Oh boy, and we're back. Robin Roth. How you doing? I'm good, man. Good to see you. I'm doing well, man. Yeah, I uh I made some tweaks on my setup here. Like I think your uh I think your sound's a bit low. Can you hear me okay? Yeah, your sound's a bit low than it was in uh Welcome everybody to the show, episode 33 with Robin and Davey. Can you hear me now? Um yeah, might just crank you up just a touch, man. Okay. Yeah, could probably come up a little bit. How's that now? [clears throat] Okay, sounds good. Cool. All right, well, welcome everyone to episode 33 uh In Before the Lock. Excited to be here. Uh we're back within a month at least of our last show, right? Let's go. My god, I mean, we anybody would think we're starting to get more professional or something. Uh I I'm still getting I'm still being told I'm too low here. I got a new mic, trying to get thing get things better, so I think like trying to plug in a new mic like 20 seconds before a show starts, eh? Totally. Well, once that music started playing, it was like everything changed, so we stopped all that. All right, hopefully we're good. Thanks for a couple texts to let me know if we are. Um See. All right, so so what's new, man? Like a lot new on my side, right? Oh my god, yeah. I mean, it's there's been a couple of changes with you over the last couple of weeks, isn't there? We we had a big announcement come out a couple weeks ago prior to TPF that Nick and I were joining the team at American Pinball. Super excited to be working with Brian Vincent and the crew that he's pulled together. We are of course still uh doing the Electric Playground, so we've got a bunch of team members stepping up to help us out. Alec is going to be taking on a role as creative director. Dustin Howell will be taking on a role as our operations manager and John Miller as our production manager. So we're we're really excited to be growing, building, moving into a new facility in a couple months. And what wasn't announced with our American announcement was that we were going to be doing our Circus Voltaire topper with them. So as of TPF, it was announced that American is doing Circus Voltaire later on this year and the topper from the Electric Playground will be a part of that. So that's kind of how this whole partnership came to be and it's it's definitely evolved over the last couple months. So is that that is how it started then? So you launched the Circus Voltaire topper at Expo last year. Yeah, yeah, so I know you were there, so a bit of a rhetorical question for you, but we did we had a really fun thing where we showed off our Circus Voltaire topper just 1 hour per day. So we actually closed down the booth, brought everybody in to see it. It was probably about 85% done at the time. And every day everyone could see it and Brian was one of the people that saw it who ultimately find out later was acquiring American Pinball from Aimtron, the company that owned it prior. And reached out to us I guess maybe in December about wanting to explore the opportunity to bring that topper to the the remake that they were working on. And we learned a lot more about that too. I think there's a lot that they're doing that's making it even more than a remake and the topper was part of that. So Brian kind of told us about this reimagined initiative they had around the Circus Voltaire game and and wanted the topper to be a part of that, so Yeah, cool. I mean, that's what I mean, I know you're probably under all kinds of agreements not to let on information that you're not allowed to. Um but in my head uh you know, like most sort of V2s or reimagined games, there's always like sort of a version of it, whether it's in the build that sort of aims to replicate the game exactly how it was back in the '90s. Um and then there's like the upgraded versions that have say extra code, you know, more dynamic sculpts, possibly a different playfield, different graphics on the side and things like that. So you know, that's that's kind of where I imagine they'd be going with that. And I guess the I guess the topper will be on the uh Is is it Can you can you say whether it's going to be supplied with the game or is it an is it an add-on afterwards or Yeah, so we're still kind of working out some of those specifics. [clears throat] It will will be available for all versions of the game and then just so everyone knows that the topper in the exact form that it'll be available with American will also be available um to for classic machine owners. So it's like anybody that has a machine today that has signed up for our wait list, that topper will still be available to you. We're just kind of delaying when that's going to come out to be at the same timing as when the American games comes out later this year. Yep, got it. Cool, man. And so when did you when did you and Nick start working then? Uh so that actually started this month. So another part of that was as we started talking with Brian about his vision for the company and then the fact that Nick and I had a number of projects underway within the company with trying to get kind of more into pinball. We actually had a whitewood that we were working on and we were kind of telling him about what we were doing with that, which at that point was just exploring kind of how to bring that to market with some company in the future. He was interested to learn more about that and we how we might be able to help him. So different than maybe what has been said on some podcast, we're not building that game with them necessarily, but we are building a game with them. It was a license that he had previously acquired and is working on. So so Nick is already underway on that. And then I'm I'm I'm getting involved in a lot of the things that I do at the Electric Playground in terms of managing project plans, park taxes acquisition, go-to-market strategy, building teams, working with the teams, working with the creatives. So it's it's funny how there's just a lot of the same stuff I'm doing previously with the Electric Playground and now handing off to other team members I'm doing with American, but it's obviously more complex with more parts. Yeah, and where so where is American based? Are they in Chicago? Yeah, they're so they're so they're real close to Stern, actually. It's in Palatine, which is a small town, I guess, in that area. Stern I think is is in that area as well. So so it's about a four four-hour drive and you know, Nick and I will be up there a couple times a month, but we're primarily operating out of the Electric Playground facility in terms of a lot of the work we're doing. Yeah, and how you're finding that sort of distributed workplace kind of situation? If it's difficult, hard to manage? It's good for me. I mean, in my past jobs I've worked exclusively with distributed teams, so it's not too And that's been in the hardware space, too. I mean, it's definitely doable. It has its challenges, but I think you know, it's it's definitely There's there's there's a lot lot of a lot of people that are there, too. I think one thing that I whenever I started going up to American and having these conversations with them, I was surprised with how robust the team, you know, already was. I think a lot of people make up this story that there was just like one guy left and nothing was going on, and that was pretty far from the case. And and they've already brought on a lot more people, and they're already spinning up. We're selling building Houdinis, we're building lots of Tank Force, we're building new Hot Wheels. Obviously, titles that a lot of people, you know, aren't as excited about as the new stuff, but they're starting to build momentum now. I think that's a really cool thing to see is that now that people know the games are going to be supported, that momentum is building, and we've got some some stuff in the works for a few of those as well. Very exciting stuff, man. I mean, somebody told me recently that Hot Wheels actually sold a lot of units. So, maybe when we have a private conversation later, you can tell me exactly how many those units were, but Yeah, so surprisingly sold a lot of units. You know, it's it's a it's a fun game, it's affordable in the grand scheme of things. And also, they