic. And we were using his boards like that demolition man had a P-Rock in it because at the time that was the only way that you could customize rules on a WPC game.
    32:50
    And my background in computer science or my background in college was computer science. So I've always been a software guy. And he was like, hey, you know, we're kind of designing this gnarly P3, you know, like, you know, we're. But back then, he sent a video of the ball rolling on top of a screen, and it had some ball tracking that it could locate in 2D space where the ball was. And he was like, all right, well, we need to tie this into a modern-day game engine. Do you think you could help us? And at the time, I wrote Demolition Man using what they called XNA, which was a development kit for the Xbox. So that was actually what was powering that demolition man was effectively code that was built with that. And so he was like, hey, could you use something similar to achieve what we're trying to achieve here? And so that started my relationship with Multimorphic, which we did a lot of stuff right up through probably 2018, I think was whenever I shipped my last thing for them. And so that was a great relationship. Jerry treated me very, very well. And it was actually what got me to move to Austin, Texas, just so I could kind of be closer to that. I was never a full-time employee of Multimorphic. I was doing all that stuff kind of contract. But that would have been my first corporate gig. And then the next opportunity that came a knocking was a guy named Kevin Kulik from Skip B. He was working on this Predator game. And he's like, have I got an opportunity for you? And, you know, it was, hey, let's let's yeah, we need an operating system because at the time I was also the operating system guy because most people were shipping their games on Windows or whatever. And, you know, their their games are crashing in the field or whatever because they just weren't designed that way. And so I was usually the guy that would kind of bulletproof. I was brought in to to make it go. I was never the guy that made anything fun. I was always the guy that was that was brought in for like the nuts and bolts. So the more judicious approach to vetting out which contracts I signed because I was like, okay, first one was J-pop, then the second one was Jerry, and that one worked out well, and then the third one was Kulik, and okay, well, so we're kind of, our batting average ain't looking too good here. At least you got to work on a really cool title. I don't know if the game's really cool. Yeah, right. The game was interesting. It was the biggest effort on the not stern kind of manufacturer front that had ever been seen at that point, even though the playfield art was just diabolical. But, yeah, and so I had ended up, you know, shipping them an operating system and then like everything blew up at that point. So I never got paid. No, because, you know, then it came out that, you know, Skippy actually doesn't have the license. And then so I was like, all right, well, whatever. And, you know, moved on from that and then got involved with Spooky, which was how me and Scott Denisi started working together on TNA. Oh, very cool. You know, doing that. So I was the operating system guy on TNA, Alice Cooper, Rick and Morty, and then all of us left Spooky. And I've done contract work for Dutch and all those guys since then. But it's been a good time. And Haggis. That was another opportunity. Oh, Lord, you worked with them, too. Did you get paid? I did. I did. I was on the early side of that because at least Haggis had learned, hey, before we can ship games, we do need an operating system. So I was like, I got paid before the first game, I think, even left. Right. But, you know, it just taught me, which I guess if you want to know, like, hey, what put us into the pinball mod business? It was mostly getting tired of shit like that. It was like, all right, you know, this thing could just blow up in everyone's face. And, you know, I don't want to be associated with, you know, with that. And also, I would like my pinball legacy to be something nicer than that fucking Cosmic Carnival game from Suncoast Pinball.
    37:09
    And I still get people to email me about that. Really? Oh, yeah. Because it's like, we have a Suncoast Pinball. And I'm like, you know, does it work? And they're like, yeah. And I'm like, oh, that's rare.
    37:22
    No, that's really interesting. You've worked with all those people. Are you currently working with another company? I know you can't speak about it, but will we see more of you with other companies in the future? You will, and you'll see some stuff that I'm doing myself, right? I'm not opening a pinball company. Nope, not doing that. Not opening a pinball company, not doing pre-orders or anything like that, but you will see some remasters of existing titles that you know and love, And you'll see some new stuff as well. And I am very excited for that because it gives me a chance to scratch my creative itch and and do the pinball stuff kind of more on my schedule and kind of not at the, you know, the whims of the less responsible. And you live in Texas and Texas seems to be like the new Chicago or becoming the new Chicago over time as far as like manufacturing and pinball related companies. Dude, I would have never have pegged any of that happening between barrels and between multimorphic and what they're doing. And, you know, of course, of course, deeper in San Antonio, you know, they're crushing it.
    38:38
    Oh, my God. I forgot about that. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Nice little nice little skid mark off of I-35 down there in San Antonio. And then, oh, well, Titan Pinball is here too. Oh, okay. I didn't know that. Titan Pinball is located up in Dallas. Yeah, so they're up north.
