There's some games that we're going to bring up later that people will go, well, that's not a fan because there's the shot that's right on the edge of the flipper, right at the edge, and that's close in. So, like, that's not a fan. But, you know, otherwise you would look at it and go, that's a fan. That's going to be kind of a recurring thing, I assume, in this episode where it's like arguing over what's a fan or not. People just use it to describe any two-flipper game they don't like lately. It feels like we're like, oh, that's just a fan layout when they see something like a John Wick or something. And you're like, well, that's a fan. And you're like, what kind of fucking fan looks like that? It probably is a fan. It is. Everything's a fan. It only has two flippers. Yeah. All the shots going to be, you know. Yeah. You have to be able to shoot the shot. You're like, that does not feel like because they're at different spots. There's weird kind of shit going on. You got kind of goofy feeds. It's just that doesn't feel like what a fan is to me. Oh, really? Interesting. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Well, we'll get to that. But my definition very much is. So, yeah. I've also heard that there's the lower play fields devoid of any dangerous or randomizing features. So, things like the magnets in Adam's family, even though that's an upper flipper, so that wouldn't be a fan anyway. But also, like, anything that, like, is sort of makes the ball chaotic doesn't feed cleanly to flipper returns. Yeah. Like, people associate it with it's the two flippers at the bottom. Shots are in a straight line left to right. And when you hit shots, they come right back to your flipper and they hit another shot. And I also heard that there needs to be an orbit to be a true fan, an orbit that goes all the way around the play field. See, I never really thought about that as part of the definition. And to me, that might be like the single like it's that's why like John Wick, it has an orbit. But the orbit starts in the middle of the shots or ends in the middle of the shots. Right. And that might be why it feels like it's a disjointed fan because it doesn't have the big ring around the whole thing. It does have three flippers and the one VUK on the right side that kind of feeds to your lanes. And it does have the orbits that kind of feed around. Am I blanking on third? There's not a third flipper on WEC. Third ramp. Oh, third ramp. Gotcha. Yeah, yeah. Third ramp. The last thing is a controversial stipulation is no close in kind of center bank of targets. They all have to be like lane shots, like shots through a lane. So either an orbit or ramp through a spinner into a VUK or something. Yep. that there's not just like a target bank of either drops or stand-ups. Because there are some games where you're like, oh, this would be a fan, and they go, not so fast. Yeah, like playing like Firepower. Yeah, or like Taxi. People say Taxi a lot. They're like, is that a fan? And you're like, why wouldn't it be a fan? They're like, well, the target's in the center. No orbit. See, that's the kind of shit. You're like, that does not feel like one to me. See? So there's stuff. And I'm sure anyone listening probably has their own feelings on it, and that's why it kind of gets to be this argued thing, and you really only use it to insult things when you're you know it's weird that close-minded so many games have been made that could be called fan layouts because they're kind of like the way a modern game has to be laid out the only way to make it any different is to add extra to add a flipper up top and then you get one or two shots up top and then everyone thinks like this is some crazy shit and you're like it could be a straight fan with an upper with an upper flipper and no one will question it and that's what you'll see too later is there's some upper flipper games that people are still like no it's still a fan like even though there's an upper flipper like it that's still a fan so but i think we should talk about the history a little bit like needless to say just like everything with family outs the first one is disputed yeah like i was trying to do research i was looking at old forum posts and i knew how i knew what i thought it was but then i was interested to be like oh these other people are bringing up different games and i saw an old pin side thread where people were arguing about it and i think some people point to bride of pinbot taxi or elvira and the party monsters as like the early fan layouts because they all have two flippers they all have ramp shots that feed flippers shots are spread in a regular fan like intervals interesting i think that some people dismiss taxi because of the center targets like i said and i think some people dismiss bride because it's not flowy i think that would be the only reason because it's like it doesn't got an orbit though it doesn't feel like going back to the orbit is i'm now realizing such a big part of what feels like a fan to me because it gives you an extra two shots either entrance also feeds like right in front to your flippers yep usually the ball will return right in front of the sling lane heavy feel that i associate with this layout but i mean if you look at just like the established like no one will argue tenants of what a fan layout is you know bride for sure taxi elvira yeah they all could be like the original arguable they're all arguable you can make a case but the first universally acknowledged fan and this is the game that i associate it with is steve richie's terminator 2 1991 and just like he always did he inspired a lot of copycats afterwards who did variations on the wide orbits well when you sell like 20 000 units yeah the other people will take note yeah i mean he didn't sell 20 000 of those but they sold a lot. How many T2s do they sell? I thought there were a shit ton. I don't know off the top of my head, but