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Episode 67 – Raymond Davidson: World’s best player

Head2Head Pinball·podcast_episode·2h 11m·analyzed·Oct 29, 2018
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Raymond Davidson (#1 WPPR player) discusses competitive pinball strategy, tournament formats, and game-specific tactics.

Summary

Head to Head Pinball interviews Raymond Davidson, the world's #1 ranked pinball player as of October 2018. The conversation covers his path to competitive dominance, tournament strategy, play style (accuracy and adaptability), machine preferences, and specific strategies for games in his collection including Metallica, Guardians, Aerosmith, Dialed In, Deadpool, and Tron.

Key Claims

  • Raymond Davidson is currently ranked #1 in the world (as of October 28, 2018) and still holding the position

    high confidence · Hosts Ryan C and Martin introduce him as 'the world's best pinball player right now' and 'still number one'

  • Top pinball players cannot make a living from tournament play; Davidson breaks even on most trips and hits it big maybe once per year

    high confidence · Raymond states: 'I'd say most trips I break even or aim to break even, and then maybe one a year or so I'll hit it big, like win a machine, or get second at Pinburg'

  • Davidson was introduced to pinball at age 5 through his grandparents' machine and learned by playing arcade machines and studying rule sheets

    high confidence · Raymond: 'I got introduced to it pretty young, like when I was like five, my grandparents have had a machine'

  • Davidson's primary learning motivation was achieving replay scores and understanding how to accumulate millions of points

    high confidence · Raymond: 'the replay score was basically my primary motivating factor of learning'

  • Davidson won a WWE LE once but convinced Stern to give him a Ghostbusters and later a Guardians instead; he never took possession of the WWE LE

    high confidence · Raymond confirms: 'the first time I was able to convince them to give me a Ghostbusters, and then the second time I was able to convince them to give me a Guardians, but then the third time they were like, all right, you're getting a WWE Ellie'

  • Davidson prefers Guardians of the Galaxy over Metallica currently due to better shot findability and less punishing gameplay

    high confidence · Raymond: 'I used to think Metallica...I think I still like Metallica more overall, but I think right now I've been enjoying playing Guardians more than Metallica. It just shoots better.'

  • Davidson discovered a Deadpool Megalodon mode exploit at Expo (shared by Kaylee George and Tim Sexton) where shots scale to $10M if the mode is never ended

    high confidence · Raymond: 'I literally just found out about it at Expo...you start Megalodon, you just never end the mode, and eventually all the shots become worth like $10 million'

Notable Quotes

  • “Don't have kids. That's what I'm trying to get to you. Don't have kids. Yeah. And you will keep your number one spot.”

    Ryan C @ Early in episode — Humorous explanation for why Davidson maintains his #1 ranking (Keith Elwin and Zach Sharpe dropped off due to life changes)

  • “I'd say I'm pretty good at accuracy and adjusting. Like, I'll rarely miss a shot early twice in a row. Like, I dial in on shots pretty fast.”

    Raymond Davidson @ Mid-episode — Core description of his competitive advantage and play style

  • “I definitely pride myself in always trying to give myself an out. So I will always try to put, even if it's just like a tiny bit ahead of someone else, that I prioritize that just to give myself that out.”

    Raymond Davidson @ Mid-episode — Key tournament strategy: accumulating small leads rather than going for high-risk big scores

  • “I'm definitely playing against the other players. Like, against Escher on Iron Maiden at Expo, he put up 1.9 billion, and I had, like, 200 million going into Ball 3...I was just gonna see if I can cyborg and just grind cyborg like for a 10x jackpot”

    Raymond Davidson @ Mid-episode — Demonstrates adaptive competitive strategy: adjusting goals based on opponent performance rather than playing the machine optimally

  • “Metallica is pretty clunky and like all the shots are pretty tight. Guardians, they're tight, but they're more findable for some reason and less punishing.”

    Raymond Davidson @ Late episode — Technical analysis of two premium Stern titles comparing ergonomics and shot layout

  • “I love getting the double portal. One time at League, I had this ridiculous game where I got two double portals in the same game, and it was just so sweet. It wouldn't have never happened if I didn't actively, like, oh, my Zeus targets, I need that last Zeus target. That's purely for fun.”

    Raymond Davidson @ Late episode — Shows willingness to pursue non-optimal gameplay for entertainment value in casual play vs. competition

  • “I think you can convince me of some of the later 81s that...the more controllable, like, late solid state, those are fine.”

Entities

Raymond DavidsonpersonMartinpersonRyan CpersonKeith ElwinpersonZach SharppersonEscher LefkoffpersonKaylee GeorgepersonTim Sextonperson

Signals

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Elite competitive player prefers modern (1990s+) machines in main tournaments but appreciates variety in classic tournaments with EM/solid state/DMD/modern mix

    high · Raymond: 'in big main events, I definitely like, you know, 1990s and onward' but also 'I like EMs and solid states in classic tournaments. I think they're great.'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Raymond Davidson's adaptive gameplay strategy emphasizes 'giving yourself an out' through accumulating small leads rather than pursuing peak scores; he plays against opponents rather than machines

    high · Davidson: 'I definitely pride myself in always trying to give myself an out...I have slid through a lot of tournaments on very thin margins because of those outs'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Guardians of the Galaxy preferred over Metallica due to superior shot findability and less punishing playfield design despite similar shot layout philosophy

    high · Raymond: 'Guardians, they're tight, but they're more findable for some reason and less punishing...Metallica, when you miss a shot, it's just like gone'

  • ?

    community_signal: Raymond Davidson's approach to machine adjustment: makes conscious mental notes on new machines regarding shot timing, but relies on muscle memory and flow state during extended play

    high · Raymond: 'If I'm just getting on a new game, I'll definitely make mental notes...But then as you're playing, eventually you sort of just get in the flow and you don't have to consciously remember them'

  • ?

    product_concern: Metallica criticized as 'pretty clunky' with tight shots that are less forgiving than comparable machines like Guardians

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.394

0:00
you're listening to the head-to-head people podcast find us on facebook email us at Welcome everybody to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. This is episode 67 and my name's Martin and with me... It's Ryan C. And I am very excited today because in the past we have had special guests on that were very good at playing pinball. So good that they were previously ranked number one in the world. Such personalities like Zach Sharp, no longer number one, sorry. Keith Alwyn, sorry, no longer number one. Zach Sharp, I think it's because he had a kid. Keith Alwyn, everyone knows that he's a hussy. and he goes, he's a bit of a boogey bicycle, he gets around, right? Raymond Davison, on the other hand, number one in the world now, and he's still number one. And so it is currently October the 28th, 2018, the world's best pinball player right now, Raymond Davison. How are you going, buddy? Hey, how's it going, guys? Good, man. Don't have kids. That's what I'm trying to get to you. Don't have kids. Yeah. And you will keep your number one spot. Pretty much the secret sauce there. So can I ask a question? I know we're going to go through a lot of news as well. How do you become number one? You go to a lot of tournaments, and you place reasonably high at most of them, and you win a couple of them.
1:43
Do you spend more money than you earn, or is the money you make more than your travel and hotel expenses? I'd say most trips I break even or aim to break even, and then maybe one a year or so I'll hit it big, like win a machine, or get second at Pinberg or something. That's a nice bonus that puts me ahead for the year. But it's usually just you break even. Okay, so pinball's not at the stage now where you can earn a living or anything off it, right? No. I don't even think Keith Elwin could make a living off of it, and he wins everything. you're number one and I think it was you know a few months ago that that happened um but you've been playing for a long time and the reason why I sort of asked how do you become number one because it's actually the question that a lot of people ask me probably the number one question I get asked is how do I become a better player and some people have actually asked you know how do you become as good as the greats so so what's your journey how long ago did you start playing pinball and how long ago did you start playing competitive pinball and how did you get to be so good? Well, I think it really just came from a source of passion, you know, it was like, I got introduced to it pretty young, like when I was like five, my grandparents have had a machine, and my dad kind of taught me the ropes. But then anytime we'd go to a restaurant, you know, there'd be a pinball machine, and I started learning that you could win free games. And I was like, Oh, cool, I'm gonna play the pinball machine, because I can play it for, you know, a long time. And then as you start playing machines, you have to start diving deep and being like, oh, how do I actually get the replay score? Because it's one thing to play pinball to keep the ball alive, and then there's another thing to play for getting certain points and doing certain objectives. And just the replay score was basically my primary motivating factor of learning, okay, what actually gets me the millions? How do I actually get these points? And so I would just play often whenever I found a place. There was a go-karting place that I would ride my bike to, and they had a Terminator 2. And I'd ride my bike there several times a week and just do an hour or two, seeing how long I could last on like a dollar. And let me tell you, Terminator 2, that game will force you to learn pinball. You can't just get replayed by flipping around on that game. You have to learn the rules, and they have to execute. And, you know, I think it was just games like that. I just kept reading online, you know, rule sheets. I just really loved it. And so I just kept diving deeper and deeper and playing more and more, finding out local leagues, other tournaments.

  • Davidson plays competitively 6 times per year traveling to tournaments

    high confidence · Raymond: 'I literally fly like six times a year doing this'

    • Raymond Davidson @ Mid-episode discussing game eras — Indicates preferences for controllable machines over chaotic EM/early solid state in main tournaments

  • “I don't like games that are too brutal in finals, like a lot of these new tournaments the finals have like EMs thrown in and like really brutal solid states and they won't let you pick the same game more than once, so you're just kind of forced to just...you work this whole weekend getting your qualifying position and then it's like, oh, I get to play on this thing and lose.”

    Raymond Davidson @ Tournament format discussion — Criticism of tournament structure: finals design that penalizes qualification performance

    • Trentperson
    Jesse Ellisperson
    Head to Head Pinball Podcastorganization
    Stern Pinballcompany
    IFPAorganization
    Metallicagame
    Guardians of the Galaxygame
    Iron Maidengame
    Deadpoolgame
    Trongame
    Dialed Ingame
    Aerosmithgame
    Pinburghevent
    Expoevent
    PAPAorganization

    medium · Raymond: 'Metallica is pretty clunky and like all the shots are pretty tight...Guardians, they're tight, but they're more findable for some reason'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Deadpool Megalodon mode exploit (keeping mode alive indefinitely to scale shots to $10M) anticipated to be patched within two weeks of discovery

    medium · Raymond: 'I mean, that's probably going to be patched out in, like, two weeks, right? I assume so, yeah.'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Criticism of single-elimination finals structure and brutal machine selection that penalizes qualification performance

    high · Raymond: 'I don't like games that are too brutal in finals...you work this whole weekend getting your qualifying position and then it's like, oh, I get to play on this thing and lose'