    39:01
    And you got Turner and others. Yeah, Turner down. Yeah, Turner. And okay, I told Chris this and I hope he doesn't, you know, still harbor any feelings about this. So I was like, man, you are a guy that everybody would have just loved to hate because, you know, I was like, all right, you know, my first interaction with, you know, or my first introduction with Turner Interactive obviously was with DeepRate, right? Yeah. But then to see what Turner is building, how he's, you know, kind of risen out of a lot of that, you know, kind of negativity and all that and built something that's, you know, really a remarkable product. I was like, okay, man, my hat's off to you, dude. Like, you've done something really cool here, and every game that you make, like, they play better and better and better, and now my hat's off to them. You know, in Bernie, Texas, right outside of San Antonio. So, yeah, they're right up the street. Yeah, I really want to get one of his games eventually. I'm just waiting for the right one to speak to me. But, man, the bottom of them, like, looking at the bottom side of the play field, I'm like, is this the future of pinball? You know, versus like all the wires. The CGC, man, they kind of started with them, right? Kind of started with, well, yeah, I kind of did. Yeah, with the medieval remakes, they, yeah, it was all that whole one circuit board thing, you know, and then Dutch started doing it. So you're a techie guy. How do you feel about those like massive circuit boards? They kind of scare me if I have an issue 10 years down the road. How do I repair this one massive board versus, you know, something that's just like a more module type type deal? Oh, I definitely feel a certain way about that. The manufacturer wins and the customer definitely loses on that. And manufacturer wins for a number of reasons. One, it's just it's so much more cost effective to manufacture something like that. Your failure rates are a lot lower, but when there is a failure, it becomes catastrophic at that point, right? Surface-mounted stuff, it's hard to work on.
    41:09
    Yeah, it's a pain. It's a real pain, and I've got a hot air station and all that, and I've still grown at the thought of, man, I've done it a few times successfully. And one time a guy's like, can you fix this board for me? I'm like, I will attempt. And if I screw it up, I'm not liable for it. But thank God I was successful and it worked. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the service mount stuff doesn't scare me so much, but it's like everything that's ingrained together. And I'm like, OK, how do I diagnose what this problem is? It's like if one of the communication chips on that board, for example, goes out, that could be an LED. It could be a coil. It could manifest itself in any number of ways. So from the serviceability standpoint, I have problems with it. But, you know, it definitely is an interesting way about which we're going. But then you get into Stern's designs, right? And sure, Stern's got node boards that, yeah, it's a $250 board. You can replace it if you need to. It'll probably only affect one part of the play field because, you know, it is a distributed system. But my problem there is like they put software on there that you can't replicate. Like there's encryption hardware on there and stuff that's like, OK, if something ever does happen to Stern, I mean, you're kind of hosed. Because, you know, remaking those boards is going to be kind of difficult until somebody, you know, reverse engineers enough of it. But yeah, so. I like the NodeBoard 9 and 8 or whatever. At least some of those components aren't surface-mounted, like some transistors and stuff. So it's like you can still somewhat work on those. And like you said, you can work on surface-mounted stuff, but I hear so many people that are already scared to solder. And I'm like, if you're scared to solder, you sure as hell don't need to attempt this. Yeah, I mean, it gets out of control really, really quickly if you end up botching a solder job on one of those. But we'll see how it pans out. I definitely, you know, I appreciate Stern at least making the replaceable components or the, you know, the components you often have to replace. At least they did those surface mount to try to be friendly to people. Right. I see so many people that just chunk their NodeBoard 8.9s and I'm like, it might be one simple thing. You might not want to throw it away yet. Oh, yeah. I mean, like when Kerry got his first pinlights kit, he blew up a cabinet. Did he really? I want to hear this story. Please tell it. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And he was so patient about it. And I was just like, well, this should be an interesting YouTube review of a product. I'm like, great. Yeah, because we hadn't even launched yet. I was like, oh, shit. And I think, honestly, he had gotten one of the connectors messed up because our documentation wasn't clear and all that. But Kerry lives up north of us, and typically we can get things to him in a day if we UPS it. Oh, nice. The next day. Yeah, like it's really quick. So I said, well, Kerry, for this special occasion, I happen to have replacement node boards in stock so that if something happened, I can rush you out one. But would you be willing to send me yours so that I can take a look at it and diagnose what happened? And it turned out all it ended up doing was blowing a regulator or whatever. So I was able to repair it, but I just sent him a new node board. I was like, here, just go ahead and drop this in. And then we updated the documentation. I'm like, don't touch that connector. And then we were fine. But yeah, I was scared shitless whenever that happened. I'm like, great, just tank the company. Haven't even sent the first unit out yet.