a lot. I thought it was in the high teens. Yeah. And now I don't know. It's in the mid teens. It feels like they're everywhere. You know, it's got wide orbits, ramp on each side, center bash between the middle. It was a smash hit. And, you know all the other designers at Williams and the other companies started copying it Like it just like stuff goes well and people are like It also cool as hell Yeah it is cool That the thing about these layouts You're like, they're fun. They are fun. They're fun to shoot. They just feel good. The fan layout is kind of the backbone of modern pinball. That is what – when they became fans, that's when people start – that's why we discuss how like you have solid states and EMs and then the later solid states, the System 11. and we're like, they're not quite like the 90s games yet. Yep. They're almost there, but they're not quite there. And I think the fan layout is what... It starts like feeling like that. You're like, okay, this is now, it actually shoots like a modern pen. It was kind of like the transition point for the layout. Yeah. Exploded in popularity through the 90s and into the 2000s and 2010s. Their ubiquity started to be seen by, you know, some pinball nerds as being basic, cookie cutter, derivative. i remember when i first bullshit bullshit bullshit derivative bullshit but i remember when i got into the hobby in like 2008 and then a couple years later i got on pinside and it was just a constant dismissive refrain from like all the most frequent posters like every game being made was just just another cookie cutter fan layout boring like it was just all of that like it was just constant like boring boring lame cookie cutter like alex is laughing but you can like it's true like yeah that's what you still i mean you still run into that people be like oh it's just a basic fan and you're like well fuck guys what isn't i mean because that's that's i think why it's funny to me is because it's like there's so many ways and there's like what everybody kind of defines their own like what makes a family out a fan layout but by like the loosest definitions almost every game starts fitting or modern game and then you realize how like what a dumb way this is to try to quantify things yeah it's just a way for people to immediately dismiss a new game on an online forum dominated by home collectors a game that they're not gonna buy and are maybe salty about so they just go it actually probably sucks because it's just a fan layout and we've seen it a million times like yeah i mean if you've played a variety of like the games that we're going to be talking about you know how different they can be from title to title and like the implementation it's pinball moving things you know a quarter of an inch makes a huge difference yeah or just the way it's implemented in the game if you have to combo things in a certain mode or you have heard they feel different like you know what i mean like t2 feels different from attack from mars yeah absolutely right even though they're both very similar fan layouts yeah yeah and that's kind of a good a good segue because despite all of like the you know the regulars the long timers in the hobby being mad about fans being recycled garbage or whatever a lot of the very highly regarded well-loved sought after popular games especially from the 90s are just pretty straightforward fans yeah and even like the most loved like kind of early sterns like we're all fans too like lord of the rings right like yeah sopranos like yeah a lot of yeah and once we can get like because it's like gomez liked it straightforward to flipper fan yeah and like he does good shit with it and that's the fun part they play like a gomez game like a lord of the rings plays substantially different than like an attack from mars which plays substantially different than like no fear yeah i was no fear fan oh we'll get to that buddy yeah we'll see we'll get to that buddy that's enough for flipper i mean i guess what we're saying is like fans are undeniably fun to shoot even if they don't vary like if you look at pictures of them and you overlay them because this is something guys on pins i'd love to do man yeah they love to like game looks like that game like this game's that game this game's actually that game yeah like they love whenever a new game comes out and then like trying to post overlays about like they're like if you run if you flip rush and you cut this section of the play field and replace it with a section from tron it's just the same as turtles and you're like i don't fucking care man yeah it's crazy dude but they guys like doing that and i get into i do that too where i'm like oh this is that shot from this game because when you're in the hobby you start recognizing things and it's fun to draw the lines like for our second sunny up reference of the episode the charlie fucking in the mail room with all the strings is how it feels people dissecting these layouts when they come out fans they all they might look the same at a quick glance they play different but almost all of the famous fans that we can think of and that we'll keep naming throughout this episode are very fun to shoot yeah they're kinetically pleasing because if you're aiming for one shot and you're late or you're early you usually hit the shot right next to it so you kind of like yeah it kind of just works and you're kind of work like slops it out for you yeah it's kind of nice it's like you're not gonna like if you're aiming for a lane and you miss it instead of hitting like a bank of drops that's gonna fuck you like you would on a classic game or something you're now gonna hit another lane that's probably another safe feed yeah so you're like they're beginner friendly in that regard and they make you feel better than you are because a lot of the time you just kind of hit the flipper when it feels right on the you know you hit the button when it feels right