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Episode 87_Golden State Pinball Festival Recap 2026

The Spinner Is Lit Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·2h 28m·analyzed·May 25, 2026
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Golden State Pinball Festival 2026 recap: 353 floor games, 50+ campground games, record-breaking attendance and community celebration.

Summary

The Spinner Is Lit hosts recap their Golden State Pinball Festival 2026 experience (May 15-17) in Lodi, California. The show featured 353 registered games on the floor, plus approximately 50 additional games in the campground. Key highlights include unique campground attractions (Juan's elaborate TNA tent with lasers and smoke, Lynn's Arcade setup, Reno camp with rare games like Fly High and Q), a new tournament director (Shannon Miles) running a smooth 64-player qualifying format, professional streaming by Rick from Elk Grove Pinball, and the overall 'vibe' of the festival that blends competitive play with social experience.

Key Claims

  • Golden State Pinball Festival 2026 registered 353 games on the show floor and in the tournament room

    high confidence · Spencer verified against official website: 'According to the Golden State Pinball Festival website, the listed games on the show floor, including the tournament room, is 353.'

  • Approximately 50 additional games were set up across the campground beyond the main show floor

    medium confidence · Mark estimates: 'I mean, there had to be, what, 50 games out there?' Spencer confirms rough consistency with the count.

  • Juan's TNA tent with lasers, smoke effects, and 220 watts of sound was the highlight of the campground

    high confidence · Multiple hosts confirm: Mark 'One super outdid himself with that,' Spencer 'I think that Juan's TNA tent was probably the high point of the campground.'

  • Shannon Miles ran the Golden State tournament for the first time this year in place of Mike from CCPL

    high confidence · Spencer: 'This is the first year that our tournament hasn't been run by Mike from CCPL. So it's under new management.'

  • Rick from Elk Grove Pinball streamed 21-24 hours of unedited tournament content and added a 3D camera for close-ups of LCD scores

    high confidence · Spencer: 'there are like 21 hours or 24 hours of streaming content on YouTube' and 'He added a 3D camera this year... you could actually read the scores... pretty legible.'

  • The tournament format consisted of two 64-player qualifying sessions with top 16 advancing to a 32-player final

    high confidence · Spencer: 'two 64-player qualifying sessions and then it's like a 32-player final'

  • Don from We Are Pinball attended the Golden State Festival for the first time and was impressed by both the show and campground experience

    high confidence · Spencer: 'You know, Don made it out. He tagged along with the Spooky crew... I think that he liked the show and he was impressed by the show.'

  • The Reno camp brought Fly High, a rare 1980s Geiger game based on Never Ending Story theme with Super Sonic mechanics

Notable Quotes

  • “Come for the pinball, stay for the Lodi.”

    Spencer @ mid-show — Captures the defining appeal of Golden State Festival—the campground and community experience is equally or more important than the tournament itself.

  • “The after hours entertainment might even be better than the show if you can stay up that late, which I cannot.”

    Spencer @ mid-show — Highlights unique draw of Golden State—the campground social/party scene rivals the official show floor.

  • “Man, bro, you weren't kidding.”

    Don (We Are Pinball) @ post-show — Reflects Don's conversion from skepticism about Golden State to appreciation after experiencing it firsthand.

  • “You're supposed to bring it home to the spinner is lit, man. What happened?”

    Mark @ tournament recap — Humorous jab at Spencer (described as 'number one ranked player in the state of Nevada') failing to qualify for playoffs due to bad luck and machine malfunctions.

  • “That's Pinball.”

    Spencer (paraphrasing TD response) @ tournament recap — Reflects the philosophical acceptance of bad luck and minor malfunctions as inherent to the pinball experience.

  • “It was an all-you-could-eat pinball buffet.”

    Spencer @ pre-show banter — Describes Mark's marathon pinball session at Dan's house (8-9 hours straight) before the festival officially began.

  • “His entire motorhome was all soundproof, so you couldn't hear anything... it was like totally silent.”

    Mark @ campground logistics — Contrasts comfortable lodging in Jason's diesel pusher against the loud campground atmosphere, setting mood expectations.

  • “Gold star, sir. Gold star.”

    Spencer @ tournament wrap-up — High praise for Shannon Miles' tournament directorship, signaling successful transition from previous TD.

Entities

SpencerpersonDanpersonMarkpersonGolden State Pinball FestivaleventJuanpersonShannon MilespersonRickperson

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Golden State Pinball Festival 2026 registered 353 games on show floor, plus ~50 additional games in campground, representing record scale for the event.

    high · Spencer verified 353 from official website; multiple hosts confirm ~50 campground games across distributed camps.

  • ?

    community_signal: Don from We Are Pinball attended Golden State Festival for first time, initially skeptical, became impressed by campground experience and community vibe. Represents bridging of separate podcast communities.

    high · Spencer: 'He made it out to the show this year. He tagged along with the Spooky crew... I think that he liked the show and he was impressed by the show. But I think that like most people who really indulge in it, he really liked the campsite.'

  • ?

    event_signal: Golden State Festival tournament directorship transitioned from Mike at CCPL to Shannon Miles, first major event for new TD. Tournament ran smoothly with two 64-player qualifiers and 32-player final.

    high · Spencer: 'This is the first year that our tournament hasn't been run by Mike from CCPL... for his first time doing an event of this size... He did a wonderful job.'

  • ?

    content_signal: Rick from Elk Grove Pinball provided 21-24 hours of professional-quality unedited streaming with added 3D camera capability for readable LCD score close-ups.

    high · Spencer: 'there are like 21 hours or 24 hours of streaming content on YouTube... He added a 3D camera this year... you could actually read the scores... pretty legible.'

  • ?

    venue_signal: Golden State Festival's campground experience featuring multiple curated vendor camps with themed attractions (Juan's TNA tent with lasers/smoke, Lynn's Arcade party setup, Reno camp) is positioned as equal or superior draw to main show floor.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.446

0:00
Autobots, today we honor the brave men and women who gave their lives in defense of freedom. Their sacrifice forged the path for the liberties we cherish across this great nation. As we gather with family and friends this Memorial Day weekend, let us pause and remember their courage, their dedication, and their unwavering spirit. Their legacy will endure through every generation that follows. We shall never forget those who made the ultimate sacrifice. And we will continue to honor their memory for all time.
0:44
Freedom is the right of all sentient beings. And because of them, that freedom lives on. Welcome to the Sterners Lit Pinball Podcast, Episode 87, Golden State Pinball Festival 2026 Recap.
1:21
I'm your host, Spencer, and with me are my co-host, Dan. Hey, how's everybody doing today? And Mark. Hey, everyone. Thanks for listening to us.
1:31
Yeah, most of our listeners, no one, if you're new to the show and you don't know, we'll recap this real quick. Last week was the Golden State Pinball Festival, which the show officially opened Friday, the 15th of May, and went through Sunday, the 17th of May. Started a couple of days before, though, you know, set up and all. So, Dan, you live fairly close. You got there Thursday morning? Yeah, but a couple days before that I was entertaining. I had a refugee here. That's right. From Reno. And that was me. And I had a chance to, I got to play a lot of pinball before the show. So I kind of got it out of my system, but it didn't work. I still kept playing more pinball when I was there at the Golden State Pinball Festival. But, Dan, I want to thank you so much for letting me stay over two nights in a row. I might have overstayed my welcome, but I appreciate you. He was working during the day and I was out there playing games trying to beat all of Alex's scores. And I could not do it. I tried. I feel like you're underselling it.

high confidence · Mark: 'Fly High... was a rare game that was made by Geiger, which was based off of Super Sonic. And the theme of the game was Never Ending Story.'

Don
person
Mike Garciaperson
Jack Jarrettperson
George Gonzalezperson
Lynn's Arcadeorganization
CCPL (Sacramento)organization
Reno camporganization
Jasonperson
Scott Buseyperson
Rick (Velcro of Pinball)person
Mark Cowardperson
Champion Pubgame
Indy 500game
TNAgame
Fly Highgame

high · Spencer: 'I think that it is the campsite and the side events that I think really kind of set our show apart from almost any other show... the after hours entertainment might even be better than the show.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Multiple tournament games experienced mechanical issues (ball hang-ups, multiball firing errors) affecting tournament results and player experience.

    high · Spencer experienced Champion Pub ball wire hang-up and Indy 500 turbo multiball malfunction both in same tournament session, reducing qualifying chances.

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Reno camp adapted rare 1980s European Geiger machine (Fly High) for US operation, requiring 220V transformer conversion and non-standard power cord replacement.

    high · Mark: 'it was at 220 volts. So we had to switch it and fix the transformer... the plug was for Europe also, so it had the two prongs... we had to go... pick up a cord and rigged it up.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Golden State Festival demonstrates mature community infrastructure with multiple established camps (Reno, Sacramento, Lynn's Arcade), coordinated game transport, professional TD services, and streaming coverage.

    high · Coordinated truck crew led by Mike Garcia, professional tournament management by Shannon Miles, dedicated streaming by Rick, established camp traditions and vendor participation.

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Match-play tournament format noted as less stressful and more social compared to competitive formats, enabling better player socialization and attendance.

    medium · Spencer: 'The thing about the target match play is it's a little less stressful and it's more socializing, in my opinion. The way I play with everybody, it was just really nice to see everybody.'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Shannon Miles demonstrated competency as major-scale tournament director (192-player pool across two qualifying sessions), handling TD calls smoothly, maintaining game quality, eliminating downtime.

    high · Spencer praise: 'for his first time doing an event of this size... He did a wonderful job... very satisfied how smooth it ran... really great job of taking games out that were not working.'