    44:52
    Well, you've probably seen some of Kerry's review videos. And if he doesn't like it, he'll let you know. He doesn't sugarcoat it. No, which was really one of the – I think that's why we get along so well and why there's so much respect there. It's like, all right, you're not after just the dirt. Yeah, you're not after any of that. But I did tell him, I said, look, the only thing that I would ask is if we really, really managed to fuck something up, give us the opportunity to correct it first. Right. And then and then you can talk about like, OK, well, here's how they at least unfucked it. Right. Exactly. But you can still give them the full timeline, you know, but. Well, his reviews on pin lights are what originally sold me on them because I was watching his reviews and I'm like, These are really damn cool. And he's usually pretty damn truthful about his, you know, his thoughts on them. So and then, you know, one thing led to another. Now I've got them on all the sterns. Do you get a lot of orders for like older games or is it mostly just more modern stuff?
    45:53
    So it's it's it's an interesting split. And I think a lot of it is just due to math. Like most of the current day orders that we get are all for whatever stern shipping. As soon as Pokemon dropped, it's like, all right, we're getting orders for those.
    46:11
    But during the early days whenever we still had the wide plastic form factor light bars that weren the slim and sleek ones we did get a lot of orders for WPC games or just 80s and 90s kind of games And we even get people asking, hey, should I put these on my EM? And we will tell them, no, it will look like shit. Because one, it's just stupid. It doesn't need it. Yeah, it's like three inches away. There's no vertical clearance. Yeah, it's going to look like you put two fluorescent bulbs just on the sidewalls. It's going to look really stupid. Yeah, it's got to have the deeper back half of the cabinet, how they got steeper and steeper with the glass. Yeah, yeah. But we get a pretty interesting distribution typically. But then when – I think it was when Harry Potter dropped. We started getting orders for Harry Potter. I'm like, okay, you do not need to put ten lights on that game. I would tell people, I'm like, okay, that thing's already got lights everywhere. And it's one of the better lit games that I've seen, certainly compared to Wizard of Oz. We sold a lot for Wizard of Oz.
    47:27
    But it's an interesting distribution. But for the most part, yeah, I guess what we're seeing most is whatever Stern tends to be shipping. Have you ever had a bar reach out and say, hey, I want to put pin lights on every single one of my games? Yep, yep. And we would offer them very handsome quantity discounts for that. And we would say, hey, if you're running an establishment where you've got cameras above the playfields and you've got TVs and stuff and you want people to be able to see that, let us send you some lights. We'll give you a hell of a deal.
    48:04
    And oh, yeah, I mean, we've got people that will buy 20 or 30 sets. Okay. Yeah. For streaming or cameras, like, yeah, I've had streamers come over and they're like, what lights are these on the game? They're like, these would be perfect. And I'm like, pin lights.
    48:19
    That's it. We try to give the streamers and the people who are really sensitive to it the ability to get some reliable color ratings and stuff like that, which pin lights out of the box do not do that. They are really purple whenever you take them out of the box, and that's honestly just due to a bug that I had made that I never went back and changed the default because we noticed this. Like I set the value too high whenever I set the default settings when we shipped our first units. I backed it down at one point, but then I'd get all these support requests and be like, hey, the purple's not working. I'm like, well, no, we just backed it off. Like you can still – so then I was like, I got to put it back in.
    49:05
    I've got one older guy that, you know, has came to my tournaments and he saw them and he got, you know, I've got to have these and he bought them for all his games. And he does like that he doesn't have to actually connect to the app to make them work because he is not tech savvy. He's never going to download the app, unfortunately, but he does like that they just work out of the box.
    49:27
    We have one guy that doesn't even own a phone. Oh, my God. And he was like, hey, look, I don't want to fool with an app or do whatever. I said, that's fine. Okay. But he's like, however, I do want to adjust these. And I'm like, well, that's a really difficult task.
    49:45
    Well, the pin lights have one button on them. Yeah. They have one button. It's the nuke button that will, you know, reset the settings on it. But I was like, all right, I can make you a custom little version that if you don't long hold the nuke, like it'll adjust the brightness and the color temperature. And you can just basically page through, you know, 10 presets or whatever, like your car stereo or whatever. I'm like, yeah, you just keep tapping it. So you get the color you like.