did a red package, and they also added the aura lighting that I I don't know that we're going to be doing that kind of like offset lighting cuz it is a little bit weird. But at the end of the day, they've added that offset lighting to Hot Wheels, and it looks really great. I actually have enjoyed playing it, and enjoyed the It's it's nostalgic, it's Hot Wheels, you know. Someone was kind of mentioning I don't I wasn't really as in in the hobby as I am now whenever that came out, but I I had heard that it launched right around when COVID kicked off, and it kind of got a false start for that reason. And of course, things have developed with American negatively over time. And of course, now we have a very positive event, but I think there's a lot of things that have come into play with American, but the one thing that I really felt good about when I started talking about this with those guys is just talking with people about the quality of American, and and people feeling like that was very strong. Of course, there are edge cases where that hasn't been the case, but that's true with any company. But I felt like that they had the foundation to build a great company. And as as I talked with Nick about it, the opportunity is there to to be a part of growing something really special. And, you know, as I as I got to know [clears throat] more about them and and more about the team they're building, and and even the opportunity to work with Melvin. I mean, what Melvin brings to the table with what he did with Alice, and what he wants to bring a lot of the things that makes Alice amazing to American American's titles. That that was a very exciting opportunity. So, it's it's happened quickly, but it in the end of the day, it was the the vision that Nick and I had for ourselves, you know, at some point along the path with making games, and Brian presented that to us, and we were like Yeah, yeah, it's very exciting, man. Um And you know, it's interesting what you say about the, you know, American build quality. That's certainly something that I've noticed people saying over the years is just how good the build quality was on American pinball games. I think Barbecue had a couple of issues with flippers, but that's like basically the only thing that I've ever heard of. Well, that that was actually I mean, there's a lot of I've actually talked with the team about that recently, and there's a lot of different coil options you have with things like that, and and the public opinion on it is they cheaped out on this the coil they selected. But in talking even with Neil, cuz Neil's like came to the group and was super excited about Barbecue in the sense of like theme aside, [laughter] the the game is actually really cool, especially if you like older school games. And then even more so if you flip out the the coil. So, it's it's it sucks that you have to flip out the coils to make the game good. That's a a separate issue. Yep. But but the build quality of these things are good. I mean, a lot of the stuff that I've learned with Galactic was related to a couple things that have been addressed. They had some a really bad batch of power supplies. There was some code that was doing some things that made it think they were mechanical problems. Yeah. I've got I've got Galactic Tank Force here right now, and it's it's fun. I mean, there's some code gaps, but I mean, overall, I think everyone wanted American to do well. It ultimately kind of I'm really happy to be a part of it, and I'm I'm happy it still exists, too. So, Yeah, there's there's a one of our pinball compadres here in the UK called Rob, who goes under the name of Siko Psycho Siko Kid. He's got a Galactic Tank Force as well, and he's Yeah, no, I'm I We talked a lot with him on the floor. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I bet. I bet he's [laughter] Yeah, he's He's very chatty, and also likes to be involved. Yeah, good friend of mine. But he worked a lot with the code, I think, like during the transition period between you know, David Fix leaving, and obviously Brian Vincent picking it up. Um And was working directly with the coder to fix some of those code bugs, and and you know, to make sure that you know, the the wheels were still turning with that game that he was really passionate about. So, I mean, I just thought it was awesome that the code was even entertaining that, you know, given the position the company was in at that at that time, but he was. And I think they got a good result out of it. So, you know, awesome to see that um you know, things are pushing pushing more in that direction. And yeah, man, congrats. And really excited to see what bangers you bring out. Yeah, I'm I'm really excited about what Nick's working on, and then I'm I'm very involved in the Circus project, and excited to share with the world what that looks like. So, definitely more down the pipe. Yep. Great. And what are we looking at, Expo? Yeah, well, we'll be at Expo. I'm I'm not saying it's launching then, but it will be at Expo, for sure. Hopefully hopefully sometime before that. Not quite that far out, but it's coming this year, for sure. Okay, man. Cool. One step at a time. Yeah. [laughter] I was just after the I was just after the juicy sound bites, man. Yeah. So, you [laughter] It's a new world here on In Before the Lock. We've got We've got juice direct. [laughter] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We can increase our fan base from two people to three people. Exactly. [laughter] So, TPF Besides Yeah, I got I took You know, we didn't do any interview like we did normally at TPF. Primarily cuz Dave wasn't there with me, so I I couldn't I couldn't do that. But I did record some video. We're just going to kind of let this play. It may There was actually three amazing circuses on the floor, all unique in their own rights. And I was sad I was sad that we weren't able to show our topper on any of those, but it was it was a fun show. They had a new layout that I really liked. It was kind of There's a new show runner involved, so there was some kind of little small hiccups, especially for vendors. But overall, I think people had a really good time. And there was Beetlejuice in mass, which was really cool. You had new game from Turner with their uh uh Yukon Yeti, which the lines were extremely long the entire time. They had two of those, and definitely seemed to be a big hit. Really proud to see the pinball community show up for those guys because that game is is definitely their best game to date. You know, they keep raising the bar, Okay. which is really cool. And we had Unfortunately, Hexa had a a shipping mishap, so they weren't able to show their their Three Musketeers game, which was disappointing. But overall, you know, not a lot of new stuff there. I didn't get any new games in on Winchester. The lines were super long. But definitely I was on were there? Oh, man, I think there may have been two. There's Jamie and Ralph. But yeah, you definitely could get some good time in on on Beetlejuice, so that was that was really cool. Okay, good. Yeah. Yeah, man. Look, I'm sorry I I couldn't make it this year. I was a no-show. My first question is, did anybody miss me? Did anybody ask where I was? [laughter] There was a lot of people wondering where you were, actually. No, there wasn't. I mean, you know, all three of those people you mentioned earlier asked. [laughter] And No, I mean, I I know your buddy Scott, who was in our TPF booth, sorely missed you at our Expo booth. But He misses me even when I'm there. I know. He was he was missing you, for sure. But yeah, man, it wasn't the same. And I know it sounds like Expo might be your thing going forward. Is that kind of what you're thinking? No, no, not necessarily, man. I mean, look, it was it was just a it was just family commitments this time that kept me away. My wife had a work trip, so you know, I I you know, in an ideal world, I'd go to both. I think if I'm if I'm honest with myself, doing two year is quite heavy duty in terms of I think as I get older, I miss the family more and stuff, and so I sort of find it harder to stay away than I used to, which sounds so ridiculous, but you know, there it is. So, I I would still like to go to