Hey, what's going on Pinball Land? Welcome, it's episode 5, that's 05, Flip N Out Pinball Podcast. My name's Ken Cromwell, with me as always, the man with the master plan, Mr. Greg Bone. What's up, Greg? What's going on, everybody? What's going on with you? What's happening? What's happening in Greg Bone Land? Man, you know, just doing better than what I should be. Just living your life over there. It's all we can do. I was sitting around the other day. I was doing laundry. I do laundry at the end of the week, right? And it's like one of my little household chores. And I was upset because I only had one pair of socks that came through the laundry. And I'm trying to figure out, like, what happened? Where are all my socks? And then it dawned on me, man. It's like since I've been working from home, I literally wore one pair of socks one time last week. and that's the only socks that came through the laundry so life is good oh man i know what you mean i used to be such a dapper dresser and now my entire wardrobe consists of v-neck t-shirts gym shorts and hoodies yeah yeah i'm literally in the recording studio it's a little chilly right now but i got i got a hoodie on i've got my adidas gym shorts and i've got i think some some type of a croc probably knockoff that i'm wearing right now and just kind of kind of chilling out but uh yeah so we're getting episode five rocking and rolling i wanted to take we both wanted to take a second because the patreon's been hot uh we've got a couple new patreon members we've got dual exhaustion who comes in uh at tier one dce who came in at tier two and the big dog tony v tier three patreon sub we appreciate it guys that's awesome big it's big tony v thank you tony i was uh messaging some of these guys uh this weekend just thanking them for their patronage if that's even a uh an appropriate use of the term if it's not a appropriate word we're making an appropriate word we'll do what we need to do and i was like look guys i'm like you guys are ground floor you guys are og so when we all look back at this in a couple years and uh it's the massive the massive combination of people that it uh that i hope it will be like you guys are ground floor so we we appreciate it and if you're looking to yeah if you're looking to come and help support the show from a Patreon standpoint, go to patreon.com slash Flip N Out Pinball Podcast. We've got, I guess, really the cool benefit there is kind of the behind-the-scenes stuff, but you can kind of check that out. What else do we have on the docket? What else is going on? Well, so I kind of ran my mouth a few episodes ago. Was that just the last episode? Yeah, I believe it was the last episode. It was that you enjoy fixing them more than playing them was the debate. I do. And just right after that, you know, I said that I'd been on kind of the hunt for a kind of a nice project game. And one kind of fell into my lap. Zach had gotten this Tales from the Crypt in and I was like, you know what? That is exactly what I'm looking for. And so I went down, I picked that up from him. And, you know, it's not bad. It's not it's not real bad, you know, which most games I don't because I want them in, you know, especially cabinet and stuff in a semi, you know, pretty good state. So it's just going to require, you know, a real good heavy shop job. You know, mechanically, everything is functioning good. So that's always a plus. Replace a few targets, that sort of thing. And see, dude, here's the problem. Here's where I go down like a bad rabbit hole is I don't even know how long I'll keep this game. I don't have a lot of time on it because every one of them that I've ever messed with, they're just blown out on location. They play horribly, everything else. So I've only gotten, I was at, I was at Expo one year and there was a really nice, good playing one there. And that's the only real time I had on one. But, so I don't know if I'm going to keep it, but my problem is, is I know I'm going to have it for a while, for at least a month or so. I can't bring anything into my house that I'm not happy with. So then I just start doing dumb shit that I shouldn't do for a game that's in its condition. Like, so I'm ordering these eyeball targets that there's, you know, on each side, there's these eyeball uh half you know half orb half sphere shaped uh targets and they're like look like eyeballs and so they're not that bad but some of the paint's worn off of them and so i'm ordering like 15 targets i'm ordering like 90 in target in targets that nobody's gonna care nobody's even gonna fucking really notice it and oh but you're you're gonna notice it and that's that's the most important thing at the end of the day you want to make sure you saw the whole project through you didn't kind of go at it you know half-assed so to speak well and it's still i mean because you there's still things, you know, I'm not, I'm not cleaning, you know, I'm not going to even, you know, a half restore, you know, I'm not doing any of the harnesses and cleaning those, you know, I might replace, you know, I find a couple of coils that are a little sluggish or something, you know, I might change the coil sleeves, but like, I'm not going all deep, but cosmetically, like when I start digging into these games, like there's just things I just can't let go. So, you know, all new rubbers going on it. They had the, so here's something too, to kind of throw in and not to stay on this topic too long but um with anything but this is something that most people probably gonna disagree with me about is this had the glow rubbers on there you know for the the uv light because there's some uv reactant paint in this game and so somebody did the glow rubbers on there and i'm going all back to black like i'm not a silicone fan like i cannot i don't like the way it plays at all what is it is it too great is it too grabby for you or too bouncy It's almost too bouncy. You just get the ball. It's just less control. And I feel like, especially in the lower half of a game, it's just, I don't know. It just doesn't feel natural. I never liked silicone. And there's games I'll buy. I had a real nice shadow, and I put all clear silicone on it and said, look, gorgeous. And it played fine. But some games, I don't know. I don't like it. And I definitely will never do silicone flipper rubbers. like i'm always even if the rest of the game has silicone in it my flipper rubbers are 100 regular rubber on there wow i i almost prefer the silicone i kind of like that it's a little more uh yeah for some reason i feel like i don't know why i feel like i have better ball control with the silicone see and that's a lot of people like zach zach loves it yeah yeah yeah i do too so like yeah i know i know i'm kind of weird one out on that so you know all new rubbers on there i'll polish the shit out of it this is my first time and and again kind of reason i'm explaining a lot to you guys Basically, if you haven't already seen on our Facebook, what we're going to do on our socials is we're going to go in and end us over the next week or two because it won't take me terribly long with this game. Just kind of you can follow along with what I'm doing if it interests you. Kind of see the different things I'm cleaning up, replacing on this. I'm replacing side rails, a lot of small, stupid things, like I said, that won't matter to most people, but it matters to me. I'll do a little bit of cab touch-up on the game and so forth. but you know follow us on there to take a look at you know everything that i'm doing on there and this is my first time i've used a tumbler i've never i've never broke down oh yeah that's cool yeah i polished everything you're gonna start throwing random you're gonna start throwing random things into the tumbler and just see how they come out it's like an instant restoration machine oh you know it's it's it's pretty remarkable it is and that's what like i've just i've just i've gone through enough games now where it's like okay i can justify buying one even though it's not very expensive, but I can justify it. I'm tired of polishing post by hand and shit. Like it's just grueling to do and just takes so much time. So it's like, okay, I'm hoping this Tumblr really cut down on stuff. The only thing that I'm concerned about is when I tear a game down, I will put everything in separate baggies or I will take and I'll spread out, you know, a moving blanket and I'll do, you know, in certain sections, Like this screws went with this plastic and I'll polish and clean that plastic and I'll polish all the hardware with that and lay it all beside each other so I know where it goes. Well, with the tumbler, just because, you know, you're letting shit sit in there for six hours or so to tumble, I don't have that luxury. So like I'm just throwing bottom half in, top half in and hope that I can put it all back together. It's going to be cool. We actually nice job on the social media graphic too that came across and I was like, Greg, this is pretty incredible. It kind of reminded me of an old-school pinball flyer to a certain extent. I liked how that looked. But we had a Patreon member, Pats Arcade, who also posted on Patreon and said, Beautiful, I'm also in the middle of restoring a Tales from the Crypt. Just installed a color DMD and a pin sound plus. Need to redo the cab next and go over the entire play field. So you guys are like Eskimo brothers as it pertains to the Tales from the Crypt. Well, hell yeah, but it sounds like he's going a little more in-depth. Like, I'm wondering, like, it sounds like he's going to go full-on restore, whereas mine, I'm just slight refurbish. