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Midwest Gaming Classic Recap

Poor Man's Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·analyzed·Apr 16, 2019
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

MGC recap: Wonka reveal highlights, Black Knight Pro disappoints, Beatles and Alice Cooper impress.

Summary

Drew and Ian from Poor Man's Pinball Podcast recap their experience at Midwest Gaming Classic (MGC), including attending the Willie Wonka reveal. They discuss games played, meet industry figures like Steve Ritchie and Pat Lawler, and provide detailed impressions of both new and classic machines, with particular criticism of Stern's Black Knight Sword of Rage Pro Edition as under-featured.

Key Claims

  • Black Knight Sword of Rage Pro Edition is bare-bones and a tough sell compared to Premium/LE versions

    high confidence · Ian and Drew, firsthand experience at MGC playing multiple models

  • Star Wars Premium should be priced closer to $7,000 but feels incomplete at that price point

    medium confidence · Drew, speculation based on gameplay experience at Zach's Flippin' Out Pinball booth

  • Stern's approach on Black Knight feels like penny-pinching and going backward; Premium design should have been Pro tier

    high confidence · Ian, direct criticism of manufacturing decisions

  • Oktoberfest has poor image resolution, muddy artwork in person, and flow issues despite interesting shots

    high confidence · Ian, firsthand play experience; Drew corroborates on artwork quality

  • CGC sold nearly all 22 remakes (Attack from Mars/Monster Bash) by Saturday night at MGC

    medium confidence · Drew citing post from Troy Smith on social media

  • Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle is an excellent game with great mood, lighting, and shaker integration

    high confidence · Ian and Drew, both enthusiastic firsthand assessment

  • Beatles is a surprisingly fun game with elegant design despite minimal on-field elements

    high confidence · Drew, firsthand play; described left loop as standout feature

  • Steve Ritchie was present at MGC walking the floor and approachable to fans

    high confidence · Drew and Ian, direct encounter and conversation

Notable Quotes

  • “That pro felt completely unfinished... it almost seems to me like Stern's going backwards.”

    Ian @ ~28:30 — Core criticism of Black Knight Pro Edition design philosophy and manufacturing strategy

  • “If you put that thing in your basement, any non-pinball person is going to gravitate towards that. It's a lot to do. It's colorful.”

    Drew @ ~34:45 — Assessment of Oktoberfest appeal to casual vs. enthusiast players

  • “This game had more in it than Black Knight. Womp womp.”

    Ian @ ~45:00 — Baywatch comparison highlighting Black Knight Pro's lack of content

  • “If you're gonna play your fucking games don't ever go near it because that message was brought to you by gary stern thanks gary”

    Ian (re: Game of Thrones Premium upper playfield) @ ~48:15 — Sarcastic jab at premium feature usability for active players

  • “He's literally reading from his phone... if you're gonna do it especially something that's like the multi-million dollar company you need to do it a little better”

    Ian @ ~55:30 — Criticism of Wonka reveal presentation quality and professionalism

Entities

DrewpersonIanpersonSteve RitchiepersonPat LawlerpersonJosh KuglerpersonCharliepersonZach SharpepersonEricperson

Signals

  • ?

    product_concern: Black Knight Sword of Rage Pro Edition criticized as under-featured and 'bare-bones' compared to Premium/LE, with hosts suggesting Pro design should have been standard and Premium design should have been Pro tier

    high · Ian: 'That pro felt completely unfinished... Stern's going backwards.' Drew: 'Premium model felt like that should have been the pro model.' Multiple references to lack of content and 'penny pinching.'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Hosts expressing frustration with Stern's apparent strategy of stripping down Pro models to maximize Premium/LE sales, perceiving it as unsustainable pricing differentiation

    high · Ian: 'They can't pinch pennies forever.' Drew: 'It almost seems to me like Stern's going backwards.' Both recommend flipping before buying Black Knight Pro.

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Beatles praised for elegant, minimal-content design that works through superior shot layout and repeatability; contrasts with Black Knight Pro which feels incomplete

    high · Drew: 'Beatles is a good example of not much on there but boy it's designed around not having a ton of stuff.' Ian on Beatles left-loop repeatability: 'oh man oh man yeah so cool.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Oktoberfest artwork criticized as muddy and low-resolution in person, failing to match concept appeal despite interesting shot layouts and modes

    high · Ian: 'Seeing it in person it almost looked muddy... the resolution was off like it wasn't high-res resolution images.' Drew corroborates artwork quality concern.