both TPF and Expo because I love them both for different reasons. I feel like they're both really different shows. Um and you know, like you know, even though I was like this time I was like, you know, my wife had a work trip. I was like, okay, it'll be nice to have a bit of a break anyway, so I'm not sort of traveling so much anyway. Um but I did get major FOMO as you always do, you know, you see all these great things being released, all these great mods being released uh during that week as well and you know, and and I I just sort of felt like I was missing out on it all. So, yeah, I was a bit gutted to be honest. Yeah, man. Well, uh there was a lot of great stuff. I mean, you you kind of went over the main things. Uh the vendors came out. This is uh yeah, a little bit of things from Backalley. Uh you had a you ended up having it There's Alec right there. Um you ended up having a bunch of stuff launching kind of in relation to TPF even though you were Yeah. Well, that was like that was basically like my hissy fit for being excluded, wasn't [laughter] it? Like, you know, I was like, well, if I can't be involved, I'm just going to do four product releases in a week and just see what happens. Yeah. So, um So, yeah, I did I did one for King Kong, which was a spider replacement. Uh we launched a Lord of the Rings Balrog. Are you going to show these to us during White Water World? Should I Should I do a switch? Uh let's let's pull them up during White Water World. How's that sound? Okay, yeah. So, so So, anyway, yeah, okay. So, I'll stop I'll stop going to depth on them anyway, but essentially I I had four uh that week releasing and and to be honest, I was copying uh an idea that uh that uh Backalley um had Backalley's Kong. This is This is These are all lovely, you know, I mean, they they do incredible work, obviously. Um and they're so prolific. They just release so much stuff and and always at TPF, they've always they've always done this great uh uh like daily release schedule of all their new mods and it's always really impressive and exciting and and so I was kind of like uh basically just copying them and and doing a similar thing but with my mods. Um and yeah, it was heavy duty. Like, you know, one one product release on its own is difficult to manage in terms of uh getting all your content together and getting all your promo together and uh responding to all the queries from people over email and over PM and the sign-ups and any technical issues you have and then so doing them day after day after day, I think by the by the by the fourth day I just wanted to like [laughter] kill myself. Yeah. It was It was impressive. It was impressive from my side. I I hear you on everything it takes to get that out. And then of course now the hard work really starts, right? Yeah. Well, that's right. Yeah, cuz obviously when you're doing your promo, you're you're pretty much just getting the mod to a point where you can take video of it. [laughter] But if it's not quite connected to the switches that are triggering it and if you haven't quite worked out the finer details and maybe a few parts are held together with like Blu Tack or whatever, you know, it doesn't really matter cuz you got your promo video together. But then you've like after it's all done, you've got like, right, I've got to iron out all these little kinks. I've got to order all the parts. I've got to, you know, work out even boxing, man, you know, like some of these mods are bigger than all of our other mods, so you've got to buy special boxes for them and then you've got to have foam inserts to make sure they stay together in shipping and you've got to get a product label on it. And it's like, you know, all of these are like manageable things, but when you do four in a week and then everybody's like, when's it coming out? And you're like, 2 months. You know, you've got to you've got to do the same amount of work but times four. So, um yeah, it's been a lot, man. And um [snorts] I mean, look, you know, there was a couple of sort of people who sort of questioned the strategy behind doing four in a week as well. They were like, you know, why are you doing four in a week? You're like, you're stealing sort of the hype from the last one. Um you know, but before people have even sort of, you know, got excited about that, you're doing another one and you're sort of, you know, like a snake eating its own tail. But um you know, and I suppose, you know, maybe that's true, but uh you know, I just sort of wanted to test the theory to see sort of what would happen. Um you know, would they would they support each other? Would people get excited? And you know, I think it was probably um a little bit of one and a little bit of the other. Um but certainly what did happen was um that they got a lot of attention and not just from customers but also from uh you know, people within the industry. You know, the There's been a number of collaboration opportunities that have come out as a result of sort of, you know, I guess this week. Um and you know, that's really exciting and obviously also adds to the workload. But um you know, like you know, it would you know, as we've discussed on this show many, many times, you know, one of our priorities has always been like to have a closer relationship with the manufacturers and you know, we were talking about AP earlier and the fact that, you know, you and Nick have been able to do that um so successfully with them. Um and you know, it's it's like having men on the inside now, right? Like, you know, we come from a modding ethos and we're very mod positive and mod supportive. So, being able to work with manufacturers in any way, shape or form and be able to like Holy [] what's up, man? What are we looking at? Oh, man, this thing was Oh, I know this. Yeah. This is the back back backwater. Oh, wow. Yeah, I I've never seen this in the flesh. Yeah, it's it's pretty pretty cool. Backwater 1,100, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, super rare, isn't it? Um yeah, so working working with manufacturers uh and being able to sort of, you know, slowly sort of push them in the direction of being more mod friendly, whether that's uh you know, even if it's just like having powering options easily available in the game. Um Oh, okay. So, that's that's the That's the other Alice, isn't it? Yeah, this thing was This was getting a lot of positive vibes on the floor. All the comments were of course like, for a $1,000 game, it was as much or more than what I would have hoped for. Uh which is encouraging. It's awesome to hear that, you know, they're delivering on, you know, I think what what they wanted to build was a decent $1,000 game. Um real quick going back to your thing. I mean, you're you're building you're building your brand. We're you know, we're building our brand. Uh we want to do more in pinball. We're not building mods because that's the only thing we want to do in pinball. So, you know, kudos to you for taking the the risk. I mean, it it could be something to where maybe the sales end up different, but I think you're showing everybody like, you know, hey, I can do the volume. I can do a lot of things and you're you're showing people like a lot of different different things for different products. So, I'm sure there's going to be follow-on sales related to that. Yeah. And that and that's kind of that was kind of the intention, I suppose, in a way. And you know, I mean, ultimately, it's not uh you know, I mean, look, if you lose a couple of sales because you're doing them all in a you know, it it doesn't really matter. I mean, we're we're working at capacity anyway, so um you know, it's not it's not a huge deal one way or the other, but it's just kind of the fun of trying it out as well, isn't it? And um you know, I think I think having those opportunities of sort of building that brand and moving further into the industry, um you know, that's the goal. So, you know, I think I think that that's actually been achieved um as a result of that release week. So, yeah, I'm I'm really happy and you know, the projects we've got on the boil now are so exciting. Um and you know, working with some really, really cool people and I obviously can't talk too much about it um at the moment. Um but as time goes on, you know, we'll make those announcements and and let people know sort of uh you know, what those collaborations are and I'm you know, really excited to let people know. And you're starting to get into some stuff that's a little more kind of game agnostic too or at least can can work across multiple titles. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. Which carries its own difficulties because obviously, [laughter] you know, you've got to make it work. Like the toppers that work on nine different Star Wars machines. Yeah, yeah, something like that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For a friend. [laughter] Yeah. So, um yeah, and I mean, look, we we've had a you know, that the product you're talking about the glow rails, um you know, that's a collaboration with a with a French uh guy and it's the spiritual successor to the rails that we put on um uh Alice in Wonderland. Um uh with Melbourne for Dutch Pinball. And um you know, we got Melbourne's uh I guess approval and his blessing to sort of carry this through as a as a Stumblor branded product or a collaboration Stumblor branded product. Um and you know, uh yeah, like you said earlier, now the hard work begins of, you know, trying to get all the parts in and working out the boxing and you know, we're going to have two different distribution centers, so one in France and and one here in the UK. And [gasps] you know, uh trying to work out what the best configuration for that is and the splitting of the parts between two locations. Yeah, it's a challenge, man. Well, I now now we're getting into the weeds for sure. [laughter] Talking about boxes, this is this is the This is the the boot camp podcast episode [laughter] of the No, I hear you, man. I I won't indulge you anymore Boxes, man. Boxes, I know. I know. Boxes. Yeah, okay, just quickly, do you know how hard it is to search for a box? Have you [laughter] Like, you must have done it, right? Anybody who's not tried to search for the exact box you need for a particular product, it is not easy. Well, there's a million Now we're talking about boxes. There's there's a million boxes options and there's never the one exactly you want. Exactly. Exactly, man. Yeah, it annoys the crap out of me, but there you go. Well, we'll move on from TPF. It was It was a fun show. If you guys haven't been, definitely of course check it out soon. Yep, here is the Barrels Barrels booth. I got a chance to congratulate our buddy Kyle Smith on his new role at Barrels of Fun. So, that was cool to see him. And if he he had his uh he had his Big Trouble in Little China there. He ended up winning, of course. I don't know if it was the top number, but it was something along those lines. So, yeah, Brad was there. He's He's fully inundated like us and he's projects, but Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, indeed. Yeah. All right. So, what else do Oh, there's the other. This is my buddy Peter's Circus Voltaire, which uh was was gorgeous as well. There was some really fun ones there. I mean, it is a stunning machine, isn't it? Absolutely stunning. Allen That's Brian Allen's artwork on that one. Yep. And uh All right. So, what is next on our agenda? I think it's mod, man. Do you want to work on a mod? Oh, I just want to give a quick shout out to um let's see. I'm going to pull this up right here. So, Carrie Carrie's telling you that you've not got the right mic activated. He says you sound like a toilet. So, I assume that means that your mic's not right. He didn't actually say that. [laughter] Did he say that? No, he didn't. Uh man. Uh let's see. Is that one better? Slight. Is that one better? I don't know. What do you reckon, Carrie? Is it good? Is that one better? He's not responding. He doesn't care. He's Yeah. [clears throat] Um let's crack on to mod and I'll quickly go through the products that I [music] And we're back. And we're back. Yeah. So, this was Carrie just a couple of minutes ago saying, "Davey, ready to get those side rails on my Harry Potter." So, yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Carrie. We are so close to being ready, man. We're going through the final hurdles. I won't get into that anymore cuz it's all about boxes and we've done enough of that chat, but the product that you're talking about is, of course, glow rails, which is our spiritual successor to the Alice side rails. This is some fantastic art that we got Brad Brad Albright, who we just saw on the TPF video, to do for the product. I mean, Brad's just great, man. So so great to work with. Always knows the vibe that you're going for and just knocked this one out of the park. So, super stoked to get that. But, this is This is the product. Um And let me quickly uh Sometimes these videos don't come through, do they? Oh, it's coming through right now. I think if I go full screen, it doesn't work. So, yeah, they're lit side rails. We're starting out with Harry Potter. Um to sort of replicate the laser cut side rails that are on the CE of Harry Potter. Um and they are controlled by a lolly board, which is our uh ever-present mod board that you see in loads of best-selling mods. Um You know, and we've been honing it over the last couple of years. This is going to be sort of fully reactive with the game. It's going to have RGB sensing so that the rails change color when the games change color. And a whole bunch of other features. All of our uh you know, pattern algorithms that we've been working on for all of our mods over the last couple of years and you know, they're going to look really great. So, um you know, we've got a really great feedback on this. We're almost about to hit 300 on the list. You know, I think we're 2 weeks in. So, looking really great on that one. And to quickly cover off the other products that we released, this is the Balrog uh that we did for Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Rings has a center bash uh a center bash toy that you hit that only comes out during certain periods of the game. And the original one's pretty underwhelming, really. He's sort of got a bulb inside of him that lights up. I've always wanted to redo it with something a bit fancier, but I've never really had the technology that could do his whip successfully. You know, I used to try sort of optos, sort of optic optical tubing and things like that and try to buy you know, filament LED filament wire and things like that, but could never pull it off. But, since we did the uh the electric fence mod for JP, I've been able to produce these LED strips that are really tiny, um which has enabled us to do his whip like that. And you know, we've got these great fire algorithms now that can, you know, look really amazing. Reacts to hits and things like that. So, I mean, this mod was kind of a little bit of an experiment in a way because Lord of the Rings is an old game, beloved game, but quite old. Usually, most of the top mod makers always focus on the latest titles cuz that tends to be where majority of the sales are. Um so, it was a little bit of a passion project, I suppose, to do this one. And yeah, it was good to see all the Lord of the Rings fans sort of coming out of the woodwork and getting on the list. Look, we're up to 150 in a couple of weeks. So, really pleased with the response on that one. Um and yeah, Balrog's going to be seen in machines really soon. Before Before you move on, it's amazing. Like [laughter] it's it's incredible. Thanks, dude. The amount of work that you did on this one is is superb. I mean, is it Is this pushing boundaries for you in terms of like light integration or what? Uh yeah. Yeah, yeah, you could say that. So, I also want to point out it's a collaboration effort as well, this one. So, Paul Jazbec, who's very good friend of mine, um he's produced the sculpt for Balrog. Not a Lord of the Rings fan, so I sort of had to coach him through that and explain sort of how important the Balrog is to the Lord of the Rings like, you know, underworld, I suppose. And um And you know, we we wanted to make it so that he looked like he was on flame, but in a very sort of lava, you know, black sort of cracked sort of crust sort of effect. Um And so, he's got three strips that