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, I'm excited. You ought to post, you're out there listening to this. Make sure to post some pictures along with mine. Post in the comments. I want to see your progression of your game, too. It's pretty awesome. How much time are you giving yourself to kind of see this through, or is this just something you're doing on the side and it takes as long as it takes? It all depends on Carl Weathers. So my garage, while I have my Mr. Buddy heater that I can use during the winter, I have no air conditioner out there. And, you know, like most of the country right now, we're setting at about 80% humidity plus and about 96 degrees. So I get maybe 30 minutes to an hour in the morning to work on stuff super early, about 530 or so to work on it. So it's just going to kind of depend when the Carl Weathers breaks and how much time I can get out there and put into it. Well, that's good. I mean, I'm looking forward to seeing the progress, and I know that you do a good job on everything that you put your efforts into. So, you know, hopefully we get to see that before the end of the year. It'll be about two weeks, I think. It'll take me about two weeks. Is it two weeks? Is that what you're thinking, about two weeks? Yeah, probably. Usually most of my games that I'll do like this, you know, I'll have about, you know, probably anywhere between 12 to 20 hours into it. So it's probably about right, about two weeks. So will you flip it then and then just turn the cash into something else? No, I'll keep it. It's all about keeping it. Like, only one or two games, I had a Star Trek 25th anniversary, Data East, that I flipped, that I'd gotten. That was my last project I did. It was home use only. It came out of a basement. But, I mean, when I say it was home use only, it was one of those things. You know how, like, when we talk, like, you know, Shooter Lane, the game itself, look at the condition. Play numbers don't matter so much. Look at the condition of the game. So when I say Hellmuse only, these people had never cleaned this game. They had never done anything with it. Like the rubbers were, I mean, it had just sat forever. Never new balls put into it, any of that stuff. So when I say Hellmuse only, it was not a clean game. So, you know, I tore all that down. There was a little scoop where that was my first time doing some play field touch up and did a little clear coat over that. Turned out good. But the rest of the game, dude, it actually turned out phenomenal. Once I cleaned that play field, it wouldn't scratch up, it wasn't dulled, anything like that. So that was one, but I just didn't have any interest in keeping it. That game, while it's fun, it's kind of shallow. So I flipped it, and a giant Star Wars collector up near Indianapolis came down and bought it. Him and his son came down, or Star Trek, sorry, I said Star Wars. A Star Trek collector came down and bought it and stuff, and he was super ecstatic with it. But, no, most of my games, dude, I do this because, like I said, like I want to play them, but I'm so anal and weird about what's in my house. Like I can't look dirty. I can't see any wax behind a post underneath plastics. I can't see any dust. There's always wax behind the post. That carnauba wax stuck behind there. And it's cool, too, because it's always nice when you get a game that's a little bit of a fixer-upper and you get to the point where you kind of maybe you do a topside teardown where everything comes off the playfield on the topside, and then you start kind of giving it a cleaning, and it looks dull and all kind of not blown out, but you know how it just looks dirty. And a lot of that stuff, it's like the dirt preserves this pristine playfield underneath, and you wipe it off and it's clean, and you're so happy, especially playfields that have a lot of white. and I go back to Baywatch because I've done a couple of them where you're doing the wave areas and you're like, wow, it's cleaned up amazingly. It's such a nice little surprise. I've had a couple Twilight Zones that I was lukewarm about playfield-wise but after cleaning them, they were some of the nicest playfields I'd ever seen on a Twilight Zone. It's amazing, honestly, about what you can do with a game. You know what? Star Trek was my second to last. My last one was Stargate and that Stargate had full Mylar all over it. A lot of those had factory Mylar. It was a full play-filled Mylar on there. And I was really nervous about it, but then I saw somebody that used Plastic X, like, for your headlights and stuff. And so I put some head on there, dude, and I put a buffer on that damn thing. And, I mean, because you can eat into it. It's a little different than clear coat. And I just went to town on that thing, dude, and it cleaned up so nice. Like, I could not believe it took out all the haze. and that play felt, I mean, it was dirty, everything was nasty, but man was I, I mean, it's gorgeous looking for, for, for what it is. Wait, so were you, were you polishing the Mylar or did you remove the Mylar? No, no, no, no. There's no way I was going to remove that Mylar because first of all, it's a pain in the ass and it's a nasty project to get that adhesive and stuff off of there. And you take risk on an old game like that of peeling up, you know, some insert, you know, print and stuff on there. So no, it's just the Mylar. You're polishing the Mylar like that. Mylar. That's crazy. Yeah. buff out to a you know a pretty decent shine that's what i couldn't wrap my head around i'd never thought about kind of touching up the mylar but um listen before we get into the topic at hand today i also wanted to follow up with you on something else that you teased back in episode one and that is your wonderful world of magic and magic tricks you've had quite quite a few people that are like hey where's the videos of greg's magic tricks and i'm like i i don't know it's like they disappeared and he made them disappear that was the magic within itself if you got it got a trick or two, I think it'd go a long way with the listeners. Okay, you remind me this weekend. I'm serious. Remind me this weekend, and I will record a trick for our listeners. All right, we'll do it. So Greg, we posted on social media last week the question that we're going to discuss a little bit today. It's a little bit of a snow, snow, it's a little bit of a slow news week, so we'll have some fun. The question that we proposed to the general pinball public was this. What's missing in modern pinball? I'm kind of surprised, slightly disappointed with some of the feedback because some of it I just, when I think about pinball as a whole, it's like I feel like pinball should already be there, but we'll see what you guys think. And overall, because I know you had a chance to kind of look at these topics and look at the answers and whatnot. Was there anything on that list that you had thought of or anything on that list that you hadn't thought of over time. Yeah, yeah. There is one of them in particular that I can't wait to talk about. Because it, to me, is what pinball really needs. And they kind of had touched on it at one point, but I think it leaves a lot of room to do a lot of cool shit. I don't know, engineering-wise, how much you can fit into a game and what you can do, but I think that it needs to be the next evolution of pinball. I think it's where this step needs to go. I love the tease. You've got me interested, too, because there's one or two that I thought I would absolutely have assumed we would have worked it into pinball already. But in my eyes, it's kind of the next wave of modern progression, so to speak. So, all right, what's missing in modern pinball? How about this one? Auto-leveling. So the game levels itself to the appropriate pitch and then levels left and right. Well, I think that that would be absolutely outstanding. Yeah. I think that would be a very difficult and expensive thing to add in. A little expensive? A little bit of a bill of materials hit on adding some actuation that auto-levels? Yeah, I'm not really certain whether. I don't know how well that that would fly. It would be great. Again, it would be amazing, amazing to have happen. Right. That would be amazing. You know what you could do, though? I mean, because you can get an app on your phone, like the Leveler. I think it's like Pin Leveler or something on Android or Apple. if you just had some type of device that was in the machine that could then show you on the lcd screen what pitch you were at and if the game was level left or right i mean that probably seems like it could be doable you could even have audio cues where if you're under the machine and you're kind of moving the uh the levelers the feet where it's saying you know increase left increase right i mean that would be kind of cool and i think is maybe doable yeah no i could see that like yeah i mean if you had something that tied in and ran up the legs that almost had like a strong servo type thing in there that would do it i mean i don't know it's doable i guess it i don't know it's doable it's like i think it's expensive i think it would be i mean that's something to lift that amount of weight and to stay set you know what i'm saying that you're not going to damage because of shifting and smacking the game around and nudging the game like yeah no i i agree with you i agree with you it's great in concept but i don't know how practical it is for uh modern pinball doesn't necessarily correlate to like super expensive pinball, but again, just kind of the natural progression. Built-in payment system for operators. Now, this came in from our buddy, Trace, and I got to be honest with you. Trace is a great guy, brilliant guy, one of my closest buddies. I could not grasp exactly what he was going for in there, but I think it was something to the effect where credits were being prepaid and then the user of those credits could use