    • 4:27
    I'm looking at your IPA profile here, and unless I'm reading it wrong, four years into tournament play, you had only won two tournaments. Is that accurate? Like one year in, you won the Seattle Pinball League, and then kind of four years later, you won the nice and naughty Pinball 20.
    4:50
    Yeah, I mean, I didn't really win stuff so much. As, like I said, I just went to a lot of things, and I did, you know, better and better over time.
    5:02
    But keep in mind, four or five years ago, there was the 25-point base whopper value. so you could just farm walkers if you just knew what to go to, and you did halfway decent. Every event was worth something, basically. And I was just going to everything near me and placing pretty high. Like you said, I didn't actually get first in anything, and you don't really need to get first in stuff to move up in the ranks. You really only need to get first if you want to make that top 20, top 10. Okay. Yeah, pretty much. here. We need to, because the points are so much lower here, we need to pretty much, as I said last week, win or nothing really for a lot of players. Yeah, it's definitely changed a lot. For better or for worse, I'm not sure.
    5:52
    Okay, so for those who don't know, your worldwide ranking depends on your best 20 tournaments in the last three years, I believe.
    6:02
    So for me to get a tournament to be included, because I haven't been playing that long. I need one whopper, right? That's all it takes. For Marty, I think it's about four or five. Raymond, I'm looking at your profile, and you need 35 whoppers, I think it is. You have one of your tournaments, so it might not even help my ranking. Yes, I mean, what does that do to your desire to play tournament and competitive pinball? Do you drop out of the local tournament scene and just go to the big ones, or? Do you still? Yeah, I probably do that a little more than I like, because I do like playing pinball locally, but it's just, you know, with all the traffic and commuting and, you know, real life, it's like, it's so much, you know, it's asking a lot on a weeknight to go play in a tournament that starts at like 9 p.m., you know, just to have fun or whatnot.
    7:00
    So, yeah, it does actually affect me a little bit. Well, that's what I'm saying, though. Like you said, just to have fun. So if it was fun plus whoppers, right, like this mystical thing that somehow improves your ranking, is that the kicker? Then say, okay, well, I'll deal with the traffic and I'll start it on at 9 p.m. because this will help me stay number one in the world. Yeah, I mean, it sounds so silly when you repeat it like that, but there is something there, you know.
    7:29
    It's hard to explain. It's just really cool to watch yourself, you know, track your progress and it just means something. Yeah. No, I mean, the reason why I'm saying it as well is that I had a little gathering last night at my house, and, you know, like, none of the tournament people came because it was just playing pinball, but all of the non-tournament-playing people, they rocked up because they just want to have fun playing pinball. But unless you say, okay, there's also a tournament running and the boppers are available, the tournament people just don't... Like, it has to be pinball plus the competitive spirit, right? Yeah, I think part of it, though, is competitive players like myself, we just go to a lot of pinball tournaments just normally. So doing another pinball thing, it doesn't have quite the appeal as maybe a casual or someone just getting into pinball who, you know, hasn't been to a lot of tournaments. And they don't really know. They're like, oh, pinball, like, this looks like fun. I'm going to go play in this because I don't do it very often. But for people like me, I literally fly like six times a year doing this, you know. So taking a night to do it more doesn't really make as much sense. Sure. So another thing I like to ask, you know, major players as well is how they would describe their play style or what they're known for. And I described your play style probably about, I reckon, four or five months ago. And I'm keen to hear what you, how you would describe what you're known for, whether it's recovery, whether it's shot accuracy, whether it's rule knowledge. I'd say I'm pretty good at accuracy and adjusting.
    9:05
    Like, I'll rarely miss a shot early twice in a row. Like, I dial in on shots pretty fast. And then I'm also just, I guess, with the accuracy, I'm very efficient with, like, oh, I need to get this many points. I'm going to execute this. So I guess rules knowledge. although I don't go into as much crazy detail as like some of the people in the hobby who just know everything every little corner of Stern Wars you know and that Game of Thrones and that sort of thing I guess I just sort of I kind of have a combination approach where I do what I need to do and sometimes I do it in interesting ways like I'm not always trapping, but I'm not always on the fly, you know what I mean? It's kind of like I adjust. I guess I'm very adaptive.
    9:59
    You said before that you usually don't miss a shot twice in a row because you can adjust, and that's something that I absolutely struggle with because do you make the conscious decision that, okay, I missed that shot and this is the part of the flipper that I flipped, so I know that I have to delay my hand hitting the flipper button by an extra how many milliseconds to hit that shot, or does it just now come naturally to you that it's just second nature?
    10:29
    It depends. If I'm just getting on a new game, I'll definitely make mental notes of, whoa, these shots are way earlier, these are really late, so that I remember going into my next ball like, okay, remember what happened last time, don't do that again. But then as you're playing, eventually you sort of just get in the flow and you don't have to consciously remember them because your timing, you know, muscle memory just sort of figures it out for you. Do you find that playing games at home that you then have to play in a competition, so say you have a Metallica at home, do you think that that might hinder your success in playing that machine elsewhere, or is that just part of the adjustment as well? Like, can you adjust from the games you have at home, or is that harder? Yeah, I mean, I've played enough pinball to realize that it's not going to be the same as my one at home. So I just don't even picture me playing the one at home. I picture it as just a new game, you know, just any other game. The advantage of having one at home is I know the rules, and I know maybe a couple of things to try. Like, you know, I own a Metallica, so I know you can usually backhand the grave marker. You can usually drop catch out of the snake, that sort of thing. But I still approach every game as having to – The first thing I do when I get on a game is figure out, like, are the shots early? Are they late? How bounce are the rubbers? How is the feed out of the right orbit? You know, that sort of thing. Okay. Would you prefer... Like, I know in some of the tournaments, you get your 30 seconds of play beforehand.
    12:03
    Would you feel that there might be an advantage to you not having that because you can adjust on the fly so quickly?
    12:12
    Or would you still prefer to have that practice period? I think as a mental aspect, I prefer to have it so that I can just learn a couple of quick things about the game.
    12:22
    But, yeah, I don't think it has actual, like, any results. Like, I don't think I do better in tournaments with that practice than I do without that practice.
    12:32
    Well, certainly one thing I've noticed is, one of the things, when I described you before, I said you're a bit of an all-rounder, but you're very calm until you're not calm. meaning that you'll sort of do your slight nudging but then you'll nudge that thing as far as it can go sideways and so if I would imagine you understanding where that tilt bob is in that 30 seconds is really important to you. Yeah, that's kind of something I'm working on is I don't play every ball like it's ball three. I definitely play ball three differently than the first two balls. On balls one and two, I just sort of assume that hitting shots and I'm just playing the game sort of offensively, but then a lot of times on ball three I switch to like, oh, I need to get ready to nudge this. I can't let this drain. This is my tournament life, and I think I need to use that more on the first two balls so I'd probably have higher scores. You know, some people that you watch, you'll see that they're sort of going the long game. With you, what I've sort of noticed is that you've still got, it looks like you've still got the long game in your mind, but you are chipping away at a, I guess probably a shorter game, just to rack up some points to at least put you in contention. I definitely, I think I pride myself in always trying to give myself an out. So I will always try to put, even if it's just like a tiny bit ahead of someone else, that I prioritize that just to give myself that out that they can, you know, have a house ball. And I have slid through a lot of tournaments on very thin margins because of those outs. And I think that's a very important thing for people getting into competition to learn is, you don't always have to hit the home run, you know. You can chip away, like you said.
    14:14
    Okay. So then, are you playing the machine, or are you playing against the other player? Oh, I'm definitely playing against the other players.
    14:26
    Like, against Escher on Iron Maiden at Expo, he put up 1.9 billion, and I had, like, 200 million going into Ball 3. and like you know normally I would play Iron Maiden you know just start some modes get some points do whatever but in that situation I was like okay well in order for me to get that many points I don't think I'm gonna have a ball as long as Escher's so I'm just gonna I'm gonna see if I can cyborg and just grind cyborg like for a 10x jackpot and I almost did I got up to like 8x and I got like $1.4 billion. It was pretty cool.
    15:01
    Okay, so me and Marty have been talking about it recently on the podcast about long-playing tournament games.
    15:10
    Do you like those epic long battles, even though they might result in a loss on Iron Maiden, or do you prefer games to kind of be set up? Because I know the Expo games weren't set up kind of brutal. They were fairly factory besides Extra Balls. so would you prefer for it to be harder and it's more of a quick get-in-get-out, let's see who's the best at this brutal machine, or would you rather it be factory and... I'm not sure how long that game lasted. Was it like a half an hour game? Oh, yeah, it took forever. Yeah, you know, I guess I'm pretty indifferent. I think it was cool. I've never played in a tournament like Expo where the games were set up factory. Like, that was so refreshing. I had never seen that. Like, I got to basically regularly put up, you know, $400 or $500 million on Guardians. Like, it was nothing, you know, like that sort of thing. It was definitely a cool experience.
    16:02
    But I don't know if – I would definitely tire of it if every tournament was a slog like that. But I think now and then having some epic games is great for the sport because it really – you start making a lot of decisions you normally wouldn't make. It's kind of like the difference between unlimited qualifying and, you know, like a match play qualifying. You definitely get to see different aspects of the game when you're playing for huge scores than just trying to survive. Well, so then what is your favorite tournament format? Definitely the Old Papa or even Unlimited Entry is fine. Generally, I don't, the qualifying part, I'm fine with whatever. I'd rather have lots of tries at it though so I don't feel pressured as much and the finals, I really like the finals where there's lots of games like three or four games and you get to pick the games and they're like, I don't like games that are too brutal in finals, like a lot of these new tournaments the finals have like EMs thrown in and like really brutal solid states and they won't let you pick the same game more than once, so you're just kind of forced to just, you know, you work this whole weekend getting your qualifying position and then it's like, oh, I get to play on this thing and lose, and that kind of is a bummer. So I like the formats that really reward, you know, good play and lots of games, basically, I don't know. Do you enjoy the format when it's finals? Because I know a lot of the high-level ones, And I think even the IFPA World Championship, it's head-to-head. It's not four-player groups.
    17:49
    Do you feel like that you could kind of accidentally get stuck with someone who maybe had a bad day of qualifying, but he might be a really strong player, and then you have to head-to-head battle with him or her and potentially get knocked out early? I don't know if I like head-to-head for that exact reason, because unless it's double ELIM, I think double ELIM is fine. but single A limit is brutal if you get a bad draw luckily though I think they do a good job of giving you lots of buys so if you focus on the qualifying aspect and you get like a double buy it's like well the worst I can do is 8th place like that's great like I don't really care at that point so as long as the tournament structure is set up smartly and it's not you know 3 games qualifying top 64 bracket like you know chaos Yeah, well, so then the pro circuit final, which I think is now the CERN pro circuit, I mean, that's an interesting one because the higher you qualify, the later on the ladder that you start, but everybody else is warmed up. That can be a bit of a disadvantage, don't you think?
    19:00
    Yeah, definitely. My hardest part in a tournament is those first games, for sure. so it is nice to come in and kind of get to play some warm up games and kind of figure out the games as you're going but it's risky right because if you bomb out you know you wish you would have rather had the buys well that's exactly right well then so you know you sort of talked about EM before what type of machine do you prefer to play on in finals or is it situational because I guess it can probably also depend on the group that you've got or the person you're playing. But is there an overarching style? Like, is it late Stearns? Is it middle Bally Williams? What is it for you that you like? I mean, I like EMs and solid states in classic tournaments. I think they're great. I love classic tournaments. But in, like, big main events, I definitely like, you know, 1990s and onward. You could convince me of some of the later 81s that, like, I don't know what year, like, Grand Lizard is or some of those ones, the more controllable, like, late solid state, those are fine. Sure, but I guess the idea of having, and, you know, Pinberg was like that, where you had an EM, a solid state, a DMD, and then a modern, was really to test your all-round skill on all years, I guess. Well, it's also because they can't, there aren't that many modern games, right? Like, they've pretty much got every modern game in there, but they need 300-plus machines, right? so they kind of forced them. And that was fine because you know what you're signing up for and it's a variety. Like you said, you have to be well-rounded. There's four-game rounds. And a lot of it comes out in the wash. It was more like things that bug me are where you kind of get forced. Like at the Stern Pro Circuit, they had a bunch of... Even the DMDs are set up brutal. But I was in Group 9, so I always got stuck with the crappy games and it just felt bad.
    20:59
    Okay. Well, Raymond, I mean, I know people are sitting here saying, oh my gosh, they want to talk about the Beatles, we want to hear about the Beatles, but let's keep on going a little bit more, because, guys, it's not that important, it's the Beatles.
    21:11
    So, you've won a WWE LE, is it twice or once? Twice, I think, isn't it? Well, I only ever actually won it once. They wanted to give it to me like three times, but the first time I was able to convince them to give me a Ghostbusters, and then the second time I was able to convince them to give me a Guardians, but then the third time they were like, all right, you're getting a WWE Ellie.
    21:40
    You never took possession of it, right? Yeah, it never came to my state. It went straight from the Stern factory to Oklahoma or somewhere.
    21:49
    Poor WWE, it's such a bad rap. Just on that line, so, Raymond, why did you not want WrestleMania? Yeah. Because I wanted an Iron Maiden. No, I... That's the reason. The next day, as soon as the funds cleared, I sent the check to Trent and bought my Iron Maiden.
    22:10
    From a, you know, the number one player in the world, I'm keen to know what you either like or dislike about WrestleMania.
    22:18
    Well, there's... I just don't like... There's, like, no shots on the game. There's, like, two rams. Yeah. And that's, like, it. And, I don't know, it just doesn't... It doesn't... Just drop targets? Yeah. I guess so. Is that a little loopy thing down the side for tag team? Yeah. I don't know. The ring up the middle... It's the finger is what I'm hearing.