    • 2:39
    I'm underselling it, huh? Mark gets to town two days early. That's right. Before the day before, because we start the day before the show because we help with set up. So Mark gets to town two days early, makes the tour of Sacramento hitting every spot he could possibly play pinball in. That's true. I did. I got a chance to go to Capital Pinball Parlor. That's the one I always miss. I always go to the one out for Dust Flipper House. But I was like, I want to try something different, and I had time to do it. So when I first arrived, I got to meet Jim and spend some time with him over there and play some of the games. And then after that, I had some time in the evening before I went over to Dan's. I went to the other Dan. I went to go to Dan Costa and went over there and played some Harry Potter. And then I went over to Capital Pinball Parlor for about a half hour because by the time I got there, it was about to close. And then I made it to my final destination at Dan's house. And wow, Dan, you have such a great collection, and I just could not stop playing the games. I know our first game that we played was Weird Al, and I was starting to learn that game a little better. Still couldn't make that side ramp shot, but I was working on it. It's such a bear. It's so tough to play that one. I was cracking up, so I had to work. Yeah.
    4:00
    Tuesday and Wednesday, unfortunately. So Wednesday, you know, and I'm working from home. I have a home office. Mark, you know, says, hey, man, and it's adjacent to the garage where the pinball machines are. Mark's like, hey, is it going to be okay if I play pinball? I'm like, yeah, man, play to your heart's content.
    4:19
    And I worked from about 7 in the morning until about 4 or 5 that night, and I heard pinball going the whole time. Yeah, pretty much. Like it was a solid eight, nine hours of pinball. Then we took a couple hours of a break. You know, Mark came in, and I don't know, we might have grabbed some food. We hung out, whatever we did. And then we got Rick over here, Velcro of Pinball fame, and we ended up playing for a couple more hours. We had kind of a little impromptu King of the Losers round. That's right. And then we went to bed, and the next day was when the fun really started because that's when they came to pick up the games, and Mark headed into the show. And I didn't work until that night, so I had some last-minute home preparations to take care of. But, yeah, they took – what did we take to the show again? Oh, we took Transformers and we took – Transformers Pro, my old Transformers Pro. That's right. And we took Low Buck Monopoly.
    5:24
    And so the guys on the truck crew led by Mike Garcia and George Gonzalez and all of their assistants, there were a bunch – Hector was in there. They came and grabbed the games, which was awesome. You know, it's always great to not have to truck the games yourself. All you got to do is basically get them soldiered up. And if you live in an adjacent location to where other people are, the show arranges a truck to come around and scarf some stuff up. That's right. That's a lot of our lives. But you started work that day. I started work that day, yeah. Absolutely. When they started picking up stuff, I know one of the major accomplishments that we succeeded at is that we had a big foosball table that was in the middle of the room, and we finally got it taken away, and now there's a ton of space in your garage, which is awesome. So my question, I guess we can come up with that later, but I'm wondering if somebody took it home with them.
    6:16
    Yeah, Mike sold it to somebody. Nice. Okay, good. So he's in a big home. He's thinking about like 50 bucks for it, which was a shame because it's a really nice foosball table. It's a really nice food spot table. At least I went home with somebody who was going to want it and hopefully have some room for it. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I got there around noon or so. I was originally going to get there at 10, but sometimes when I get there too early, there's really nothing to do. And it was awesome because right when I got there, they already had the truck arrive, which was the one that picked up your games at your house. So I got there right there at the exact same time the truck arrived. So I was able to unload the games and obviously set them up, put the legs on them. And it was interesting. Different crews had different styles and different ways of setting them up. Some used a, like it was a Escalera or whatever. And one that was a real fancy one that Ryan had that was able to put it on there, put all four legs on and then just boost it up. So that was cool. And then I helped set up the Reno Camp as well because we had a really nice little attraction at our side with five games and it was really nice to have people be able to play them. So that was really great and once we got all arranged and all set up, I went back in to help anybody else that needed help setting them up. I did not level the games this year because I guess somebody was already in charge of that, cleaning the glass and leveling them. So I just kind of just helped with set up. But it was great seeing everybody, and it was already a family reunion just going over and checking people out and giving them hugs and just excited to see everybody. So it was awesome.
    7:58
    When did you get to town, Mr. Spencer? You had a little adventure getting here too, right? I did, yeah. So I flew into Sacramento on Wednesday and then grabbed and rent a car, drove up north and spent a couple of days with my daughter, my son-in-law, my little grandson. So we had Leo, big Leo, man. We had real good fun and a quick little side note. So, you know, my thing is making breakfast for my kids and my grandkids. So Thursday morning I made big breakfast for everybody. And, you know, we had a wonderful time. And the kids watch a lot of Monty Python stuff. So Leo, because he knows the Spam song, loves Spam. And so he says, you know, the kids are like not into it really, but like Papa loves Spam too. So Friday morning before I left to come to the show, I made my grandson Spam and Eggs and we had Spam and Eggs together for breakfast.
    8:54
    Fried Spam is not to be underestimated. It's not. It's really not. You don't want to think too much about how they made it. Because it is just chopped up meat.
    9:04
    But, man, you throw that stuff in a frying pan and you get a nice little crisp on it and something kind of magical happens. Yep. Yes. So a quick side note to that, too, is I called you, Dan, Wednesday night. And I'm like, hey, what are you doing? He's like, no, you're like, I'm sitting at my Lazy Boy. I'm like, where's Mark? He goes, I don't know. He's out in the garage playing pinball. He's been out there for nine hours. I haven't seen him all day. And like I said, man, it was open to close. It was an all-you-could-eat pinball buffet. It was, yeah. And I'm going to start calling it Dan's Airbnb. And thank you because I stayed with you, too, for Friday, Saturday, Sunday night. So thank you again for that, for lodging me, giving me a place to stay. And that's why I sprung for the upgraded mattress on the Hyde event because you guys are worth it. Yeah, and it's really comfortable. It is very comfortable. I was very comfortable on that. Oh, I love that. I didn't think it was bad. Yeah, not bad at all. No one's ever complained. I mean, maybe Will has, but yeah, honestly, no, I thought that it was a good arrangement, you know, especially because I think that the schedules ended up being pretty compatible with Spencer and I are both kind of early risers. And so, you know, come 11, 1130, we were ready to leave the party atmosphere at the campground behind and get to it. I mean, the party at the campground, I mean, it started Thursday night. It did. Maybe even Wednesday night. I think people were there even the night before. So we were perfectly content to get out. But Mark had a crash pad at the camp. I did. I was living in luxury. Let's just put it that way. I got to stay in Jason's 40-foot diesel pusher, so it was nice. It was really nice to be able to crash in there. And what was so cool is his entire motorhome was all soundproof, so you couldn't hear anything. As soon as you walked in and you closed the door, you couldn't hear anything on the campground, so it was like totally silent. Oh, man. It was incredible. It was awesome. And at the show, that's so nice because the first year that I stayed there in a trailer, which is the only year I've stayed there in a trailer so far, like it was so loud. Yeah. And I mean, I may as well have been sleeping on the lawn, you know, behind the trailer like Mickey did that year. Yeah. Because, yeah, it was just, it was going off the whole night. And it's like, you know, you don't want to stick your head out the window and start yelling at your neighbors, right? You just sort of, you know, just shrug your shoulders and grin and bear it, put on your noise cancelings if you brought them. Yeah, the campground was full swing on Thursday night, and it pretty much was the same for Friday and Saturday. But, of course, we had Lynn's Arcade that had all their games. They had Circus Voltaire, they had a disco, and they also had a Rick and Morty that were up on stage as usual. And they always do something different every year, but they had lights galore all on their pop-up tents. And it was like a mini festival in their own corner of the campground. And then, of course, I don't think they break down until Monday. No, they don't. I think they were still going on Sunday. Yeah, I missed the party on Sunday night because I had to go home. But it can get a little wild over there. But, oh, man, such a great group of people. And it's like a lounge, man. You go over there and there's couches. And, you know, I mean, like I say, I have to say that Golden State Pinball Festival is kind of like the pinball festival, kind of like Burning Man. But it's just really cool. Awesome. Amazing food over at the Lynn's Arcade area. Oh, my gosh. They had homemade tortillas. I miss the ribs. I heard they were really amazing. But it was really cool. And then we also had head-to-head competitions with NBA Fast Break that were linked. And that was absolutely a blast. That was really fun. And those were brought by our friends Mike Garcia and Jack Jarrett. Yes. So those were at the CCPL camp. Yes, absolutely. And then, of course, we had the classic phone booth from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and other cool things. There was also a hockey game that was really cool so that people could play that and also foosball right next to that. So it was a really nice recreational area to play in that neck of the woods. And then, of course, Mark Coward brought his classic pool game that worked really well. And now we knew the rules, so it was a little easier to play. And, of course, he had three of a really nice bad cats. That was awesome. And I didn't get to play as Lebowski. I was so bummed I missed out on that. But, you know, there's so much to do. I feel like it's like a conference. You go over there and it's like you can't do everything in that weekend. I was trying to do as much as I could. The other highlight was the tent. Of course, we always have that pyramid tent. But this year, holy cow, Juan did an amazing job of putting together a TNA that had lasers and smoke coming out When you were about to blow up the reactor. So it was incredible sight to see. And what an experience with, you know, 100. I don't know. I think he had like 220 watts of sound blasting at you. Good thing I wore my earplugs. I did get in there and check out that TNA, by the way. And that was that was something else. Oh, my gosh. One super outdid himself with that. And that was so popular that like we had benches set up in front of it just so that people could sit on the outside and like watch it happen as they waited to go in. Yeah, absolutely. It was it was awesome because it was a sight to see from the outside. And then it was like you were engulfed in in the smoke and the way he had it so clever. And if you look at it closely on the bottom, it looked like it was like sunk into the ground, even though it was sitting on top of the ground. I don't know, he was like some kind of, I don't know, some kind of black cloth or something, but it looked like it was like sunk into the ground. And then he had this green, I don't know if that was fluorescent light or LED light that emanated from the bottom that glowed the smoke like a green color, just like toxic things from like a nuclear reactor. So it was dope.
    15:42
    It was so good. And I kept playing that all the time. It was it was awesome. I know you guys had a Beetlejuice over in the Reno camp. Yeah, we did something different. We put it in a trailer so that everybody had a chance to experience it with the sound. And it even was like a motion simulator. So when it shook with a shaker motor, the whole entire trailer rumbled under your feet. And I know a lot of people were very, very appreciative of that. But I do have to say that I think that Juan's TNA tent was probably the high point of the campground. Like that was something else. And a ton of other camps had machines. And I said Linz had a tremendous setup, you know, and Reno had V5, V6 great machines and other camps. You know, it might be, you know, they had a couple EMs or, you know, a solid state or two or sometimes, you know, some of the hottest, newest games were out there. But it was absolutely insane that you could just take a lap of the campground and there were I mean, there had to be, what, 50 games out there? I would think so. I mean, I was trying to find all the ones around the campground. Some were hidden. But once you found them, yeah, there were a lot of games to play. And it was awesome. The show hit what, 340? Holy cow. Wow. That's not including the campground, right? Right. That's no, no, that's just that was registered games in the show and the tournament. Wow. Wow. That is a lot. That's a lot more shows, in my opinion. Wow. So to put 50 more on top of that out there in the campground, including, again, some of them were like special attraction kind of games. Like it's it's pretty great. You know, Don made it out. You know, I'm sure he's going to listen. Hopefully. Thank you, Don. He made it out to the show this year. He tagged along with the Spooky crew.
    17:39
    And, you know, we've been telling him for years, right? You got to come out to Lodi. You got to come out to Lodi. And he had a real, I mean, I don't know if I'd say negative outlook on it, but he didn't seem especially rosy on coming to Lodi.
    17:54
    And I don't know if you haven't listened to his recap of the show and the stuff that they did when they came to California. Give it a listen. But, you know, I think that he liked the show and he was impressed by the show. But I think that like most people who really indulge in it, he really liked the campsite. He did. Absolutely. And so did Plug and all those guys, too. So, yeah, it was cool. It was it was funny as heck because he was he was saying, you know, again, in this kind of his kind of way, he was, you know, talking about the Golden State Lodi Festival. And somebody jumped on there. In fact, I think it was Huntsman jumped on there and said, that's not what it's called. And I said, no, no, no. I mean, you know, come for the pinball, stay for the Lodi.
    18:37
    And there you go. So so after after that, I was I was talking to him and I was talking to him through text and I just said, yeah, I told you to come for the pinball, stay for the Lodi. He's like, man, bro, you weren't kidding.
    18:50
    Yeah. It's on the show. They sure do. Yeah, we do. So, yeah, I just double-checked because I haven't looked since the show. According to the Golden State Pinball Festival website, the listed games on the show floor, including the tournament room, is 353. Holy cow, that's a lot. That's a lot of games, folks.
    19:15
    So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was nice having Don do his little take on the fact that he went, oh, now I see what you guys are talking about. I didn't get it because you have to experience it and all the whole package, you know. Right. Yeah, well, and shows are shows, right? Like, you know, whether you go to California Extreme, whether you go to Denver, whether you go to Tacoma, Northwest Pinball and Arcade show, you know, there's always that aspect of the show where it's like there's machines. There's, you know, seminars, you know, hopefully there's some stuff you could buy and there's, you know, maybe something to eat. And I think every show brings its own flavor. You know, Midwest Gaming Classic has, you know, tons and tons of other kinds of gaming. I couldn't tell you what Southern Fried had, but I'm sure it's awesome because it's in the South. I know Texas has a lot to recommend it. But I think for Lodi, I think that it is the campsite and the side events that I think really kind of set our show apart from almost any other show. I don't think anybody's putting on a show like that, you know, where, again, the after hours entertainment might even be better than the show if you can stay up that late, which I cannot.
    20:29
    Me neither, man. We were going out early. Way too late. But you know what? I'm a night owl as it is, but that really put me to the test.
    20:39
    I'll tell you something, though. It was really cool. Reno really did well. We had a good variety of games this year. We had an ollie that had the new code. We had, of course, night moves that Huntsman always brings. We had a beautiful Sopranos. If you didn't get a chance to play that, I hope you guys did. That was really nice. And, of course, we had Beetlejuice in the trailer. One other game that was under the tent was Fly High. And that was a rare game that was made by Geiger, which was based off of Super Sonic. And the theme of the game was Never Ending Story. So it had some beautiful artwork on the back glass and also on the sides of the cabinet.
    21:22
    And also it had some artwork on the play field, but it had the color scheme similar to what Super Sonic had. So it flowed really nicely together. So that was one of the other games out of the five that we had at the campground. And that was kind of an adventure because at first we realized that we couldn't play it because it was at 220 volts. So we had to switch it and fix the transformer to get it. We had to wire it properly. And then we realized that the end of the plug was for Europe also, so it had the two prongs. I'm like, well, that's not going to work. So we had to go, thanks to the hardware store down the street at Ace, and we picked up a cord and rigged it up and it finally worked. So that was cool.
    22:10
    And one other one I can't remember. Oh, yeah, the Q. Q was really popular. People really like playing that one.
    22:17
    That's like a one-place-only kind of game. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, like you're not going to see that anywhere else unless it's on display at Jason's place. Yeah. You know, I don't know if he puts it at the underground or if it's on one of his locations, but I'm kind of sure that one lives at home when he's not using it. It does. Yeah, it lives at home. But people really enjoy playing that one. So that was really cool. But yeah, it was great. We had a really good time in the camp. You know, and it's really neat because there's different areas depending on your mood. If you want a party rave experience, you go to Linz. If you want in the middle of the road with a party atmosphere just hanging out, then you want to go to the Sacramento side. And then if you want just lay back and chill, you come to the Reno side. And I think it's nice to have that variety. So whatever floats your boat, you want to go over to what fills with your mood, or you can have a taste of everything, which is what I did all night long. So it was cool. He just wandered the earth. I did. I wandered. Like a pinball cane from Kung Fu. Yeah, exactly. When you can take the pinball from my hand, grasshopper, you will be ready.