those to extend gameplay by purchasing extra balls or kind of like a continuing system if you were going to be putting quarters into an arcade to continue, like on a four-player Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or something like that, where you could keep putting quarters on to continue. but then the operator, because it's digital, would get his cut on the bonus credits that were purchased, but then potentially the manufacturer who offered the bonus credits, because it's digital, would get like a coin split. And truth be told, I think I was a couple bourbons in when I was reading it, and I had to read it a couple times. I went back in the next morning, and again, love you, Trace, went back in the next morning, I read it again, And I still, I don't know, it was beyond my full comprehension. But I think that's where he was going with it. It's just so convoluted. And so that could be, if you have to put that much thought into it. Well, I mean, there was an extra ball button on these games for a little bit. Yes. Back in the Valley Williams day. Joseph Ripp has an extra ball button, speaking of that. Oh, yeah. There you go. There you go. So, I mean, that kind of went away, I guess. Which is surprising because the code is way deeper now than it ever has been. Even on location, right? You go play a game. Like if you're going to go and say you go in and you play Stern Godzilla, you're most likely not going to go in there and casually blow that game up and hit the wizard mode. So I could see where you could buy an extended credit or two or three. But then does that nullify high scores? Yes. Like how do you know? I mean, is it going to pop up on the screen then that this was an eight ball high score? Or did you do it in three balls? You know, that kind of gets high scores very muddled. I mean, I like the idea because, like you said, the continuation of the game, because, you know, at home you can put on a five-ball plus game on there if you wanted to. So, you know, having that on location, I could see where there would be benefit to it. So, like you said, you've got more of a chance of hitting a wizard mode and seeing some things you haven't seen. But then, like I said, I don't know. It just kind of kills the high scores on location type thing. I think you could easily kind of fix that with just having a dedicated leaderboard just for your standard three-ball play plus any extra balls you earn during gameplay. And then anything else that had extra credits, it's just there is no leaderboard for that. It just is what it is. The only thing I could see being an issue would be, I mean, for me personally, if I kept buying extra balls and I just blew through a game, I don't know that I'd really – we were talking about this the other week. Once you kind of conquer a game, you don't really want to go down and play it again right away. You take some time off. So maybe you would limit the ability of maybe you could buy up to two extra balls or something. But it's interesting. I think that's the problem that a lot of people have with, like, modern arcades in their homes or anything. You know, you've got these games, and if you've got them on free play where back in the day or if you're putting a dollar in or you had quarters back in our day, you run out of money before you beat a game like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or something, you know, a huge four-player game. You know, and playing it on location, you weren't going to probably beat that game because you run out of quarters, you just didn't have enough money as a kid, and you have that in your home and you can just keep hitting, you know, continue, credit, credit, credit, you beat that game in like 45 minutes. It's almost inevitable that you're not going to beat it. Yeah. Yeah, so I've got a Jurassic Park shooter. Like I've got the big set down Raw Thrills Jurassic Park shooter in my basement. And the entire family, we only limit ourselves to two credits on there. That way it keeps it interesting. So you can only continue a game twice. That's it. And that should be in the settings. That would be, you know. I think so too. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And you're exactly right. That's why you're not seeing a lot of, you know, we're talking about modern-day pinball. You're not seeing modern-day arcades in the home. And it's because those games are still largely just being produced for location. And if you want to pay to blow through a game in 45 minutes, you can do that. But in the home, there's not really repeatability for gameplay there. And with the exception of a couple games and ones that come to mind like Golden Tee that just has constant updates and there's an extensive competition system built in, Big Buck Hunter, there's so many games. There's, I don't know, hours and hours and hours in Big Buck Hunter. But, you know, anything else, I don't know that – and if I'm missing something, you know, reach out to the show and let us know. I still think you can still play those. I think it's fine because you can chase a high score. You know what I'm saying? I hate chasing high scores. I'm not a big fan of it either. I like a challenge. I like that game to end. And again, I think that if people adopted that mindset going into it, I think there is still a place for these arcades. And like I said, because Zach kind of makes fun of me every day. He's like, why haven't you sold that Jurassic Park yet, man? And I'm like, because I love it. I was like, first of all, because it doesn't get old to me because of the way we play it. So it doesn't get boring. And I said, dude, it's just a staple. Like all of my pins, as beautiful as what they are, The number one thing that people come down if they come over and go to first, that drive-thru. It's a staple piece. It's a conversation piece that is awesome. Like they go sit down because anybody can do it. Anybody can shoot a gun and shoot at dinosaurs or, you know, if you've got a cruising blast or anything else, like you can sit down and drive and race your friends. Not everybody is good at pinball. You know, so those things still, to me, still have a great place in the home environment. It's just I don't think people give them a chance because of that exact scenario that we talked about. It'd be great if there was more of a homeowner approach to modern-day arcades. And I think that's why you see multi-game arcades so popular because even those individual – you might have a game that has 10,000 games on it, right? You're probably only going to play like eight or ten of them. And even those, because they're dated and they were intended to let you play for 10 or 15 minutes, even those games are – you're not going back. You're not sitting down with a six-pack of beer and playing Donkey Kong for three hours. It just isn't happening. At least I'm not. And I love Donkey Kong. Don't get me wrong, but it's just one of those things. See, I almost kind of disagree with you on some of that. I mean, they do get kind of old because those games are so tough. But those, you know, 80s games, 70s, 80s games, those, you know, you got Frogger and, you know, like you said, Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, all that stuff. To me, those don't get as old as the 90s games that we really grew up with because those games were so damn tough that you're making it through a couple levels if you're lucky. So I think the problem with those are you kind of give up. You're like, shit, okay, I've played the same two levels 18 times. Well, that's the thing. It just gets boring. And that's why you need 10,000 games because you're going to cycle through them every five minutes. You just get pissed. If you're not progressing, you're just mad. Right. or there is no progression it's like this is the same like ms pac-man or something all right same same a's different color these ghosts are kicking ass yeah their patterns are a little different i'm not smart enough to pick up on that i don't really care that's exactly right it's like i don't even know whatever happens oh shit uh all right well here's an interesting one um and this this one was was on my list also and it's head-to-head online play and that's essentially being able to hook up with somebody that's not in your home or not in your location and be able to challenge them live or be able to post the score and ask them to compete against the score and and that portion of it has uh come to fruition in different platforms but you don't see head to head you don't see you don't see it yet no and live to me i i don't know what the holdup is on that i i do think that that's a very realistic thing and i think it is something that we will see uh i would assume shortly, especially from someone like Stern with such a broad, you know, with that Insider Connected platform is marvelous is what that is. I think that they're the first ones to really have that opportunity to do that. So I would expect to see that. And I do think it'd be fun, man. Like, I'd love to play, you know, if we had the same game that you and I could battle it out. I just don't, I just don't know what it looks like. Because what's the difference? Because me and Zach had done that. We did it early on where we would like, okay, we're battling it out for a week, two weeks. uh on this game we both got the same game who can get the highest score you know what i'm saying so what's the difference of actually having an online you know what i'm saying or are you going to split are you going to have a camera now implemented you know like jjp does to where now i can watch you while you're playing um so we're playing at the same time that's that's where it has to go and this is for the live interaction in my opinion for head-to-head play because i If you can call up your