    22:38
    Yeah. Okay, so in your collection, you've got Aerosmith, Black Rose, Daldin, Dirty Harry, Guardians, Iron Maiden, Lord of the Rings, Metallica, Meteor, Pioneer, Tron, Volia, and Walking Dead. So you have... Not many people have Guardians and Metallica together. you've had lengthy discussions about the game being very different, but still has kind of the same feel because of the shot layout. Do you currently prefer one over the other? I'm guessing you've played Metallica to death, right? I used to think Metallica, like, I think I still like Metallica more overall, but I think right now I've been enjoying playing Guardians more than Metallica. It just shoots better. Metallica is pretty clunky and like all the shots are pretty tight. Guardians, they're tight, but they're more findable for some reason and less punishing. I think Metallica, when you miss a shot, it's just like gone. But Guardians, you're kind of playing the long game more like, I don't know, it feels safer. And it's just the rules are way different than any other game right now in Guardians. and I find it really interesting to kind of figure out what the best strategy is because I'm still trying to figure that out. Yeah, I find that Guardians, the ramps in particular, they feel really satisfying when you get them, but they don't feel as conventional as a lot of other Stern games. It almost feels like, particularly the left ramp, is a lot earlier than I would expect on any sort of left ramp. Really? I feel the complete opposite. I always think it's way later. maybe the flipper angles you have set up are different.
    24:28
    I love how Marty says, nah, to the number one player in the world. He's like, nah, nah, I'm right. It's too early. I always miss that ramp early. I usually have to tell myself, it's late. Wait, wait, okay, now shoot.
    24:40
    I don't know. It also does that weird double back thing, right? It feels funny when you hit it. All right, so Raymond, I want to, there's a lot of things that people do in games, and every once in a while, a top tournament player will tell me, like, you're wasting your time. Like, you're playing Fathom wrong. You do this and you hit that and that's the game. Like, that's where the big points are. So I'm sure there's a million others I don't know. So how do you blow up some of these games, right? So what's the perfect scenario? And we don't have to go into, like, a long 30-minute discussion on each game. Just on Aerosmith, what's your go-to song and what stack are you trying to get? Aerosmith, well, the old code, the same old song and dance is always a good one to start on because it gives you some nice base points. Like I said, to give you those outs against people who don't get anything started. I haven't played as much with the new code. I think they changed some of that.
    25:37
    I usually just pick, I guess I'll walk this way and try to get super ramps because that can be good. Or just pick any mode that has the toy box as its first shot. It's usually a good strategy. okay uh dialed in uh that one's pretty straightforward um you just play the modes and beat the modes um although there's a couple of things like um often times especially if I'm on a really hard playing dialed in um if I beat my first mode and I have multiball lit I'll uh I won't cancel it like I won't bring another mode into it because it's too risky I just want to start the multiball as soon as possible because I want to get that sim card you know bouncing around and land in there well surely you have modes that you prefer like I always chose the meteor modes or whatever it's called because it's just you know hitting targets which is risky but I feel like I can do that I can brick shots yeah it's not a bad choice it's only like five shots and sometimes off of those targets it goes into the sim card hole which is nice I usually go with like whirlwind is one of my favorites alien invasion is hard, but it's worth the most, so if you need a ton of points, you can do Alien Invasion.
    26:55
    Wait till Big Bang for that one. The Big Bang on that is, that's a good combo, is starting Alien Invasion and then Big Banging. It's like 250k or something ridiculous. I'm always confused with Big Bang. Does Big Bang hit all the shots that are currently available on the playfield, or does it finish the mode by going through? Like, if Big Bang was lit at the start of Alien Invasion, do you want to hit that first shot first and then the Big Bang target, or you just hit the Big Bang target straight away? You just hit it right away. Yeah, it's, I don't know, they've got some crazy math and crazy coding back behind that game because it will literally pretend that you hit every single shot, including that first one for Alien Invasion. So, yeah, it basically just acts as if you hit every shot yourself. Okay, so there's no point in waiting until a certain point in the month. The only difference is if you have sim card multipliers and you want to get some multiplied shots first, you can hit a couple of shots, and then once you're running out of time, then you can big bang to finish it. And the later shots won't be multiplied, but your earlier shots will.
    28:01
    Ah, okay. So big bang doesn't give you finish all the shots with a multiplied value, just the base value. I think that's correct. It also doesn't multiply the completion bonus. Yeah. Math, okay. Now, Deadpool. Deadpool's a newer game.
    28:18
    Jesse Ellis was talking to me about how you know this secret sauce recipe to blowing up that game in Megalodon or something with the boom button. Is that right? Oh, I literally just found out about it at Expo. Kaylee was telling me what to do, and I think Tim Sexton. It was just basically, you like Megalodon, you start Megalodon, you just never end the mode, and eventually all the shots become worth like $10 million, and then, like, you can use a big boom and collect all the 10 millions, or you can just hit them one by one. Like, there's no, you know, there's no timer in that mode. You just have to make sure you don't accidentally end it.
    28:54
    Okay, so how do you end? So there's an end shot, but the other shots will just keep on being lit forever? Yep.
    29:02
    Okay. I mean, that's probably going to be patched out in, like, two weeks, right? I assume so, yeah. Yeah, okay.
    29:09
    What else? I love the rings. Everyone has had a play of that. Metallica. immediately everyone has had a play of that. Tron, I mean, Tron gets a lot of hate because everyone says there's just one way to play it, but on a high level, I mean, you play it at home, so obviously you try and blow up the game.
    29:25
    Are you kind of making sure that you replay certain modes before you finish all of them to make sure you get that... I used to go for it. I love getting the double portal. One time at League, I had this ridiculous game where I got two double portals in the same game, and it was just so sweet.
    29:48
    It wouldn't have never happened if I didn't actively, like, oh, my Zeus targets, I need that last Zeus target. That's purely for fun. I don't know if you'd do that in a real competition.
    29:59
    Do you have the Pro at home or the LE? I just have a Pro. Okay, so do you ever go for the gem shot through the right flipper, or are you always banking the shot? Oh, I just use the upper flipper. I mean, it's hard, but it's doable. You just have to find it. You have to get a nice bounce off of the Cora shot. Like, you kind of have to hit the ball while it's off of the rail a little bit.
    30:23
    Well, yeah, it's kind of hard to explain, but it is hit. Yeah, I know what you mean. If it's perfectly gliding along there, then there's less of an angle than if it's kind of hit off the Cora bouncing. Yeah, I know what you mean. So with Tron, like, I've seen some videos of people like, what is it, end of line when you do the combos and then to the scoot? Is that something that you would try, or are you still going into multiballs to get up to CFC and all the portals? I mean, it all sort of works together hand-in-hand, right? Because you need to hit the side ramp to light your multiball, and when you hit the side ramp, it lights the scoop for end of line. So you just kind of, you know, the game's pretty face-up. It's like, oh, you hit this, you hit this, and then you hit this. I mean, some people will, like, just keep going end of line and ignore multiball, but it will light Cora eventually. So if you're good at Cora shots, you could basically ignore the light cycle shots and just do end of lines. But some Trons are a lot easier than others. Like my Tron at home, the Cora shot's really hard, but then I'll find one on location or in a tournament and I find it easy and I'm like, wow, okay, I know what I'm doing on this. I'm just going to do this all day. Do you know why it's probably hard?
    31:34
    Sorry, the U target is probably drifted to the right. Yep. Yeah. You can 3D print a little thing to fix that. I can send you the file if you want. The reason why I ask that is because I, obviously I've watched a lot of you on YouTube and Twitch, etc. But I also watched you playing live the first time I went to Indisc. And it was on Doctor Who. And a lot of people were playing it a certain way. They were either going for multi-ball.
    31:59
    But I just saw you doing, I think it was, Who Loops over and over. Yep. I don't remember playing. was that like a tiebreaker against Bob Matthews? No, it was unqualifying. It was unqualifying. So it was first day, so it was early on. You're going to forget that one. But you did put up a fantastic score. In fact, I think you were doing a combination of that and video mode. You were getting right into video mode as well. But the reason I was saying that, and you mentioned it before about being a scissor, you are the king of the repeatable shot, where if you know that there is a safe but repeatable shot, you will do that rather than go for the risky strat. Yeah it just depends on the efficiency and also how likely I am to hit the shot and what happens when I miss the shot You know theoretically you could loop the right ramp on Walking Dead all day but you're not going to because it's, you know, it's hard. It's dangerous if you miss and it's hard to hit, yeah. Well, let's talk about Walking Dead because that's the one that has,
    33:04
    I mean, maybe for the high-level players there's just one strategy, but just things like there's just a million ways you can go with that game. So, I mean, what mode do you usually choose first? I know it depends on who you're playing against and what score you need to put up, etc. But if you're playing at home and you just want to blow it up,
    33:22
    are you playing barn first? Yeah, I always play barn first, just because it's a good single-ball mode, and it will get you your multi-kill pretty easily. It'll get you some good points on the board. And then also, people don't know this, but in Walking Dead, after you play a mode, that shot is now worth a mode bonus in any other modes you play, where it will actually boost whatever mode you're in. So if you play Barn first, and then you play Riot, every shot to the left orbit will increase your Riot value by 500k, and give you, like, a 500k bonus. It's called Patch Mode Bonus or something. It's like a hidden thing Lyman put in there.
    34:05
    It's pretty useful. I need to raise some roll shades. Yeah, that's why your modes suddenly just start becoming worth, like, way more later. Like, the more modes you do, the more they're worth, because all your other mode shots are basically adding to it.
    34:18
    Can you please explain CDC to me, because I don't understand that mode. I know it should be so simple, but I remember one time I played it, and I got 120 million in that mode, and I hit the main shot, and then somehow, like, the shot kept on roving, and I hit the entire playfield. But I was playing it yesterday, and it's just the two shots next to it were lit, and I didn't know how to expand the shot. Yeah, so you only get one chance, basically. When you start CDC, every shot to the ramp will add another roving shot. It's not roving, but it'll add another shot. Okay. And basically, you just keep hitting the ramp, and then as soon as you hit one of those non-CDC shots, it basically locks it in, and you move on to phase two, where you just collect all the shots that you have lit. and then once you shoot the CDC ramp again that will end phase 2 and move to phase 3 which is it lights the CDC ramp for collecting all the points that you just got so it's really nice with the multiplier on the in lane because what you'll do is you'll start the mode then you'll hit some shots and then you'll hit the CDC ramp which lights the CDC ramp for the collect and also goes down the right in lane so you just get like a massive like you know 200 million shot or whatever. I mean, you've obviously got a pro because I've got a premium and sometimes Bicycle Girl will just start in that mode and it just kind of ruins the mojo of that Liony X because you then have to watch Shats the Lane or somehow get it in there to X the shot. The premium has its pros and cons. You can definitely farm the Bicycle Girl shot if it has a nice return so you can still get a huge CDC score during the build phase, phase one, where you just keep hitting bicycle girl, and then you'll build up your value that way.
    36:04
    I will go on record as saying I think the Pro is better, even though everyone seems to think the Premium is better, and it's for the simple fact of I don't like the crossbow, I don't like the magnet on the well walker, and I don't like the CDC ramp, and all three of those don't make up for the walker bombs, even though people tell me that it does, and I don't know. I'm not both, so I can't be offended. But yeah, it's... I mean, what versions of Guardians do you have? Guardians, there aren't much differences either, right? But do you think you're the pro for that? The pro. It was funny, at Expo they had the premium, but they sawed off the Groot. The Groot hands were gone.
    36:48
    So you can see that left insert, which you can never see. Yeah. Batman 66. do you like playing Batman 66? Um I think I like playing it because it has smooth shots and it's a you know it's a controllable game where you can put up big scores when you need to um I don't fully understand all the rules yet it's sort of like a Star Wars enigma to me where I generally do good when I play it but I generally don't really know what I'm doing I'm just sort of just keep hitting things building up big points yeah we do ask you know the big players you know what is it about batman 66 that makes it this special game and we're not kind of getting that from you like i said i don't um i don't investigate as much with the new games because they're just always changing and i and i'm very lazy i don't like to put in any more effort than i need to so It's like I don't want to learn something that's only going to change again. I usually just brush up. If I'm about to play a game, I'll ask somebody, what's the latest on this game? They'll either tell me this, do this, do this, and I'll try to do that, or I'll just do what I usually know works. On Batman 66, I usually just do Catwoman, just shoot the ramps because they're fun to hit. It's safe.
    38:12
    With your collection, obviously you've got a favorite game, but is there a least favorite game that you have that you're like, okay, well, this might be next on the shopping block. I'm done with this game. Probably the EM volley. It's just way too simple.
    38:29
    But I got it for so cheap that it's just sort of like I just got it. I'll probably get rid of it as soon as someone wants to buy it. It's good to have an EM, but that one is just way too simple. It gets old fast. Okay, well, then going back to what you mentioned, you mentioned Star Wars before. what are your thoughts overall on Star Wars? It's been out for a while now what are your thoughts?
    38:52
    I'm telling you it's just way too it's an enigma, it's like there's a general roadmap of okay, destroy the Death Star, TIE Fighter whatever, but then your actual score is like completely unrelated it's like, did you hit this shot while you had 40x or while you had 2x? like so So, I mean, I usually do pretty well on it, but I'm always scared to play it because I don't, it's almost like a, I don't feel in control of what my score is going to be as much as other games. Yeah, well, that's what we found is that people that can master the multiplier can consistently put up good scores. I'm one of these ones that will just set it on a particular location and go, you know what, I'll just keep going for that same shot. but do you find that as well in the tournaments that you play where it's in that those people that understand it will genuinely do better than others oh yeah I know a few people that just always blow that game up and I've gotten better at it and I'll definitely move my multiplier more than maybe other people would and I'll also I feel like once I start learning the shots I feel like I can execute better than some people that know the rules inside and out. So, like, if I get presented with something obvious, like, oh, I need to shoot this to destroy the Death Star, I can probably pull it off. But it's those situations where I don't know what's going on and someone else does. Like, I just learned about the Ataball with the force targets. You know, I learned that the hard way when somebody used that against me and I was like, okay, well, I'm making a note of that. You just learned that? Okay. Well, I guess I only learned about that a while ago because someone told me when they did it. but I'd love to see Star Wars as, it is like math-wise, just being streamed at a higher level in like some finals, just purely for entertainment purposes. Like you versus someone like Josh Sharp, who swears by not moving it. And Steve Babin told me last week, why are you moving the multiplier?