    23:32
    Exactly. So that should now take us to Friday when the show actually began. That's right. And that's when Spencer finally rolled into town. I did. And we finally all got to get together. So Friday, I'm pretty sure I started off working and then I ended up in the tournament room because I worked the tournament as often as I could with Rick from Elk Grove Pinball. And if you're interested in seeing the Golden State tournament, there are like 21 hours or 24 hours of streaming content on YouTube. It's not very edited, so you can do a good amount of skipping around as like games are being switched and whatnot to cut that down a little bit. But like you can see a lot of Pinball being played because he streamed every minute of it.
    24:31
    And very professional. I say it's very it's definitely as good as IE Pinball with his production quality. Oh, yeah. His setup's fantastic. It's outstanding. Like his setup is next level. He added a 3D camera this year. So even when we couldn't get over there and move the rig to the next game, he could zoom in on it and actually, you know, see what was going on. And it would get close enough that you could see scores. No way. I didn't know that. On the LCD screens, not on the DMD. It's usually pretty easy to see a score. But, yeah, like the bottom of the LCD screens, like you could actually read the scores. They were pretty legible. So that was that was a really, really neat addition. When I wasn't like punching buttons and screwing everything up like it seemed to work really, really well this year. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Rick's Rick's setup is supreme. And so did you play Friday or did you play Saturday? I played Friday in the tournament and I had a great time. It was fun. It was the thing about the the target match play is it's a little less stressful and it's more socializing, in my opinion, The way I play with everybody, it was just really nice to see everybody, the tournament people. And the game selection was awesome. I wish I had some that I didn't play before, but it was the way it is. But they did have a dune there, which was great. We had a chance to play that one. Of course, we had the Pokemon. Scott from the Lodi League. Yep, Scott brought that one. You brought that, Scott Busey. Beautiful game. Thank you, Scott, for bringing that and giving us a chance to play that. Yeah, I wanted to play, what was it, Counterforce. I didn't get to play that one. It wasn't in my lineup. Pulp Fiction was great.
    26:21
    I had a good time. Did I win? No. Did I make it to playoffs? No. You didn't even qualify. I did not qualify. What happened? I did not qualify. Well, I can tell you, I had some unlucky issues that happened, and this is not any fault for anybody. It's just pinball, but I will state the facts. The first game I played was, well, it wasn't the first game, but the game that I'm talking about that likes to maybe, how would you say it, likes to mess with you and then do something that you didn't expect was Champion Pub. So I was playing Champion Pub and I had two terrible balls, like instant drain, couldn't even start a fight. And then I was like, okay, I got to get training. So I was like, I can do the jump rope pretty well. So I went in, shot the jump rope, got pretty good and got about 10 or 12 in a row. And then I was like, okay, fight is ready, ready to go. Now, at this time, I had two balls locked. So all I had to do was just, you know, shoot it to start a fight. It wouldn't start a multi-brawl, but I tried it anyway, and I shot it up there in that same area where he locked the ball. And the ball hung on top of the wire. So there's a wire that holds the three balls when they lock, and it was just on the edge of it, and it wasn't moving. Now, I didn't see this at the time, but I thought it was stuck somewhere in the machine, so I was pushing it, and I was, you know, trying to nut it. Oh, that's right. We streamed that game. You did stream that game. Okay. That's on camera. Yeah, you did get kind of jobs. I did get jobs, didn't I? The ball hung up, and it timed out your fight. Right. And then when it came out, you pretty much just drained. Yeah, it came out and then it drained. The fight was over. Yeah, you just didn't have... My game was over. That was bad luck. So I got a last on that because of that, but whatever. I don't remember the name of the young lady who played, but she really, like, she had obviously been around Champion Pub before because she just beat the heck out of it. She destroyed it. She did really well on that. She kind of shook that ball jam out, and you kind of raised your hand to try to get a coordinator over, because, you know, that's probably a smart play you don't want to risk tilting. Right. But, yeah, that ended up, I think, being a tactical error, you know, an understandable error, but a tactical error. Yep. You know, I had higher expectations of the number one ranked player in the state of Nevada. I agree with you. You're supposed to bring it home to the spinner is lit, man. What happened? I know, I know. The other issue I had was Indy 500, and I was trying to obviously the best scoring opportunities to get multiball started with the turbo. And I shot it in there, and I got another one locked, and it was like, turbo multiball, and it went, and it only fired one ball. And there were two balls that were stuck still in the turbo thing. So obviously I couldn't really do anything. It wasn't stuck. I just waited for a ball search. But I was playing with one ball at the time, and I was trying to make the jackpots, and I was like, wait a minute, I'm only having one ball here, this is not right. So I was holding it, waiting for it to release. Well, during that time, of course, the ball saver is timing out. So it released the two balls, they hit into each other and drained, and my game was over there. So those are two things, and ironically, they were right next to each other. So that kind of didn't help me getting a zero on those two games. So that kind of dropped my score down. And then, yeah, that's just it just happened that way. And I didn't make it into qualifying. But, you know, that's the kind of luck I have, man. Yeah. I'm just like, oh, how do you know how to how to tell that God wants you to lose at pinball without actually asking? Right. You know, just just weird, weird, minor malfunction that, you know, as a TV, all the TV can really do is just walk up and say, well, That's Pinball. Actually, speaking of the TD, we also have to throw a big high five to Shannon Miles and his crew and his scorekeepers and Jen. They put on a wonderful tournament. This is the first year that our tournament hasn't been run by Mike from CCPL. So it's under new management. And I think for not a first time TD because he's done events in the past at Pinnagogo and at his house. But I think that for his first time doing an event of this size, which was two 64-player qualifying sessions and then it's like a 32-player final, like that's a lot of pinball to manage. Yeah, he did a wonderful job. The feeling tone that I felt from the competitors was just people were very satisfied how smooth it ran. The games played great. He made really good decisions when he had to make those tournament director decisions based on calls and stuff like that. There weren't that many things that came up.
    31:26
    He did a really great job of taking games out that were not working right away, and there was no downtime. It was very smoothly run one round to the next with no issues. So, Shannon, outstanding job running your major tournament over at Golden State Pinball Festival. So I think you've proved to us that you can run another one next year.
    31:50
    Gold star, sir. Gold star. So do you want to go ahead and just finish out the tournament talk here, just talk about the finals, and then we can just move on with the rest of the show? Sure. Yeah, let's do that. Because the tournament went all the way through Sunday, right? Uh-huh. Yeah. And so Saturday, it was Friday, you know, you had a 64-player qualifying session. Then you got down to top 16 advanced. Then Saturday you had a 64-player qualifying session in the top 16 advanced. And then Saturday night you had the women's competition, which was kind of an all-in-one, and they went until late. Yeah, at least until 10, I think, 10 or 11. I think it had to go later, but I didn't get a chance to participate in the women's session this year. But we do have the list of winners here, and it was Michelle Litzinger, our friend from your neck of the woods, who took the first place. Melina Meltzer took second. Abigail Labunsky took third, and Ripley Randall took fourth. And those scores were, I mean, I have the scores for this, 17, 16, 17, 16, 15, 14, it looks like. Wow. Wow, that was a nail-biter. I'm going to have to go back on the YouTube and watch that. Yes. Oh, so he did post it on YouTube? Yeah, like I said, there are like 25 hours of Pinball on YouTube, completely unedited.
    33:30
    So you'll see all the bumps, all the bruises, all the pauses. I mean, it's like you were there if you just sit down and like let it play in the background. Awesome. So, yeah, there's a lot of content if you want to see it. So going into the finals, I did stream most of those with Rick. I missed maybe the first couple hours.
    33:53
    But, yeah, you know, the field was extremely competitive, and there were some really, really exciting games. I think one of the ones that really stands out to me was just an absolute shootout on Dune. Oh, gosh, yeah. That was intense. That is a game to watch that Andre Massenkopf ended up giving us a wonderful gameplay demonstration on. But he just couldn't pull it off. He was close. Gabe DiSevera, he took first. Andrew Massenkopf took second. Our good buddy Gene X. Wong took third. And Dwayne Smith from the Idaho Pinball Museum took fourth. And that was, again, another really competitive field. Like, those guys all fought, you know, tooth and nail to the end. Yeah, the Viking game was really awesome to watch. The Viking game was really, really, really good. That was so good. And like those guys who managed to take some of these games that I don't, you know, that I just don't see how those could be, you know, that exciting to watch. I'm like, okay, it's hiking, you know, you're trying to, you know, get the ball up there and, you know, hit the targets and hit the thing to catch. And how exciting can it be? And then you watch these high-level players play it and the drama of the competition kind of gets into it. You get engaged and you're just like, oh, my gosh, it's so good. It's so awesome. Yeah, just incredible.
    35:21
    And I had an opportunity to commentate. I usually never have time to do it. And I had a blast with Dan. Dan does a great job, Dan Costa. And I was able to do a couple of games right at the end of qualifying on Saturday, right after I had lunch. Sorry, dinner. After I had dinner and then got to do some commentating. That was a blast having fun talking. And actually, all the games we played, I knew some of the rules. So it wasn't like a game. I was like, I don't have a clue what's going on here. Except Orbit. Orbit, I was finally figured out that the very target is the one that really... Oh, Super Orbit. Super Orbit, yeah. That one I was like, is it Spinner? Does the Spinner advance the bonus? I didn't know what was going on, but of course it wasn't much to it, and then I figured it out as we were watching it, but that was so much fun. Yeah, I think rule number one of commentary is if you don't know about the game, just be honest about it. Not everybody knows everything about every game. It's nice to be, you know, to have a good degree of knowledge. But, you know, sometimes there's games out there that you just haven't put your hands on or haven't got to spend a lot of time with. Rick and I didn't know much about Dune. Yeah. But we learned as we were watching and I had a couple of games under my belt on it. And I'll, you know, kind of going back to it's kind of, you know, time traveling. But, like, you know, you would have some some pretty deep knowledge of Beetlejuice that would help us out later in the show. Right. But, yeah, the there was one other cool thing besides, you know, just the great competition. And what were you saying that you really liked about the about the tournament this year, Spencer? Oh yeah So who was it Oh it was Matthew Peterson from Next Level in Oregon brought like a little treasure chest box called the Match Prize Box So if you're in the tournament, you were playing a game and you got a match, you got to go over to the prize box and pick out a prize. There were like stickers and some other little doodads and goodies. I don't know exactly what else. But I just thought that was a really neat idea and I wanted to give Matthew Peterson a shout out for that. Because while I was there and Shannon showed us the box, somebody in the women's tournament had matched and she came up, oh, I matched on the game. Like, oh, you get to go to the prize box. I'm like, oh, what's that? And so Shannon explained, she was showing it to us, explaining what it was, and she got to pick a prize out of the prize box because she matched. I just thought that was really neat because otherwise if you match in a tournament, so what? You know, you don't get anything for it. So I thought that was really cool. And I have a cute little anecdote to add to that is I came in Friday night around 4 o'clock and Mark was in the tournament and I knew he'd been playing pinball pretty much straight for three days without sleep. It was very little sleep. And so he was kind of pale. So I brought him, I ran out, I went down to snacks. That's right. So I brought him back salty snacks, a couple of bags of chips and some Cheez-Its, and a big bottle of water. I said, I want you to eat something and hydrate. And then I saw him later that night, and you looked way better.
    38:38
    I was dragging a little bit. What was really cool is after you did that, I was next up on Pulp Fiction. And to make a long story short, I mentioned this on the stream, but I'll say it again. And I was thinking of having my students watch the tournament from the classroom with my sub. So I had the link to Twitch to the Elk Grove Pinball site and sent the link. And I was hoping that she would be able to have it work with the district not blocking it. And fortunately, they did not block this Twitch stream. So they played it. And I was thinking, well, that's great. The kids are going to enjoy watching it. But they're not going to see me on camera unless they get lucky and get picked with a game. So I'm sitting in the chair and I'm watching the rig move over and it moves over to Pulp Fiction and then all of a sudden they put in the new lineup for the next round and the computer assigned me to Pulp Fiction. So I was the first player and I got to play it in front of the kids live and they were cheering going nuts after the subs sent me a picture and also a video of them just cheering on. They got to see me live play and not only that, but I didn't suck. I actually could really could. That's because I bought you snacks and water. That's the reason why. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. No, and I was going to say, you know, you could always just come on over and, like, we could help you arrange that, but I guess that, you know, the door on that situation is closing. So, no, it's just a good thing that it worked out. It worked out so well. It was so cool. And then we rewatched it again in class when I came back just to see, you know, what the reaction was again, just seeing the kids. But it was really cool to play it for the kids, and they got to see it live. So that was neat. For the record, you should warn us at the booth because sometimes we work a little blue. Not too often. I think usually we keep it pretty family friendly. But, you know, I'm sure there have been some fa-bombs that have fallen. But not too many. Not too many.
    40:39
    And, no, I mean, that was it. I mean, does anyone else have anything that they really want to say about the tournament? Other than just every, you know, it seemed to, I didn't spend a lot of time there, but it seemed to run really smoothly and kudos to, you know, Shannon and everybody who put that tournament together. And it's an immense amount of work. It is. So much work. Which we didn't do. Like we showed up, like me didn't do. Like I showed up and I talked about it and I got to comment on how great it was. And, you know, at the end of the show, Spencer and I asked, Rick, hey, do you want us to help pack this thing out? And Rick's like, no, I got a system. And I said, I know you do, but I just wanted to be polite. And we got the F out of there. Yeah, we did. We kind of walked around saying goodbye to people and just, you know, threading the needle of, you know, if we stay here too long, we're going to get conscripted into loadout. Yeah. So, like, we've got to move fast while we have a sense of purpose. But let's time travel a little bit, right, because we jumped way, way ahead. Let's go back to Friday. Okay.
    41:46
    So Friday night, Spencer hosts the Flipping Friday kickoff dinner every year. That's right. Do you want to tell us about that, Spencer? Yeah. So it's the Flipping Friday kickoff dinner where we have amazing food, and that's all put together. The dinner is all put together by a local Girl Scout troop run by Eric Neff's lovely wife, Andrea. And she does her and the girls all the cooking and serving. It's sort of a wonderful meal. And they have – it starts at 6, and there's like appetizers before going to the main dinner room. And there's an open bar, beer and wine provided by Das Flipper House. It's always fantastic. And they have hors d'oeuvres like meatballs and prosciutto and tomatoes and cheese, good stuff. And we present the Steve Sharno Spirit Award to a worthy pinhead, somebody in the community that just does some really amazing work to promote the fellowship of pinball, of good friendship and spirit of community like Steve would always do. Yeah, definitely. The person who pushes pinball forward, not just in California, which, you know, is kind of our primary thing, but everywhere. Like, this is a guy, these are guys who, I mean, sometimes it's been very locally felt like when we did it for Adam, but like this is a guy who, you know, while he's California based, you know, much like Steve Sharland, his influence is felt all through the pinball community. Yeah, around the world. And this year's recipient is Larry Zartarian. And if you don't know who Larry is, he's, I believe he's the president of the board of the Pacific Pinball Museum and an avid collector for many, many years. Had a really interesting background story, which I didn't know, that he grew up in Fresno and every year his family would vacation to Santa Cruz where he would spend as much time as he could on the boardwalk playing pinball machines. And Larry's area of collecting and expertise is the wood rails, two-inch flipper, two-inch flipper games, you know, especially the classic Gottlieb's of the late 40s and 1950s. And he has an amazing collection which you can see and play at the museum. And he brings an amazing collection of games every year. So always get a chance to get over there. He's just the most down-to-earth, laid-back, nicest guy in the world and definitely deserving of that award.