buddy and be like, hey, you want to jump on Evil Dead? Yeah. Okay. And it's like, you've got a couple hours to kill. It's Friday night. I'm at home. You're at home. Let's get some beers. You've got a camera. And you need two cameras, in my opinion. You need one on the play field. You need one on the player. And then you need microphone integration, right? Agreed. So you need to be able to chat. You need to be able to see a live ball in play while it's not your turn. And you need to be able to see your buddy's reaction. You know, your friend or family member, that's where you get that that kind of connection. I think largely the concern is going to be, I mean, how often is that really going to apply? How often are two people going to have the same machine, have the same time where they're going to link up and play? And for how long is that fun? I mean, well, if say there's 3000 games sold, how many people would actually utilize that? I don't I don't know. Well, I'm kind of mixed on that too, but I think you would just have to run it like Xbox or PlayStation online formats to where you can get on and it will randomly connect you with another player. Oh, that would be interesting. Sounds risky. I would think so. Tapping into somebody's camera. It's like, hey, what's going on there? Then does it get really weird if you've got cameras on, you know what I'm saying? Because everything else is just voice. Or maybe you do just talk to them and it just displays. So you've got to think about that too. This is the problem that when you really get seriously into it, even though I just ran my mouth and said, oh, I think we're going to see this. I think we're going to see some form of co-op. Or not co-op on there, but online head-to-head. Head-to-head. On there. But, you know, you've only got so much room on an LCD monitor. So where are you going to put their face? Where are you going to put their play field on there? Now you've kind of screwed up the formatting and all of the animations and everything that are on your – for that particular game on that LCD anyways. So where are you going to put that stuff? Where are you going to put a mic? Well, I mean all these games – yeah, they all have 16.9 monitors. Yes. I would just – and again, this is something I wanted to tie in later, and I'll go more into the weeds about it when we get there. But I would just set it up like a generic stream template, kind of what you're used to. You know, if you're tuning in the Joel and Jared, you're watching the stream. I mean, you're essentially just watching somebody stream, but it's out of their house. And streaming is something that I think is important for the manufacturers to start paying a little bit more attention to as far as ease. And again, we'll talk about that later. But I mean, it would be pretty decent, I think. Again, I just don't know how many people would actually if the juice is worth the squeeze, all the programming. and the UI and the technical issues because now you're talking about a whole other line of troubleshooting. I can't connect with my friend. What's up with his Wi-Fi? I could see it being a headache, but it would be pretty cool. Yeah, because from a tech support side, it would be a headache because somebody's like, my mic's not loud enough. What's going on? It's going to be. And even though I said that you run it something like a platform like Xbox or PlayStation, at the same time, I'm fine with waiting to connect to a friend. If I go down and play pinball or something like that, Like, I don't want to stand around for two minutes or three minutes waiting for it to connect with me, you know, to play somebody. And then what if their game, they're a really good player and they play forever. And then I not that good and I don't play like then my ball just ends and then I just stand around and wait for them. Or do I just disconnect? Now they're playing against nobody. They already knew they beat me. There's a lot like when you really start to get deep into it, it's like, oh, I don't know. well it would be cool if i could just and maybe this doesn't make any sense but let's say uh let's say i want i want to play you right yeah you got harry potter i got harry potter you're going to be home later i'm hanging out on lunch in the afternoon i play and record my game and then challenge you and then you accept my challenge you play ball one and at the end of ball one it plays my ball one on your screen and you could kind of see what i did on ball one then you play ball two then i played i mean that would be kind of neat almost like um yeah i I think that that could be neat to where you're just picking up challenges to where that you're playing people, but it's not real time. You just go into Insider Connected and you pick up like a head-to-head that, you know, I'm playing Caromwell, you know, fucking 1984 or something, you know, on there. Right. And that's who I'm battling against. And this is the game, you know, we're playing King Kong. And exactly what you said, like this is what ball one is. And then after I complete ball two, it'll pop up on my end. And, you know, I don't know. I think that would be the most viable, some form of that. And this is what Golden Tee does so well also because, for instance, a new game comes out, you're a couple months in. Let's say everybody has Godzilla. Instead of me having to even look for games, I just go online and I enter a 20-player tournament. Everybody just has one game. Now, obviously cheating is what everybody's concerned about at that point, but it just posts my score to the leaderboard, and I just see how I fared in that 20-game tournament or 20-player tournament. But I can just keep entering 20-game tournaments all the time, and it won't populate all the scores until all 20 players have completed. I mean, there's ways to do that. I think Stern has that ability. I mean, I would assume something like that would be incorporated very easily because, I mean, they already have leaderboards. They already have tasks. They already have monthly things that they'll do like that. But, yeah, to where that you just get into a group sort of thing to where that you're battling just those 20 people or 10 people or whatever, you know, thing that you get into. I think that that's actually doable and it would still be fun because I would want to see how I fared against those 20 people versus the entire nation. You know what I'm saying? On a one. Well, it's it's it's always a random group of 22. So, I mean, if you're in there with a couple of sweats, you know, Keith Ellens in there rocking your socks. You're like, oh, man, this sucks. You know, when you hit start again, it's just randomized. It's 20 different people. You got a few thousand games out of location and maybe a few hundred of those are connected in this kind of online thing. I do like that. You run the risk regardless of your skill set to place higher, maybe win some of these things. That's damn good. I actually like that. That, to me, is viable. But, yeah, we'll see. I mean, head-to-head makes sense. How it gets implemented and rolled out is probably going to be one of those things that will evolve over years when and if it comes. Another one here, we've got more hologram effects Like Dialed In or Ghostbusters More hologram effects in modern day pinball Do you like the hologram effect? I do I don't think it looks bad To me, the way that Ghostbusters and Dialed In was done I thought they were clear I thought you could see them pretty well It wasn't something that was all washed out Again, this is one of those things That I was going to We're not on the topic I was talking about initially When we started this yet but it is sort of a similar type thing with this. I think I know where you're going later, too. Does it start with a P? Does it start with a P where you're going later? Yeah, I think I know what it is. I figured you were on it, dude. Me and Zach have talked about that so much, about that there's just so many things you can do with it, and it's like, why isn't it done? And I kind of think the hologram thing is, too, man. Like, at this point, I mean, look how long ago both those games came out. I mean, those games have been out for, what, nine, ten years? Yeah. Like, why haven't we not revisited that? And it looked good then. So, I mean, I would assume that some form of that technology in its small capacity has become maybe even a little better. And it's so underutilized is the other thing. It's like, especially in Ghostbusters, like, they could have done a lot of really cool stuff with that. And I felt like, at least at the time, I was seeing the same, like, three or four things, like, forever. And I was like, man, you could have done some great stuff. The dialed-in one was a little more prominent, like, in the middle of the play field. Again, I thought they could have done more stuff at the time the game was over. But you're seeing that with some of the toppers, too, that Pepper's Ghost effect. Yes. You see it on The Mandalorian, Star Wars by Stern Pinball. You see it on Avatar, Jersey Jack Pinball's CE. And it looks cool. It's something that's not physical, but it's on the play field, and it creates something that's constantly changing, and you can have fun with it. Pinball 2000, I still thought, you know, again, it was kind of at the downturn of pinball at that time, so I don't know if there was anything that would have really done it. I mean, there's actually a really good documentary about Pinball 2000 that's phenomenal, if you guys out there have not seen that yet. But I love it. When I still step up and play those games, I'm like, man, if you would have done away with the tube and you would have made this smaller, a lot lighter than what it is, and integrated this a little bit differently