    40:59
    Just four people going at it at a high level and someone trying to commentate, you know. Because the weird thing to me is that, With these games with crazy multipliers, it's the same stance there. I know sometimes when you're streaming pinball, you don't get that full sound kind of coming through, but if you hit a 40x jackpot, it's the same sound as when you hit a 1x. I think that's what drives me the most crazy about Star Wars, is I'll literally, I won't know how good I'm doing until I look up and see my score. And sometimes it'll be a billion, and sometimes it'll be two in a million. And you have no idea. yeah another one like that is is ghostbusters where um i said triple triple triple super jackpot i mean it's worth three million but sometimes it's worth just insane amounts and it's just like well i get the same call out so when do i get excited and it ends up being i guess for the the new player it's they're always excited but for me it's i'm never excited i never trust the timor machine to let me know when to get excited yeah i think that definitely is something that they need to really work on. I think that's what part of the magic of the Williams 90 era was, was they had that down. When you got a jackpot on Adams family, everyone knew it and your score went up accordingly. Well, that's another thing I wanted to touch on. It's like the newer games, especially Stern, and maybe it's a really good thing for people that are new into pinball. You work hard, you get into multi-ball, generally pretty much on every game, everything's a jackpot and then you work for your super. So even if you flail and you hit one shot in that 20 second ball save, you're going to get a jackpot. Whereas I watched someone play Adam's Family yesterday and I'm sitting there for three games telling him how to get into multi-ball and then I'm like, shoot the side ramp and they're like, oh, there's an upper flipper? Like, how the F am I going to shoot that side ramp? You know what I mean? But it's like, they have to earn that jackpot and that jackpot is special because one, it's hard and two, nothing else is lit except for those two side ramp shots, right? side show. Do you know the thing that shoots me the most? I'm just telling you now. The thing that shoots me the most? Big points. When... It's not big fucking points. It's actually bullshit points is what they should say.
    43:12
    But Aerosmith gives you big points. Is that just me? Well, does it? Not that great. Is it 15 million right now? Yeah, it is.
    43:23
    It's a lot. On Aerosmith, it's a lot. On Ghostbusters, I think it's one or two or three or something. It's just... But it goes back to what you were saying. This is an inverse. It's a big boy that says, you know, big points. You look up and it's a million points. You go, hang on, that's actually, in the scheme of things, not big points.
    43:44
    But it's like skill shots these days. This is why it was kind of cool with Iron Maiden that at least, you know, Keith made the super skill shot worth something because you were getting more of a ball save because they're not worth the points wanted for a skill shot, right? Yeah. It's hard to design games for everyone. I mean, George Gomez, in that interview he did on Special End Lit, was talking about designing Revenge from Mars, and he's like, he made the flipper gap smaller, but he's like, I don't like games that... He didn't say to shadow, but, you know, that return the ball directly to the flipper because the novice player can lose the ball too quickly. I like a game that turns it up into the pops and do some random action and then it returns because, you know, the psychology of your players thinks that they're playing well because their ball lasted longer, even though they haven't done anything to deserve, you know, that 10-second ball time. It's just a psychological thing, right? Like, you don't get ripped off because, you know, you lasted longer. Yeah, that makes sense. And people always fall punch. That's right. But that's why it was kind of... I don't think they've done a bit. But you know when the... Was it Ghostbusters that started it, or maybe it was Game of Thrones where the pop-up has had that random award? That was kind of an interesting way to make something that really was just a time extender kind of mean something. And that's kind of why I look at the skills shot, and I say, well, that could actually mean something, but it's not. It's just a way for the ball to go up there and waste some time in the pops. Well, because there's no skill. Every person, if they know the rule, can light an in-lane up the top, if you can move it around.
    45:27
    Plunging off the skill like you can't move it, like creature, for example, and TNA, yes, there's skill involved with that. The orbit all the way around, that's another one, right? Deadpool's done that now. He's got a fixed in-lane that you can't move. Yes. I've heard that Deadpool likes TNA very much.
    45:48
    Yeah, you have to be careful, though. If you make skill shots worth too much, then it can dwarf someone's actual performance. Like, you can... All I lost was somebody who got three skill shots on Ripley's, believe it or not. Like, it kind of feels bad. Was it Domino's? The Domino's skill shot was worth a million. Yeah, that's what I heard. It was, like, impossible to get a million, like, through normal play. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's hard. Game balancing is hard, right? Like, Whirlwind. Like, the only way to score massive in Whirlwind is to hit jackpots in multiball, right? Like, Whirlwind. Oh, yeah. As soon as... Oh, God, I... That is the most frustrating feeling, is draining out a multi-ball on Whirlwind. Oftentimes, I'll just turn off the game. Like, I'm just... You don't have one at home, so you're turning off games on location and just restarting them.
    46:36
    So, quickly, Raymond, then, because another game that's in your collection, and I've heard you say this when you were commentating.
    46:44
    Black Rose, you said there's actually more to this game than people give credit. Explain to me why, because I'm one of these people, I actually really like the game, but I don't think it's a deep game. But you sort of said that there's more depth to it than people think. Oh, yeah.
    47:03
    It goes deep in a lot of directions, like the broadside awards. If you get all of them, you can light a jackpot, which in tournament play is $30 million. So going after broadside awards is a decent strategy. with the cannon, you actually when you open the cannon and put it in there you actually don't want to just shoot up the middle, you actually want to bank off of as many targets as you can because every target you bank off of gives you a sink ship letter, so a lot of people don't realize that, and also they don't realize that there are different levels of the cannon and it'll actually have flashing jewels and non-flashing jewels and you actually have to shoot the flashing ones to get the award, so the first award is double broadside, which is worth a ton of points, and everyone is familiar with that award.
    47:52
    But then after that, it goes video mode, and in video mode, you have to either shoot the left side or up the broad side with the cannon. A lot of people don't know you can just shoot the left. If you have multiball, you can just shoot it in there with the cannon.
    48:06
    That's a nice little thing. And then after video mode, there's 5 million award, Jets at Max, which Jets at Max is actually good in that game because it makes the right orbit worth a million a shot for the rest of the ball, which not a lot of people know.
    48:24
    The multi-ball has two-ball and three-ball multi-ball and it has hidden treasure, and hidden treasure is really cool. You basically have to hit all the little jewels around the playfield, and when you get all of them, then they all become lit and it plays the little pirates theme and it goes to your bonus. and it's just a really fun mode.
    48:45
    You can stack up lots of Sink Ship letters, Sink Ships for huge points. I don't know, the shots just feel good. Like the left ramp to locker ramp combo just feels good. Is it better than... Would you rather play Black Rose than Stern, Pirates of the Caribbean?
    49:02
    Yeah, I think so. Would you rather play Black Rose than JGT, Pirates of the Caribbean? I don't know. I haven't played much of JJP Pirates, but probably.
    49:17
    So you really love Black Rose? Yeah, I really do. I think it's a good game, but I'm also biased because it was my first game. So I will admit the bias. But I think people should just give it more of a look than they initially do.
    49:34
    Well, it's, I guess, the cheapest Billy Williams game in Australia, I think you can pick up from the 90s era. I don't think there's any games that are cheaper than it, but they're all pretty expensive here. Well, there you go. Good bang for your buck. Thank you, buddy. I'd say get one. Okay. ACDC. Sorry, I'm not sure when we're going to get you on the show again, so we're just going to just me and Marty just gather all this game knowledge. Because ACDC has changed. Number one in Australia soon. Yeah.
    50:05
    ACDC has now changed, right? and a lot of strategies that people were relying on have changed, I think, during the last code update. So I don't want to know what you were doing before, but what's your go-to now for ACDC? Jam. Jam all day.
    50:21
    With what song are you choosing? I usually like Rock and Roll Train or even a whole lot of Rosie I'll do sometimes just because if I'm in multiball, you know, going up to the top hitting the rollovers is good.
    50:39
    Hell's Bells is still okay to pick sometimes. So Rock and Roll Train will only award you if you hit a shot in a combo, but you can't combo the same shot. You can't hit, like, backhand, left ramp, backhand, left ramp. So is your jam strategy to go left, right, left, right?
    50:57
    That's definitely what I try to do. If I'm having trouble hitting the right ramp, then I'll probably change it up and just do backhand, left ramp and pick a different song next ball.
    51:07
    Yeah, because you're right. You won't get any points just hitting the left ramp all day, but none of the modes will give you points if you hit the left ramp all day. But it doesn't matter because once you get into multiball, then the whole world opens up and you can just get points everywhere. Yeah. Okay. And once you're in multiball, are you trying to hit jackpots? Are jackpots worth it, or are you just trying to somehow just keep the ball alive as long as you can to, you know, go for the song jackpot, multiply and stuff? Well, the first thing I do is I want to make sure I get the add a ball, which you have to hit all five shots for.
    51:41
    Although I think I don't remember if they've been changing this where you might not have to hit all five. You only have to complete whatever set. So if you had, like, three out of the five going into the multi-ball, you might only have to hit two. I don't know how that works because sometimes I feel like I hit a bunch of shots and I don't get an add a ball, and sometimes I'll just get an add a ball right away. Yeah, I pretty much wait until my ball's about to drain and just mash my VAP button, and then it comes back. Yeah, yeah. But other than that, the jackpots are really good, and you want to combo those. You want to go left ramp, right ramp, because it actually won't give you – I don't think it'll give you another jackpot if you just keep hitting the left ramp. I think there's, like, a time delay on that. But the jackpots start getting worth a lot, and then you get a super, and the super is, like, 20 million, which is also on the bell shot, which will usually be multiplied, so you'll get like 40 million. Okay. Pretty good. So I've heard Super Jackpot before when I'm playing in ACDC, but I never know what's going on. So how many jackpots do you need to get the Super? This is Jam Multiplot we're talking about, right? Yeah, Jam.
    52:46
    I don't know. It's probably around 10 or 15, somewhere around there. It depends on the – I always thought it was – because I don't know if Jordan Treadway spent 30 minutes explaining the rules to me, and, you know, me, I would have remembered only about five seconds of it. But isn't it also dependent on the albums as well? I don't think that is on jam multiball. I think that's just on album and tour. It matters. Right, okay. Yeah. It's so strange. It's like if you're playing the song that is in the album that you got and you get the albums in order, then your jackpot will also give you the song bonus. as well so it's like you know randomly your album can just give you a ton of points do you think it's weird that like line and sheets games they're so complicated but so loved right but like like you don't even know the rules properly and you're the number one player in the world at the moment so but someone like like when people talk about pirates of the caribbean they're like oh yeah too deep too complicated it's like well not really not compared to this stuff like like Walking Dead, like, you talk about that rule, that's not written anywhere. There's, like, there's no, probably no D&D animations for it. Like, how are you meant to know this stuff?
    54:06
    Yeah, um, I think it just goes to show you how well Lyman layers his games, where there's an overarching, like, simple set of instructions, and then each instruction you kind of can go as deep as you want on, and it's just a really good way to build a game, because you don't have to learn everything all at once. You can just start with the first layer, and then, you know, like an onion, peel back each layer, layer by layer. Yeah, but stuff like The Hobbit, I think there's a very simple layer there as well. The multiballs, like the multiball have five stages, but you don't have to know that. You just have to kind of hit the shots and go for the jackpot.
    54:47
    Maybe it's the fact that certain games are kind of everywhere because they're put on site. There's a pro version. You know, they're, I guess, pretty much the cheapest manufacturing. That's definitely true, because I can ask somebody rules on a Stern game and usually get pretty straightaway answers, but if I'm like, hey, how does multiball work in Hobbit, people will be like, I don't know, I just keep the ball alive. Hobbit scoring is a mystery to me. It's very strange.
    55:17
    Alright, well, everyone has survived one hour of game and Raymond talk, So let's get to the big news and what everyone's been waiting for, the news of the week, which is Stern has released a teaser video and not much else. And there's been a lot of discussion on this one little teaser video of the Beatles pinball machine rumoured to be a Sea Witch layout. Guess what? Everyone was correct. and the funny thing was a lot of people knew it was Sea Witch for a very long time and a lot of people talked about it, but it was still a shock to everyone. Like, we were all lying. I know. People were like, actually, really? They did do that? We kind of, we'd been saying it, but as soon as you saw it, it was like, oh, it was actually true. We were expecting it not to be. Yeah, I don't want to sound pretentious or anything, but it's like, well, either they don't believe, they don't listen to podcasts and read This Week in Pinball or they don't care or they just wanted to get angry. I don't know. I think there's a lot of saved-up anger since Iron Maiden and Deadpool came out and there wasn't really much to be angry about. So let's just unleash on the Beatles.
    56:27
    Yeah, that's well. There's a couple of things that people have unleashed, yeah. Okay, so what do we know? We know it's based, I don't want to say loosely, but it's based on Sea Witch. but, I mean, we talked about Guardians and Metallica. Guardians and Metallica are so different but so similar in layout. There's not a couple, there's a lot. I mean, I don't see this playing the same as Sea Witch at all because, Raymond, when you play Sea Witch, do you ever go for loops because they're not really worth it, are they?
    57:00