    50:14
    And yeah, so we get all sorts of just interesting asks, and many of them do materialize into some interesting product development. But, you know, the biggest part about this isn't even the, you know, anything financial or whatnot. It's the biggest win here has been, and this sounds so stupid. I realize this really sounds fucking stupid, but it's... The people that you get to meet, man, because honestly, if I go to a pinball party or whatever and like.
    50:50
    It's such an easy icebreaker now because, you know, they'll be like, oh, what do you do? And I'm like, oh, I make stupid little LEDs for pinball machines or whatever.
    50:59
    It's it's it's an icebreaker and it's it's introduced me to some really cool people because when. You know, whenever I'm kind of an introvert, like if I go to a party and I don't know a ton of people, I'm usually going to start kind of heading for the door or whatnot. And that has taken a lot of the legwork off of me because it's like if I just show up wearing a shirt, a lot of times it's enough to like meet somebody new, which has really been cool. Back to our earlier point where I go to these pinball shows to talk and pal around with friends. And I think we went to pinball at the beach last year. And I mean, I was probably in the game room for an hour and the rest of the three days were spent, you know, on the beach, just chit chat with people. That's awesome. I got to make it a pinball at the beach. I usually only go to like that backs up to like TPF really closely and I can only do one of the others. So maybe next year I'll go to pinball at the beach and miss TPF. Maybe I'll switch back and forth. I don't know. It's a different ambiance. Like Pinball at the Beach is a little higher brow in terms of like, you know, they limit the ticket sales. It tends to be a lot more emphasis on the resort. It's not a manufacturer type, you know, show. You know, you don't even have booths, really. It's the only booths that are there are people that brought games like Spooky or whatever. So it's definitely a different show. But I mean, we're definitely going to go back. We had a blast. It's a pinball show that you could bring your significant other who is in no way into pinball. We're going to a resort. Exactly. Like you can bait them with that. And honestly, my my wife, she was like, hey, we are absolutely going back to this thing. We had a great time. And she was even sick. She was actually confined to the room for most of the time. But she was like, hey, the view was still awesome. And like, let's go back because I know when I'm better, I'll be you know, I'll be able to really enjoy it. So I yeah, I, you know, show Marshall and Ed some love, you know, try to get down there if you can. I mean, we'll be down there having a great time. I mean, it's a good show. It really appeals to me just because I can drive there and not have to get a plane ticket. I mean, it's a long drive, but, you know, I think it's like five hours for me. It's definitely drivable. It's a boring drive, too. I'll just listen to a bunch of pinball podcasts like I usually do when I drive. Oh, yeah, that should get you, what, at least two episodes of a podcast, typically. A lot of the pinball podcasts, they run about two and a half or three hours sometimes. I like the long ones because I'm like, dude, that was too short. I have a four-hour drive today. I need some material.
    53:49
    That's how my wife would start knowing who people were in the pinball industry because whenever I'd drive from Athens to Savannah, for instance, I'd put on some of Clay Harrell's old TopCast pinball episodes, which were typically interviews with all the designers and stuff. Yeah, those were two-hour-long shows, four hours if you get Gomez talking. It was great. It was a good time. And yeah, I popped those on, big pinball podcast listener. And I was kind of sad after the pandemic had set in because I lost all my commute time. That was my podcast listening time. To go back to the shows for a second, have you ever done any pinball shows or anything as far as doing a booth? Oh, yeah. So we'll sponsor a lot of different shows to try to support the showrunners. And we know those venue costs and it's expensive to run a show. And so we'll try to sponsor a bunch of shows. But the ones that we typically will do, the only one that we'll do a booth in is typically TPF just because it's so close. We won't do the Houston show primarily because we go to Houston to party and that's the party show.