are inside of him. One for his body, two in his arms. And that's why you get this sort of really dynamic sort of effect through his body. Um And then the whips uh were I guess not, you know, they're they're the same technologies we used on the JP fence, but just longer. And I've made all of those connected to each other. So, they're all individually lit. So, you know, if you wanted to go crazy and make one strand green and one strand blue, you could do that. Um So, it's going to be a lot of fun for people to configure it to their liking. I know that a couple of people weren't keen on the purple trigger effect. Obviously, you can just change that to whatever you like. You can keep it red or whatever. Um You know, I just I just sort of essentially made it that color so that it'd be really obvious that he was getting triggered when the ball hit him. But, like all of our stuff, it's all super configurable. Yeah, it's it's super cool, man. So, Thanks, man. Thanks a lot. Yeah, imagine having this game and not having that bad boy in the middle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, like I said, it's it's always something that I wanted to do. And you know, I'm just really pleased to get it over the line, basically. Cool. Yeah. On to the next thing. So, we talked about this. you a shout out, by the way. Did he? Did he like my Balrog, dude? Balrog looks I think that's good. I think that's good. [laughter] I think I think in young person's terminology, that means good. Yeah. Um So, this is the card blaster. Card blaster. You got to say it like an Australian when you say it. Card blaster. That's really good, man. That's really good. [laughter] You should You should speak Australian. I'm I'm actually talking to my mic now, so I don't know, Carrie, if you're getting any [laughter] uh more feedback on my toiletness toiletness factor on a scale of 1 to 10, but any any feedback is appreciated. The more toilety, the better. [laughter] So, don't you stress. So, this is the card blaster. And um I don't think I've got the full video on my screen. This is obviously an omission due to the busyness of release week. But, essentially, this is a device that goes in your pinball machine that hook is is going to hook into the ticket dispenser system. Um so, that it's super configurable in game and spits out a playing card, whether it's Pokémon or whatever, when a certain achievement happens in the game, high score or something along those lines. Um We originally talked about this idea, didn't we, Rob? It was originally your idea. Yeah, on this podcast. Yes. And and it was, you know, it was it was your idea originally. Um I know a lot of people have sort of been mentioning it in the in the forums, on Facebook. You know, a lot of people when Pokémon came out said, "Look, the obvious thing to you know, why doesn't this dispenser cards?" So, a lot of people asking for it. We had a bit of a chat about it. You had some early designs. I sort of took those designs and and sort of took them to this level with the LED strip triggering when the card comes out, making it a bit more robust so that only one card ever comes out, to make sure if the card hasn't been pulled another card doesn't come out if it's triggered again, things like that. Um And we originally had it tied into the extra ball using a sort of a lamp sensing technology that I designed, which is this board here. But, since uh releasing it just a couple of weeks ago, uh we've had a ton of amazing customer feedback both from people who you know, intend to put it in their homes, but also people who want to put in their arcades. Um now you know routing machines and owning arcades isn't something that I'm overly familiar with. So it was really great to hear from people how useful this would be or how it needed to be changed to make it more useful for them. And part of that was this idea that it needed to hook into something other than extra ball and we eventually settled on the the ticket dispenser system which is the most obvious answer to the problem because it allows full configurability through the game as to you know what score you need to get before a ticket before a Pokémon card comes out. But likewise other really cool ideas like people wanted to see like a a lit window in the front where they could advertise either their company or the fact that you could win a card. So we've integrated that as well. Where you know putting things like you know easy disablers on the side so that you can turn it off if you know [laughter] if the kids have got all their friends over and you don't want to give them all a card you can easily turn it off on the inside and a bunch of other you know things like you know testing buttons and and stuff like that extendable magazine so that you can put more cards in because obviously when you're running an arcade you don't want to be filling up the the card bin you know every 5 minutes. So having sort of extensible uh or longer bins so that you can put in more cards and things like that. So it was a really great process of of getting that customer feedback and I mean the the response for it's been off the charts. I think um I think out of all of the mods that we released that week this was the biggest one which is a bit of a surprise really. Okay. Well you'll be hearing from my attorney on this [laughter] and I will go You don't have an attorney. You sound like your attorney is you. It's definitely not Rob. You've created a huge headache for yourself. I'm really [laughter] happy to hear that this is going to be your problem and not mine. Yeah yeah well it will be your problem soon man because remember you promised me that after we're done with Pokémon we would be taking this to the next level. So that's going to be your problem. There's levels on levels. No. I'm I'm happy you ran with it. I mean obviously I had a lot going on. So I appreciate you you taking it to market and I'm excited. I think it looks amazing. And it's it's really cool that you're getting like so much interested in it. I certainly I'm excited to get get one for sure. Yeah yeah yeah. So was that is that three or was that all four of your bad boys? That's right. Last one is yeah this is this is Chad the glowing yeah. Chad. This is this is my my wife's favorite of the mods. I think because she just likes that I called him a name. So she'd be she'd be happy if I called all my mods by some name I think. But this is my favorite. hey real quick we're up to four. We're up to four now. Yeah yeah yeah. Four fans. All four fans now. Yes. [laughter] Got a new one. He came. Yeah. So this is Chad and then I like very I made sure that I like um This is my favorite bit where it goes c h a d Chad yeah. [laughter] Boom. Chad. That is video editing at its finest. If anybody wants any tips hit me up over PM I'll tell you exactly how I did that. Yeah this is this is Chad. He glows. He gets triggered by the targets. He's going to be in different colors for the various multi balls. Um We've done some further modifications to his design so he's even chattier in the production version. He's he's he's great man. He's going to he's going to be really great. And yeah I'm I'm I'm stoked to be doing more mods for King Kong. I think it's a great game. I think it's a highly underrated game. I think it's going to be one I think it's going to be a classic in years to come. And that's that's it man. That's it for me. Cool. Well yeah congrats on getting those out. I mean the not only are there four of them but they're all amazing in their own right. Oh that's good work man. Keep up [clears throat] the good work. Oh look at that we've got coming to you mods on the stream as well. Nice to see you man. We're going to be talking about your mods very soon. I've got them on the mod list. missed it. That's that was the fourth fan that I mentioned. You were distracted. [laughter] Yeah I was distracted. I was just trying to keep my place. Before before I forget to I want to I want to give a shout out to Empire Pinball. If you guys get a chance check out their mod recap from Expo. Alex did a detailed mod recap from the show. It's great to see other people doing like exclusively mod focused content. So definitely definitely check that out when you