    Yeah, you can't really hit them very easily. No, you just follow the X's on Sea Witch and I don't think that's going to be the primary strategy on Beatles. I mean, maybe the first Target Bank will light your lock or something, but I don't imagine it's going to have the same bonus multiplier chasing thing that Sea Witch did. Yeah. And does it look like it's got modes? Well, you've got five of them. Yeah, but I mean, the songs, I think, relate to, well, maybe it's a playing in order. I'm not sure because one of the songs, All My Loving, underneath it, it says two or multiple. Drive My Car is... Oh, man, I can't read. Jeff, you didn't do high-resolution screenshots, Jeff, from this week in pinball. Here we go. Okay, Drive My Car is Loof Mania. So I'm guessing that's what makes Loofs worth more.
    57:50
    I Should Have Known Better is Drop Target Frenzy. Ticket to Ride is Super Spinners. Spinners with an S on the end because they've added a spinner to the left entrance of the pop-up area. Yeah, that's an interesting one because it's not even a real shot. they like invented a shark they were like yeah I was chatting to George Jermez a little bit and I think he will probably be appearing on Nate Shivers' podcast as is tradition with you know the new Stern releases and I'm not we're not sure exactly when we're going to get more information about the Beatles because it's literally just a video that appeared on the Beatles store website but you know maybe next week maybe in two weeks is the rumour but yeah he opened up that shot because he said he wanted to make it makeable from the kind of like Iron Maiden where you can start that loop from the lower flipper and then keep on looping around so he opened up that shot and decreased the width of the right spinner. That's where that room came from.
    58:54
    What else we got? It won't be long is Super Pop Bumpers. So I'm not sure if you get presented with a mode when you start. We'll hear about that soon but I mean most of the inserts are still there. I mean, you've got the X in front of the each drop target bank. You've got, you know, score the bonus value. You get the last drop target on the second time that you do it. You get the same amount of bonus inserts.
    59:21
    I don't know. Wait, can you explain that to me? I never actually learned the full rules of those magical, the lights in front of the targets. Yeah. I know sometimes they come on and they're worth points, but I never could figure them out. Okay, so if you drop down a drop target bank and then you drop down, say, all but one, so you leave one left, it starts blinking and it says score lit bonus value. So say your bonus is worth $25,000 at that time, right? And maybe it's like 6x or something. Ignore the 6x. When you hit that drop target bank down, you get whatever value it's meant to be, like the 1,000 bonus plus whatever, but it's also worth 25,000 points. That's why the loops in Sea Witch are almost worthless because a max loop value is 11,000 because it's one for every drop target, and if you hit all three drop target banks down in the same ball, it's 2x rip ties, right? So that's 22,000 plus whatever you get on the spinner. so it's usually worth going for the drop targets over and over and over again because if you get that loaded value and I was talking to Colin McAlpine about it and he says that it only starts blinking like maybe one or two seconds after you like leave that one drop target up and he doesn't know that if you hit two to drop it down like the last two drop targets on the bank if it gives you that value so he always goes for one, waits for it to start blinking and then hits it because he doesn't trust the solid state. Oh, so it'll always start blinking if you just hit it and wait? You don't have to, like, qualify it or anything? No, you don't have to qualify, but it's not the first time. It's always the second time on the same ball, right? Okay. And you can have them all blinking at the same time. So if you've got all three drop target banks down and then you hit every drop target except one on each bank. They should all be blinking and you can just score massive points. That's Sea Witch. That's Sea Witch and this is Beatles, so this is actually... Are you bored, Marty? Yeah, I'm out of the Beatles.
    61:35
    Anyway, sorry, back to Beatles. No, actually, you know what? You know I really do like Sea Witch, but look, overall, as probably expected, the response to this reveal has been very cool, I think is probably the nicest way of putting it. Well, I'm glad we're talking about it kind of a couple of days later because just the first day, it was just, like, you know, we're in Australia, so it gets released kind of while we're sleeping. We wake up, and you're logging to Pinside, and it's just absolute trash. And just, man, people, I don't know, people want Rams. People wanted a modern game. People wanted Beatles to be given the Aerosmith treatment. They were thinking, well, if Aerosmith, right, which aren't as cool as the Beatles, gets a whole new unique layout. If not, why can't it just kiss?
    62:25
    Why doesn't the Beatles get the same treatment? So, I don't know. We don't know the price yet. I'm guessing people know it's going to be as expensive as a normal Stern pro game, or if not more. So, I guess people have the same reaction to TNA, right? no ramps, why should it cost us more? People say with this, well, you're copying a layout, why should it cost us more? Well, Joe Kamigai already said this costs a million dollars to get the license.
    62:59
    Yeah, but he also said this is the game that everybody's going to want. Do you say the game or do you say the license? This is the thing that everyone wants.
    63:10
    Well, I don't know. Maybe put it into both, but it was kind of like, you know, he was sort of saying that, you know, When people come into your house and they see this, they're going to go, oh, wow, that's amazing. Yeah. What do you think, Rem? Would you buy this or would you find it? What was the price? Well, there's no price yet, but it's rumoured to be like $7,000 or $8,000 for the peasant version. Oh, so it'll just be like Batman 66?
    63:36
    Okay, well, this is the thing. This is what we held back in our last episode and I told Marty to edit it out because I didn't know if this information was kind of meant to be out there, but Jeff from This Week in Pinball has put it out there, so I'm guessing he's got the okay from someone.
    63:52
    So the way it works is distributors get allocated a certain amount, right? So if a distributor wanted to buy 10 of the Diamond editions, the very highest Super Alley version, they can't. They have to buy, say, 15. I'm making these numbers up. They have to buy 15 of the Gold version, the lowest version, and with those 15, they then can buy two of the LEs and one of the Super LEs. I'm getting 15 of the version names.
    64:26
    Apparently, they get them for the same price, but they are allowed to sell those two high-end versions for whatever they want. Now, we didn't mention it because I thought this is going to be an absolute mess because Joe Blow is going to sell it for $20,000 and the guy down the street is going to sell it for $15,000 and then someone's going to get ripped off by five grand.
    64:49
    Do you have any thoughts on this, Marty or Raymond? Well, I think, I mean, except for people that listen to these podcasts, I mean, if people don't know about it, I don't think anyone will be mad about what they don't know about. But, yeah, once they find out, that's going to be, yeah, that could cause a lot of trouble. I don't like that. Yeah, when I first heard about this, I kind of, I said to, to Ryan, this is Supreme 2.0, meaning that they're trying to now manufacture that, I guess, the market that Supreme did where it was sold for a certain price, but then people resold it at a much higher value depending on its demand. So they are creating this demand and they can set whatever price based on what the market is willing to pay Yeah I mean it true If people will buy it yeah the supply and demand right If there's only one distributor who you know you can get it for, then he can charge whatever. I guess, like you said, if there's multiple distributors and you start shopping around, And theoretically, it should all converge to the same amount because no one's just going to pay more if they know they can pay less. Well, it's almost like whoever gets in first, right? Whoever sets the price first, that's now then the benchmark. Yeah. If it is a hot-selling title, then someone will be smart enough to hold stock back and say, okay, well, everyone was dumb enough to sell this version for $10,000. Well, I've got the last two in the country, so if you want it, it's $50,000.
    66:26
    Who knows? This is all just kind of, well, I guess they're kind of satiated rumors, but the artwork on the playbook, let's go to that. So I had an image in my head of what I thought the artwork was going to be, and someone, like Jeff Jewell has just absolutely said I'm an idiot for saying this, but every time I see the Beatles pretty much it's in black and white. So for some reason, that's how I picture the Beatles. I've never seen them live in person. You're right. I do think of black and white when I think of them. Yeah, or not just black and white, even like the album colors. They're very like old looking, like Abbey Road, like everything. Like they're all wearing like brown, white, and like the very earthy colors. So, I mean, when I woke up and I saw the video, I'm like, what the hell is this? Like I didn't think to say, okay, this is nice. I don't think because it was just like a color explosion of like teal and, you know, yellows and kind of light colors. So I was kind of taken aback by it, and then when the smoke set out, I'm like, okay, well, this looks pretty funky and very 60s-like, but Pinkside had the same reaction, but they didn't really come to their senses or anything. It was just, this is the worst-looking pinball machine ever, right? I like the art. I think the art looks good. It looks exactly what it should be. I sort of think, you know, Sands and Peppers, which was more colourful, I guess. this is interesting because it's obviously, you know, it's frangy and it's got his style all over it is colourful, it's not you know, detailed like we expect from you know, the likes of Zombie Yeti or Dirty Donnie, it is that sort of flat line drawn it looks fine, I actually quite like it kind of makes me think of Dirty Donnie a little bit just from the colours, but it's colourful, right? yeah, it's colourful yeah, I like it's meant to be vibrant I think really the challenge here is that you have got a very obviously it's a single level playfield so you've got a lot of open space it's kind of hard to make that look exciting so therefore it's going for more of a colourful retro look let's just say that the video that they showed didn't paint the pinball machine as exciting okay it wasn't like Like, okay, just suppose that against the Supreme video. When I watched the Supreme video, I was like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. Like, look at that cool dude playing that cool pinball machine. I want to be a cool guy like him. Okay, I know that sounds lame. When I watched the Beatles one, I'm like, okay. Like, I know that Sea Witch is an exciting game. Like, it's absolutely brutal and fun.
    69:12
    But it was just, I don't know, it just being kind of like slow and... I don't think marketing, like its first video is Stern's strongest point. I guess their strongest point is what comes after it. That was their original, like, here's the pin. Everyone can go crazy on pin side. And we'll give you two weeks to calm down. And then we'll release the rest of the information. But here's the problem, right? Is that what we know about these machines is it is always about how you play it. Because when it plays, that's different. And that's the TNA effect. Everyone looked at TNA and went, I don't get it. As soon as you play it, you understand because it's fast and it's brutal. That's what makes it exciting. So this could actually have that effect. But you're right. The video kind of made it seem a bit slow. And I don't think it will be a slow game. Yeah. I mean, see which is going to be slow or fast depending on... The older games are very sensitive to how they're set up. if you have an old game and it's tied with, you know, you haven't rebuilt the pop bumpers. If you have the slowest and most boring pops on a newer game, say like Star Trek, for example, it doesn't affect the game at all because it doesn't matter how hard the pop-up that kicks the ball, it only has one way to exit, and it's an absolute perfect speed to the upper right flipper. Whereas in Sea Witch, I mean, the spinner might change things a tiny little bit, but in Sea Witch, that's where all the speed is generated from. You get the ball into the pop bumpers, and it can shoot the ball out in insane speeds, because it's open.
    70:50
    So how many people have played a perfect condition Sea Witch? Not many. It can be an absolutely fast and brutal game. So as we discussed previously, Mike, I don't know how much of the song people are going to get to listen to, because who knows if this is a brutal game or not. I don't think we're going to get a Jack Danger reveal of this. Apparently it's going to be... I don't know if the normal selling crowd is the target here. Do you think it's going to do kind of like Supreme did, where it just kind of fell off the map for me? I remember it being a big thing on Instagram or something, and then I just kind of forgot about it. Do you think that could happen, or do you think it's such a big license that I'll actually maybe know somebody around me that will have one.
    71:41
    Well, okay. The Beetle is obviously bigger than Supreme in terms of the pinball buying market. You know, it has a slightly older demographic.
    71:54
    I'm not sure about the rumors still of it being home use only and kind of having a coin door, but it's deactivated in software. I guess we'll learn about that soon. But as we discussed, there still is a way around that if someone really wants to decide it. But I don't know. How many rich friends do you know, Raymond?
    72:12
    He keeps. Look, the way I say it is, if you compare it again to Supreme, the difference with Supreme was when people looked at Supreme and went, oh, I don't get the theme, but because nobody cares about Supreme, it really didn't matter. The difference here, I think, is people are like, well, hang on. I actually do like the Beatles and I wanted a Beatles game that is like, as you said, Aerosmith or whatever, which has got the ramps and got the deep ruleset, that's probably the disconnect. And I think that people are sort of saying it's a missed opportunity, whereas Supreme people sort of just didn't care. They just scratched their heads. Yeah. I think it was limited to, I can't remember if it was 200 units or 100 units, but this is almost 2,000 units. So obviously there's a lot more units to get through. Is it 1964 units? Yeah, 1964 units. And that's in total. That's the pro? No, that's in total. so um okay 1000 I don't know I don't have the numbers in front of me but yeah uh it's still not a large amount of units to sell like they'll sell them all well we don't know because we don't know Sterns don't release their numbers so if this sells out then we will know that Stern has sold 1964 of them but we don't know how many Ghostbusters they sold we don't know how many Metallicas they sold it could be 3000 it could be 5000 it could be 10,000 we literally All you have to do is guess based on, I don't know, pin-site collector numbers and extrapolate it from there. I don't think it's very accurate. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, we'll see if it's a hit or not sales-wise. I think Stern are very confident.
    73:51
    I don't know. What do you think, Mike? Do you think they'll sell out of all of them? I just said that, yeah. I think they will because I don't think that they are a huge amount of numbers. and yes, I know that we don't know how many they sell per title but we've sort of got an indication of how many machines they sell per year. I mean, yes, it's only ruined when people can make up numbers but I think that's a low run. I think that's still in that sort of boutique-y thing for them. So, yeah, I reckon they'll sell it out. Easy. I think a lot of pinball sales and the ability to sell a pinball machine fast is highly dependent on the fear of missing out factor. And I'm not sure if that's there for this yet. Maybe soon we'll reveal something else, more gameplay footage, more information, something that'll get the hype train going.
    74:45
    But I've started to like older games. Marty, you lived through the 60s and the 70s, so you like older games. How dare you? How fucking dare you? I did not live through the 60s.
    74:58
    Raymond? For sure. I'll concede 70s and 80s. Okay. Yeah, I love old games. Yes. Okay. Yeah, no, it's for me. I find this game appealing. Okay. I don't find the price tag appealing, but I like the game. Raymond, did you... Yeah. Do you like older games now? I'm not asking you how much you like older games versus the newer ones, but do you remember back to when you first got into pinball, did you gravitate towards a certain era? Oh, yeah. I mean, I basically, I kind of dreaded, like, early Solid State because I just thought they were such, like, random, like, you know, no ball save, like, there were no cramps. So it was like you're just kind of batting the ball around. And, yeah, I wasn't a fan of them at all until I had to start actually playing them competitively. And I started, like, I forced myself to learn them. And now, actually, I like them. I like, you know, I have a Meteor.