    44:36
    So dinner was great. The awards were great. It was always a little bittersweet anymore because none of us getting any younger. And we've had a few people in our community pass away in the last year, one of them being an absolute, you know, just a fixture at not just our show, but Pinball shows around the country.
    44:57
    And that was Rob Anthony. And there was a memorial set up for him in the EM room where he used to always have his booth in the old, older games, what it was called State. And I don't know who did it, but thank you to the Unsung Hero who not only set up his memorial with a lot of pictures and video, but they had produced buttons with him and his dog Antar. And I was able to get one of those buttons and I have it hanging on my pin side lanyard along with a button of Steve Charland standing in front of the row of spirit games from a few years ago. And so, you know, that it's always tough, you know, but it is. We remember them. We honor them at this dinner every year. And it's always a really wonderful way to start the weekend, you know, good food and drinks and friends and and just a good time. Yeah. Dan, you were there. Yeah. And actually, going back to the dinner real quick, our president, Eric Neff, had a fantastic presentation speech. with some just extremely, extremely funny moments. And Larry himself, like very, very engaging speaker, had great stories and just, you know, was absolutely a joy to have on stage, you know, telling us about, you know, what he does, why he does it, giving props to his cohorts at the Pacific Pinball Museum, And what you guys can look up at PacificPinball.org if you're ever interested and you're in California, Bay Area, Alameda. It's a must-see. Like, it's mind-blowing. They have a ton of games. And, you know, it's not just all old stuff either. You know, if you're into modern games, they got modern games. You know, if you're into mid-80s stuff, they got the 80s stuff. They got the 90s. They got the 60s. They got the 50s. You know, whatever you want to see for pinball, they've been gifted a couple large collections by collectors who, you know, at the time, you know, they knew that they were getting towards the end of their lives and they said, hey, I want these machines to endure and be enjoyed, you know, not just to end up wherever. So the Pacific Pinball Museum took those upon themselves and now their job is to show them to the pinheads of the world and let them see them. But yeah, the dinner is a must-see almost every year. I won't say I've gone to all of them, but I've always regretted the years that I haven't gone. But yeah, to go see The Legend of Self, you know, Larry brings, what, 30 games a year to the show. Always great ones, yeah. She moves pretty much single-handedly because the guy's a beast.
    47:47
    And yeah, just makes it look really, really good. And then we also had ourselves a side event, which we kind of invented on the fly this year, which was the Larry's Artarian Cup. Oh, yes. Which was a competition between El Presidente Eric Neff and the president of the Pacific Pinball Museum, Larry's Artarian. And I believe that Larry won rather handily. What was the competition? What were they competing with? Dude, they played a game, and I wish I remember what game it was. Oh, they were playing a game, huh? But there was something about it that was a little bit screwy that Eric was like, yeah, this will be my advantage.
    48:27
    And Larry just cleaned them up in here. Oh, wow. That's cool. You know, the guy grew up playing boardwalk games. You know, he knows how stuff works. Right. He's a route game affectionado. But yeah, the Flipping Friday Dinner is a great way to end Friday night at the show, and then you can go out and hit the show floor and start checking out games, or you can head out to the campsite, as we were talking about before, for some campsite amusement. Right. And like you said before, wood rail machines are not easy to find around the country and they have an amazing collection. The only other one that I saw that has as good as Pacific Pinball, of course, was in Paris. But those aren't easy to find. Most people don't have those. So Pacific Pinball Museum, if you're looking for wood rail games, those are amazing. And he has an amazing collection. It might be the world's preeminent collection of those kinds of games. I mean, I'm sure the Pinball Hall of Fame has a bunch, and, you know, you never quite know what you're going to get when you go to the Pinball Hall of Fame. Some people love it. Some people hate it. I'm sure that at Pacific Pinball Museum, not every single one of the games is presented and ready for action. I mean, it's pinball after all. I promise you, if you go there, there's going to be plenty of wood rails. Yep. Absolutely. You're not going to not get to play some wood rails. Including the very first game that had flippers, Gottlieb's Humpty Dumpty. It's there and the last time I was there, it's been a while, it played great. I mean, it played great. I heard they put a color DMD in it. There you go. And, yeah, like I said, there's newer stuff too. I'm playing it if it doesn't have a color DMD. Great, great selection of 80s, 70s, 80s, 90s games, modern games. It's got a variety of everything. So, yeah, definitely if you have the ability, get down to Alameda and go to the Pacific Pinball Museum. Support that wonderful organization and say hi to Larry. And the rest of the guys, the entire crew, man, is just the most awesome people and what they do to preserve the history. History, the art, and the science of pinball is really, you know, they're like the Smithsonian of pinball. They really are. Yep. So that takes us to Saturday. Yeah. So we wake up Saturday, whether we, you know, pull ourselves off of the lawn wherever we passed out like Mark, or whether we wake up in a civilized fashion in a house and drive a half hour back down to the show. And I know that for me, Saturday I worked a lot. And but there were a lot of things going on. I'm not sure if anybody got to break into. There was the swap meet. There was there was the barbecue. There was Pinball University, which we got involved in later on that day. Yes. And there was the raffle. And I want to I want to talk a little bit about the raffle real quick. You guys can circle back to whatever you want, because this year I actually worked the raffle for the first time. And so I was like in the middle of that room when the entire show crowded in there to see if they were going to win a Foo Fighters or Halloween, you had a choice.
    51:55
    And I'll tell you what, that was crazy. I got some really good pictures of just that room, just standing room only because every way, except for the little weird island that we were in that was in the middle of all the island auction items. But yeah, it is completely stuffed to the gills and just the excitement was so crazy. You know, usually, like, I try to avoid that room at all costs when the raffle's going down because it's just much, much too crowded. But, yeah, they had a couple great games. I don't know the name of who won the games this year, unfortunately. I didn't get that. But, you know, some really, really lucky people, you know, won their choice. So they took Foo Fighters. And then on Sunday they had another raffle for Halloween. So, you know, two great games. The Halloween was provided actually by the estate of Rob Anthony, and the Foo Fighters was provided by the Golden State Pinball Festival. You know, they buy those games, and they use them at the show, and they use them to promote, and then after a couple years, they use them for the raffle.
    53:05
    One thing I wanted to note is one of the winners from the raffle was a friend of mine. His name is Marlo, and his father won the Foo Fighters game. So he was able to bring it back to Reno. So, yeah, so that was cool. So Reno came home with a machine, which is really cool. And so he got a Foo Fighters, which is incredible to have those kind of games raffled off. It's pretty amazing. That's pretty amazing. Plus, there were so many other cool prizes. We have these little mini arcade games. I won one. Somebody here might have won one of. Hey, you messed up my story. Sorry.
    53:43
    Which one did you win? I won 1942, which actually has 1942 and 1943. It's my middle son Seth. It's like one of his favorite classic arcade games. So I just like put in five, I bought five tickets for that, threw it all in the barrel and forgot about it. I was actually across the way playing Yukon Yeti with Mark when they pulled the drawing. I came back like, yeah, like, hey, you want a game? I'm like, oh, cool. Yeah, not a pinball game, but a little mini arcade game. And these things are cool. They're like 200 bucks and they're about a foot tall. And like if you take one, if you take a picture of one and you don't know that you're looking at a little miniature arcade game, you'd be hard pressed to know the difference. I sent a picture of one of mine. I have the Ghouls and Ghosts one to a buddy of mine and he didn't realize it was a miniature. He's like, oh, when did you get that? And I was like, well, it's a miniature. And he's like, really? He's like, oh, you didn't get a full size one? I'm like, no, man, it's sitting on top of my iPad. He's like, oh, I didn't know.
    54:46
    You know what's funny about that? Seth opened up the box finally because I just gave it to him. And it's sitting upstairs in the living room right now and everybody's been playing it. It actually has a little bag with little itty-bitty tiny coins. Right. It comes with coins and you can hook it up to your TV with an HDMI. They're by a company called Replicate, and they've made a bunch of them, some of which are extremely, extremely valuable now because it's as everything in our day and age. As soon as you can't get it anymore, everyone's like, oh, I wish I got it. And so they lose their minds and they go after them. So who knows? Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll be worth a lot someday. Probably not. But, yeah, the raffle was awesome and it was super fun to work at. I worked with Michelle Bannister. She's the raffle queen. And so that was really, really cool. And I worked that right up until we got to do our big event. But what did you guys do to keep busy on Saturday?
    55:45
    I had the morning free. So I just wander around and play games and talk with friends. I dropped off stuff for the barbecue, but I didn't attend. I left the site and had lunch with an old friend who's a business associate. And he's recently retired and we still keep in touch. We had a nice lunch together offsite. And I came back and I had to work at three. So I worked three to six thirty roving. And then like you, Dan, immediately ran from there to make it over to our presentation at Pinball University. What'd you do, Mark? I went to go venture and play the games. So I went out and I actually stood in line for a lot of new games because they're nowhere around. And so I went to go. I wanted to play a Merlin's Arcade. So there wasn't a real long line for that. So I tried that out. I played a little bit of Alice in Wonderland and that was fun. And then I stood in line for Yukon Yeti. And that was a pleasant surprise because I really enjoyed the gameplay on it. The game is beautiful and the artwork is stylized to some people that don't like it. I liked it because you know what? If it's different artwork and it looks good, it doesn't bother me. So I really enjoyed it and had a really great time trying to get things. And there were people in line anxious to see the avalanche multiball where you lock five balls as it goes up the little incline. And it reminds me, like I said, of like when you go to the airport and you see the penguins and they go up the step and then they go and they go all the way down like on a track. It was kind of like that feeling where it was like a step type of mechanism and it moved the balls up slowly to the top. And once you locked five balls, it would release them like an avalanche. And everybody was hoping to see that. And it was really cool because I think it was you, Spencer, were with me, right? I was with you Sunday. Oh, was it Sunday? Okay, it was Sunday. Because that was the time I probably got to play. Okay, so I'll talk about that on Sunday, but on Saturday, like I said, I got to play that. There were a lot of people that were playing the System 11s because all the other ones are really crowded, so I kind of went in that pod area. And I couldn't get off of police force because I was trying to beat my last record of 24 ramps in a row. Could not pull it off. The flippers weren't strong enough to get it up there like I was doing it consistently. But I did look on there and my score was still on there from last Golden State Pinball Festival in 2025.
    58:26
    He never erases the scores, so it was cool to see. I was like, M.A.S., 24 million, wow, it's still there. So that was really cool. I didn't clear out the jackpots on Cyclone.
    58:38
    That's always my habit. Like I see it and it gets to 4 million and I just try to clear out all the system 11s. But I didn't get around to it. I was kind of looking at any games that were available. I got to play a really good game with Genesis. I love playing. I always play a high-speed getaway, always. There was a really nice one that I played, and it was just plenty of strength, and the supercharger was working awesome, and I was able to put my initials on that, so that was cool. I love that game. Oh, so good. It's so good. I did get to Redline Mania, so I was really happy about that. So I was just going and playing a whole bunch of games, and it was crowded. There was a lot going on, but I just kind of pick and choose whoever was open, and I went in there. The other game I played a lot was Jokers. That was really, I think that was, if I'm not mistaken, that was Hector's. Yeah, that was Hector's. So that played really well, and of course, it was at 4 million. I'm like, I'm going to clear this, but I couldn't get the double score. I was trying to do that, but played great. I really had fun with that. So, yeah, I was just picking and choosing, you know, any games that were there that I've never played before or things that I don't see around the Reno area.
    59:54
    So that was cool. And then a lot of socializing. There were a lot of people that came up to me talking about the spinner is lit. Thanks to our shirts, Spencer. We all wore our shirts on there. Yeah, we did. We wore all our shirts. And Spencer, that was a genius to have it on the front and the back because then people could see and go, oh, there's a spinner is lit. And there were so many people that came up that I never realized it. Hey, I love listening to your show. And are you Mark? And I'm like, yeah. It's like, oh, I enjoy having you on the podcast, blah, blah, blah. So, yeah, it was really cool to meet new people out of the blue that we got a lot of listeners. And I think it will continue to grow because it is fun to talk about Pinball and everybody has kind of the same thoughts we do. But he doesn't seem loud and stupid enough to be Dan.
    60:46
    Well, you know what? He doesn't seem short and flighty enough to be Spencer. He must be Mark. I was sending messages. I was sending messages where I kept getting messages all weekend. Hey, I met Dan and I met Marcus on work, but I never saw Spencer. It's like, I'm the short one. How can you miss me? Because you're below their line of sight. That probably is. What we do next year, guys, is we did stickers this year, and it was really fun. We gave out lots of stickers. I gave out all my stickers. Next year, we should make a unique sticker for each of us. Ooh. What a great idea. So people can collect the whole set. What a great idea. I love that. I love it. We should make a censor, a mark, and a dancing, or we should each do a design or something. Oh, yeah. That's great. Yeah. That's a great one.
    61:35
    But I think that for us Saturday night, the main event was definitely that we got to participate. And by participate, I mean we essentially ended up running the Spooky Pinball seminar for Beetlejuice with Bug, with Corwin Emery, the head honcho of Spooky Pinball these days, and with Emoto Harney from Marco, and with – I always blink on his name. It's DRI 374, DRI 374. Yeah. Isn't it like Raccoon? Raccoon. Yeah, Raccoon City Pinball. He had a tremendous streaming rig and they had a multi-camera setup. And so we got to go and do a seminar with Bug where we got to talk about Beetlejuice. We got to talk to him about their method and their process and their inspirations and potential copyright infringements and all the fun stuff that we can come up with. And then we got to work the crowd a little bit and we got our seminar hijacked by Keith Parkins because that's just what Keith does, buddy.
    62:51
    It was good to have him do it. DRI 374 is Michael Mattson. I knew the Mattson. I was like, is it Matthew Mattson? Like Matt Mattson, what's the call name? Michael Mattson. And Emoto Harney is just like, she is just such a down to earth. Oh, she's great. It's professional. She's amazing. She's professional, but she's got such a wonderful, upbeat personality that just, you know, just screams pinballs for everybody. Old, young, doesn't matter. Come on in. Come on in. Sit down. Talk pinball with me. Have a have a cold drink. Play some pinball. Enjoy the day. Yeah. She makes everybody feel welcome and at home. And I just absolutely she's just the best. And I loved it, too, because when we met with her at six forty five before we had our session, I looked at the flyer and it said seven thirty. So I'm like, oh, wow, we got forty five minutes to prepare. And I didn't realize we started at seven. So it's a good thing that we all were there early. But we're like, hey, yeah, go ahead. I think we all knew seven. You did? I don't know where you were at. We did. Yeah, we all knew seven. I listened to the memo and got there at the time that we were supposed to meet, and it was great. I was like, what are we doing? What are we doing to moto? And she's like, I don't know, whatever you want to do. I'm like, okay. So we just rolled with it, and, man, it was awesome. It turned out great. And, you know, we didn't interrupt each other. I don't know how we pulled that off. But we did a really good job in answering or asking all our questions based on our expertise. You know, I was obviously focusing on the game rules. And Spencer, you had some great controversial questions that they did not edit out, which I was really happy that they didn't. And I never meant anything bad by it.
    64:32