guys get a chance. What do you what do you got else? You got more or is it just your stuff today? No just this is just a self promo we would say yeah. No I've got I've got more yeah. [laughter] But usually we obfuscate it slightly more. So look at this like [clears throat] so I I was talking about coming to you mods uh Is it Shawn? I think maybe his name I saw it mentioned in the TPF thing. I apologize if we got your name wrong but we've we've chatted a bit over over PM over various things. Lovely dude. He's creating just really great mods. Been primarily focused on D&D and this is a cracker man. Oh was he at he was at TPF right? I jiggled this bad boy. I got Yeah yeah yeah. I'm glad I'm glad you got to jiggle it. [laughter] Yeah I mean This is really well done. This is really well done. That's awesome man. That's like what a great concept. What a great concept. I'm on the list for this. I don't even have D&D at my workshop anymore. It's gone back to Cole. But how could you say no to a jiggling cube especially with some mixelot on the promo video. You know that just that just that's the icing on the cake for me yeah. So yeah that's great. Uh They've done a bunch of other really cool mods for D&D too. Go check out that TPF mod video. You'll see all of the great stuff that they've that they've released. Um So Chris see arcades is back on the scene. He sort of went a little bit underground. I think we mentioned that on the last episode or the episode before. He's sort of been not as prolific as he once was but he's back with a vengeance and releasing mods for pardon me Beetlejuice. Um so he's done a bunch of stuff over on the right hand side of the game. There's this Beetlejuice graveyard tombstone. All the text lights up. So nicely dry brushed. You get the you know the normal Chris pricing of course and [laughter] Come on Dave. Is that all the is that all the shade you're capable of? [laughter] You got more shade know. It's not $700 so Yeah yeah well yeah. Well oh man. So yeah Chris got into a very heated back and forth with a a few people on the Beetlejuice thread about his pricing um and yeah it was probably the most exciting thing that happened on Pinsider that week but thing Chris. Do your thing. Yeah yeah do your thing exactly yeah. And so he's also done this that's gorgeous. Yeah. Yeah so that's like a mean that. I'm not trying to make up for the previous comment. Like that Yeah yeah. And look it's only 38 quid too. So Wait a minute. How's that how's that work? So I think that is existing so it's only the skull and the arms that replaces the flasher. Um I think maybe I actually like what you did. So wait a minute. We got to be clear. Is the say my name thing is that a spooky thing? I think that's spooky. Yeah that's a spooky thing. And so I think he's just replaced maybe it's not actually. Maybe he's redone the acrylic with a cutout possibly. I'm I'm unfamiliar with Beetlejuice so I couldn't really tell you. Let's have a quick check. Green stuff flasher. It's just a I think [clears throat] it's just the flasher cover. I think it's just a flasher cover. Yeah. Okay. But anyway he's I think he's a massive Beetlejuice fan so he's going to be doing a bunch of stuff for Beetlejuice. If you want Beetlejuice mods and you're loving your game Chris is the guy to talk to. He's going to be all over this. So yeah check it out. [clears throat] Right. We're now we can't talk about mods that have happened over the last two weeks without talking about Backalley. Now look all of these tabs here are all Backalley mods. So I mean So good. So good. Yeah yeah yeah. So they've just done they've just done and this isn't even all of them as well. Like look so this is this is more of their stuff. Um Hang on. Let's start at the start. So these are pretty much all new I think. That's that's not new. That's a new Evil Dead mod. The chainsaw mod's new. They've done it I think they've done maybe 10 different shooter housings. That train track is new. All of this stuff's new. There's a bunch of stuff for Guns N' Roses. A bunch of stuff for Scooby-Doo that's new. New AC/DC shooter color. There's so much stuff here to check out and they really as I was saying earlier they released like four mods a day for like seven days or something like that. So very very prolific mod makers. They've also done this Jaws kit that is like a real wood company that does the sign that does the upper playfield. I think the shack as well. Um Yeah. So so yeah these these seagulls as well and these plastic replacements. Yeah yeah. So very look you can see how much stuff is involved in that in that extension kit. So very very cool. Uh I'm not a like so this was this was released by Jay Graphics at the same time. I seem to remember this from TPF last year. So I'm not sure if this is new, but it is very cool. So it's uh this is uh a Wolfman replacement for Monster Bash. Um like all of their stuff just beautifully sculpted, beautifully painted. Um it's generally not interactive, generally not lit. Um but if you're after kick-ass sculpts that have just been painted really beautifully, um go check them out. They always do fantastic work. Right. You ready for some for some Creature throwback? Let's hear it, man. Okay. So all right. So what's the part on Creature that always fails, Rob? The rules? [laughter] The rules? The rules are perfect. Uh some people some people some people uh think it's too simple, but it's Creature. It's amazing. That was a bad joke. Keep going. Yeah. So the hologram always fails. It's always blue or black or and it's impossible Is it What it Like what's the deal with it? Is it Uh Is it fail part failing or I think look I mean So there was a time when I was like researching how to make holograms and stuff, but and they were quite big at the time when Creature was made. So this was like the early '90s. I think Creature was 1990 maybe. Um and holograms are relatively prolific at that time. You know, you'd buy them on magazines and things. But I think what's happened is I think I think because they're um sensitive to light, they decay over time. So um if they've been in the sun or whatever, they'll just they'll just wear out. They'll They'll first go blue and then they'll go black and they'll just they'll just die. But the problem with it is is that there's no companies still producing holograms or very few of these companies exist. Whereas you know, there might have been a hundred back at this time, there's maybe one or two in the world now that still make holograms. Now Freddy from Freddy's Pinball Paradise made a hologram replacement um a few years ago which is what's in my game. And they were great, you know, they were beautiful and they were green and they were bright. But they weren't exact. They weren't the exact same creature sculpt that was in the original hologram um because it doesn't exist anymore. Nobody's been able to locate it. Or somebody owns it in a private collection and they're not letting anybody get access to it. So the idea that um the hologram you know, to to try and replace that hologram, you either try and source a nice one which are basically impossible. I've known one person who's ever been able to do that in the last couple of years. Um or you try and find some other solution. Um so this is a another solution. Somebody's recreated um the hologram as a digital screen which has been done before but nobody's ever tried to recreate the hologram exactly as a digital screen. Um which is what this one is. Like an authentic interpretation of it. Exactly. So when you when I mean when you look at this video, right? That looks like that looks like the original hologram and most people probably wouldn't wouldn't be able to tell what it wasn't just by looking at it. So they've you know, it'd be really exciting to see this in the flesh just to see how it performed. And Rob uh Seeker Gator we were mentioning earlier just bought one for his Creature. So I'm excited to talk to him about it. Um which I'll do uh you know, in a week or so to find out what his impressions of it was. Um but yeah, looks like a really fantastic uh thing. I'm always loving to see uh uh Creature mods. You know, I've done a couple of Creature mods myself. It's a game that's very very close