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Game of Thrones Premium upper playfield criticized as aesthetically beautiful but functionally distracting for active players due to lane proximity on base layout

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.246

0:00
Welcome to the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast, episode number five. The only pinball podcast sponsored by Willy Wonka Candy. When you want a Willy in your mouth, try Wonka Candy.
0:21
I am Drew, and with me is the man, the myth, the legend, John Papaduke. What's going on, Papaduke? what's going on pinball people how you doing it's ian it is ian and i am drew surprise no guests for you john papaduke will not be here tonight he's got prior engagements yeah sorry and lawsuits um too soon too soon too soon what are you drinking today oh man you know what i've been having you know some good weeks i've been losing a lot of weight so tonight i'm like fuck it i'm drinking some whiskey and coke just coke uh no diet coke nope regular straight coke tonight hey i don't even have a lime in there tonight you know it's just it's just getting browner and browner by the second every time i pour one of these things man that's because i'm too lazy to buy limes for you anymore yeah that's actually what happened i love limes in my drink i could never get enough and ian's like fuck you i don't want to get you any more lines i can't go to the store every time we do this podcast cheap motherfucker all right i am going to be drinking tonight some jamo and ginger ale so a little jamo ginger for you folks out there ian got me hooked on those a long time ago they're they're delicious ginger ale with your whiskey is just fabulous i didn't think about it until i went to the uh distillery tour in dublin and the three options were whiskey neat uh whiskey uh you know jameson and cranberry and then there was jameson and ginger ale and i was like wait a second you can do that you put that in ginger ale well i'm gonna take that but jameson and cranberry that's like jameson jameson cranberry and uh a lime have you ever seen anyone order whiskey and and uh cranberry here in the states no they just do the cape cod right the vodka cranberry yeah for the most part yeah that's always what it's been walk the cranberry please exactly my brother drinks that he would yeah no no no yeah yeah gray goose and vodka oh excuse me uh i gotta get to the country club so could you get me uh he's one quick he's part of the rich man's poor pinball podcast he's so rich he doesn't even want to buy a pinball machine that's why he stays so rich oh man we had a fantastic week didn't we and this weekend seemed to go on for fucking ever but we had a great time we uh friday night we ended up hitting up mgc midwest gaming classic we got there when the doors opened yeah we have a few cocktails before and major ghouls bees across the street everyone's talking about milwaukee yeah everybody's talking about doc smokehouse our first choice but then we were like shit looks expensive it really was so we went to the dive bar down the street yeah no it's a staple in milwaukee whenever they have bucks games and stuff everyone goes to major ghouls bees it's just a just a cool sports bar yeah yeah good food good drinks yeah it's your basic fare but so but yeah we had a good time there um we got we got interviewed for the news there we did the news came by why don't you tell them that story and that's pretty good you know cbs you know our local station here they ended up uh coming to our table it was me uh it was drew myself uh eric who was on last week and our buddy dan we had a few cocktails in us not not gonna lie quite a few we were three or four deep at that point i think we were feeling great is what you're just trying to say this very attractive girl comes up to our table which happens often she had a microphone and a camera crew again happens often and uh she wanted to talk to about talk to us about the uh the bucks playoff now granted there was only about four parties in this whole bar at the time so she only had choices one of four people four tables people right and there's literally like 50 tables in his place which which which makes this story even funnier if you think about it because so they interview our table and we think we are the funniest guys in the room which we never are well in that room we might have been because there was only like 10 people in the whole room we were the youngest there was quite a few older people there i don't know if that means you're funny or not but we thought we were the best and so we were talking we had this interview with her we were talking about the bucks we were very excited uh she got our name and our info and she's like watched for the news tonight at 10 you'll be on you know we get all excited then she went to every other table we were like oh well that's weird all right whatever long story short we checked the news at 10 online and and uh we didn't make the cut we were cut we did not make somebody else did so uh story of my life but anyway we ended up uh going across the street to midwest gaming classic i was impressed i mean the friday night is a little different than the saturday sunday if you're unaware it's basically they have fewer people come in they don't have the whole vendor section yet so it is still bringing games in just bringing games in still but there's still a ton to play and the wonka reveal was that night at seven and the game and the doors opened at six so we were there my man we were there and uh lots of lots of games to play lots to talk about we were playing uh a few titles we wanted to play on our wish list so alice cooper octoberfest we got our hands on stern had a hell of a booth a hell of a show uh marco had a booth and they had what uh 20 stern games maybe it was crazy so 25 it was i didn't even talk about it last week but beatles was there and i was excited to play beatles in fact that was the first game i went on and then uh they had all the sword of rage they had the pro and the premium i believe yeah they had everything though they had batman 66s they had uh help me out monsters premium oh yeah all the monsters deadpool uh le with the the disco ball yeah the iron maiden le2 you played right away right yes because i you know as much as i love iron maiden i never got a chance to play the premium and man that light show was it the premium it was the premium okay It had the Pharaoh artwork. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's the premium model. Yeah, light show on there was really good. It seemed to be a little better than the pro. And in the past, I've voiced my objections to some of the light shows I made. That got cut for time. Don't worry.
Doc
person
Troy Smithperson
Stern Pinballcompany
Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
American Pinballcompany
Marcocompany
Midwest Gaming Classicevent
Willie Wonkagame
Black Knight Sword of Ragegame
Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castlegame
Beatlesgame
Oktoberfestgame
Galloping Ghost Arcadevenue
Galloping Ghost Pinballvenue

high · Ian: 'The lanes are so close to you... with that upper play field on top of those lanes it almost was almost too much.' Recommendation: buy LE/Premium for aesthetics only, avoid if actively playing.