    Yeah. Hold on, Spencer, before I run you over. You didn't mean anything bad. I think what happened was I asked about inspirations. Mark went into deep gameplay. And Spencer just asked, you know, kind of offbeat character questions, color questions, you know, that, you know, got into the minutia of like, hey, what did it take to get a Polaroid camera in this game? Did you have to ask Polaroid? And Bug, I mean, for a young man his age in this business with his level of responsibility, he is so good at tackling questions. And, you know, just he was incredibly poised. Nothing threw him off his game. Nothing. You know, he did a tremendous job. And the great thing about, you know, and you guys can watch this. This is on Marco's YouTube channel. It doesn't mention us. It's just, you know, look for Spooky Pinball or Bug. But we're there. We're all over it. But yeah, you know, we weren't the stars of the show, but we got to be a part of the show. So it was really, really, really cool to get to have this one-on-one time basically with him and to work with Emoto. And I felt like we learned a lot from the experience, and it had heavy train wreck potential. It did. And we kept the train on the tracks. Well, my opening question, because Dan was over at me. Quit defending yourself. You didn't do anything wrong. No, I know that, but it was, no, and I, well, no, when I went and watched her, I'm like, oh, it wasn't bad at all, and everybody laughed, and it went really well, but no, it was great. Yeah, but Dan, you look at me and go, okay, take it, because the mother goes, okay, folks, we're live, but the spinner is lit, and it goes, I've been standing there, and Dan goes, you can hit the video.
    66:19
    Okay, that's great. I thought it was going to be more edited, right? So, like, if you watch the video, it starts off with, you know, me saying, so no F-bombs, right? Yeah, exactly. That's literally where it starts. That was brilliant. Literally, that's like the first line you hear in the left-bombs, right? And I'm just like, oh, oh my God. Our professionalism knows no limits. But no, it was great. And I think it brings the chaotic buddy energy of the Spinner Is Lit to Marco Pinball and Spooky Pinball. Marco Specialties are Marco Pinball and Spooky Pinball. But again, it's on YouTube. Do yourself a favor and check it out or don't. You know, it's not going to change your life either way. But yeah, you know, Beetlejuice is a tremendous game. Spooky Pinball is a great company that's just getting better with every game. Yeah, absolutely. And that's it, Marco. Marco is the place where you get parts. Yeah, it was right in an hour because they're like, we're going to go about an hour. And we went like, like, it was like around 55, 57 minutes. Yeah, we went a whole hour and it went fast. Yes, but there was some great things that I learned that I didn't know. Like just the highlight was when you go for the couch multiball, when you lock it in the couch again during the multiball, if you hit the spinner, it makes the couch tilt forward as you spin it more. That was just incredible. I did not know that at all. And then, of course, the fly that lets you gain a ball save. So make sure you check that out because he does such a great job demonstrating the game. And I love it how he wasn't flipping it, but he was just throwing the ball to make those shots to really see it. But hats off to Emoto and DRI 374 with great, great production value. Michael Matthews. Thank you. I don't think he recorded it. I think he just provided the streaming rig. Okay, well, it turned out great. I think Marco actually recorded it. I think that was Emoto's crew. But his streaming rig, for anyone who hasn't watched his videos, you know, definitely go online, go on to YouTube, check him out. He does reviews of just about everything. But, like, you know, Rick's streaming rig is like a battle station, and Michael's is like an X-Wing fighter. Yeah. Like, it's super advanced. It's got all the tricks, everything that you can need on it, but like it all just rolls around. Yep. And so, yeah, he takes it to all these shows and he hits every new game and gives you impressions and is just a super cool, super cool pinball oriented guy who is really enjoying what he's doing. You know, sometimes a little critical, but, you know, aren't we all? But yeah, just all those guys did tremendous work and just thanks for bringing us along for the ride and letting us add our particular brand of irreverent pinballosity to it. Yeah, thank you so much. Anyone else got any more thoughts about Saturday? I know we all went out after that. We spent some time at the campsites. Saturday I got a little tossed and I got to have a pretty good long conversation with Butch Peel of Barrels of Fun. He didn't tell me anything about their next title, so don't ask.
    69:47
    But he's a super cool, super smart dude who you can just tell is like really into what he's doing. Yeah. We both got pretty tossed Saturday.
    70:00
    Well, I couldn't get too tossed, but I got provided a Xiao special, which I'm just like, what was in there? She's like, oh, it's mostly vodka. And I mean, it was like a solo cup with some ice and vodka. I was like, well, we're not driving home for a while. We just sat at the campfire and looked at each other. Yeah, I just rolled out and they had tri-tips and they had chili and, you know, so I stuffed some of that in my mouth and, you know, just sort of hung around and talked to people and wandered over to the TNA tent and checked that thing out. Oh, yeah. I wanted to get a game of NBA Fast Break on with Adam because when we did the Battle of the Leagues, we were the co-champions. And I was like, we need to have it out. Our partnership ends here. But we didn't manage to do it. So our partnership continues. But, yeah, it was super fantastic. And, you know, it's a really nice night to hang out at the campsite. The wind hadn't, I mean, it was just starting to pick up. It was giving you a hint of what it was going to be the next day, but it wasn't that bad yet. It was a little chilly at night, but once I had a sweatshirt and jeans on, I was fine. I ventured off to all the different campgrounds again. I spent a little bit of time over at Mark's playing the pool game on Saturday night. I finally got to try the hot dog with his little hot dog toaster, And I couldn't believe how good it toasted those buns and cooked those hot dogs. It was really good. Is it like one of the ones that you like? It looks like a toaster. Yep. And you put a hot dog in the bun and you push it down. Yep. I've seen it on Sharper Image a long time ago and he had it. And I was like, I got to try this because I missed out on it last year. I'm like, I've seen those online and they always bury them. Yep. They always bury them. It works good. Yeah. See, that sounds awesome because I'm a big fan of just like, you know, I wrap a hot dog in a wet paper towel and throw it in the microwave for like a minute. But it's like, man, a hot dog toaster, like I think rolled hot dogs are, you know, awesome. Like you got to put them on that roller and let them just get to the edge of salmonella.
    72:13
    Hot dog toaster sounds like something I could get behind. Yeah, it was cool. I got to play the NBA Fast Break. I missed out. Of course, I came in. I'm like, hey, can I sign up? Of course, you know, the tournament board was all full. So I was like, well, Mike, I definitely want to sign up, Mike Garcia, for the next one. So I was there right after I got out of the session, or actually right when the show closed on Saturday night, I immediately went over there and signed up. And I got to play. I made it to the second round, and then I got destroyed by Jack. He destroyed me by at least 30 points. I thought I had a chance. He's like, oh, you want to play the same game? And he's like, I played that game. I'm like, okay, yeah, we'll just stay on the same machine. And yeah, he wasted me and I didn't make it through the round. I also played pin golf and that was really fun. All the different holes. So thank you, Gene X, for putting that on. There were some really challenging holes and some of them I did really well. The one that blew me out of my mind is that they put Powerballs into TNA for the holes. Hey, with the pin golf, so is that the one that goes around everybody's different campsites? Correct. Yes. See, I always want to do that, and I never quite figure out how, but like, yeah, putting that together, like he must do that on the fly. Yeah, he must. Like he gets there, and when he's not almost winning the tournament, like he runs around and he figures out goals and makes memos and makes, you know, scorecards and organizes a side event. Like, that's awesome. Gene X is an amazing dude. He is so chill and such a fun person to be around, and he has some really good objectives. The one suggestion I told him is that the fire line, it takes a little longer than it should because it was set on five ball, and it took a while to get through that line. It an experience for sure and I know Creech always has it differently set up every year I know he had like three flames so if you hit one side it would light one the left flame and then the right flame But I was able to pull it off because the post had a malfunction so it stayed up the whole time So I couldn't drain the ball, so I lucked out and was able to get a one on it because I was able to raise the ladder in the middle and make the center flame go off. So that was cool, but it was like about an hour wait before we played, and I was like, oh my gosh, I've got to get these scores in And because eventually, you know, people are going to close up their machines if they're going to bed or whatever, and you can't play the whole. But I did really well. I got second in pin golf. So I came home with a really nice translate of a Star Wars comic edition. That was really cool. So, yeah, that was a lot of fun. And I wish more and more people played, but it's tough, like you said, to get all those things in. And on Saturday night, in addition to going over and playing in the fast break head-to-head, there was a huge stall ball tournament that was going on at the Reno campsite. And there were 120 people at one time that were playing on one game of stall ball. That's hilarious. And it was on heavy metal meltdown. So that was really awesome. I missed it, but oh my gosh, I heard it was really cool. So it's the problem. I can't be at two places at once. So obviously I was playing the tournament in the NBA fast break and I missed out on the stall ball. But I'll try to do both next year. I did play stall ball on Friday night, but not on Saturday. So that was another thing that was happening at the campground at Reno. Nice. I can't even picture a 120 person stall ball game. Oh, it was insane. It was like he'd run out of ball. Yeah, it was pretty amazing. Yeah, pretty amazing. And then he had a thing where if you got out, you could do a buy-in for $5 and get back in line, but you could only do it once. So the pot even increased. So yeah, it was fun. It was a fun, fun time. So Mike Huntsman, shout out to you for always holding those stall ball events and they're really popular. So awesome. That dude is like the patron saint of Stalball. Yes, he is. Just the righteous dude is beyond that. Absolutely. Everybody from Reno on that is just awesome. Everybody's cool on that show. Everybody.
    76:40
    Like I said, it's a family reunion and it's just awesome to see everybody. We also watched the tournament. Michael from Reno put a projector on the side of the trailer. So we watched Michelle live in the tournament, which was great. So people were hanging out, sitting in their camp chairs and watching the chairs. I would just wander over to the tournament room and see her win live. You guys watched it live on video. Yeah, we watched it live on video. So we made fun. I was playing cute. It was cool. Get us those links. Yeah. Get us those watches. Yeah. So that was really cool. So that was fun. And then the night still kept going. It's about 3.30 in the morning. And I was like, you know what? There's probably not a line to play Beetlejuice. So I went into the trailer and there were still at least eight people waiting in line to play it. And then I was like, well, let's see how this goes. So I just kept playing a couple of games and then I had people go in front of me and they were just this one guy was his name was Greg. He was ranting and raving how amazing this game is and how great the light show is. And he was just having the best time of his life. And then there were these two people that came and it was about 4.15 in the morning and they're like, oh, we didn't get to play Beetlejuice yet. It's like, I'm like, oh, come on, go ahead. You can play it. But this is the last game and then I'm shutting it off.
    78:03
    So they got to play it. You're not asleep sometimes. Yeah, exactly. So they had a really fun time and they were like, oh, thank you so much for letting us play it. It was just super awesome. And that game made it all the way through. We never had to open it up to get a suck ball or fix anything, except in the very beginning we had a loose wire that we had to fix for the opto. But that was before we started playing it. And it was new? Like he unboxed it at the show or he unboxed it at home? He unboxed it at home and then he was like, oh, just bring it to the show so everybody can play it. He just loaded it up and drug it right after the campsite. Yeah. That's cool. But what's really funny is Bug got to go see it, and it was during the daytime, and he was concerned because the plastics were starting to get soft and melt because it was so hot in the trailer.
    78:52
    Oh, was it not hot? It was that hot. But at night, it was perfect. That always freaks me out about when I see games out in the camp side and outside, you know, and when, you know, my Metallica was out there for Tiltalica. Like, I was always like, man, we need to keep them covered. We need to keep them as cool as possible. Yep. Yeah, I know Creech had a game out there that even though it wasn't incredibly hot, you know, because the game's under glass, it's not getting airflow in there. He had his ramps like distort. Oh, wow. I was like, yeah, you got to keep those things at least in the shade, you know, because like they will get hot. Yeah. You know, don't get me wrong. It just, it just, it shows that, you know, there's another, there's people who just, you know, they're committed to bringing this stuff out and sharing it with others. You know, I bring a couple games to the show to put on the show floor and each of my games soaked up, I'm thinking, between 550 and 600 plays. Wow. In three days. And, you know, they were just beaters, you know, Monopoly and OG Transformers. So it's like, yeah, imagine, you know, what these Beetlejuice is and, you know, Pokemans and stuff like that are getting hit with. Right. So it's amazing. Well, the good news is nothing got ruined. The plastic is intact. But Bug was a little concerned. And I'm like, hey, Bug, did you get to check out the Beetlejuice in the trailer? He's like, yeah, I'm a little concerned about those plastics. They were getting a little soft. I'm like, ooh. Like, how would you really tell if the glass is on? Yeah. Well, he's just great. He's just being the engineer that he is. I think it was the topper that he was concerned about. Oh, okay. Because it was kind of driven forward a little bit. Oh, and Jason does have the snake, right? He did not have the snake because it's on location. He's going to definitely put the snake on there, right? Yeah. He didn't get a snake one because he didn't think that Spooky Speak would be effective in an arcade setting, but he does have one for his home that has the snake. And on top of that, the trailer wasn't tall enough. It would have probably hit the top of it because the original topper that came with the non-snake version was literally maybe one quarter of an inch from hitting the top of the trailer. I have more than once seen like toppers, like laser-rific toppers, stuff like that, melting the sun. Yeah. Yeah, you have to take the plastics off and you have to flatten them back out. So, yeah, you do got to be careful with those things. They will do their things. It's great that Jason brought that because I was able to get a few games Saturday morning. Good, good. So I got about a half a dozen games on it. There was nobody there when I walked in. And I walked in like right about opening and went, all right, cool. So I was in there getting my games going and, you know, making, you know, mental notes and just having a good time with it. So when we got to the seminar, you know, it's like, okay, I have a, you know, at least a bit, you know, a basic idea of what's in this game. Oh, man, I'm so cool. And you can hear it. Well, that's the thing. You can really experience it. People really appreciate it. Like, oh, this is a great idea because you can totally hear the game and experience it. And, you know, small fans would have been nice. Absolutely. Yeah. Think about next year for sure. Yeah. So it wasn't hot. The weather of the show was good. It was perfect. It was actually regular. Yeah. There's probably not a lot of air movement. No, we opened the side door and that helped a lot. But the first time when we had it on Friday, we didn't have the side door open. And that's what it really started heating up in there like an oven. But it was nice. Like I said, in the night when it was a little, you know, away from the wind, you were sheltered. So it felt nice and cozy in there and people were all hanging out. And the other funny story is on the first night, we didn't have something on the back of the trailer. So when people were standing waiting in line, the trailer was starting to kind of do a little wheelie. And we didn't want the game to come crashing onto people. So we put a tire in them. That didn't work. So we got some jacks and finally secured it so it didn't tip.
    82:56
    But hey, you'll live and learn, but nobody got hurt, so that was good. So people had a great time. So it was really, thank you, Jason, for providing everybody a chance to play it in isolation. People were having a blast. It was like a party in the trailer itself. So it was cool. Yep. So Sunday morning. Are we ready for Sunday morning? We are ready for Sunday. We are ready for Sunday morning. So Sunday morning, I will say, is where I felt the absolute benefit of going home. Because like I woke up Sunday morning, grabbed a shower, you know, threw on my show shirt and was still feeling, actually I was feeling really good.
    83:37
    And Spencer and I rolled to the show and we grabbed breakfast burritos at a California burrito on the way, a California burrito in Galt. And we got to camp, you know, what, like figure nine o'clock. Yeah, about that. Yeah. And everybody looked haggard.
    83:59
    Everybody looked like they'd been through it, man. Like you could tell that you guys all stayed up till like three, four in the morning. Yep. Slipping out and partying down. And like you guys all just look wrecked. Correct. By 11 o'clock, I was handing out beers to people because I just I had a little ice chest I bought and I had some beers and soda. So I came over to the Lodi area and I was like, Hector, you want these sodas and beers? I was like, yeah, try these. And so I'm all sharing the last of my local beer I can't get back in Wyoming. It's Lost Coast Brewery out of Eureka, the Tangerine Wheaton. Everybody's like, this is really good beer. So by 11 o'clock, we're all knocking back hair of the dog. It was great. Cool. Yeah, Sunday was, like I said, things were slowing down. There weren't as many people in there, so I had a chance. I was like, you know what? The lines aren't as bad on Sunday. I'm not in the tournament for the finals. So guess what I'm going to do as soon as the show opens? Even though I only had three hours of sleep, I went to go play more games. And I had a chance to go and play Mystery Winchester. And I also had a chance to play that the day before, but I really wanted to get more experience playing it. And mine wasn't too long. And so I waited in there and played Winchester. And, of course, I also went over and played Dune and I checked out the homebrew section on my own. And then Spencer and I got to experience it, too. So that was cool on Sunday. So Spencer, if you want to talk about that, then I'll just kind of chime in. Yeah. Dan, you got over and played Winchester too, didn't you?