    75:55
    So I definitely like them now. But yeah, I definitely gravitated towards DMDs. Yeah, and that's my point, is that that's the first port of call for someone that's getting into pinball. The 90s DMD era is just so appealing because of how cool the pinball machine makes you feel.
    76:13
    A lot of the buying community, I think, I'm speaking in generalizations here, but I think a lot of them like the easier games, and ramps make a game easier because it takes longer for the ball to return to the flipper. It's a safe shot. I don't think a lot of people like the solid-state games that aren't good at pinball because they are, in inherent nature, they're hard, right? And they can make this game easier with ball save and, you know, shipping it with the in-lanes closed, but at the end of the day, it's still not... It looked like they were going to ship it without any in-lane rubbers.
    76:53
    Maybe the game's too easy. I don't know. I mean, the one millimeter, one millimeter there, maybe George Gomez has created a really long-playing game. Who knows? But I see it as, yes, people will buy it, but it doesn't have that factor that Batman 66 had where, you know... Let's say they're about to reveal something, like Paul McCartney's going to personally sign all of the Diamond Editions and give you a call-out or something. I don't know. There's got to be something, right, that is better than the layout and the art and the clickability of it. Yes? No? Sure. Crickets?
    77:32
    Sure. I'm done. I'm done talking about Beatles. Yeah, move on. Move on. Okay. Move on. Someone stream it. Someone play it. Let's see if it's any good to just let... That's what I'm interested in now. Sure. Okay. So, I guess the other only new topic we're going to talk about, because the Beatles kind of dominated this week, is the American Pinball's Oktoberfest price got released. So the price of Houdini was, I believe, $7,000. This one is $7,400. So a $400 price increase, but they're including the Art Blades, which surely is $400 worth of value right there.
    78:10
    Raymond, you got to play Oktoberfest at Pinball Expo, is that correct? I actually never actually got to flip it myself. I watched, like, Steve played a bunch, and I watched a bunch of people play it, but I didn't want to wait in line.
    78:25
    The only reason why we got you on the show, Ray, is you let us down. Shut this interview down now. So, okay.
    78:35
    What are we going to talk about? I guess what we want to touch on is what Marty has dubbed as monkey games.
    78:44
    Who wants to explain this? So I will. So on the back glass, if you zoom right in, you will see that there is a depiction of a monkey grabbing two ladies on the buttocks, and they are smiling at the camera because they enjoy having their butts touched by a monkey.
    79:11
    Here's probably the best way to explain that. like you know okay it's funny and look American Pinball have then come out and said that they realised that the backlash and they're going to change it you know people are talking about the fact that it's offensive and it's effectively assault but effectively it's BCRD right there you go oh shit I mean it was it is pretty a mighty touching but Right, it is. I don't know why they would want to draw that. It seems like they were just asking for this, like, sort of... Well, it's weird, because they really dodged around the whole boobs thing. Like, I was literally thinking that there's just going to be a big busted woman just in the middle, like, Angus's face, but just a giant pair of boobs. And they, I mean, they didn't do that. But then, yeah, this is probably almost worse than that. But I didn't see it. It was only pointed out, I guess, after our interview we did last week, and we kind of said it was family-friendly, and then someone posted on... I'm not sure if it was... I think it was Joe Carabino from Canada, and he posted it on our Facebook page. I'm not sure if he's the first person that found it, but, I mean, the art is so detailed that I'm sure there's something else in there that's offensive.
    80:30
    The funny thing is, that monkey, I mean, that is like the cows to Bally Williams back in the day, where they just started chucking cows and everything. that monkey is I think the American pinball version of that because that monkey appeared on Houdini it has absolutely no place in the Oktoberfest world but that's the story was Houdini wanted extra testosterone so he was thinking of getting that from a monkey's testicles or something and injecting it into his body it was never proven that he actually that's a great story he never proven that he actually did that but on the Houdini art there is a monkey with two band-aids over his nether regions. So he's not actually a male or a female. He's a non-binary monkey. He doesn't choose to identify as a male or female monkey. Now, this is the same monkey, right? So it could be a Lezardian monkey. I don't know.
    81:27
    Anyway. That's right. Yes. So it's offensive. I mean, the pinball community is so small that it's not worth leaving that art in to defy everyone and say, well, no, this is the way we do it. It's not going to be in the final version of the game and everyone moves on. No. Which, do you know what was interesting, right? When you're talking about the art and the boobs and everybody, the thing of it was that people, I mean, look, the whole notion of the women being, you know, provocative and all that kind of stuff is kind of there. But because criticism people had over the art had nothing to do with the monkey until that came out. All the ladies where they had boobs. It was obviously talking about the lady that's got a moustache. That was intentional. But I think people were really more so critical of the fact that the artwork wasn't consistent. Some of it was cartoon. Some of it almost seemed photorealistic. It was just people really complaining that there wasn't consistency throughout the machine. Well, we know for a fact that they were scrambling to get the job done because, you know, we saw the game. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we kind of saw in the early version of the game, and it was nowhere near kind of being complete. And, I mean, Josh Kruger said himself on Pinside that, you know, those three machines that were there were being built that morning, and they didn't finish until like 3 p.m. for the 7 p.m. reveal. So the artwork will change, hopefully.
    82:53
    I mean, I would just love to see that. The game, the layout seems really cool. Jeff Deolist, Raymond said that you described it as Joe Bolsa's greatest hit You know, you kind of saw stuff from Simpsons and was on there Yeah, it's got the ramp, the side ramp, the like, I don't know, the weird It kind of makes me think of Wizard of Oz, like the layout The two magnets are the exact same pretty much locations that the magnets are on Wizard of Oz Yeah. I guess maybe it's less apparent on Wizard of Oz because the upper play field is kind of blocking a bit of the view. But, yeah, the Wizard of Oz can catch the ball to drop it into the top lanes, or for the monkey to pick it up, and it can catch it for the witch kill shot.
    83:38
    So, same kind of idea there, but obviously a bit different as well. So, hopefully we'll see a slightly different art package come up for that. And, yeah, that's Octoberfest. I said it last week in the, you know, they've got a good layout now, right? I think everyone was saying the layout's great. Artwork can change, you know? That's the easy part to change, you know? So, get to it, Joe.
    84:03
    Well, I think the one criticism was the side ramp is basically as hard as hitting the treehouse ramp on Simpsons, which, if anyone's played Simpsons, how hard that shot is. Why is it hard? Is it the geometry? Because the entrance of that shot is huge. Like, you've got Dirty Harry at home, Raymond. Like, you can hit that shot all day and it just feels so good. Why does his treehouse shot feel so weird? You can't see the entrance to that ramp on Simpsons. It's not... I think the treehouse ramp is narrow. I mean, I don't know. It also... I think it is the geometry. I think it's weird because the upper flipper on Simpsons, somehow it's supposed to be able to hit the through-the-pops target, the comic book guy, the side ramp, the quickie mart, like, something's got to give, you know, no flipper can be angled to have a sweet spot on all those shots, so I think it's just in an awkward spot on the flipper. Yeah, I guess that's an interesting way to put it, because I think, I didn't even mention there's about six shots you can hit off the Apple flipper, including, like, the, the sign mode start, and then all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I think it's the same problem, I think it's spread too thin, I don't think, it's just so hard to make a side flipper shot that's consistent and still have a whole bunch of other shots you can hit with a side flipper because there's just not that much play you can have with a side flipper. It's all about the software working with that, right? Like, the treehouse shot on Simpsons isn't really essential to progressing through the game versus, like, in Dirty Harry, like, you want to hit that shot because it's the super jackpot shot, right? Right. I think it's also the position of the ramp because it is a little bit lower. it's almost horizontal to the flipper. So the comparison I'll give as well. So we talk about things like Star Trek with its warp ramp and similar Steve Ritchie's where that ramp is sort of a little bit higher, so it's earlier on the flipper. And if you think about momentum, if the ramp is further down, then the ball's going to be a little bit faster as it gets towards the end of the flipper. Because there's another game that's similar that I really struggled when I was in disc, and that was Monopoly getting the jackpot side ramp because that is also a little bit lower as well. Yeah, dialed in is pretty high and you can just really dial in that shot and hit it almost every time. That's right, because it's high, yeah. That's probably why the SIM card is so hard, because it's so late. Yes, that's exactly right. Ah, we've figured it out. We've cracked the code, guys. That hole is actually quite a nice size. It is actually quite wide, but I think that's exactly right because it is horizontal to the upper flipper. It's kind of awesome that another game like that is Demoman. How many times have you hit that side ramp on Demoman? Did you even know there was a side ramp on Demoman? All the time. What are you talking about? No, it's very hard.
    86:57
    Do you know what they should do? Demoman almost has it swapped around, right? Like, the ramp should be where that massive scoop is, and the scoop should be where the ramp is. And Daldin has it right, except the SIM card shot is, like, it can bounce out. Like, can you imagine if the SIM card shot on dialed in was the same style as... As a Demoman's Cube. Yeah, not as big, right? Because that's huge, right? But can you imagine that it, like, there's nothing stopping it from bouncing out. It's just, if it goes in there, it goes down into a subway. Yeah, that'd be great. I actually removed the Cliffy on my dialed in because I got sick of rejects. Yeah, it's so much more fun. I mean, every Pat Lawler game, like, just is so much harder with a cliffy. Like, you can just... My Adam Stanley is worn to shit on the chair shot, but I can hit that shot just perfectly because there's no bounce out. It's just... It's all chipped around the chair shot, but that's how the game was designed by Pat Lawler. When he was spending two years designing Dialed In, he did it millimeter perfect for no cliffy. so when you add a cliffy you're absolutely destroying the geometry of the game but which one do you want? Do you want a better playing game and lower the resale value or do you want to keep the resale value of your game there but be frustrated while you play it? It'd be nice if you had both but yeah we'll see with Pat's next game if it comes with a cliffy because you know there's going to be a scoop every game he has has a scoop right and you know there'll be some side shot or something.
    88:40
    Alright, mate. Thanks for joining us. Alright. Thanks for having me, guys. Catch you later. Thanks, Raymond. See ya. Bye. So, that was Raymond Davidson. And, Ryan, what did we learn?
    88:54
    Not enough. So many unanswered questions. Like, what did he think of Thunderbirds? Yeah, that's true. He did got to play Thunderbirds. I don't think you went deeply enough into the rules of all the games. Well, I wanted to know, like... No, it was a spoofs fest.
    89:11
    Okay, if you enjoy talk like that, please email in. Head to head. I'm serious. No, I know you're serious, because then you're sending me a... People want it. Yeah. I don't know, because one person has said it.
    89:23
    Well, it's... Okay, email in if you don't like hearing that stuff. Have a day. What's really interesting about Raymond is, and I've known this as well, he doesn't necessarily know the intricate rules like some other people that we speak to he knows everything that you need to have the perfect game okay and that's what he can do he can just set up everything at once but it doesn't necessarily need to know how all those bonus behind the scenes points are made, he just knows exactly what to do sure yeah a couple of things we missed a bit all over the place with our news reporting but did you know Marty that the Beatles pinball machine the remake the new pinball machine by Stern did you know the spinners Marty don't use micro switches and they have optos to count the spins which means less resistance which means more spins yeah I did know that did you know that the Beatles regardless of how much it costs still has yellow instruction cards that drives you nuts well Batman 66 had the super alley treatment and that didn't have yellow instruction cards so I think someone Greg Ferris just didn't get a memo just signed up just but yeah maybe it'll change it for me one day maybe that'll be my influence on the hobby is stamping out yeah yellow instruction cards but there's no inappropriate monkeys on it so you know they've still done okay The cool thing about American Pinball is they not only have custom instruction cards, they also let you know the history behind the theme they're going with, right? So there's actually Oktoberfest Wikipedia copy and paste stuff on the Oktoberfest machine. Isn't that great, Marty? Oh. Just in case you don't know what Oktoberfest is, you walk up to the machine and you're like, I don't want to put $2 on this. And then you read the instruction card, oh shit, this has been going on for 100 years. I want to put some money in. Yep. Okay.
    91:29
    Did you know, Marty, did you know that before this crazy sexy monkey thing started to happen, that an American pinball representative said that there will be alternative art available for Sexpoberfest as an additional purchase? Now, I'm not sure if that just means a racy trans light, or if it's kind of like the Radcals on JGP where you can, like, slap on, you know, like, side art as well. But do you think that's a good idea now after what's transpired?
    92:03
    I would hope it's Radcals. Radcals? Well, no, I don't, yeah, no. Butter cabinet. I don't know. I just, you know.
    92:14
    Last week we posed the question, would it be cool if Stern went online since they're going to do it and what would be some cool additions that they could do for the pinball machine. Fantastic. And how many entry did we get? We got one from Jared Mendoza. Hey, we can read it now if you want, just to blend in the male segment into the normal show. Sure. Let's go. Yeah. Okay.
    92:40
    Caught me off guard. He says, You asked what I'd like in a pinball machine. Should they go wireless? Split screen in the back for gameplay and Pornhub. you know that's what we all want i'm just saying it for the masses deliver it stern and deep root and pinball will become the norm um that's why people have mobile phones mr mendoza um i started a thread on pinside very active um but very active for the reasons of arguments unfortunately um there's some good ideas in there and but most people will kind of well a lot of people don't care about it just like you Marty keep it offline a lot of people are excited about it and a lot of people are like well I don't want my pinball machine to get hacked bro there's hackers out there hacksaws they're going to 0011111 in my pinball machine and boom they're going to steal all my information I don't know it's true anything that is online can be hacked but yeah I'm sure Stern is surely well maybe not, I don't know but who's going to hack into one machine? Somebody, some board person Here are two answers that I plucked out One was from Yoko to Una on Pinside, he said weekly tournaments for similar machines running similar code create virtual leagues for those who aren't in an area where there are leagues close by Of course there's issues surrounding that to do with tilt bobs and And maybe they can also have a digital tilt bob so you can't cheat it. I don't know. Zach AJ, who is Zach from the Slam Tilt podcast, said, I like to see automatic reporting of issues, et cetera, while on route. No need to go and check your games if they can tell when they detect an issue. Maybe give you reminders to clean them every 100,000 plays. And I guess you can also see earnings. And, yes. And my idea was to have head-to-head battles, right? So me versus you, Marty.