you're aiming for the ramp and you hit the orb instead well oh well like nobody has to know yeah just don't call your shots it's not a problem exactly but like the games end up becoming safer you know because of the fan layouts there's an emphasis on made shots returning safely and this still exists in the modern day even when you have the three or four flipper games that come out sometimes the fundamentals of like like made shots need to feed safely back to your flippers that was like the fans that's what they did yeah that's how they change pinball and we talk about on the show sometimes we're always a mistake alex is like i hate stuff that returns to the flippers there's a severe lack of there's a severe lack of modern games that don't just hand the ball back to the flipper every time you make a shot it's very very rare to see shots on a modern pin that don't deliver the ball back safely or at least super important shots that you have to bash around and you know can drain you because of it but uh yeah i mean i think players oftenly like we just said like people love to just dismiss these games as family house because they don't like them yeah and they love dismissing steve the kings games more than anybody because he kind of arguably invented this as he arguably invented everything in pinball even the games that don't fit into like the common definitions of if it's a steve game it's a fan like everybody's like oh star trek fan layout and you're like what it's got multiple shots that you're making off an upper flipper like yeah the shots are at different entry points there's all kinds of arguments to be made that this isn't a straightforward fan but it's a steve game so it's a fan layout to like the pin side crowd yeah like people will be like spider-man or star trek or those games and they're like well these are fans and you're like no they have upper flippers dude you have to hate those upper flipper loops you're like this doesn't yeah you're like what isn't a fan and that's i think what drives me nuts is once people start like nitpicking you're like ah just another basic fan and you're like what the fuck isn't a fan by your definition then yeah like because like it's like when bond like gomez's most recent 007 or whatever came out people are like just kind of a straightforward fan and you're like what you're like it's got like three upper flipper shots it's got like a bank of targets in the middle it's got like all this goofy shit kind of going on that's not conventional and not a fan layout and it's not symmetrical like you're like it's a fan and you're like all the ramps are on the right side that has the one ramp that has the two entrances right like yeah but the other ramp is an orbit it's just some people look at it and it's like visually i think a big problem with a lot of like the a lot of the games that kind of are like well that's just real straightforward their art leans into it. Like they have the shot lines and Steve Ritchie kind of, like they used those lines on his shots, on his games a lot. Yeah, totally. To highlight the shots. And so when you're standing in front of a No Fear, you're like, well, of course this is a fan because I'm looking at a fucking fan drawn on the play field. Like there's like line, line, line, line, each going to a lane. So it makes sense. We're going to talk about No Fear in a second, but I do want to give some shout outs because I think people were thinking about like what's a fan or whatever. I have some confirmed like absolute bangers of like what fans are first of all we'll start with the designers that are like kind of almost every modern designer has at least one fan layout like confirmed fan layout in their arsenal some people do it a lot more or are well regarded for it I would say Steve Ritchie he invented it and even his non-fans people just call fans like because like yeah man because he's done some fans but he's done a lot of games that are definitely not fan layouts but he gets just like called out all the time like fan layout fan layout fan layout i'd say brian eddie because he did attack from mars medieval madness yep and now he's done stranger things he's done mando right like but mando even has that like little upper flipper thing in the special so that's not technically a fan right like yeah i mean venom would be a fan but yep venom's a pretty straightforward fan to me but it's like it plays so different than like those than Stranger Things or Mando that I'm always just like, well, what's it even fucking matter? And that's like when you start defining a lot of this stuff, it's like, what's the point? I don't know. Well, just to insult things. I want to I think the point to do in this episode in particular is one is fun to talk about pinball and different games and different design philosophies. But it's also like it's going to be something that you're going to run into when you're in the hobby long enough is you're going to hear of you like, oh, this game looks cool. Hey, there's new games coming out with this theme I like. And then you're going to get online and someone's going to show you pictures and go, it looks like this other game. It's a fucking fan layout. I can't believe Stern's still making fan layouts or whatever. Right. Yeah. And you're like, what does that even mean? Give us something different. And we do love seeing different shit. We were both very excited for like X-Men was like the weirdest layout that we've seen in a long time. Sure. And that's not a fan layout. It's not. Well. It's not. You sure that's not? Yeah. It's got to be. You know, it's a fan from if you ignore the little danger room. It's the two little flippers. see it because it's the little flipper the little flipper changes it because you can't hit those shots without that other extra what is the danger room except for a two-lane fan as far as other the double family out the mount yeah it's a double fan it's even