    85:41
    Yes. What'd you think? It was cool. It was mind-blowing for me. Everything was awesome on it. It's a gorgeous game. Winchester's really, really good. The layout is fantastic. I love the call-out. Oh, the guy is so good. I feel like he's like the ghost, you know, What is that? The Ghost Host from, you know, the Haunted Mansion. Thank you. And oh, it's so good. It's so fun. I can't wait to play it again when I see it. But I'm very impressed with that game. Barrels of Fun really is nailing it out of the park with these last three games they made. It's awesome. And they also had a labyrinth there, too. So, yeah. Yeah, no, that's kind of where I was headed. All right, let's go. So I got to sneak in early because I was working my last shift in Chardonnay, and that's where Winchester was. So I got to sneak in there and have a three-player game with Greg Creech and briefly Seth, but then Seth got called away, and so we brought in New Better Seth, which was some other bald guy. And, yeah, I got to put a game on that, and I was like, dude, this game's sweet. Like it kills me that like it's going to be hard to get. Luckily, we have a couple locals who came down with it. We have a local location. The Flipper Room has one. So, you know, we will definitely get to spend some more time on it. But yeah, of all the like crazy, super hard to get, you know, collectors oriented recent games, that's the one that I'm like, oh, man, I wish I'd figured out how to make this happen. And, you know, that is a dope game. In a couple of years, I'm sure they'll still hold really good value. But like in a couple of years when people are ready to move on from them, you know, and there's only 500 of them out there. But I will definitely be trying to figure out a way to scan my way into one of those because that could definitely be that's the perfect blend of just super cool, good shooter, weird, unique theme, you know, safe horror that I really like to see in a pinball. It definitely clicks all those boxes. But it's funny going back to your beer story, Spencer.
    87:58
    So I'm working my last shift and Chris Bannister comes in and it's 10 a.m. and he cracks a modello. And I immediately went into that. Was it Mr. Mom? Yeah.
    88:11
    I'm like 10 a.m. Scotch? 220, 221, whatever it takes. Yeah, just so, yeah, I got a chance to finally get on to one of the rare games. But from there on, it was like, yeah, just kind of the same old thing I've been doing all weekend. You know, I finished my shift and then ran right over to ride out the rest of the finals with Rick. And so we streamed that out to the very, very end. And at that point, you know, the show was over. The show ends pretty early on Sunday. Yeah. So, you know, it was weird because you get to the end of the party and, you know, everybody's, it's, you know, you're, it's, it's a kingdom, it's a city. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It's, it's, it's semi-permanent, but then Sunday, like it, it, it goes away so fast. Yeah. And, you know, the next thing that you know, you know, the games are being broken down and, you know, there's still pockets of activity. Like if you were working at the show, if you knew people or if you were camping at the campsite and you just weren't in a hurry to get out, you weren't trying to beat the crowd and you hung out, you could get a whole other day of pinball or a whole other evening of pinball in, you know. Right. On the radio set up, there were still a few campsites. I know some of the Teardown crew set up some of their games in the tournament room and had some last-minute pinball competitions. So you don't necessarily need to just get out of Dodge as quick as possible, but, you know, hang out, hang out and experience the fun. But, you know, me and Spencer had a mission, and that mission was to get our Wyoming refugees some gym boys. There you go.
    90:03
    Because I can drive up to Denver and get in and out now. So I can get that. That's within, you know, reach where, you know, Jim Boy's is only when I'm in California. It was delicious. So nice. And then I got semi-attacked later that night. Yeah, it was later that night by landscaping equipment.
    90:24
    What? How do you get attacked by landscaping equipment? You don't remember when you woke me up? Oh, I was exhausted. We had to tell the story. So we get home and Mark, you know, we all say our goodbyes, you know, we say our goodbyes to Mark because Mark's, you know, going to steam right out to Reno, which I kind of thought you should have crashed at my house and left the next morning. I know, I should have. You know, but it's fine, you know, we understood, you know, you needed to get home because you worked the next day, right? I did. Foolishly, I went to work. So we get home and, you know, we sit down in the front room and, you know, even though I'm sure we were somewhat fresher than most, you know, like Spencer is gone within a couple minutes. And, you know, we, you know, we're sitting there and I'm sort of dozing off and on. And then I finally get the text message that the guys are coming with the games. And Saturday night and just all day Sunday, we had these crazy windstorms. And I've got a neighborhood with like a lot of big trees, so I just had leaves everywhere and I didn't want the guys to have to trudge through the leaves. So I went and grabbed my leaf. I have a battery-powered leaf blower off the back porch. And I was walking through the living room. I gave Spencer a shot with it. So he's like, and I just sort of laugh and I walk out in the garage. So then I'm out there leaf blowing and Spencer walks out to the garage. And I mean, he looks like he looks like, you know, OK, honey, we're at grandma's house. Put your shoes on. And I just said, he's like, what's going on? I said, they're not here, buddy. Go go sit back down on the couch and I'll let you know. He's like, okay, let me know when they're here. And those guys showed up, and I mean, you know, it was like 9, 10 o'clock, and I mean, they were ready to be done. So, like, yeah, you know, we grabbed the games, just, you know, left them soldiered, just set them on the garage floor, slapped some high fives, did some hugs. And again, George, Mike, Christian, Casey, gosh, I don't remember who the last guy who was with them was, but, like, just, you know, So hats off to you guys because load in and load out, like load in is a tough shift.
    92:51
    Load out is the toughest shift. Yes. Because you're exhausted and then you have to go and you have to move games. I know that like, you know, Will and I did load out a couple times. I know he was doing the drive-in. Spencer did it. And, yeah, I mean, we were out there until 1 in the morning. I mean, I remember going back to the hall and eating cold pizza off of Rob Anthony's table at one in the morning, you know, because we had missed all the fun because we were sleeping games around the whole world. So like, hey, guys, you know, hats off. But, you know, at that point, you know, the show party is pretty much over. We listened to Don's episode and we got a kick out of that. That was a really fun time. Actually, Spencer got the dramatic reading of it because I kind of read the transcript of it when we were eating our gym boys. Yep. And then the next day, you know, Spencer needed to kill time until like 1 o'clock. Yeah. My flight didn't leave until, like, I had to have the rent card back by 2.30 and my flight didn't leave until 4 or so. Yeah.
    93:57
    So we ended up meeting up with Adam. And like we had talked before, like the whole plan was to meet Adam Sunday night for dinner, which just timing wise didn't work out. And so we said, OK, well, you know, why don't we meet tomorrow for breakfast or maybe tomorrow for lunch? And, you know, again, Spencer and I were up at the, you know, the crack of dawn because we fall asleep pretty early. But like Adam's asleep. I mentioned him at like seven o'clock and he messaged us back, you know, a couple hours later. And by then, you know, we'd already been to the UPS or the FedEx store and grabbed some McDonald's. And, you know, we were just basically kicking it out in the garage, running games through my Black Knight sort of rage. Nice. And then Adam showed up and we went out to a barbecue place here in Sacramento.
    94:49
    And see, I should have hung for another day. Oh, yeah. I mean, this wasn't Brothers Barbecue, but it's not bad. No, it's good. It's pretty darn good. And so we went out there and, yeah, we played a little bit more pinball and we got all of Spencer's stuff sent away.
    95:08
    You can take everything on a plane, you know, the big game and the poster and all that. So I just sent it via FedEx and it got here Thursday. I've got my poster framed hung up and Seth's got his game and it's cool. Cool. Well, I know on Sunday I'm kind of going back in time, but before I went to the showroom I was thinking Jason probably wants to get out of there on Sunday. So I felt I needed to help him break down the camp. So even though I went to bed at 4.30 in the morning, I got up at 7 and helped him get all his games packed up. And that took a good two hours until we finally got all the games soldiered up, loaded into his trailer, and then taken down the pop-up tents along with Ben's. So that took a little while. And then I played games. But, yeah, so it was really a great opportunity to help him because a lot of people, like you said, were totally just sleeping in. And I was like, oh, man, I don't want to have it. Sleeping in is not the term, sleeping it off. Sleeping it off, yeah, there you go.
    96:18
    It wasn't lazy, it was like, if I don't sleep another couple hours, I'm going to die. Yeah, exactly.
    96:26
    Like I said, we got into that camp Sunday morning and we were looking around and again, it just looked like the aftermath of just the biggest rager. Yep.
    96:36
    Yeah. But, you know, and I do want to throw some props out, and I know that the show responded to this, but I will say that, like, compared to when we stayed last year, they had a better cleaning crew. I know some of the Girl Scouts were involved, actually, in cleaning the campsites. Oh, that's nice. And cleaning up the campground, and I know they had a big dumpster so that they could get rid of garbage faster, so it wasn't those little garbage cans just overflowing at every camp. So, yeah, the campsite was so much cleaner. I didn't end up having to use the campsite restrooms, but I would imagine that they were probably better. And having worked at the volunteer table and gotten to check them in and out, yeah, they were like super friendly, super upbeat, you know, very task oriented.
    97:24
    And, yeah, just it seemed like they got out there and they just made it happen. And so another just really wonderful response by the show's management to a problem that a lot of people had last year, which was like, man, the campsite was just tossed. Having the dumpsters was huge. When I saw that, I was like, oh, thank God we got a big dumpster to throw our crap in. So that was nice. This year it was much, much better. Way better.
    97:55
    Way better. Yeah, so for that, you know, for us at that point, you know, that was kind of the end of the show. You know, I kind of, the show was over for me once I got, you know, Spencer on his way. You know, Adam and I drove back. Adam took off. And, you know, I didn't even get back to soldiering up my games until yesterday or to unsoldering my games until yesterday and surveying the damage. And, you know, they both made it through just fine. The packout crew did a really nice job. Everything was there. No problems that I've noticed so far. And again, each of them soaked up about 600 plays. So between the packing crew and the pack out crew, you know, because you don't pack it yourself when they're taking it home, right? They pack it up for you. So you're kind of like, man, I hope they do a good job. They seem to do great. And the techs handling any problems, it just seemed like they really did a wonderful job of taking care of the games that were provided to them. I know not every game makes it through scot-free. That's Pinball. Trust me, I brought home plenty of games that I needed to figure out problems. But yeah, you know, I thought that honestly, if I had to kind of give my review of the show for our good buddy Practical Steve, and I'm sure you guys all put in your review of the show, I thought it was great. You know, I think that it was super well run. The volunteers seemed very engaged this year. The weather played pretty nice up until, you know, up until the wind started trying to steal people's canopies. Yeah, mine was tossed when I came back. Yeah, the campsite was super exciting as usual. It seemed, I mean, maybe a little less rowdy than it was the previous year, which I thought was good. I thought it kind of got a little wild, you know, but I think that people definitely, you know, did a great job of knowing where they were and just everybody had fun and everybody was respectful. I heard of, you know, working with the board, I did hear of one or two situations that happened on the show floor, but, you know, certainly nothing, Nothing super out. I didn't witness any near fistfights like I did the John Wick year.
    100:19
    You know, or somebody started a four-player game in front of somebody else, and I'm like, oh, that dude's about to get his ass kicked. He was a dude operating between me and that guy. He was not having it. He's like, nope, nope, nope, nope.
    100:32
    I was like, uh-oh. And I was about to just step in and be like, hey, you know, I get it. That dude, there was a D-bag move, but yeah. You know, let's not turn it into something that it's not. But yeah, man, I mean, I had a great time. I felt like, especially for the show, we got so much more attention than we had any other given year, I think, between the stickers and just between the growth of the Spinner is Lit fan community. Yeah. We have a ton of people who listen and a ton of people who want to do engage with us. And, you know, they came up to me and, you know, asked me about the show and I gave them a sticker and, you know, they were talking about about you guys. And have you seen Mark? Where's Mark at? Have you seen Spencer? I'm just like, oh, Spencer, you got to kind of look down. Mark, you just you got to be in the right place at the right time. You know, me, you can pretty much just come to the tournament room and I'm going to be streaming. So we're all pretty easy to find. And I thought that was a fantastic show. Like I said, just great vibe, always plenty to do. If I had to put one critique on anybody, I'd put it on myself. I didn't make enough time for games. Yeah. I made a lot of time for, I mean, a good amount of time for working and volunteering because I wanted the swag.
    101:55
    And I wanted to contribute. And I made a great amount of time for just visiting with people. But like, yeah, I do need to manage my time maybe a little bit better that I can sneak in a couple more gameplay sessions because I think I played TNA at the campsite. And I think I played my own Monopoly once because I was standing by it when I was checking on something and it wasn't being played. And I just wanted to see how it was holding up. And I will say this, low buck monopoly for a game that I put together myself out of mostly spare parts and a game that had seen some stuff.
    102:37
    I put it, I turned it on the other day, ran some balls through it. I mean, it seems like to be 100%. I had to like snap one flasher back in place, but waterworks still worked. The ramp repairs seem to be holding. Good. Flippers are flipping. So, yeah, I think at this point that that game could survive a war. Yeah, you did such a great job on that. I had a chance to play it at your house, and I was really impressed. You did a phenomenal job, and to show that it survived at the show says a lot. So, great job, Dan, using those parts and making it work. Yeah, no problems that I – I think one person told me that it was kind of machine gunning the slingshot, and that's just the rubber being too tight. That's just a simple adjustment. And I'm sure the techs took care of that. But, yeah, I was pleasantly surprised because, you know, I went into it going like, well, now we're going to see if those ramp repairs will hold or not, you know, because they survived being in my garage. They survived league play. But, yeah, you know, 600 plays in three days. Like, that's peak arcade action, if not more. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, good to see that Lobuck held on. And OG Transformers, like, it had been to the show before. And so I was pretty confident that it wasn't going to have any problems. The only problem with OG Transformers was I had kind of mods that weren't entirely attached in place that ended up like in the back of the game when it got soldiered. But, you know, that wasn't any fault of the games. That was just me taping stuff to the game. I'm like, oh, maybe I'll like it here. Just put it down with tape. Yeah. Yeah, man. So the games did great. We had a ton of cool stuff. We had a ton of great people. You know, it was absolutely wonderful. To work with the coordinators and to work with all the other volunteers and, you know, again, big thanks to Emoto and Marco and everybody. So that's my review. That's awesome. And, you know, the thing that you did a lot, Dan, is you did a lot of commentating for the stream. So hats off to you. You do always a great job. And I know you're busy for those finals because that is a huge part of streaming that exciting pinball. But one of the things that I wanted to do was to commit to playing some games with Spencer. And we did. We played a ton of games. We did. We played a ton of games. We're like, we've got to go in the EM room and let's play it. And the first thing Spencer said, you've got to play the Wizard. You've got to play the Wizard. And I was like, okay, all right, let's go check that one out. So then we started playing Wizard. And then what was the other one that was next to it? I didn't play the one to the left of it, which I was like, darn it. Oh, Skylab. Skylab, yeah, yeah, Skylab. Those were Grey Wolves games, and they were just dialed in. Yes, yes. I love Grey Wolves. He's a great guy. Yeah, he's so cool. We love Grey Wolves. Oh, my gosh. That was the best wizard I've ever played in my life. It was so amazing. Oh, my gosh. And like you said, the other one was great. It was Skylab, you said? Is that what it's called? Yeah, Skylab. And then he had a Sky Jump, a Gottlieb Wedgehead, and I didn't get to it. I didn't get to that one either. Why didn't we play that one? There was so much to do. I know. Oh, did you guys get to play Spanish Duel? No, and I meant to. I did. I played it. I played it with somebody, so I got a chance to play it, and that was awesome. And then there was one. One of those was mine. The one that had a metal shooter housing. That was my Spanish eyes. Oh, nice. Nice. That was the one that I went to Spencer. That's Spencer. You're Spencer. That went to Cheddar because he did my play field slot for Creature. And then he upgraded and he sent it over to Maurice. And we had made a joke, right? Oh, you have two Spanish eyes. You should link them together.