    94:45
    You know, if I could somehow incorporate streaming into the whole thing as well, that'd be awesome. But yeah, a head-to-head battle, Marty, where I say, let's get to Kobayashi Maru, like we've done before in the past. But instead of saying, oh, I got there first, or you got there first, the machine just dies when someone gets there, and it shows up on the screen, and you can have an ongoing tally. Blah-dee-blah-blah-blah, I know you don't care, you're not listening. It's gonna happen one day. Yeah, yeah
    95:13
    There is a use for it Everyone says I don't know until they do it and it becomes a norm. I'm sure I mean I could play like You like doom online, you know, like from the 1990s you play online
    95:30
    The machines are super duper far back. And yes, I know it's a mechanical real world real world experience kind of thing but it doesn't mean that you can't share that experience with someone somewhere else. Marty, you just want to play some of the Top 100, don't you? Is that what you're waiting for? I am desperate for it. No, I'm still in holiday mode. You know that.
    95:51
    Marty, did you know that Pinside updates the Top 100 every week? But they've added a little thing I just noticed saying the Top 100 will update in six days and 21 hours. So whenever we record, it's literally three hours after it updates. Okay. Eddie Evil Manners is back to its number one position. Number one.
    96:11
    JPOTC, they didn't properly put that, Robin, is number two. The second greatest aim of all time. Unfortunately, Iron Maiden is pin sliding all the way down to seventh position, Marty. Oh, really? Yeah. Pin sliding. Bringing that one back up.
    96:28
    Still, I'm looking, still no sign of Thunderbirds. Oh, did it get more rating? I don't know. I can't see it, so maybe not. This game has received 11 approved ratings, only four more needed. Woo-hoo! Let me just quickly read the latest rating, Marty. Are you ready for this? I'm ready. Five days ago, so this was after our podcast. I think this was because of us.
    96:53
    This is by Caucasian2step. Thunderbirds is a new game from Australia slash China. The pros, someone with a passion for pinball made it happen. The T2 ramp and lock is interesting, and multiple start with the ball rising from under the playfield is neat. The cons. The game does not play well. The ramp in the middle to spell international rescue with one shot for each third does not add to the challenge of the game. It adds monotony to the game. While the stand-up drop targets to load the T2 lock, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, why bother? Take away. New pinball companies are a good thing. new pinball games are a good thing, but if the price is not up to snuff, the company is not going to survive. 3.785 out of 10. That's pretty low. Yeah, well, the next one is, I wanted to like it more, but that center ramp isn't fun to shoot. Beyond that, it takes up prime real estate and prevents some cross-play field shot. The racing ramp also seems like a disappointment. It lifts up, and then the ball just bangs around on some exposed targets. Love seeing new companies take a crack at it, But this first attempt is a miss. Swing and a miss for me. I like this detailed review from Pimbala31520. Fun theme! Fun theme. 7.6 out of 10. Yep. It is a... Four more, four more, right? I can't wait to see where it debuts. Every WP debut at two, can we get this up to number one on Pinside Not with those rams I afraid Last week Marty I absolutely destroyed you Yeah you came Finally Yes. Thank you.
    98:32
    I can't remember what the game was, but I remember. Well, I do. Mouncing Around versus Phantom of the Opera. And here's the reality, because, you know, obviously last week we sort of argue our points.
    98:45
    Mouncing Around is by far the better game. I understand. It's so much fun to play. The problem with Phantom of the Opera, it's not the art. I love the look of that machine. The problem is, it's just the layout is just terrible. The rules are really awful. Like, there's actually nothing to do in that game, really. Multi-ball, get that ramp on your last ball to either double your score or get bloody millions or something. Is multi-ball available for free on the last ball, regardless of what you've done? That I don't know. I don't think it's of that same year that those... That year. Oh, but that era. That era. Okay. Because it's pretty much an early... Nice. Okay. It didn't have modes or anything. So, yeah. Wait. Does it have a D&D?
    99:37
    I don't think it does. No. The translator's gone. Anyway. All right. Let's go to... And the worst part of Phantom of the Opera is this woman's scream. You think those screams that you've heard on modern machines like Houdini, they are nothing compared to the screams from Phantom of the Opera. It is the worst.
    99:57
    Okay. Yeah, there you go. Please generate a number from 100 to 200. Okay. 157. Is The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends. Don't forget the friends. Okay, that's my one. What a fun game. What an absolute fun game. Please generate a number from 100 to 200. All right.
    100:32
    166. Oh, fella. Thank you. Oh, two super colourful rainbow pinball machines. You will win. Okay. Only one of them playable. You ready to go, Marty? Yeah, you go first Let me just get a picture, actually I was a little bit too confident there I'm really keen to hear you go into the rules of this game It's right Yep, that's right I want you to tell me at least two rules in this game I've got the instruction card right here You ready, mate? I'm ready So, do you remember, Marty, last week how I said Data East pinball machines are rubbish? They're not. I remember, I think everyone remembers you saying all Data East machines are terrible.
    101:25
    Well, what am I comparing it to this week, Marty? Not a Bloomington's machine. So, okay. Rocking Bullwink. Bullwinkle. And friends. Don't forget the friends. Absolutely amazingly fun pinball machine because it's colourful, okay? No drab sands on the opera sheet, okay? We've got three different colours for the wire forms. You've got yellow, you've got green, you've got blue. They even painted the inside of the cabinet blue, Marty. So, yes, don't care about art blades. You've got a blue cabinet, okay?
    101:54
    You've got beautiful art, just vibrant popping colours with, like, flowers as the inserts. As with all Dada East games, you can get tri-ball because they couldn't use the word multi-ball.
    102:07
    This is one of the only games, Marty, that will reward you for a death save. Did you know that, Marty? That if you death save on this pinball machine, it'll give you, like, a bonus and say something on the D&D. Isn't that exciting? The only pinball machine to do it. Just encourage you to break the legs of your pinball machine.
    102:25
    The rules, the rules are pretty cool, Marty. You know, you get modes, you shoot the shots, you shoot the blinking light.
    102:34
    Yes, better than any Zachariah pinball machine out there. Dada East, Rocky Bullwinkle, and friends. Wow. Oh, you're going to get a painting.
    102:46
    Fafala by Zachariah. One of, if not the prettiest games you'll ever find. And did you know what fafala means, Ryan?
    102:57
    I don't know. Is it the same as botana? It means butterfly. Okay. Oh, isn't that nice? So a vote against this machine is a vote for the destruction of beautiful butterflies. this is a great game I love this it's probably I wouldn't necessarily say it's even the best playing Farfella but overall for the sound package is fantastic the art is great the layout is great it's got an upper play field it's got these really cool things like forget about your Magnus things this has actually got flippers on the outline so once you do what you've got to do to light the auto thing. As the ball goes down, the flipper flips out and it's almost like a ball return.
    103:49
    Very innovative. I've got a real soft spot for this game. I played it a lot when it came out. A friend of mine had one at home. I played it to death. It is a fantastic game and they're very hard to find and therefore they go for an absolute fortune.
    104:05
    This is the difference between these two pins, Marnie. Both of them are good looking. I will argue for you that Farfella is prettier than Rocky and Bullwinkle. But Rocky and Bullwinkle is actually fun to play, okay? Farfella is just pretty. That's all it is, okay? It's an upper play field that just doesn't really do that much, right?
    104:24
    And there's no multi-ball, Marty. Rocky and Bullwinkle has multi-ball, and I'm guessing that it's also free on the last ball for all the newbies. So, a vote for Farfella is a vote for the mindless raising of prices in pinball purely to do with art. And we don't want that in pinball, Marty. We want amazing art and we want good gameplay. Data Reese will give that to you, Marty. Hmm. Okay. The lovable characters of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends.
    104:55
    What's the character on Farfella? The butterfly? Sure. Just the colours? Yep. Rainbows? It's beauty.
    105:05
    Okay. That's all I've got. Okay. So... You have to tell me how bad Rockin' Bullwinkle is. Here's the problem with Rockin' Bullwinkle.
    105:15
    One of my absolute favourite themes. I grew up watching Rockin' Bullwinkle religiously. And the great thing about the show is that there's so many characters. You know, you've got Boris and Natasha. You've got Mr Peabody and Sherman, you know, obviously as well. They're friends, right? You know, we're Rocky and Bullwinkle and friends. The problem with this machine is they didn't do that many call-outs. So it just is so freaking repetitive. The same thing over and over again.
    105:51
    Are there any call-outs in Farfala, Marty? No. There's probably, you know, Farfala from Zachariah. I don't know. I don't know how it starts. But the actual problem with Rocky and Bullwinkle is it's actually not a fun layout. It's just not fun to shoot. I loved it when it came out. I hate it now because the layout is just really not a lot of fun. And rules-wise, which you didn't go into because I don't think you've ever played this machine. I haven't played the machine, money. Have you? One game. Yeah, there you go.
    106:23
    And I can't remember what it is, but it's also one of these games that can't be played in tournaments because it's got this really obvious exploit that everybody goes for and it completely ruins the game. So, you know, it's like one of those catch-up feature things or, you know, most games get 50 million, but there's one shot that's a billion and, you know, it's just... Now, it's not a great game, whereas Crust Alley is a really nice... It's always featured... Yes, it's featured in Swarmlands all the time, isn't it, mate?
    106:53
    Well, you just can't find them, though, because people have them in their private collections. they don't want to let them go because they're so beautiful. You fucking bullshit us. You had a chance to buy Farfella a couple of months ago and he messaged you when you were looking for that. I know. Advertising on machine and you're like, eh, pretty game, but you know. Well, it's just not what I wanted. I didn't want, because I saw the state of that era, I wanted a more modern machine. But for that era, Farfella is a fantastic game. Ah. You can see the chick's nipples. Oh, well. Is that what Alternative Expand's like? No, it isn't. Oh, monkey gate.
    107:30
    Smack butterfly gate. Okay, guys, everybody. Everybody, right? You know, regardless, because everyone's just going to see the gifs and you're going to have a really funny Rocky and Bullwinkle gif and it's going to get the win, right? Here's what you've got to understand, people.
    107:45
    Ryan has not given you a solid argument. And I'll tell you why. I have. No, well, did you talk about the back glass?
    107:54
    The back glass of Fast Fallon? No. of Rocky and Bullwinkle. Okay, it's Backglass to Backglass of Bugs the Flyfella because it's very pretty and she has... That's all I'm talking about. What's notable about the backglass on Rocky and Bullwinkle?
    108:08
    Rocky's there and Bullwinkle's there and also the friends are there. A true representation of the name of the Timber Machine, Arlene. Right, so everybody listening, I gave him an opportunity to demonstrate that he had knowledge about this machine. He doesn't because it has got an interactive backglass. He pulls the freaking rabbit out of the hat And he gets it wrong And he goes But it never works Cool Because I don't give a shit about interactive back glasses See guys A vote for Ryan is A vote for criminals He's a fraud Criminals He's a fraud Okay I'll put that up on Facebook On Tuesday slash Wednesday And you guys and girls can vote for Who had the best argument Or who had the best nibbles in this case. I might just give you someone that has their nipples poking out, Marty, and that might give you the win. How about that? That's all this game is. It's a rainbow with nipples, okay? Yep, I got it. Farfella. Rainbow plus nipples equals Farfella. Okay.
    109:08
    Oh, it is. It's a weird one. He's so lame. Okay, this week, we're going to link all this stuff in the show notes. Someone is making a Breaking Bad pinball machine, and he's re-theming Judge Dredd to do it and posted it on Facebook and Instagram and I think it looks bloody cool. I think it looks fantastic. One person didn't think so. One person didn't think so and the artist came in and said it was fake news. I thought that was funny. So the artist is Brian Allen who we talk to every once in a while and he's the guy who was in the alternative alien alley pinball machine scene. Flyland Designs. designs. That is Flyland Designs. .com.au, money. Because his art is sensational. He is very good. And that Breaking Bad play field looks exceptionally good. I like the use of colours.
    110:07
    Anyway, that's just the custom homebrew game, but I'm excited to see it finished. I'm not sure... I mean, you know, I think it's getting someone else to do the cabinet art and the backlash, but it'd be interesting to see the full, complete game. And, I mean, because, I mean, the inserts have, like, custom modes on there, so how much detail did this guy go into? Well, this is what I'm saying, like, you know, if you just put, let's say you get a play field, and plus you get plastics and all that kind of stuff, and you make it look like a Breaking Bad game, you're still playing Judge Dredd, the code, unless they're redoing the code as well.
    110:46
    Because I don't know, I don't get unless you are recoding it. It's just things a bit odd to me, but it looks like freaking bad, but you're still hearing the call-outs from Judge Dredd. Yeah, well, I mean, what are the call-outs from Judge Dredd? 15 years for this, 15 years for that. It could be the cop guy. I don't know. Talking about re-theming demo machines, segue, that same crew that did the re-theme for Castrol have done it again with a re-thing for Illawarra 98FM Convoy, whatever the hell it is. I'm pretty sure... I showed you, Marty. It's the same game again, right? Yeah, it looks the same. It's like a... Same game, but this one's like just rainbow colours. We'll link that in the show notes as well. How much did we say it went for, Marty? I don't know. I think... Okay, it was auctioned off for charity. Someone bought it for... Take this, Beatles and Stern. $50,000.
    111:45
    Wow. That is insane. And it is a true limited edition. There is only one of them. What else this week?
    111:56
    Just to be on the topic of Monkeygate, we've got... You know what? If we're going to be really inappropriate, let's go all the way.
    112:04
    Let's just piss off as many people as we can this week, Marty. We got an email, a frequent emailer, and they said, a new pinball machine for the Nintendo Switch. Japanese only. Sexy anime girls. See for yourself. Looks fun. Rest in peace, Highway Playboy. Now, I clicked on this link expecting just, I don't know, a pinball machine with Japanese art on it, but this is a bit more interactive than that, Marty, isn't it? Yeah, I'm not entirely sure about this. Like, it's an Nintendo system, and it is incredibly inappropriate. So, you know, if you thought Monkey Gate was bad, this is far worse.
    112:48