with a lot of physical stuff as well. Dude, it's so freaking good to blast aliens and shit like that. Like, it's fun. It's funny. It's awesome. And why not? Because you've got living, moving things that look pretty good in front of you. Like, why are we not doing it? Yeah. I don't know. And today's anti-reflective glass, and I just think, like, it would be even way more prominent now Because that was the first go at it with Pinball 2000 when you had kind of that holographic effect on the glass I imagine now you can make it look two three times better Well you don have to do the whole game You don have to go to that extent But like you said like with Ghostbusters and Dialed In just throw in a little bit more of that a little bit larger things You know, instead of just one of each. Like maybe there's four or five different characters. Could you see that like an entire back panel being something that you could just throw a holographic effect on? I know. I think there's so much. I don't know. That, to me, is one of the best things that you could do right now that's within the capabilities of these pinball companies to really spice up what pinball is. Yeah, I agree with you 100%. All right, universal cross-platform, similar to the Stern Insider Connect platform. Do you want to see something universal that it's like an all-in-one solution that would link all of your games in one app, one platform? I think that there was a particular person and company that was working on something similar to that. But then I think that the problem you run into is you have these entities like Stern and so forth that already have their own platform. getting being allowed to connect to their services and to do anything into those games i i would think would be you know kind of a rights issue on things that i don't think a lot of these companies you know somebody like stern or somebody wouldn't give up to be able to have a universal platform like that yeah i mean if i'm stern pinball because i have that insider connected platform where i want it um i think for the most part i would use that as something that this is unique to our brand so if you want to experience this you know you're not going to experience it over at jersey jack you're not going to experience that uh you know spooky uh you need to be part of stern because that's that's a huge selling point in my eyes uh and and especially with locations right locations want to have these stern games obviously because they're fun the playability but that stern that that that insider connected platform oh as an operator i i love it like i love being able to track i it needs more to it like i actually need a lot more than what they they have in there for the the pro uh version that you go into when you are an operator but you know it's still good to be able to go in there and track you know some of my plays to see you know what the seven day was the 28 day play markers were you know service alerts are fantastic especially if you've got a stuck ball or something somewhere a bad switch yes like all of those things are good i want a more detailed report i want a report that i can finesse uh you know i always wanted to to talk to dwight about that and be like you know what what's the hold up like there's so much more that you can do that i wouldn't think would take up that much more room on your servers and everything but but maybe it does but i i need a little bit more that i can do with that but just what they have is still phenomenal and that is a huge thing i'm pretty sure there's a lot more in the pipe over there i mean but you know the thing that they're doing is they're they're rolling it out and it works it's not buggy it's not you're not beta testing for the most part i mean there's always like updates you might have you know uh a snag here or there but it's just it's clean uh i'm a big fan of it i i oh i enjoy it a lot so it's and i would be stunned if this is even halfway to where they actually see it i think it's in a good place for now uh but but i'm assuming that you're going to see the evolution so yeah i don't think you need all these different apps and whatnot for these uh for these companies and in my opinion But it's interesting to consider. How about this one? What's missing from modern pinball? Better sound and speakers. Seems pretty simple, right? Yeah, I mean, it's not bad. I mean, they're not nothing, you know, it's nothing real great. But, I mean, take it or leave it. They sound good enough to me at the price point. Oh, man, I just feel like they could sound so much better out of the box. Oh, it could. And I assume some of it obviously is like, you know, do you want to sacrifice some audio for the sake of putting the money somewhere else? I mean, that pinball machine is a big freaking woofer, man. It's a big box, and you have a woofer inside. But I would like to see just a better amp, better speakers, better experience. And honestly, I think if you threw another $50 at the – and again, $50 sounds insignificant to us, right? But $50 does impact the material. But yeah, 100%. But I mean, I would rather pay $50 or triple your money. I'd rather pay $150 more on a game if I had $50 of better audio. And, you know, the other thing is, too, is you can go out and you can get, you know, mods to upgrade the stuff yourself, but it'd just be nice if it was out of the box. You kind of had that audio experience. Yeah, I mean, I don't disagree. It doesn't mean a tremendous amount to me, so I'm kind of a take it or leave it, but I'm not saying, you know, it would be nice to have. I'm just thinking modern-day pinball, like how advanced has the audio come, if you think about it? I mean, I don't know. When I say audio, I'm not talking about the creativity behind the sound engineer. I'm just talking about the way that the sound is delivered to us, and I just don't really feel like it's been. I want some surround sound in Pinball Ken. Now that's something I could get behind. Oh, man. That would be sick. Or even like a sound bar that has like a Dolby Atmos where it just kind of throws stuff behind you. I mean, some sound bars utilize that. Now, you know, you've just got, you're basically, what, like a 3.1 or something, or a 2.1, I guess it would technically be like a 3.1 on there. So you don't have rear surrounds, but the way that it projects sounds out of the multiple speakers off that sound bar gives sort of an illusion at times of surround sound. That's something I could get behind, that they could create something like that, that would throw sound. Yeah, for sure. All right. Let's see. This one made me laugh. accessories that are available on the release day, not one year later. Listen, that is far-fetched. For modern-day pinball, let's get the accessories out on the release day. This is something we might not ever see in modern pinball. Everybody just wrap your mind around it now. You know, the accessories, for the most part, I mean, it's not as crucial as getting the game sold on day one. So I think a lot of times you're just – it's not a priority to get them out. But, I mean, arguably, there's probably no more demand ever than on day one because if I'm buying a game online or I'm buying a game from my distributor and I'm going to spend $7,000 to $15,000, what's an extra $300, $400, $600, $800 that I can just add to cart? And I can see you moving more accessories, but, again, you've got the whole fulfillment. Well, but I will – I'll be honest with you, Ken. You'll start getting this too now that you're on board. Like, you will find that, seriously, that's honestly one of the biggest complaints and one of the most asked questions that I'll deal with is, hey, when do you think they're going to come out with accessories for this game? Like, do you think they're going to drop that soon? Man, I hope it's not like it was with Wick or Venom. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's actually, I think it's something that seems a little underrated, not very important, but I think it very much is to consumers. I could see that actually and again the demand on day one is probably the greatest the demand will ever be for those add-ons and accessories look how many new people that come in that want to bundle accessories with their game when they first buy it I'm looking at a Jaws I'm going to buy this Jaws 50th I'd like to go ahead and throw Artblades in throw the Topper in, the Shooter Rod can I go ahead and get that and purchase that we see it when people come in to buy games that have been out for a minute or they're new to pinball Like, I got so many new pinball people that buy a ton of accessories when they buy their first game. I also have to believe, and just taking the other side of it from the manufacturer, there's strategic marketing that goes on there. Because I think where you create an issue for yourself is having a brand new product. And with pinball pricing right now, it can be considered a lot of money. And then trying to transact additional items at the same time. Me as a consumer, I'd be like, well, why is that not already included in my game? whereas if you create some space between the release day and the time those accessories come out it doesn't feel as much like you're trying to double dip on me as it does that hey this is something that's now added instead of something that i feel like should have been included if that makes sense see i'm always wondering if it comes down to like a parts thing or something just to where okay we want to kind of see out of the gate how this game performs that's why we're holding off on this or like we're not putting as much emphasis on this uh right now just because you know you don't want to go ordering and having you know 2,000 toppers made for this game or bill of materials for it when you know because i'm sure i'm assuming that you know accessories are obviously going to sell less so you i would assume you'd have to be more strategic than ordering you know enough parts for 2,000 games when you typically sell 2,000 plus and you re-up the order, re-run the game, but with these accessories, maybe it's something to where it's like, okay, we're ordering 2,000, and that's basically it to begin with. Sure. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I do. I do. I would not be surprised if that doesn't play a role either. Yeah. I'd say it's one of those things when it comes to that, that there's so many different variables that play into that that there is a reason behind a lot of it. It's not laziness. It's not mismanagement. It's just literally there's a lot that goes into it. Yeah. I would venture to say there are multiple reasons on why that doesn't happen. All right. How about this one? Custom drink holders should be included on all machines when they come out. I don't think a lot of people care. I mean, it's cool. Spooky did that with Scooby-Doo. Yeah. It's smart. Yeah, it's neat. But, I mean, I don't put drink holders on my games. Any modern-day game that comes out, it seems like now, like there's some type of built-in beverage holder i mean drinking and playing games go hand in hand where i agree with you i don't i don't necessarily need to go out and buy uh drink holders for all my games but if it came with my game like i could see it uh i would i would like that oh i mean man i yeah i mean i would i'd like it yeah it's just like a little nice little thing maybe like a lunch box okay so this one is big for me and um i'll be curious on this what's that is this both of ours is this the no i don't i don't think it's both of ours i don't think it's both of ours okay okay okay it's uh in in-game tutorials and the reason i think that this is important is simply this any and i'll take this from the video game industry if i pick up a call of duty or i pick up uh you know anything that's campaign based when i put the game in it asks me if i want to go through through the tutorial and the tutorial essentially is gameplay but it's showing me how to play the game and what different strategies are. I would love to have an option where you could do the tutorial where the game puts the ball into the shooter lane and it says, hey, all right, we're going to plunge the ball and now you're going to learn the skill shot. Try to plunge at this level to try to hit this target. And every time you plunge, you know, it just drains until you hit it. It's like, hey, congratulations, you just completed the skill shot. Let's get into a mode. And it puts the game and it parks it on a flipper and the flipper's in the upright position. It's like, we're going to start the mode by hitting the spinner and hitting the scoop. Let's see if you can do it. And then you're trying to shoot the spinner and you're trying to shoot the scoop until you hit it and say, Hey, you've advanced now. And now we're going to try to get into a multiball. I think that's probably a lot of extra coding, but I think that that's just so intuitive and would really take the average homeowner or the average person that doesn't realize that there are objectives instead of just staying alive and keeping the ball from draining. it just opens up a whole different pathway for a lot of people because i've had conversations recently and i'll hand it over to you here in a second where uh people were buying their first pinball machines this is just for me being over here over the last six seven weeks and when family members came over they were immediately drawn to their pinball machine but when they realized that there were rules and things that you can accomplish it made them want to just hit start and keep playing and playing and playing instead of just flipping and flipping and flipping i hope you don't drain and the tutorial i just think especially with modern day rule sets you know it just makes a lot of sense to be able to have that as but then how far do you go with that you know how deep sure of course you know how far do you progress along the game to you know to show you know tutorial and then how much does that mean to people that aren't new to pinball sort of thing you know what I'm saying like, where, where do you draw? Well, I mean, obviously you can make it what it is, I suppose. But I think, I think me included, I don't know. I don't like people standing over me and telling, and even when I was at work, you know, and somebody would show a game and be like, well, here, let me show you how to do this. I'm sure to do this. And you're playing, you're like, geez, man, like, I don't even know what you just said. It was like Charlie Brown's parents. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. But if I just had something that was clearly stated and, and at least, at least in a, like an animation even that's on the game where I can watch what I'm supposed to be doing in a tutorial type mode I would take that what about this though what if you have a like so it wouldn't require maybe as much coding and so forth you're not you're not being told okay this is exactly like this is a tutorial mode where it's like okay like what you originally said now hit the spinner like what if you I mean what if it's some form of that but you're just playing the game as normal You know how some games are a little more, you know, some games will be like, okay, shoot the, you know, the roving red shot, you know, from the call out guy. But what if you had it when you're in tutorial mode, there's Dwight Sullivan or there's somebody on there that's literally giving you a tutorial based. Yes. Explaining the game to where it's like, okay, now to progress into the blah, blah, hit the left ramp, you know? Yes. I would love that. Yes. So that's something to me that could actually probably. It's like a director's cut, right, where they're talking over the gameplay, everything else is kind of subdued, and you just have somebody who's like, hey, notice you hit this. Instead of it being the in-game call-outs, it's the director's cut of the designer or the programmer walking you through the rules. I think that's pretty cool, too, actually. It would be cool. And you're not seeing the game. It's not just putting you into – you're learning the game as you go, but it's explaining to you what you need to do as you're just playing casually. Yeah. I would be down for that. That would actually be really cool. And it doesn't take up, because my concern with any kind of tutorial thing to where it's stopping and doing, it's like you'd have to have it shut off for location. Because people would just eat up so much time fucking around with a game like that. Like, I need coin drop. Like, that's part of routing. But something like that, though, you're still playing a normal three-ball game or whatever a little bit. But it's being explained to you more in depth about what you need to do and why you're doing that. Yeah, I think it would go a long way, especially with the homeowner and somebody that's just trying to pick it up as a casual or first-time owner trying to figure out what's going on. But I think this is the one that you're licking your chops on, and that is what's missing from modern pinball. And that is projection mapping. Oh, yes. Projection. I think this is right in your wheelhouse, Greg. Projection mapping. You love the projection mapping. Dude, tell me that I'm not wrong. I mean, I know you are a hundred percent, 100% correct. And, and I will direct you right to stranger things. Yes. And in strangers, like, listen, so there's drawbacks to that, you know, like, you know, you need to be in a little bit darker room, you know, it didn't do so well, but I think that there's so much that you can do with it, you know, almost like, you know, Disney did it a lot in haunted mansion, you know, and stuff, or they did it with the three talking heads or whatever and different stuff you know it's a tried and true halloween thing if you got your own home you know home haunt to where you've got just a still face or something and it's you know there's projection mapping on that face making it look like it's alive and it talks like do you know how many awesome things that you could do with that in pinball just visually if you did any kind of projection mapping like that yeah i'd be so oh man yeah it would be incredible it would be incredible and pinball just lends itself well to that without it does and maybe you do more you know you don't need the long throw like you you had in stranger things you know it's almost like back to the hologram thing where you were talking about the the back board or different things back there like there's so much you could do where it's a little darker back there or you know you build some you know houses like not houses but you build some kind of cover or something that that theme integrate into the game to where that is projection mapping into a little bit darker space so it shows up a little better. Use the gray screen material, the silver screen material, so you get a little bit darker, richer colors. I still think that there's a lot you can do with that. And then you incorporate something like that along with the holograms and stuff. It's just like the possibilities are endless about the worlds that you can bring to life. Because you brought up the holograms and then the projection mapping and then the third piece of the puzzle to me that I've been barking about. I mean, not consistently, but I've brought it up for at least the last seven, eight years. And that's augmented reality. And, you know, for those that don't know the difference between, like, virtual reality and augmented reality, augmented reality is more of, like, it changes