  • $

    market_signal: CGC sold nearly all 22 Attack from Mars/Monster Bash remakes (leaving only 6 by Saturday night), indicating strong secondary market demand for classic game updates at MGC

    medium · Drew: 'Troy Smith posted... they are down to six games. They sold all of them almost.' Indicates planned inventory liquidation strategy.

  • ?

    event_signal: Willie Wonka reveal presentation criticized for unprofessional execution—presenter reading from phone notes—despite strong game and video content

    high · Ian: 'He's literally reading from his phone... if you're gonna do it especially something that's like the multi-million dollar company you need to do it a little better.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Steve Ritchie and other designers freely accessible on MGC floor Friday night with minimal lines, encouraging fan interaction and approachability

    high · Drew and Ian encountered Ritchie casually, he was described as 'cool uncle' type. Hosts noted Friday night had minimal crowds compared to weekend.

  • ?

    content_signal: Multiple podcast personalities present at MGC (Lit Boys, Buffalo Pinball Boys, Joe Cats), indicating strong media ecosystem around events

    medium · Ian: 'Ken and Bill [Lit Boys] were doing their... round table... after party Wonka reveal thing.' Buffalo Pinball Boys streaming; buffalo pinball fan recognized Poor Man's Pinball podcast on the way in.

  • ?

    venue_signal: Doc from Galloping Ghost Arcade recently opened dedicated Galloping Ghost Pinball location; brought rare Predator machine to MGC for exposure

    high · Ian: 'Doc... got his new place the uh the galloping ghost pinball.' Game brought to MGC with Doc in MMA gloves costume.

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Oktoberfest praised for specific shot design (180-degree up-kick on right, well-designed bumpers) but criticized for overall flow and beer barrel shot difficulty

    high · Ian: 'Like you hit the on the right there, there's that 180 up kick where it just shoots it right up the wire form. I thought that was fucking cool.' Also: 'I couldn't shoot that thing to save my life.'