    106:27
    Then Maurice, you know, being a genius as well as a paella master, said, I'm going to do that. And I don't know if he did it himself or if somebody helped him engineering. But yeah, he figured out how to make Spanish Eyes, you know, to where you can tilt each other out when you hit the center scoop. That's cool. It's like Tiltalica in slow motion, but it's every bit as intense because of the differences in how the games play, right? With Tiltalica, it's like super fast motion. With this, it is kind of like a duel. Yes. You know, where you're trying to make this very particular shot. And, of course, Spanish Eyes has a very tricky, super wide flipper gap with that pop bumper in between it that gives you some amazing saves. Right. Yeah, that's a cool thing. I got to play that with Jason. And then also there was Blue Chip was also linked, if I'm not mistaken. Wasn't it? That was cool, too. So we got to play that one. So there are two EMs that were linked together, which is really awesome. And then I think the coolest thing in that area was Greg Wright, who had a self-playing game that basically played by itself that looked very similar to like a human playing it. So it was really cool. I forgot what game it was, but he basically had it set up where it would flip when the ball came to the flippers. And it was pretty impressive because there were times where it got like close to the middle and it was a quick left right flip, just like if you're trying to save the ball. So that was pretty cool. I probably would have played worse just playing it on my own than when it was playing automatically. But that was really a cool thing to see. And then we got to play Locomotion, Spencer, right? Remember, we played that one that Mark brought. Yeah, that old Zacharia. Zacharia, we had to play that one. And that was a beautiful game to play. And that was fun. And then we spent a considerable amount of time in the homebrew section.
    108:20
    And wow, there were some amazing games. And I don't know, Dan, if you guys forgot all about the homebrew section. Yeah, that's what I forgot. We had some cool stuff there this year. Oh, my goodness. You watched Dark Chaos? That game, I have some videos. That was crazy. Yeah, Cosmic Chaos, right? I don't know, Dark Chaos. What's Dark Chaos? Sorry. Yeah. No, no, I keep getting it wrong, too. Awesome. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Spencer and I played a game of that. And then, Spencer, you got to play Star Wars, right? Yeah, I did. And then the Whitewood of Beastie Boys. Oh, my God. That blew my mind. That was so fun. And the Dark Chaos. Yeah, Dark Chaos. Definitely. That was my favorite of Homebrews. But I want to give a special shout out to that re-engineered and fully restored old Gottlieb two-player EM Gemini. They only made like 300 of those. And that thing just was like butter. Oh, my gosh. That was beautiful. Beautiful. It looked like it had just been pulled out of the box. So, yeah, man, a lot of cool stuff going on with that. Dan, when you were speaking earlier about time management, three days of the Golden State Pinball Festival is basically your PhD thesis on time management.
    109:46
    Yeah. You know, because we're all fired. We're like, did you play? No, I didn't get to that. No, you know, we're all doing it, you know. Yeah. Like, yeah, because I meant to get over and play Spanish Eyes, and I just never talked to it. There was a ton of other stuff. And then I was like, right, I was like, Spencer, did you get to play Yukon Yeti? And he's like, no, I didn't get to play that. So let's go stand in line. Let's do that. And so we did. We went out to the showroom. Yep. Yeah. I was standing in line Saturday. The line was so long. I just, I had to pee or something. I had to be somewhere else. I'm like, well, I'll get back to it. But I'm glad I did because I really enjoyed that too.
    110:21
    That was fun. And then I think you were with me when they were like, oh, come on, we got to see the avalanche. And then it was really cool when I got the five ball and they were making the avalanche and everybody was cheering in the back of the line. Yeah, they got to see it. So that was cool. I think you were there, right, Spencer? Were you there? I was, yeah. Yeah, yeah. You and I were playing with playing a four player. Yeah, that was awesome. I think the trick is next year you guys have got to grab me on like a Friday, like when the show's just starting or something. Yeah. Or a Sunday when it's just wrapping up and we need to go around as a trio and make a lap of the floor and play some games because, yeah, if you don't tell me not to, I'll always find something else to be involved in. Right. Yeah, I do feel like, oh my gosh, I missed out on playing, you know, because there weren't a lot of games there that I needed to play. You know, I played a lot of games, but I would have loved to have gotten a game on Yukon Yeti. I mean, I probably would have wanted to have touched Alice in Wonderland. I really do wish I spent a little bit more time in the homebrew section I really glad I got you know a chance to sneak over and jump on Winchester The problem is I just so like ah fuck I don want to wait in line Yeah, I get it. When there's lines, you know, I'm just like, screw this. It takes a lot of time away when you're waiting, at least a half hour.
    111:43
    Well, and to me, it's just annoying, you know, because, again, you know, you're like, why would I wait in line to play pinball? I have pinball at home, but it's just like you got to kind of remember some of these games, you know, UConn Yeti I'm probably not going to see again soon. You know, maybe I'll see it in another show. Maybe one of the local collectors or locations will get it. But, yeah, that's why I was, you know, like I got to try out this Winchester while I can sneak in and not have to be in line. So, yeah, you guys have got to, you know, like hit me with a blackjack and drag me around to the games and, you know, It'll make my unconscious body slump over them so that I actually play some games at the show. Well, you can do your commentating, you know, for the tournament at 10, and then when the show opens, then we can all come together and play some games. I think the commentary for the tournament will be different next year. Not because I'm going to leave Rick high and dry or nothing, but I think that we're going to come up with a different solution. Okay.
    112:43
    You know, I don't think that Rick is, you know, like I'm sure that everything's on the table, but I know that he's, you know, he doesn't want to just sit there in that one room the whole time either, you know, but he's driven to do it. Well, I think next year I'm probably not going to play in the tournament too just because I want to socialize more and not. I mean, you still socialize with people in the tournament, but it's still a different setting. And I think maybe next year I might take a break from the tournament. I don't know. I always say that, and then I end up signing up, but I think I'm going to commit to that. I think the tournament's a great way to spend a day. Yeah, yeah. But at the same time, you know, I think that also you should have qualified. Yeah, that's true. Mark. That's true. So you go back home, Mark, and like four days, five days later, you win a season. Yeah. You win your league season, like what, four or five days later. Yeah, I mean, I made up for it, that's for sure. So are we ready to talk about our favorite games? Yes. Yeah. Dan, you want to start us out? Yeah, I'll start us because I seem to be steering the bus today. And I will tell you why I'm steering the bus because I got the pleasure of driving in a car with Spencer.
    113:56
    His driving is every bit as erratic as his show direction. It's pretty sketchy. I'm not accustomed to sitting driving anymore. No kidding. Yeah, I spend most of my time driving on dirt roads, literally. Yeah, I scared the hell out of Dan and Adam. Oh, yeah, we were both like, I was like, hey, Adam, do you want to value being alive? You should ride with Spencer.
    114:26
    So, I mean, obviously I didn't play that many games, but I already kind of waxed, you know about it. Winchester was definitely my favorite game. Even just watching it in action, I'll give all sorts of credit to Dark Chaos. I think that it had the potential.
    114:44
    You know, if somebody picks up that design, they'd be crazy not to. It has those TNA Final Resistance vibes. Like you could tell that somebody played Total Nuclear or Final Resistance or both and said, I like this. I want more of this, but Carl D'Angelo's design is super fun to shoot. The use of the Gilligan's Island-style turntable mech, the back glass mirror, Pepper's Ghost thing. Oh, my God. Just the overall theming, the sound effects, like you said, the ghost host voice. I mean, I think it's a weird theme to have brought out, not because it doesn't appeal to me. I'm a NorCal kid, so I know what the Winchester Mystery House is, but I think it's a weird theme to have brought out, but I can see that he brought something out that either he super loves or is directly adjacent Haunted Mansion to something that he loves. Uh-huh. And, yeah, you know, that game really hits on every note. I think Barrels of Fun should do a second edition of it. I agree. Change up the cab art, make something a little bit different, and say, hey, we're going to make more. I know the collectors will crucify me for saying that, but it's just like, man, it's too good of a game to only have 500 of out in the world. Right. I agree 100%. It just needs to be out there so that more people can see it and more people can appreciate it. And I know that in pinball, 500 is not an insignificant amount. There are some games that there's 100 of. There's some games that there's single digits. But, yeah, so my vote for the best game going is Winchester. Okay.
    116:32
    Mark, I'm going to let you go next. Oh, man. Okay. Well, I have to say that for the amazing wow moment of, like, I feel like I'm in the 90s as a kid again, I would have to say Winchester. It was mind-blowing how good it was. Like you said, Dan, all of the above, it ticks everything.
    116:59
    It was just amazing how beautiful the game was in person. I can't get over that back glass of that beautiful teal and the color palette that they used to really give it that vibe of a Haunted Mansion type of theme with a mystery Winchester house. I was blown away. As far as the fun factor goes, and I'm sorry I'm breaking the rules here, but I really was pleasantly surprised with Yukon Yeti. It was a fun game, fun to shoot. And then for the campground experience, there was nothing better than having an isolated experience for Beetlejuice in the trailer. So as far as those three, those are the ones. And for homebrew, I really enjoyed playing Beastie Boys. That was my favorite. I agree with you on all points, Mark, every point. My favorite game of the show was also Winchester, but I want to give mad props to the team over at Spooky, Beetlejuice. Oh my gosh, yeah. Just, you know what? Oh yeah, Beetlejuice, pretty good.
    118:07
    Yeah, no, man's trying to out the park. Well, it's so hard because there's so much good stuff. And I agree with you, Kanye, because I also played Moon's Arcade. And, Mark, I'm giving you the credit because you made a call, and I've been using it. In fact, I quoted you in a game review I did on Pinside, and you said it's a beautiful game.
    118:35
    Well, actually, you said that of Alice, but of also Moon's Arcade. And it's a neat game. It's a neat stuff. But to quote you, there's no character. Right. There's just the game has no character. It shot okay. It was like, okay, that's kind of neat. But, yeah, UConn Yeti, bravo. Bravo is Lulu, as we say in the Navy, to the team over at Turner Pinball. UConn Yeti is a solid game. And Dennis Norman, great design. The lighting on that ramp.
    119:07
    Oh, awesome. The ramp return. I've got a short video I'm going to post up in the next few days of that, and I've got some videos of Dark Chaos, one of which is some gameplay with you, Mark, and one of them is the lights in the insert of the slingshots. I thought it was really amazing.
    119:28
    Cool. Yeah, man, and the homebrew, I'm giving it to that. But, like I said, I want to give Mad Pops, I really like the Beastie Boys and that reconstruction, that restoration of the Gottlieb Gemini was just unreal. And for those that don't know, it's an EM game that still has score reels, but the, I forgot, you got his name, didn't you, that did that? He did the entire thing in a solid state. So all the workings underneath, he converted an EM game to a solid state game that still has score reels. And he took a blown out play field and did a vinyl overlay and it looks like it was beautiful. And it shot amazing. It shot amazing. Fast and just and people are like, oh, wow, the end can be fast. I'm like, if you restore it right, it can.
    120:15
    So, yeah. So that was my new game and homebrew moments. And there were so many other moments. I mean, I could talk about this forever. Real quick before you move on. Yeah. The only reason I didn't say Beetlejuice is because I played it the week before and I didn't play it at the show, so I really wasn't thinking of it as a show game. But yeah, Beetlejuice is really up there. Like I said, Spooky's doing it every time and you can feel the passion and you can feel the progression in their games and you can definitely feel the love of the theme. You know, Beetlejuice is also like, yeah, for the best new game. It's like pretty hard not to say Beetlejuice. And again, another game I probably should have mentioned, I'd played it before, you know, it was at the show last year in prototype form, was Dune. Dune was so good too. Like, I will be honest, I don't know one thing about Dune as a franchise, although Scott Busey is determined to change that now that he's heard me say that.
    121:14
    But man, that game is good. Oh, Jermaine's fun is knocking it out of the park with every release. Like all three of those games, you could tell that, again, they understood the assignment with the theme. They 100% integrated the theme, and then they also managed to make a heck of a game. Yeah. You know, with using the mechanics of pinball and using the assets from the games, Whether it was something that like, you know, they were slavishly following the movie or whether they were taking a building and building a story around it, which again kind of makes me love Winchester because you're not playing the story of Dune or the story of Beetlejuice. You're playing this new scenario in this tourist attraction from Northern California. What a cool weird thing. Yeah, so all three of those games for the new games are fantastic. So yeah, Barrel with me. Pins of the Caribbean is no joke. I'm looking forward to their next assignment. And I want to thank Roger Brown for getting that Yukon Yeti to the show. That was a pleasant surprise. And to make a long story short, Chris Turner, when I contacted him, I said, hey, it would really be nice if we got a Yukon Yeti at the show. And he made up a story saying, oh, I'm sorry, we had Pintastic already and we're not going to be able to ship it in time. Didn't realize that he already had a plan with Roger that he was going to bring it to the show. So Chris totally fooled me, surprised me, and thanks, Chris, for allowing that to happen, and Roger Brown for bringing it from Pimball Traders. Do you think Chris Turner listens to our podcast? He does. I hope he does. He does. Okay, good. Huge props to Chris Turner. Yeah, huge props, man. That game is really good. Just for making UConn Yeti happen. Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, like, what an amazing thing that this game, and I thought for sure that that, That game was going to die with AP. Yeah, me too. I didn't realize that the rights to that game had fallen into Chris Turner's hands and that he was going to see it to completion, and he really did. I'm a Whitewater owner, but for most of my life I was not a Whitewater lover. In fact, I hated that game until I figured out how it worked. But now I'm like super excited to see that somebody took the inspiration of Whitewater and Dennis Dornman's design and built a whole new game around it. And I'm dying, dying to see what Chris Scrooge does. I was just going to say, you read my mind, Dan. It's going to be incredible. And hey, maybe if it's available, you could have that next to your Whitewater, which would be dope. That would require a serious expansion of pinball space. I'm already struggling to fit the stuff that I have in. But, yeah, if one of those happened to come into my life somehow, praise to God I'll turn it away. I have a question. What is the longest you can live off Top Ramen for?
    124:20
    At our age? Not very long. Not very long, yeah. I know. I will tell you when you're in your early 20s though, extended periods of time. There you go. What do you live off of? I live off of 100% pure sodium. Yeah, exactly.
    124:38
    And monosodium glutamate. Oh, there's another point I want to bring up. Something this year at the show, very wonderful and very special occurred that has never happened before.
    124:53
    Curious? Yes. So every piece of merchandise sold out for this year's show. Every poster, every shirt, every coffee mug. The hat sold out in about six minutes. So they'll probably make more next year. There wasn't anything left. Some chance. Wow. Everything sold out. How did the silent auction go? Did those all get picked up too? Oh, yeah. Yeah, silent auction. I believe so. Yeah, I think everything in the silent auction was gone. Like there was maybe one item left that somebody hadn't come and paid for when I left. I mean, because I worked the table that day. But, I mean, yeah, people were fanatic for that stuff. Wow.
    125:43
    Yeah, they literally sold out every poster. I mean, in fact, so much so that somebody bought the last or people bought the last of the blacklight posters from the – Dirty Donnie show when he did the poster. There were still a few of the black, white, limited edition posters left, and those sold out. But every single poster from this year sold every T-shirt, every tank top, every hat. Again, the hat sold out immediately.
    126:12
    You know, all the coffee mugs they have, like stickers, you name it. There was no merchandise left to take back. Wow. Everything sold. That's crazy. Isn't that crazy? And that's wonderful, too, you know. Yeah. Most of my assignments, I worked right over there by the merch table, and I can tell you there was always a line at it. There was always somebody buying merch this year. That's awesome. I think that the fireball design, I think, was a big, big hit. But I think that even more, like I said, it's just, you know, people want a part of this show to take home. I think that it's really a special thing to the Northern California and beyond pinball community. And I think that as more and more people schlep their way out here to give it a shot, you know, and it was great to see who came. It was great to see Bug. It was great to see Emoto. Great to see Mike Vinicor and Michael Grant from Stern. And Don, yep. And great to see Don from Don's Pinball Podcast and finally get to press the flesh with him.
    127:17