    Yes, this is... Obviously, Japanese people just can get away with anything because if a monkey rubbing a girl's arse is offensive, and I'm not saying that it's not offensive, but then this is, like... Yeah, if you want to be offended... You need a trigger. Yes, if you want to be offended, click the fucking link on this thing because it's really offensive. but Ryan said it's out there it's news it's social media yeah hey we got emailed this before the monkey thing so this is not someone saying it's funny and here's the content this was before we do a weekly show okay but I guess what I was saying is that if you were offended by monkey there's actually worse out there so I don't know it's hard what to make of this because you look at it and you go oh well that's Japan that's what they do but should they?
    113:38
    oh I guess people are fucking weird, Marty. They're very weird. I know, you're telling. What else? Buffalo Pimble. Our friends at the Brody Even Buffalo Pimble. Is that the name of the show? It's not. Give it another go. It's not. It's close.
    113:53
    If you would like to know what the best game ever is, they have an hour and 40, an hour and 50 minute show about Pirates of the Caribbean and they interview Eric and they literally talk about the machine for like an hour and a half plus on, and Nick said it's his favourite pinball machine ever. They both have the pinball machine. They both bought it and that's a site for themselves. So they are both obsessed with the pinball machine. If you would like to watch and hear people passionately talking about that pinball machine and why they think it's a good pinball machine, we'll link that in the show notes. Cool. Marty, I'm glad that these are all stories for me because you've done a lot of research this week. Marty, did you know that Flip Frenzy is a very hard format to run? Did you know that? I do know that because I've run like five of them. Yes, and Jimmy has good software out there, and the spreadsheet is good, but it's hard to kind of explain. It is now going to be supported by Andreas on Matchplay. I'm not sure if I've mentioned that before, but he's officially kind of teased it on the forums. It looks very cool. You just press a button, and it tells you the next game. Excellent. Love it. Good. Last one, Marty. I hope it's out before December 1st because that's when I'm running. the big mega lock-in with 100 people on it.
    115:11
    How good would it be if it's so easy to run, Marty, that you can just have a tablet there, right, and the queue monitors the tablet, and you and me can play as well? Oh, I love that.
    115:23
    Yeah, let's do it. The last one is, remember I was talking about Quicksilver, Marty, and the fact that my playfield is fucked and I want it, and there's no reproduction playfield. Wouldn't it be really nice if someone, Mirko, was going to do a reproduction, but only if they got enough numbers.
    115:41
    And wouldn't it be cool, Marty, if I message everyone that I know that has a Quicksilver and they have enough numbers. And they mention it on a podcast. People, if you want a repro Quicksilver, please, please put a note in to do it because Ryan's Quicksilver is absolute arse.
    116:03
    Like it actually is. Yeah, it is. Yeah. You know what's funny, though, is that someone messaged me today, and it said, like, well, once they do the playfield, like, you can build your own machine. Like, that's the final thing. Like, you can get everything else. You can get reproduction. You can make your own cabinet. All the parts are generic in the back box, like, powering everything. There's no ramps. It's just, like, spinners and stuff. So, I mean, I don't need to, but I'm like, well, maybe I should make a Godzilla, and no one will sell me a Godzilla. Probably not. Sorry, I bothered. But anyway, that was Social Media Watch. What did you get up to this week, Marty, in Fimble? Well, the first thing I did was I attempted, I think I'll say, I attempted to stream Wizard of Oz. Okay. Remember I had the magnets didn't work, but I fixed the magnets?
    116:50
    Yeah, with the fuse that James came in. Yeah, that's right. Now that, you know the lock mechanism on Wizard of Oz where you've got that weird sort of bar that comes down and lifts up? Yeah. Yeah, it's not lifting anymore.
    117:04
    At all? At all. Have you gone to... No, I've done nothing. ...SolidWorks, Jess? No. Okay. I turned it off and moved the stream over to Star Trek.
    117:14
    Okay. I just have it on the list of things that you need to come over and fix. Is it registering a lock? That's the important question. Yes.
    117:24
    Okay, so it registers all three locks, then multiple starts and nothing happens. That's right. And so when you put a ball back up that middle ramp, it just stays there. Yeah, it just stays there. Okay, so that means the optos are working, or at least the first opto. Maybe the second or third opto aren't working. They all are kind of plugged in separately into our little opto boards. That's one thing you can look at. Awesome. Yeah, or the solenoid's not working. Yeah, great. Anyway, so that was really that. But I've actually, you know how you went over to Japan and you told everybody about Japan, and it literally went for like 45 minutes even though it was not people related. There was a funny poo story in there, no? There was, yeah, quite a few. Yeah? Okay. Well, I'll give you a funny poo story.
    118:14
    Did you know that wombats, the shape of their poo is cubed? No, I did not know that. How did they ask you that?
    118:27
    Do you know what? It was the question I really wanted to ask, but I never did. Okay. All I heard is that they have all, any bit of nutrient or any bit of liquid just is absolutely absorbed, so it just comes out rock hard. Anyway, they are cute. Why am I telling you this story? Well, you know, you started talking about poos. I wanted to give a poo story. I have been to an island.
    118:54
    Okay. An island in the middle of fucking nowhere. Well, it's actually in the middle. It's in between Victoria and Tasmania. It's in the middle of Tasmania. I'm sorry. One second.
    119:05
    I Googled, why is wombat poo square? Square. And it said related questions. People asked, do wombats have square buttholes?
    119:20
    Which is the question I wanted to ask. Do they have square buttholes? They die when they poo. What the fuck? Why would a swan die when they poo? Ah, okay. Sorry. The reason why this is relevant is because I went to a place called Flinders Island, which is in the middle of Bass Strait. It's an hour flight on... You know what? It's an airplane that's got propellers. Seriously. Like, you know, crazy. and it is honestly the most beautiful place I think I've ever been to. Just spectacular beaches, spectacular mountains, but it's a land lost in time. It's very rural, very agricultural. Everybody knows each other's business. Everyone talks to everybody. What businesses are there? Is it just tourism? There is tourism. There's lots of farm... So, lamb, exporting lamb is very important. So, if you ever get Flinders Island lamb, it is the most amazing thing you can see on a menu.
    120:29
    Cheese, they do. They make their own gin. Colley Crab. Yeah. It's a plant that they make into oils. I don't know. It's like a country town, but everybody, honestly, particularly those people who are in Australia, Look up Splendours Island and just go. Like, it's pretty much a hippie commune, really.
    120:56
    Is it a good place for a holiday for me and the kids? Absolutely. Or they'll be bored out of their brain? Well, if you like going on walks, if they like swimming in beaches. Like, I swear to you, you look at the water at the beach and you can see the bottom of the ocean. Okay. It is that clear. I mean, I sent you some pictures. You saw it. Just somebody, just one every five minutes. I was just reminding you how I was literally in paradise. So the problem was it was completely devoid of pinball. So I've been away for four days. I just got back today. So, you know, and not really good internet, I'm afraid.
    121:37
    Well, you still did the Raymond interview. Well, and that's why you can tell the audio quality of that interview from my side was pretty low because I didn't have great internet coverage. Dedication, just dedication. That's what I did. This week, jeez, I did a couple of things. I'll briefly kind of go through them. I went to Bayside, Marty, just for the sake of going and just did absolutely horribly.
    122:02
    Marty, did you know their machines are all in horrible condition? Did you know that? Yeah, we've mentioned it many times. Yeah, okay. I'm going to go through all three of them really quickly, the three games that I played that I didn't qualify on. the Ironman I spent the entire game trying to get into Ironmonger multiball and I did and only one ball came out because two balls are missing from that game I don't know how that's possible but yeah two balls on Ghostbusters I was going pretty well and I was on my last ball, I had an okay score and the extra ball came on sorry, the extra ball at the scoop came on and I'm like alright, I want to go for that because it's the last ball and we play extra balls in this tournament so I hit the scoop and it's a long animation. You know that, Marty. It's a long, unskippable animation. So I got it and I walked away. Not walked away, like, that's the Tim Warms machine, but I took a step back just to cool down. You know, it's an intense game.
    122:56
    It went into the scoop and no animation, no strip ball getting awarded, and then shut it back out. And you know that Ghostbusters, Marty, will shoot it through the middle. Yes.
    123:07
    And everyone saw it and I was like, well, there's only one switch in there. so it registered the ball going in there that's why the solenoid went off to kick it out but it didn't award anything so, ghostbusters it is an old code, but I was just I mean, after those two machines I just didn't care anymore and Mataka was all my own fault that machine sucked, but it was all my fault going for an extra ball for three balls and draining going for an extra ball, instead of draining for multiple that's also got a right sling that often doesn't register so you think the ball's going to bounce over and it doesn't, and you lose the ball. Yeah. The funny thing was, I... You know, Metallica's my last game, and I usually say it because it uses this weird format where it's kind of like... Is there an official name for the format? Because this is not officially supported on MaxPlay, is it?
    124:03
    Well, yeah, it is. It's a best game format. It's best game, but best game is usually like, you know, 100, then 95, everyone gets a score like that. Whereas this uses a more fair method, I guess, where the highest game, the game that has the highest scoring, which is always Ghostbusters, that is the base value, and then every game is averaged out and given a multiplier based on that. So if you get 5 million on Iron Man, the average is, say, like 10 million, it'll bubble up. It's like 20 times that Iron Man. Anyway, hard to explain, but all I needed, Marty, was like something $14 million on Metallica. Yeah, easy. I didn't check. I was just like, you know what? I want to get it all inside my head, and I want to get like $13 million if I know it's $14 million. So I got $5 million.
    124:54
    Anyway, it was stupid. Okay, it was a dump. I hardly performed something. I went to PAX this weekend, Marty. I wasn't planning to, but I went on Friday, and I hung out with Jarrett. I got to play Deadpool for the first time. And what did you think of it? really early to tell I think I played two or three games and um they had it set up right so that shot that everyone talks about that clunks um it only clunked on me once and yes it is extremely unsatisfying when you think you've hit that shot perfectly but when you do hit it it's beyond satisfying so I guess there's a balance there somewhere in the middle right sometimes you're gonna be really satisfied sometimes you're gonna be pissed off um I mean, I couldn't hear exactly the sounds, but I still think it's weird that there's so many different types of sounds in that game. Yeah, when they've got the old Williams sounds in there, that seems a bit odd to me.
    125:49
    It does, and it shouldn't, but it's like, I'm going to compare it again to TNA. I get TNA because it has the same genre of music all the way through, right? So when you hear that, like the spinner sound compliments that, whether it's the normal spinner sound or the super spinner sound. With Deadpool, it's that classic sound, but you're comparing it to what else is going on. And there's so many different types of music in that game that sometimes it doesn't feel weird. Maybe it's just a matter of getting used to.
    126:21
    I might go to Pixel Alley this weekend to play it again in the tournament because it's being cited there. Yeah, that's true. It's 10 minutes away from my house.
    126:31
    What else? I had a Halloween party this weekend, which was half-in-ball people but half-normal people. I love that. Yeah, people are abnormal. You know that, honey. That's right. And I did have a moment where I played, we played four-player games on the old classic games, and it was just, I've never done that properly. And it took, I think, 20 minutes to go through four of the games with four people. That's the cool thing about classic games. It's just no one's waiting around forever.
    127:02
    Awesome. And that's it. Awesome. Are we done for the week, Marty? I think we're done for the week. I think that's pretty good effort from us and from Raymond Davidson. That was a fantastic effort from him. I give him a seven. That depends on PD rating.
    127:18
    We just got an email, Marty. Are we doing the mailbag? Yeah, go for it. It's a long email, Marty. You're a little near enough.
    127:27
    Okay, yeah, that is the only email. It's from Switzerland. Okay. All right, I'll read it then. Holy shit, this is a long email. Okay, go for it. It says, greetings from Switzerland. I'm a new but enthusiastic fan of your show, and as an Australian living overseas, it's great listening to Aussie accents and humour from afar. I enjoy listening to your show whilst working on practical things at work, and it really helps me during my commutes and long drives. Lots of fun. I've had an idea in my mind for a while now for an interesting thing for Pinball Machine that I wanted to share with you, which is an unlicensed particle collider theme or a licensed CERN theme. I assume you know the organisation. Yes. Know the organisation. I have a friend that works there. Nice. It's true. It does. So, as I mentioned, some cool toys with a plasma, like one of those glass ball things with purple plasma inside that when you touch the glass, you're focused, where your hand makes contact with the glass, which is kind of similar to what they've got in... um what's that what's the brush no he said no but he's talking about the ball but you know what I mean you could put that at him just share it with him no I know um he said uh and another play field that is circular system um you know I reckon we've probably said too much this is going to be a homebrew thing but you know yeah there's a lot of like links and stuff it was either getaway or Star Wars, because the Hadron Collider, right? Yeah, that's it. That's what they are. Yeah, so they whiz particles around at insane speeds, and they smash them together, and they record the results to see if they can make new elements or that kind of stuff. Anyway. I think it'd be cool. I mean, that whole... I mean, I'm fascinated by electricity.
    129:15
    But, you know, I love the idea. He's saying, you know, an upper playfield that is a circular system where balls can be trapped, then be executed to collide for a chance to find the Higgs boson or some fundamental particle. I would love this kind of stuff. I don't know if there are enough science lovers out there in Timbal. People like Star Trek and sci-fi, but I'm not sure if people like the study of science. I know what you mean. But if you could make it that it was some electrical masterpiece where it just visually looked amazing with, you know, particles or electrolysis, which is what I said last week. Yes. You know. Imagine the custom instruction card that American Pinball could make up for you with, you know, the Hadron Collider. Oh, no, I love it. I'm just, like, geeking out on this email. You know, he's talking about Proton Synchrotron. Super Proton Synchrotron. and finally the Large Hadron Collider.
    130:21
    Terminology in the accelerator field that we fund and use too, like proton bunches, femto-barns, superconductivity, ramp-up beam dump, heat load, beam dump and... Christopher Frangie-Marty is having an absolute fit. He's triggered now. We are not talking... We've spent so much time not talking about pinball... This is a pinball idea. This is an idea.
    130:43
    Anyway, hey, Christopher Frangie-Marty, we should get him on the show, Marty. What do you think? Yeah, I think that's a great idea. He did the Beatles art, right? We should talk to him about that. Well, we should get him back. He did promise that when he released a new machine, he would come back on our show, so why not? Cool. Excellent. All right. We'll see you all next week. Thanks, everyone. Bye.
    131:03
    Going straight to the Wild Wild West.