fannier dude we didn't realize but the other to round out our mount rushmore steve brian george uh or george Gomez George Gomez yep John Borg John Borg yeah who's one that gets blamed for for whatever reason Borg who makes phenomenal games some of my absolute favorite of like the modern era he also gets a lot of heat from the usual crowd online for having like all this shots this is similar to this and this is similar to this And they may be visually similar but again all these games play different I love them all. I'd put a Metallica right next to a Munsters, right next to an Iron Man. You can tell me they're the same. They don't play the same. I love John Borg. I love John Borg games. I've always loved John Borg games. I think he makes... I fucking hated him when I first got into it because he makes challenging games. The Munsters just kicked the shit out of me. but now i love that game i really came around on that over the course of like the first six months in the hobby or whatever and i was like actually monsters is kind of sick kind of rips yeah like his games are fun but yeah i think we should talk about some of like the hall of fame like nobody's going to argue that these are fans and then we're going to talk about some games that are questionable and we'll give our takes on them but attack from mars all-time fan fan fan layout pretty good game some people like that one medieval madness some would say the same game right like same game part two but again that's another one where you're like so different it's the same designer same manufacturer man attack from mars and medieval madness feel different to play very different like it's not just the theme like it like they feel different you know what i'm saying like so this is what we're talking about like just because it's a fan doesn't mean it's bad yeah shifting staying in bally williams with shifting designers we got monster bash from uh mr gomez and that's like another one that it's like the first time someone was like yeah it's just a basic fan layout and like this when i was very new to the hobby and i'm like is it like i never really like thought about this kind of shit and i'm like oh yeah i guess it is and that one has never felt fanny to me in part of that might be because the orbits interrupted unless you're in the wolfman mode it always has that post doesn't oh yeah let's go all the way around and i think the orbit for me i never really thought about it until you said it in this episode and that's why i just keep coming back to it that's a huge piece of something feeling like a traditional fan for me see this is what we mean is like everyone interacts with it differently like what is a fan to them or whatever but uh you know like lord of the rings like we mentioned also another george gomez game yep batman 66 another george gomez game another fan layout just a fan just another fan cactus canyon yeah that one's pretty pretty straightforward but it also feels different it's kind of like medieval because it has that the shooting the bad guy shot or whatever where it like takes the ball away from you yeah and so that feels to me very different than like even when you have like a board fan with the center or something it's like well the ball's coming back at you pretty fast yeah where it's like on Medieval or Cactus, you're like, well, now the ball is kind of like going somewhere else and it's going back to a safe feed. And the stop and go makes them feel like less of what I associate. Less of a fan. Yeah. Yeah, like the more the ball stops, less. You also have games like Metallica, Terminator 2, both of the Elvira Scared Stiff and House of Horrors, ACDC, Theater of Magic. Yeah. Theater of Magic is kind of a weird fan. But that one's like definitely, it's like, yeah, As far as it's probably Papa Duke's most conventional layout. Yeah, probably. Yeah. And you're like, it shoots good. Yeah. Probably shoots better than the rest of his games. Those are like classically defined fans. I don't think you're going to find people are going to be like, those games aren't fans, dude. Those are like the ones that are confirmed fan layouts. You're like, this is the example of how to do it. Now we have some modified fans. These are some games that people argue about. This is where stuff gets funny to me because you started the first one you have on the list here is Deadpool. And that's one that I remember because it's fairly new. When I got into the hobby, people were like dismissing it. It's like, well, it's just like he's just tricking you. It's the shot might look like it's doing this stuff, but it's really just a fan. And you're like, what do you need to do? That was the one where I realized there's nothing you can do to convince people or some people that a two flipper game isn't a fan. I was like, they're going to say everything is. So do you think Deadpool is a fan or not a fan? No, that doesn't count as a fan to me. Really? Why not? Because it's got goofy ball, goofy ball paths. It's got like the standups in the middle. It's got, I don't know. It's just, it's hard to feel. It just doesn't feel like a fan. And I think it's just because of those, like you're not really slopping into shots on Deadpool very often. It's possible. Okay. Fair enough. I would say I think Deadpool's a fan. I'm one of those people. Like, this is a fan. Like, if we're defining it, to me, it's a fan. The only shot that feels different is the katana shot, but the entrance to it is in a fan layout shape. So to me, it's like, and then some people will go, well, the Deadpool targets are kind of too close in, and that sort of takes up central real estate. So that breaks up the fan. And I go, not to me. It feels like kind of a fan layout to me. That doesn't make it bad. It just means, like, that feels like a fan layout to me. Part of like there's that center spinner and the scoop are kind of like set. Both of those are set back further.