    And all the other people who come out, you know, from all the sponsors, from Planetary, from Pinball Pirate, the Flipper Room crew, I mean, all the guys on the board, everything. But I think that especially as like more people from around pinball get out to the show and tell people what they think, I think that more people want to come and see what we're all about because I think that, you know, we're bringing something as a show and as a Northern California pinball community, Reno, Bay Area, Monterey, all those guys, you know, involved as well. I think that we're bringing something, you know, we bring a vibe to it. You know, we bring the California vibe to it in a way that I don't think anyone else does. Yeah, we're not on the beach. You know, we're a different part of California. And we're not in a hotel.
    128:09
    And we're not in a hotel. We're not in a convention center, you know. But we are bringing the passion and we are bringing the fun and we are bringing the Lodi. And here's the best thing about it. It's a fundraiser on top of that. So all the money that goes towards the show goes to a good cause for all these wonderful organizations. That's the other thing that people don't realize is that we're not only helping people have fun, But we're also helping people that can be able to run their programs, such as all the different organizations. And, Dan, you probably know them better than I do, but I know the museum, right, in Lodi is one of them. And what are the other ones? It's World's a Wonder. And let me bring up the other one. Make sure you give recognition to these people because it's huge that we can raise that much money for a good cause. Yeah, Pacific Pinball Museum. Uh-huh. And I forget the actual name of it, Dan, when you pull it up, but it's a division of local Special Olympics. Oh, yeah, Special Olympics. Okay. See, that's awesome. So it's all for a good cause. And all volunteer run, too. So, yeah. What an amazing accomplishment. Don had mentioned something on his show. He said people kept coming. Oh, I'm sorry, Darren. Go ahead. It doesn't really give you like a full list. It just says proceeds benefit the World of Wonder, Science Museum, Learn About, Electricism, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But there are other beneficiaries as well. I know that the Girl Scout group gets support. The group that Amanda Neff runs and helps out with the show. I know that the Special Olympics group gets some recognition and gets some support because I was working with one of the ladies from there and she was a firecracker. She was all over the place. She was selling everything in sight, getting people to sign up for raffles and stuff like that. And everybody's very engaged and into what they're doing. But, yeah, all the money either goes back into the show. It goes to the charities or goes back into the show. Nobody walks out with anything in their pockets. No. Maybe a free T-shirt. There you go.
    130:31
    That's Girl Scout Troop 1895. Yeah, and the dinner, they get the proceeds from that. It's helping them to get to, like, their trip to, like, I want to say Washington, D.C., but I think there was another trip as well. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah, so, yeah, Don, he mentioned in his podcast, which was really well done, he says, you know, everybody kept coming up to him and handing him alcohol all night and probably a dummy or two. I don't have that speculation. That's just speculation.
    131:03
    And he's racing and saying, what do you think of the show? What do you think of the show? And it's like, and Don, if you're listening, I know you are, brother, and it's good meeting you in person, and hopefully we'll see you again down the road. We're that proud of our little show. All the folks that attend regularly, that's our show. We take ownership. It's the pinball show of the people, by the people, and for the people. And we're just so proud of our little show. And now you understand why, man. It's more than a show. It is an experience. It's a three-ring circus of pinball and food and friendship and fun and good vibes, man. And, yeah. And, yeah, and you guys mentioned, I'll put it in the shout-outs and thank you, Stan. And you had mentioned the gang from Stern, our Pinn brothers, Mike Binnacore. Yeah, yeah. They always come out. They're just the coolest guys. And they're just the most down-to-earth good people. And it's always so good to see them every year. Absolutely.
    131:58
    Yeah, man. And if Mike Binnacore hears this, man, I hope you knit up soon. I mean, every time I see you, something else is broken. Take care of yourself. You only get one body. That's right.
    132:12
    So this year he was on crutches. He was. Yeah. He still came. He said he would not miss this. This does a lot.
    132:23
    So I also don't know who put all the package together for like the when you volunteer and you do like three shifts or more. You get the cool sticker and goody prize pack, which came with a whole bunch of cool stickers.
    132:41
    I've got it in my hand right now. Silver Ball Society, they got like a can cozy. I think it's used for a bottle. It came with a challenge coin, a Winchester Mystery House, courtesy of Pin Monkey. It is beautiful. Those are amazing. And did you guys read the zine? It's a little comic book zine about this year's show theme. And it's really cool. And it ended up in the cliffhanger. And I'm like, you guys are going to get a second issue, right? Because I want to know what happened. So, yeah, man, just so much cool stuff. I think Kelly Quinn puts those together. And Kelly, I want to give a special, yeah. 100% by hand. Yeah. Give a shout-out to her. It was kind of a funny story. It's like she was so cool and helping out everybody. I don't know when she was arrested, but so early in the show, I think it was Friday when I was doing Rogan Watch. Well, I was doing late game setup and we were done. So I was just kind of a runner, you know, when people needed stuff. I was going and, you know, fixing stuck balls and just whatever. And she goes, they're from Corsico, her husband, and so Michael, which we share the same birthday I just found out. Wow, happy birthday to you next year, sir.
    134:01
    She said, you know, we're near Fresno, we're in Fresno, we want to get connected with the Fresno leagues and group. So it's Sunday, Mark and I are in line to play UConn. I'm talking to two other people. It's like, we'll just play a four-player. And one of the guys, he's like, yeah, I'm from Fresno. Scott, from Fresno. I'm like, oh, are you part of the Fresno crew? He goes, yeah. I'm like, after we go play, I need to introduce you to Kelly. And he goes, well, I'm like, no, no, she didn't explain. So after the game, I walked over there because she asked a few times a weekend, have you met anybody from Fresno? No, I haven't yet. I'm sorry, but I'll keep trying. So like with 55 minutes before the show closes, I'm like, Kelly, Scott from Fresno. Scott from Fresno, meet Kelly. They were able to link up and hopefully get information on how to get involved with the Fresno area leagues and tournaments and stuff. So, yeah, that was kind of. Scott was just texting me after the show, too, and then touching base, which is really cool. So, yeah, he's getting something going on in Fresno. So great job, Scott. It was really fun to talk with you in line. Yeah, so, and that was, and that's the thing, and that's literally, Mark, gosh, what, how many years ago, how we met was waiting in line, me and you and Rusty, to play Hobbit when it was a new game. Yep, and it seems like I always have that pattern where I always get the high scores on new games, and I pulled that off on Winchester, and I also did on UConn Yeti during that weekend, so. That's right, Mark, we get it, you're good at pinball.
    135:36
    Well, when you play those 70 hours. Yeah, when you play like 12 hours a day, you hope you're going to kill some pinball, buddy. But not in the tournament. I failed there. But not in the tournament.
    135:51
    There were forces conspiring against you in the tournament. I guess so. Now I'm just counting the days for the next one in 2027. Me too, and I screwed up the initial count. Because I don't know why. Is it the wrong month or something? I was in the airport exhausted. There's more days than that in the year. I know, yeah, yeah. I was exhausted in the airport eating Pringles and breaking my coat. 376 days till the next show. I was like, what was I doing? At first, nobody was calling me. The father said, you want to check your dates, ma'am? I'm like, oh, crap. Yeah, I shouldn't have done it. I should have just waited. I thought, oh, I forget. Because usually, like, at the second the show's over, I'm doing it. But I went over to see Dan, and then, because he was still finishing up the tournament, and went like another hour. And I got to watch, you know, the finalists just play some amazing pinball. And then, like, I'm sitting on the plane flying back to Denver so that I can catch my connector to Casper. And I'm thinking, I didn't start the show thing. And as soon as I land, I said, hey, man, it was like, and it was Mark, Fireball 2, goes, hey, hey, Mr. Gunn, You didn't start the countdown yet. You all right? It's like, I'll get to it. I'm in the airport. So, yeah. So that's where I was exhausted. I went back to work the very next day. I got home at like a little after 10 o'clock Monday night and 7 a.m. I was back at work the next morning. Yeah.
    137:22
    Back in the grinder, man. All right, guys. Is there anything else? We ready to wrap up this episode and put another show to bed. I think we're ready for that. Final shout-out and thank you, guys. Mark, why don't you start? All right. So I want to give a shout-out to all the techs that were on the floor that kept those games running the whole time.
    137:45
    The show organizers, obviously, they're awesome too, but I definitely want to also give a special shout-out to all the techs that were on the floor that got these games running that I never had the situation where I wanted to play a game and it was broken down the rest of the weekend. And they were all running. And I've never been to a show like this one where they are constantly keeping those games going. So I want to give a huge shout out to all the techs that really provided us all the fun for that whole weekend.
    138:16
    Nice. Yeah, absolutely. All right, well, this is a list because I'm going to one up you, Mark. I mean, first of all, the techs are obviously great, but I mean all the volunteers, right? Yep. Everybody who works the desk, everybody who checks wristbands, all the roving security people.
    138:36
    This show is not happening without everybody. And, I mean, the techs are obviously a huge, huge part of it, you know, to be able to go in there and, you know, keep 350 games up and running. It's like juggling while you're riding a unicycle while your hair is on fire. Yeah. And at the same time, you know, you're on a tightrope and the tightrope is between two moving trucks.
    139:03
    Like, it's just so much to do. And between the coordinators and the system that the coordinators, you know, use to contact the techs and the techs constantly moving. And, you know, to the volunteers who brought games, who brought good games that are going to make it through the show. That's fantastic, you know. So thank you for that. A big thanks to all of our wives for tolerating our boyish enthusiasm. And it's a shame that none of them managed to make it to the show this year. I know that my wife was recovering from a minor hand surgery, so she couldn't make it this year. Jamie was disappointed because I know she loves spending a day or two at the show. And it was rough not to see Rusty. Yeah. And, you know, always, I know Heidi always has a hard time letting such a terrific hunk of man out of her sight. But, you know, it's great that they let us off the leash and just let us, you know, run amok for, you know, three, four, five days. Yeah. And speaking of Jamie, thank you, Jamie, for letting me stay at your home for two days in a row. I really appreciate you, your hospitality and allowing me to be able to spend time with Dan those two days. Thank you. And I think that, you know, no debt of gratitude, though. Like, we have to just, you know, put above and beyond to the Northern California Pinball Association board. You know, I'd like to name them all. I know that I'll miss some of them, but, you know, Eric Neff and Chris Bannister and Jody Dankberg and Mike Moretti and I think Seth Holder and I think Adam Holder is going to be either joined or joining up.
    141:02
    Mike Moretti. Yeah, I said Moretti. Oh, you did. I'm sorry. I would not say him because he'll actually hold it against me. Practical Steve, who I shouldn't say because that would be funny, but, you know, and all of their spouses who are, you know, board adjacent, you know, Andrea and Michelle and, oh, Henry. Henry, of course. Kendra, you already mentioned Kendra. All those guys. Kendra's a super volunteer, but yeah, she, her and Henry, like, Unbelievable how they organize that stuff. Yeah. Oh, yeah, no, like I said, they've conquered the service desk in an all too unusual way.
    141:43
    It was really cool to actually work somewhere besides the service desk because that's where I always worked too. But it was super, super cool to actually work on the other side and kind of see, you know, when you work on the service side, you see a lot of Henry and Kendra. But yeah, huge thanks of course to Kendra because she's at her post 90% of the show. Yep.
    142:07
    Yeah. Like pretty much if you want to see her there, there's rare times she broke away for the dinner, she broke away for probably the barbecue. I love Kendra.
    142:19
    She's like one of the best. She brought me my lunch and I'm like, I'm not making the barbecue, I'm stuck at the desk. She showed right up with a hot link and chili and all that, so she's great. I'd never take anything away from Kendra. But, you know, everybody, the guys who's up to the campsite, the guys who ran the trucks. Oh, my gosh, yeah. Rick's wife, Jeanette, for just constantly making sure that, like, pinball people that she knows and don't know are fed.
    142:45
    I was going to give her a shout-out, yeah. People were talking to me about where to find food. I'm like, if you just go out to the campsite and wander around for a few minutes, somebody's going to offer you a sandwich. Yep. Or a beer. More likely a beer. And the food trucks were a great idea, too, so thank you for organizing that. That was wonderful. I never even came close to the food trucks. I was like, why would you go to the food trucks, just wander out to the campsite and somebody would be like, here, put this tri-tip in your mouth. That's true. Good point.
    143:13
    But I did go to the little beer garden and I had a margarita. And while it was expensive for what you got, it was also delicious. Nice. They had margaritas? Oh, man. Yeah, they had Margarita's brother. It was great. I missed that. And finally, you know, just to all the people who come to the show, to all the people who bring games, to all the people who approached us to talk about the podcast, and to you guys, my pin bros, you know, having you guys over, you know, I regret that other than I think one or two times, and especially the seminar, we just, we always plan to do things together as a trio, And it's just really hard to get all three of us together in the same place at once. But, you know, having you guys stay and, you know, breaking bread and hanging out and the downtime before the show and after the show and just running the errands and the minutia and, you know, the long conversations about nothing in particular.
    144:11
    It's always, always good, you know, to have you guys over here. And, Mark, the next time you come over, you get to clean and wax all my games. Absolutely.
    144:20
    There you go. I'll be talking to you. I've got like 45 minutes, but how about you, Spencer? Yeah, I mean, there's nothing I can really say that you guys didn't already say, but, you know, if you said, okay, favorite show moments was when, you know, Sunday when Mark and I just got time to just go hang out and just play a bunch of games together.
    144:39
    And when, Dan, when you and I spent Monday morning just playing Black Knight, and then when Adam came over, we played more Black Knight. When I got home, I texted you all, Ollie would just say, hey, I'm home, back in Casper, I'm safe. And I was like, it was so good playing pinball with you, man, hanging out and having lunch. It was like the olden days. I'm like, same here, brother. And it was. And for me, that was the best because that's what I miss the most because I don't have that pinball community here. I have everything else in the world here that's wonderful, but I don't have that pinball community. And I desperately miss you guys, and I miss that. And that was so special to me to be able to have that even just for a few hours again. And, yeah, to all the volunteers and board members and people that bring in, everybody that our community, our whole pinball community that comes together every year to make that show happen and to make it run nearly flawlessly. Shout out to all of you and to all of our listeners and all the wonderful people who didn't see me but messaged me and said, I didn't see you, man, but hey, there's next year. And hit us up on Facebook or message me or email me or text me. And thank you. Thank you for your support and your encouragement to do our little show. I always say every year, I don't know how they're going to top last year. I don't know how they're going to top this year. They will find a way. They always do. So those are my shout-outs and thank yous to everybody and all the wonderful people and the new friends we made this year, too. Tons of new friends. Really great. Yeah. So glad all you, you know, and if I didn't mention you by name, I'm thinking of you and you're special to me. So that's it, man. It turns out that pinball is the friends we made along the way. It really is. You said that, Dan, and I think you wrote that down somewhere, and that's absolutely. That was a Ron Chan thing, which was, you know, he was always like, at my first pinball shows, I took a lot of pictures of pinball, and at my later pinball shows, I take a lot of pictures of people. Right. Yeah. That's so true. I didn't take many pictures at all except certain ones that I thought were cool, but I never liked getting my camera out. I just like enjoying the moment. That's just the way I am. It was so cool to see everybody. No, we have a Facebook to run, buddy. Well, yeah, we do. I did post some cool. Speaking of our Facebook, we are over 205 followers strong, so thank you to everybody who joined. We got a ton of new joins at the show. And just be sure to tell your friends on the socials about us if they like pinball and you think that they'll like a stupid podcast about nothing in particular besides pinball.
    147:24
    We're your boys. Yeah. Thank you all the listeners that joined us listening to this episode and listening to any past episodes and any future episodes. So just keep following us and check us out. Yeah, and you can check us out. All right, Spencer, take us home. All right, well, first of all, you can check us out on our – well, you can listen to us on our home at SoundCloud and iTunes and wherever PIN podcasts are available. You can check us out on our Facebook page. You can email us at thespinnerislit at gmail.com. And with that said, this has been Episode 87, the Golden State Pinball Festival recap show for 2026. Play pinball. Keep America strong.
    148:23
    Pirates of the Caribbean, J.P.