    55:05
    And if we're in party mode, you don't want us selling you anything. You don't want us to run at a booth. That just seems like work. I like to do booths just because I want the pass that comes along with the booth usually. So I'll do a booth. I used to sell stuff and all that, and I've kind of got away from that where now I'm like, I'd just get a booth and put a few games in it. Oh, yeah. And a booth is great, if only just to have the place to sit. Yes. And store items and stuff like that. Yep. I agree. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, that was what we decided to do with the Titan Pinball booth this past year is we just turned it into a massive green room. Yep. I saw that. Yeah. Because me and Eric were talking like, you know, hey, what are you doing with your booth? And I'm like, well, I'm going to have I'm just going to stuff mine with games. Right. And he's like, great, you can come hang out in our booth. And he put fake turf grass down and put a trash can in there with a fake trash can fire. He just basically was like, all right, we're just going to make this a green room and we'll have merch and stuff there. And so I definitely like the fun booths and Marco's booths at TPF, man. That's a party and a half back there. Oh, for sure. They got a fucking campus back there, man. Yeah, they kind of they screwed up my booth at TPF because they came around telling they probably told you at one point that they're like, well, you got to take the tops off your canopies. They're like the fire or the fire system or whatever can't work. Yeah, a fire marshal had started coming around and, you know, I was. All right, I'm going to get ourselves into trouble. What we started doing is, well, we said, all right, well, we have a fire extinguisher in our booth. So, you know, we believe that local code or whatever, like we still have the capability to put out any fires. We don't have to worry about this. This is a fire rated, you know, tent here. So it's not going to burst into flames. But their grievance was that, you know, the sprinklers or whatever. So we're like, all right, well, we got a fire extinguisher here. Well, the problem is, is between three booths, we only had one fire extinguisher. Yeah. So what we would do is when the fire marshal was going around, we'd just move the fire extinguisher. Oh, the organizer really fucked up when I was eating lunch and I was kind of pissed off about the whole thing. It didn't even matter. My whole booth was just two Beetlejuice games, you know. Yeah. But he sat down right beside me and I was like, all right, so what's the deal with this whole booth thing of not having the roofs on? And he's like, oh, shit. Yeah, I remember. And I know that he was just walking around like in a sweat and all that type of stuff. And because, you know, we were like, hey, you know, this has never been a problem. Yeah, that was like, what the where did this come from? It was a yeah, it was a yeah, it was what a pain. So the rest of the event, we never put the roof back on it. We're like, to hell with it. We're like, we just left it off. But dude, how about somebody went in our booth and peeled off one of the head stickers on the Bedelejuice game and like Luke and Pug are like boxing games up and they're like, where's the decal?
    58:21
    Like, what are you going to do with that? Like a wrinkled up sticker of Bedelejuice? Like, oh, yeah.
    58:29
    Yeah, I know. Like, there's always there's always one asshole, man. And that's the real unfortunate part. You know, yeah, we do put, you know, cameras in our booths and stuff like that. But thankfully, everybody that we tend to interact with is, you know, respectful and they do respect the games and all that. But, yeah, every once in a while you got someone there that's just determined to fuck it up for everybody. That was the first time I've ever had an issue at any show. And I mean, it was an issue, but it wasn't the end of the world. You know, they put a new decal on it, but still a headache. And why? It's like just call if you want to decal that bad, they will probably sell you one for like 10 or 20 bucks. Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's yeah. No, like do what we do. They would have gave them one for free if you wouldn't have fucked with the pinball machine.
    59:17
    And also like just do what we used to do in the 80s and 90s. Like just go out and steal road signs. Dude, I've got a funny short story. So when I was a kid, I used to have street signs all in my room. And some kid in the neighborhood had gotten in trouble for I can't even remember what it was, but he got in trouble. And the cops showed up to my parents' house and they walk into my room. That's got fucking street signs all over the walls. Thank God they were only concerned with the kid. He left with them, whatever. I don't know what happened. It wasn't it wasn't anything to do with street signs, but the guy's just kind of looking around my room like, what the fuck?
    59:55
    Yeah, it was part of it. That's what I used to do. So, yeah, see kids stay in school, steal straight signs, don't fuck with pinball machines, okay? Just don't steal the stop signs. Yeah, try not to do that, but yield signs, yeah, whatever.
    60:10
    All right, Jimmy, well, yeah, it's been fun having you on the show. Is there anything else you wanted to touch on? We're at about an hour, so you want to cut it here or keep going, buddy? No, I think I'm good. You know, I really appreciate you having me on and getting really capturing the human side, you know, what we go to these shows for and, you know, hearing people's pinball stories. It's always a good time. That's what we end up swapping when we're at shows and stuff. So I appreciate you, you know, being able to give us all a taste of that, you know, even just in podcast form. Yeah, man, it's been fun. And tell everybody how to get a hold of you and where to find your pin lights. Sure. You can go to pinlights.net. You can hit me up at Jimmy at pinlights.net or Compie on Pinside. Either one of those, just reach out. Love to talk shop or whatever. Awesome. Well, I'll see you next time, Jimmy. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks so much.
    61:20
    Outro Music