objects that are in your physical surroundings. Like if you were to hold your phone or tablet up and it shows you what something would look like in your room like on Amazon or whatever or if you playing Pokemon Go how you have like these physical or like the Mario Kart in your physical environment Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or the Mario Kart. So you're still seeing the environment that's around you, but you've got added layers of of like digital information and visuals. And nowadays, these augmented reality glasses that you put on, it's not like this big dome on your head like you're playing VR. I mean, they just look like a pair of Ray-Bans and they're comfortable. and to have and that allows you to even bring visuals not only on the play field but it could come out of the game and be around you on your ceiling you could have stuff whizzing by your head um and and i just think that would be such a cool thing to have uh at some point and you know today talking about the concept of modern day pinball i think that i agree and that's the thing is like i think something like that i think something like the head-to-head like i think that there are certain things you know that that some of these listeners had brought up that we've discussed that that are things that should be implemented and that could be implemented in a timely fashion in pinball all right so i had two other things personally that i thought would be good for modern day pinball and uh the first one is is this i wish that manufacturers would consider like a built-in built-in streaming and creator tools so that if you wanted to stream pinball they just make it easier you know maybe you've got an hdmi out you've got a a bracket that mounts to the back of the backbox that holds two cameras and you've got a microphone jack it's just like a kit that they could pick up install real easy it would uh it would allow the manufacturers to kind of frame the shots so that they're in the best possible light everything looks kind of uniform and it's you know because when when you get an engaging host right and we use uh joel and Jared over there at the flipping out pinball streaming as an example, and you have a great stream that is essentially it's free marketing for the manufacturer. It's, it's obviously it's marketing for the distributor, but I mean, if the game is in the right light and you've got an engaging host and everything looks good, I mean you, it's hard to buy that kind of, uh, marketing or advertising because it's, it's delivered differently. And if, if the manufacturers made it more, uh, made it easier for people to try to attempt to do this. I think you kind of grow the streaming community a little bit more, but even more so, you know, the more people that are streaming your games, the more people are going to see your games being streamed. And again, it's just like, it's free advertising for the game. I would love to be able to see that. Yeah, I think you're, you know, you're exactly right. Honestly, like it is like a free advertisement. And, you know, you look at something that if you have something like that, it can be an add-on accessory. So now you have created another small revenue source by creating a whole new accessory where you maybe have that add-on mic, that add-on camera that goes on with this Stern-approved accessory that goes on to that game. Dude, I don't know. I kind of think it would be kind of cool. And you've got so many people that just don't know what camera to use. They don't know what to do with this. They don't know what to do with that and have so many questions. to where I feel if it's so simple and plug and play and it's a kit that's already available and together, then you've just got so many new people that are in the hobby or people that's kind of wanted to stream and on the fence about it, and they buy this kit and it's easy to install, hook up. It's so much easier. You're going to get so many more people into it. The other cool thing, too, that I thought was even if you're not broadcasting live, just to be able to record all your games, you can kind of see your gameplay. I mean, if you had an incredible shot, like you would have it clipped so you just had it. You could share it with your buddies. Again, it's not live, but now that content's getting out there and people are posting stuff on their Facebook. Hey, look at the desk save that I had. You know, that'd be kind of cool to have, and it's just kind of there. Finally – I don't think you're wrong at all. Yeah, it's something to think about. You know, maybe the systems aren't set up to support something like this natively, but you're running through a Raspberry Pi or a mini PC that integrates with the system. I think it's doable. And then lastly, I think I kind of hinted about this during our last episode, and that is this is going to be controversial. I just feel like we need the option of having a refreshed cabinet design. And what I mean by that is I would like to see something that is more futuristic looking. It's got sleek angles, different lighting accents, maybe a fold-down LCD screen instead of the backbox, which takes off a ton of weight. When a game comes out, I want the purists to be able to be happy, and I would love for them to have the option of the classic cabinet or the modern cabinet. And I don't know how well that would catch on. I would just love to see it. I love the way that these games look now, and I am a stickler where everything in my row needs to look similar. but I wouldn't be mad about seeing just a fresh approach with the cabinet design. And if you had a big, say you had a 39 inch LCD screen, you know, cause you start going wider than that and it might be a little bit too much, but you could have, instead of a back glass, you could have dynamic artwork that's always changing. You could have some crazy stuff up on that display. Zach and I had talked about that about six years ago. We were, we were, we were talking about doing that. We were like, okay, what, what could we do to replace a head altogether and just make it one large TV screen yeah and what would that look like because it's like you said it's almost like going back to our holograms and everything else you could have an ever-changing and moving you know display on that backbox that's incorporated along with all your pinball information scores right regression all that stuff but i mean you could just make that almost interactive to you know you hit the ball in the t-rex's mouth you know in the whole you know the the T-Rex on there turns to you and roars at you from the screen. And then he goes back static, you know, like a piece of artwork on there. You know, it would be incredible. You could have a, you could have a ticker going with all your friends online and what they're playing and what scores they just put up, like a, like a newscast. Like, I don't know. It'd be, it'd be really, I'd be down with it. I love all the visual stuff. And I just think at some point it should be considered and, and whether or not that becomes a dud, but you know, maybe a sleek new modern design option is something that puts somebody over the top to try to, you know, get a pinball machine in their basement or in their room. Because I think a lot of people, they look at a standard pinball cabinet and they're expecting that game to make bells and chimes kind of sounds, you know, something that they were used to playing at their great grandma's house or something, uh, years and years and decades ago. But I don't think you're wrong, but I mean, it's kind of like what we touched on before. I mean, you gotta be careful because you know, the purest aspect of it, you know, it's like you said, everybody wants their stuff to look, look uniform in a lineup and you just kind of you want it to look like a pinball machine absolutely i mean it's got to look like a pinball machine but it doesn't need to look like a pinball machine from like 1956 that's just kind of my my thing that's all so this week i want to bring to you guys something that you know some of you may have come across before, and that is how to align your shooter rod. So a lot of you guys, you know, you might get your game, you get a game in, and it's got a weak plunge to it, a weak manual plunge. And the number one thing that a lot of pinball enthusiasts go to is, hey, Greg, man, I got this weak shooter spring, like this, this ball, like it barely makes it up, you know, the shooter lane, it barely makes it around the orbit, you know, the spring, the spring is just weak. It's the spring, the spring listen sometimes it is the spring but i'm talking like maybe a half of a percent is it comes down to spring stream uh typically what it is is just that your shooter rod is misaligned and the way that you want to do that and what happens with that misalignment is it hits the ball at a weird angle puts a spin on it almost just like if any of you ever played you know pool out there you know when you hit a pool ball on there if you hit it you know at an angle or you hit it you know you graze it a little bit you put a spin on the ball you don't have the powers if you hit that ball straight on you know it puts a little spin on it and it seems weak no matter how hard you've hit it your plunger does that too if your plunger is not hitting that ball in the center it comes across and makes it feel like you have a weak plunge because it's hitting the ball on the side or the top or the bottom of the ball putting a spin on it which you just don't get that force. So on our Facebook, I'll have a great video. Stern Pinball has a great tech school and they have a really good tutorial on there of how to align that shooter rod. But basically what you do is you want to have your game off, put a ball into the shooter