to my heart. Um and very close to a lot of people's hearts. And look, I'm sure we're going to be seeing lots of uh you know, more stuff for Creature I mean it looks like it might be a higher visual experience potentially maybe, but Well, certainly certainly a better visual experience than faded blue. Like if you had a faded blue and you couldn't source either an original hologram or the replacement one from Freddy, this is easily your best option in my opinion. I'm I'm not a big fan of the the screens that replace the hologram and do other stuff. Like for me it's a step too far. Like you know, I've always loved that hologram in Creature. So somebody redoing that hologram is a very cool thing. Yeah, very nice. Right. Pinunciate Pinunciator. Have you heard of this? Yeah, for sure. Brad I've I've met Brad at our first Pinfest we went to. Great guy. Yeah, Brad Albin. So this is uh essentially very similar to the Lollyboard in the sense that it's a piece of technology that enables people who might not have programming experience to build their own mods sophisticated mods with triggering and with light shows and everything else. Um now this isn't a new mod, but uh what is new is that um Brad has just recently rebuilt um their configuration interface to be uh to be to be web enabled. Um and why that's exciting is that it was only a Windows uh bit of software before. So people who had a Mac were [] out of luck basically. Um but that's all changed now. It's now uh it's now on the web. Uh in the cloud. Uh so it's got support for Windows, Mac Linux uh soon to be uh mobile device friendly as well. Very sophisticated bit of software. He's obviously highly skilled programmer. There's a lot of functionality uh you can um you know, use with these things. You know, Brad's a great guy as you said. Um and yeah, really cool to see them uh continuing to develop this kit. Um and I'm excited to see I'm excited to see some production level mods go out there using it. I'm not sure if there are any yet. Um love to be corrected if anybody's been using this and have their design set on a production level mod, let me know. And um we'll make sure to cover it. Is it Is it What's the compatibility? Is it like it like across a lot of machines or do you have any info on that? Um I'm not entirely sure. Like I think that I mean for for me the difficulty the there's two there's two difficulties when it comes to machine compatibility. One is the powering options and where you get the power from. And two is the triggering. The triggering always tends to be slightly different. You always need to write a slightly different circuit um for different architectures. Um look, if I uh you know, if if Brad's at Expo, I'll make sure I go up and say hello and I'll I'll get the lowdown on that. Cool. Yeah. Uh we had Paul earlier asking about uh like a topper controller board. Is this something that could be used on a topper if someone wanted to do something custom? 100% yeah yeah. Pinunciate you could. Um Lolly version 3 could. We've just recently sent out um two Lolly version 3 kits to somebody who wants to make their own custom topper for uh Jaws and for King Kong, I think. Um the Jaws one we sort of sent them out a glow post kit which contains a Lolly version 3, but instead of the glow post we included a whole bunch of lighting strips like WS2812 lighting strips uh and also one of our mini uh lighting strips that you saw on the Balrog earlier because they wanted to put like an electrical cable in in uh Bruce's mouth as though he was biting it. Um so yeah, I'm super excited to see what the results of that is. Um but yeah, Pinunciate Pinunciator will do it as well. I think Brad's really uh present when it comes to sort of helping people on the programming side of things. Uh or not programming, but with the configuration of the software. Um so yeah, there's lots of options now which is so fantastic that um that that's available to people when they uh you know, so that people can you know, make their crazy mod ideas uh come into reality. So are we uh we're moving into Pokémon world? Pokémon. Gotta catch 'em all. Um right. So You got You got a flip on this one yet? No, I haven't. Yeah, how popular was it at TPF? Uh I don't know. I mean I don't Come on. There's not a lot of There's not a lot of drawing I don't think people are real drawn in by it yet. I've heard some local guys operators complaining about the code. Uh the the layout is very simple. Uh but um apparently it's earning like a mofo. So Yeah, which is what you'd expect. Good on operators from that perspective. Yeah. But we got a juicy bit of news, man. We got any spiced for us? What what we got? Uh well, I mean So we got the card blaster. So that's a mod coming out for Pokémon soon. Get that at Walmart walmart.com. [laughter] John J5M [clears throat] is currently working on uh something for the scoop. Okay. Um so I know we talked about maybe doing a take on the neon thing for the scoop. have a patent on the scoop, mate. [laughter] Yeah. Scoops are my thing, John. Back off, buddy. Back off. Uh now we had a chat about it and uh you know, he's given me 50% royalties on that. Nice. Um I'm going [clears throat] to I'm just going to do support on that one. Look, I mean I think it's it's kind of like you on the card blaster thing. Like I had so many projects on my plate anyway. Telling him that I was going to do it and then having no intention of doing it for like four or five months is a bit of a dick move, isn't it? So um so John's going to John's I'm to take the lead on that one. I'm just going to run support on technology. Um Uh a lot of people are focusing on trying to stick uh Gameboy stuff. pokedex, Gameboys. We've got uh how far down do I have to scroll? So, we've got somebody who's doing 3D printed Gameboys. Um we've got about that. I'm sure sure Don's involved in that. Oh, yeah. Is that right? imagine. Yeah. Okay, yeah. And then we've got somebody sticking like legit Gameboys in as well. So, that's that one. Um hang on, where are we? Where are we? Um Uh sorry. It's annoying. Hang on, maybe it's this one. Oh, that's that one again. Now I got to scroll all the way down again. Bambu Labs Bambu Labs was like they saw the Pokémon pinball machine and they're like Bradlee Ching [laughter] Yeah, man. Yeah. The 3D printers are worrying. All right. Uh there's going to be so much 3D printed crap in Pokémon is going to be unbelievable. So, uh look, somebody's somebody wants to put like a Gameboy cartridge as a shooter cover. Mhm. Um Mhm. There's there's so much Gameboy somebody's sticking it on a little plant inside the cuz like cuz with with this taste Taste Gameboy color actually Taste to a certain degree is going to go out the window here because it's like anything you throw in there kind of is going to look kind of cool to some degree. [laughter] Oh my god. I mean kind of cool is doing some heavy lifting in that sentence. Oh, David, you're so wrong. Put [laughter] anything you can think of goes in that game, baby. Oh, David. See, like that's amazing. That's gorgeous. [laughter] Yeah. And look, it can go on the it can go on your coin door. It can go on your lock down but Okay, what what is going on? What is going on with that? Like what are they doing? That's the Team Rocket R. Okay. Yeah. Um how dare you not know the Team Rocket R? I'm R R. That's what my initials mean, baby. I love it. Okay, yeah. Uh look, and if you don't like the Team Rocket R, you can just stick a Pokémon card there as well. And look, somebody's created a little 3D printed housing for your Pokémon card. But look, man, that's taking the place of the the card blaster slot. So, you know, you can get that at right out of there. Um but look, everybody's having fun. I love it. Yeah, man. Yeah. Everybody, you know, I think it's I think it's awesome. We're going to I think we're going to see a lot of it. Yeah. Yeah, no, this is the this is the mod thread. This is the um Pokémon's got to mod them all mod thread. So, so how is the mod thread on this one because like the mod threads on some of the latest Stern games have been kind of quiet for all intents and purposes. Is the Pokémon one blowing up? Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. Yeah, it's busy, man. Um but mostly from enthusiasts and not professional mod makers. So, Right. Right. I think that's I think that's really cool, you know? Um you know, if this is if this is the way that people get in by, you know, testing the water and seeing if uh you know, they they you know, like modding and want to do more. I mean, you know, a lot of the guys uh like coming to your mods um you know, started out sort of doing things on a not a simplistic level, but you can just see with every release they're just getting more and more sophisticated. They're getting better. They're using more techniques. Um and it just evolves and it's it's so cool to see that. So, you know, the more people getting involved and having fun with it the better in my opinion. Well, even even beyond the mod mod side, just people becoming uh more intimately uh involved in their pinball machines I think has a lot of value, right? It's like if you're if you're if you care about it more, that's good. Obviously, we know a lot of new people are coming in on Pokémon. I mean, I'm hearing a lot about like Yeah. like trading card shops getting their first pinball machine and that type of stuff. So, yeah, I mean, it's it seems seems like a good thing. And Yeah. making it simple was what it took to do that or part of that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 100% 100%. And yeah, like, you know, there's so many facets to the pinball hobby, isn't there? And um you know, there's refurbishing and then there's the competitive side and there's modding, you know? And you know, for me, sort of the tinkering side of things, particularly, you know, you know, building things to stick inside, there's just there's just real sense of um you know, fun by doing that. And you know, when things work and you get them to to do stuff and then, you know, you release them and you get that feedback from people that they really enjoy them too or they get some novelty out of it. You know, this there's just a really uh you know, it's just simple frivolous kind of stupid stuff. And with with all the you know, the heavy duty stuff that's going on in the world at the moment, um it's just nice to have something that's just a bit sillier and and not so serious. Well, if if Sonic is truly our next title coming down the pipe, I mean, it's only going to continue uh this craziness. So, you better start turning on your printers, David. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I got one more. You you are we cool for one more? We're going a bit over time, but okay. So, I know that you're a big fan of riding mods, are you not? Oh, you know I am. So far, don't disappoint. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I I'm not going to I'm not going to talk this one in. I'm going to let you talk it through, okay? not seen this, so No, you haven't seen this. Okay, so this is a Squirtle's whirlpool mod, okay? Okay. Now, I'm just going to let it play. Can I react now? You can react, man. What do you think? I got to reserve judgment for a second at least. I mean, you know you know I don't like this. Yeah. What do you think? Uh well, it's just covering too much, right? Yeah, that 100% that's my impression as well. What's going on in the right there? That he's not suggesting there's two of them, right? Uh no. So, you can you can have it either have it in blue or have it in clear, I think. He's so good with this this medium, right? So, he's he's leaning into his medium. I mean, we all we all suffer from that as mod makers to a certain degree. Yeah. Um I don't know. up it's covering up the entire inlane, isn't it? I I would say like it's drawing my focus to an area of the game that I don't really feel like I would even want my focus drawn to. Yeah. I mean, it's a tricky one, isn't it? Because the whirlpool I feel is an ugly addition anyway to that area, right? Like it's a big circular thing. Um it's it's not, you know, I I just think it's kind of weighted wrongly for that section of the playfield. Um and you know, it's it's the same on Creature. Creature kind of gets away with it because everything is kind of more and over the top and weird. And it's an older game and stuff. even like I didn't even realize that was such a major thing in the game in general. Now it's In Pokémon? screaming at me. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, you're drawing even more attention to it, really. You're not it's I guess the intention is to sort of cover it up and make it more sort of thematic. Okay, yeah, there is that. actually, you're probably drawing even more attention to it than than before. I mean, could he Where is he at with it? Is it Is it Is this released or is he Yeah, just just released, yeah. Okay. Well, I mean I guess I'd have to see it in person to weigh in. Yeah. seems to have He seems to to make really nice stuff. So, Yeah. 100% man. And he's a lovely dude. Love him a lot. And um you know, we've we've chatted briefly, you know, over email or PM or whatever it was. Um you know, he does fantastic me, man, cuz this needs to be like a Coke versus Pepsi thing. You got to show [laughter] me the mod. Can't tell me who made it. You want my answer now? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [laughter] Yeah, see, because you like him, you're tempering your feedback. Yeah, okay. Next time. didn't like it at the beginning. [laughter] Uh Yeah, I think my actually, it's not I do think that it stands out too much and weights the playfield wrongly, but I think the bigger issue is that it covers the entire inlane. Mhm. So, if the ball enters in the inlane, you've got no idea where it's going to hit the flipper. And that's going to completely change how you shoot from that left flipper. So, um I'm not sure how he's going to overcome that, really. I mean, the the whirlpool impacts your ability to see the ball coming down that side anyway, but this covers it up even more. Right. Um you know, my instant reaction when I saw this whirlpool was like, oh, he should light it up with like, you know, an LED to stop doing these whirlpools in pinball in general. Like it's not it's not good in Star Wars Fall of the Empire. No. It's just Creature, it's not good. Yeah. It's not good on Creature. It's uh The only game it's good on, in my opinion, is Diner, but everyone skips the cup anyway because it's like not even a good scoring opportunity. [clears throat] So, yeah. I mean, I guess it's not good on Diner, but the sound effects are good when you spin it around the cup. Anyway, enough on the whirlpools, guys. That's our take. Yeah. So, uh thank you for joining us, guys. Um I hope I've I hope I worked out my mic thing. I'm going to listen back to this and and analyze it closely. It sounds Do I sound okay now? I think it was like I had a whatever whatever. [laughter] Talk about boxes again over here. Uh all right. Uh David, do you you got a couple things coming up. I'm going to be at PinTastic uh at the end of this week. Uh first time going to the show. Uh super excited to be there. It's out in the Boston area. Mhm. Thank you for Dave for setting us up. I'll be out there uh representing American, talking with some of our distributors out there. And uh love love to see you guys. Uh you've got an event coming up uh part of the UK Pinball League, I think it's at your facility? I do, yes. This is really exciting. Um you know, I've wanted to sort of have, you know, events at the workshop for a while. We're having our first one, which is the Southeast Pinball League. We're going to be running a competition. It's going to be super chill, though. Not sort of uh match play head-to-head. It's um I don't even know what the format is, but basically you just record your scores and you can have wood-fired pizzas and beers and, you know, inviting people from outside of pinball. So, it's kind of um you know, my first foray into sort of, you know, turning the headquarters, the workshop into sort of, you know, a bit more sort of pinball event focused sort of thing. So, yeah, really excited about that. If anybody's in London on the 19th and they want to pop in, please do and say hello. Cool. All right. Well, guys, signing off. Uh thanks for being with us. Uh hopefully we'll see you soon, maybe a little bit after that event.