lane, then push in on your shooter rod. Pushing in on that shooter rod will cause the tip of it to make contact with that ball. Hold it there. Look and see which direction your shooter rod needs to be adjusted to. if it's not in the center it's to the left adjust it over to the center and the way that you do that is there are a series of screws that hold that shooter rod in just on the inside of the cabinet there are typically three screws that hold the shooter rod itself in and then there's a shooter rod plate normally held on by two screws sometimes you can get away with just loosening the three screws and adjusting the shooter rod sometimes you might have to remove the other two screws holding the plate on while you adjust the other three screws. Again, on our Facebook socials, great tutorial by Stern Pinball, but I just kind of wanted to give this to you guys while we're on here. Loosen those three screws up, adjust your shooter rod in whatever direction you need to, holding that shooter rod into place, retighten those three screws, plunge your ball. Typically, like I said, 99% of the time, that's going to be the cause, that's going to be the issue, and that will get you plunging right again. That's awesome, man. That's a really good tech tip. And that can be frustrating when that ball's not getting squared up as it's intended to be. And if you've never done anything like that before, if you've never really had to dig into your pinball machine and adjust or do anything, it's a great thing to kind of get you feeling comfortable with your pinball machine and getting in there. You know, simple thing to do, but you feel accomplished. Your game works a lot better than what it did. You get that full plunge. So, you know, there's a sense of satisfaction with that as well. and you just kind of are learning your game a little bit more than what you did before. Yeah, Greg, I appreciate it. That's Greg's Tech Tips, Episode 2. Nicely done, Greg. Thank you, sir. Everybody here at Flip N Out Pinball, we want to thank everyone who attended and watched this year's Pinberg. We were one of the main three sponsors of the premier competition event again this year, and we're always more than excited to support the community. We do have a special promo that we're running in conjunction with Loser Kid and Pedretti Games, and that is for $500 off a new Funhaus remake, LE, and classic. And if you want to take advantage of that, you can go to the website. Go to FlippinOutPinball.com. Flip the letter N out, Pinball.com. You're going to add Funhaus remake, the LE or the classic, to the cart, and you can use code LOSERKID. That's one word, capital L-O-S-E-R-K-I-D, LOSERKID. And you'll get that $500 off. So good job, guys. Good job, LOSERKIDS. Oh, that was a good job, man. Get out there. Also, be sure to check out the Straight Down the Middle Harry Potter review. And we're also check out our latest episode that just dropped on Monday. That is a little something new that we were trying out where it's just kind of like a pinball talk between Zach and I. It's kind of what our daily conversations look like. We kind of get off on some tangents, maybe a few laughs, maybe a few things that will make you cringe, but it's still a good time. It's always good seeing new Straight Down the Middle content. I got a chance to take in that Harry Potter review. It's awesome, and I can't wait to see the last episode that just came out. Oh, thank you, thank you. Also, be sure to check out, you know, our good friend Joel up there in Indianapolis. He streamed Dune for Flippin' Up Pinball. Awesome tutorial on that. Kind of walks you through that game. You get to, you know, really experience that wonder that they've created with that game, with the implementation of all of the video assets and that world under glass that they created. So, you know, definitely be sure to check that out. also be sure to hop on over to youtube check out jared and joel as they explain the world of dune to you in one of you know joel's epic tutorials that he always does and there's also a freaking fantastic recent gameplay of jaws 50th and they invite the always wonderful programmer rick nagel in you know he gives his point of view gives you a little insight onto that game and everything that's going on with it so definitely a must watch for all you tutorial lovers out there and i know right now at the time of this recording i believe we might have jaws 50th in stock but if you miss this run stern has another run that's coming in september you're going to want to get in that list because one of the hottest sellers for us the last few weeks has definitely been that jaws 50th in fact the pre-owned inventory wow man it's crazy if there's not a day that's gone by over the last couple weeks where somebody hasn't inquired about Jaws 50th and it's moved a lot of units but it's a great game. The pre-owned inventory right now is super hot. We've got a lot of games that are being posted this week on Facebook and on the website. If you want to get the up-to-date current status of all the used inventory, go to Facebook, flipping out pinball and there's a post at the top that's pinned. Click on it. Zach updates that every single day, sometimes multiple times a day. So if you want to click on there and see what we have currently in stock you can and then we mentioned last episode we do have that interest list for used games if you've got a game in mind that you haven't been able to locate or you want us to do the work for you which we don't have a problem doing uh give us give us a call or or an email you can hit me up at ken at flip and out pinball.com or greg at flip and out pinball.com i'd be like hey i want to be on the uh the used list for scared stiff hey i want to be on the uh for twilight zone one of the best games of all time we'll put you on that list and and you're good to go. And a big shout out to Silver Ball Chronicles, who we are now a main sponsor for their wonderful history podcast. Nice. Always good to be associated with David Dennis and Ron Hallett. Two good guys for sure. And, Ken, something super special that you've been working on. Where are we going to this year? Where can you find us at? We're doing the comeback tour at Chicago Pinball Expo in the middle of October. we will have the flipping out booth and we're shooting for something a little bit unique this time around. So come and visit us at expo, hit that flipping out booth. We're going to have a, an interesting booth experience. And I think the exciting thing outside of the booth is that both you and Zach will also be in attendance. Finally. It's been, Oh dude, I think it's been finally, it's been like, you guys went into retirement or something or something. I think I've been to a show. Why? I don't know. Just haven't been, I think TPF was, I don't even remember what year that was. Haven't been feeling it, huh? It's like 2004. It was a long time ago. 21 years ago. So, yeah, I'm excited to come back, man. I'm excited to, you know, see everybody, shake some hands, kiss some babies. It's going to be fun. And those specific dates, October 15th through the 18th, they're at the Schaumburg Renaissance. And if you're not familiar with the area, you're maybe 15 minutes from O'Hare Airport. You're right across the street from Woodfield Chopping Mall. You've got the biggest pinball show that I think that's going with 100,000 square feet of space. And then all that is run by Rob Burke and his team. And I was talking to Rob a couple days ago, and he's ready to kind of – Great people. Yeah, he's ready. Rob and Bridget, the whole family there, they're incredible people. He's ready to start kind of promoting. And if you're cool with it, I said, you know what, Rob, come on on and let's talk Expo for a few minutes and kind of give people a little bit of inside baseball and Expo. But that's going to be fun, man. I always enjoy meeting people at the shows. and to be there kind of repping all the companies and from a distributor standpoint is going to be a new approach for me and i can't wait to do it oh that's awesome dude and it's always good because we all get to hang out i know it could be dangerous it could be dangerous and then one other thing personal favor if you guys don't mind as we kind of build the podcast up here if you're kind of listening to the shows and we have an idea of how many people are listening based on the numbers it would be great if you had a moment if you go over to facebook.com and just like or follow the show. It helps our algorithm to kind of get our reach out there, but also we post between episodes, and you'll get some more of that information because a lot of the social media stuff that we do is in an effort to have you take part in the show, and you'll see that that's kind of a standing concept that we have going forward. We want you to help sculpt the show. We want you to be part of the show, and it helps us to just have interesting topics that we know are top of mind for everybody that's out there in pinball land. So that would be kind of cool. And finally, if you want to offer some additional support, you can go to patreon.com slash Flip N Out Pinball Podcast. We've got a couple tiers there if you're looking for some more behind-the-scenes and bonus content. We definitely have you covered. For Greg Bone, I am Ken Cromwell. And listen. Listeners, I want to let you in on a secret. Ken Cromwell is not a real human being. Ken is nothing but a holographic projection. Of a real man. Of a real man. Not a fake one. Don't forget to take some time out of your day. I had nothing else. I don't know. Don't forget to take some time out of your day and play some pinball. So long, everybody. Oh, man. I love it because it's so genuine. You're just winging that one. It's so funny.