    • 6:35
    But anyways, so yeah, got to play that. What else was there? Oktoberfest. Did I say that? Yeah, they had three or four of them there. That was cool to flip that. And, yeah, we got to the Sword of Rage, obviously, and then we did the Walker reveal, which was pretty cool. You know, I don't know. I think it was Saturday I saw a little news article online that was talking about the Midwest Gaming Classic. They actually had a guy in a Black Knight armor walking around. Yeah, I saw that. He was, like, standing behind people just kind of, like, hanging out. It was kind of cool. Yeah. It was a neat thing for Marco and Stern to do, for sure. It was cool. So if you're in town and you don't have the pass for that Friday night, I highly recommend it because the lines were barely any. Oh, one deep at worst. We could play any game we wanted, number one. Number two, the designers were just walking around. You know, Steve Ritchie was just like. We met Steve Ritchie. Yeah, Steve Ritchie, man. Fucking cool guy. He's like the cool uncle of your family, man. Super cool guy. Ran into him. Ran into Josh Kugler, another great guy from American Pinball. and that was just on the floor right there i was playing next to steve richie i was like shit that's awesome you know this guy designed this game i said steve i'm a big fan of your stuff and i named a couple games i like and he just said right on and then walked about he said i saw you play play better play better in steve richie fashion god bless him all right so yeah he was cool um yeah just general thoughts of the show drew what do you think do you have a good time yes i did general thoughts i don't know ian and i've gone in the past for um you know the arcades and stuff and we used to be into that there was not nearly the showing of arcades that there was in years past yeah like i said we were they were still bringing some in i'm i saw a few pictures of games we didn't see sure okay i don't know how late they were bringing games in on friday but we were there until about 11 30 one thing that was kind of cool though in the gaming sector was um they had all the the old consoles and they had rows of crt tvs right right tube tvs playing these these uh n64s and gamecubes it was just kind of neat to see yeah we caught dan geeking out over some golden eyes yeah yeah literally it was like a picnic table with like a crt tv on it it was awesome yeah it was it was very cool it was very cool what other games there that were pretty surprises uh predator made a made an appearance doc from uh the galloping ghost arcade and he's also got his new place the uh the pinball uh galloping ghost pinball so doc uh there with his his mma gloves and all was there with the predator so that was kind of cool i understand all the providence provenance whatever that word is about the predator keep going but you know looking at the game i was just like yeah you know it was definitely nothing yeah we didn't flip it but um there was a guy on it but we looked at it and i i just kind of said meh you know it just it was one of those things that after hearing so much about it and i just said meh yeah every every listener here who has played a lot of pinball on location knows that one guy that he's on the on a machine in front of you and you're like this fuck is gonna to take a while just like he just looked like he was going to be camped out there all night playing predator more power to him i was just like well i looked at it and i there was not one thing that drew me in except for the half naked guys hanging upside down oh that it was kind of unique and crazy yeah these skin guys like in the back of the play field yeah i was like let's just go over to you know galloping ghost pinball sometime it's not too far from us we'll just we'll play it there no biggie but yeah other than that that was a pretty cool surprise drew why don't we do uh three things you loved and three things that disappointed i loved all the games that were there i mean just just the sheer number of them you know getting on alice cooper for the first time you know ian and i flipped just a couple of games but oh man that was just fun i think that game charlie if you're listening we love you charlie and you know you said 500 of those games you should probably make more i think there's gonna be a i think he's gonna open that up he's got to there there's going to be a demand for that game because unlike some of his other games i i just yeah i just think there's gonna be more demand for that game in particular well the willie wonka reveal which once again we'll get to i mean that was that was my high my personal highlight and i think that was the highlight for a lot of people that were there and then non-game related meeting steve richie and pat lawler see i'm like i'm i'm giddy and giggling because i'm just like It's so cool. These guys, I've played these games that they've made over the years, and it's just really neat to finally get in front of them and just tell them, hey, great games. Am I doing disappointments now? Yeah, do some disappointments, man. I'll jump in with my stuff.
    11:30
    Black Knight Sword of Rage Pro Edition. Big disappointment. Disappointment, huh? Yeah. I wish I could. I want to like it. It's one of those games I really want to like. The Premium and the Limited Edition I think are great. I played them. I flipped them. I liked them. The Pro, ooh, that is going to be a tough sell, I think. You know, everyone in the past that says Stern doesn't put a lot in their games, they did not put a lot in this thing. Yeah, it's bare bones, guys. That was one of my disappointments as well. You know, the Limited Edition or the Premium that we played, That felt like a full game, right? It did. It was so much more fun and complete, and there was more to shoot for. But I hate to say it, it almost seems to me like Stern's going backwards. And what I mean by that is that premium model felt like that should have been the pro model. I agree. I agree 100%, because that pro felt completely unfinished. Correct. Like, you know, I talked about with some friends of ours, these two stand-ups, which I know it's been talked about in the past on Iron Maiden and a couple of the other games where they got those flat plastic. They have to do sculpts. They got to figure out a way. I mean, it's a sculpt. It doesn't even interact with the game. But they got to spend a few more dollars to do something like that. I just think they have to. They can't pinch pennies forever. Correct.
    12:56
    That's what it felt like for Black. Yes. sort of rage was just too much of penny pinching, especially that pro edition. You guys out there that have money on a pro, double think that. At least flip it first, please, because I'm begging you.
    13:14
    It's fast. It's brutally fast, but it's fast because there's nothing on the fucking field. Correct. And this sounds silly because I know everyone knows what the prices are, but yes, if you charged the $5,600 or $5,800 for that premium with the upper play field, not even the extra Invisiglass and Shaker Motor or whatever, you just put that upper play field on a Pro and you charge $5,800 for it, you get your value out of it. But you take that upper play field out and the value is just not there. Another disappointment, man? You got anything else? Last disappointment, Star Wars Premium. Ooh. Was that there? Yeah, that was at Zach's Flippin' Out Pinball. Oh, okay. Played a lot of the Pro. I like the Pro. I like shooting it. I thought about buying a premium for a while. I never got my hands on one until now. The Hyperloop is cool. It's a neat toy. But once again, $7,500 cool. It just, I can't. Gotcha. So it's not a total disappointment. It's still, I enjoy the game. Right. It just. It should have been, again. should have been better yeah yeah if that once again that was part of the pro i would probably buy a pro you know but i just yeah i just can't uh another thing was the surprise of beatles being as fun people say beatles is fun but i got to finally play it and i had a blast on beatles absolute blast and that's a good example of not much on there but boy it's designed around not having a ton of stuff on there it's actually that left loop when you can keep repeating it oh man oh man yeah so cool it was so fucking cool man i loved it uh alice cooper's nightmare castle would be another one where i was just like this is a fucking cool game man if i had three thumbs they would all be up right now yeah he has three thumbs but his pants are awfully tight today all right so um but yeah alice cooper for sure was a fantastic game it was very um oh he's using drew words it had a great fantastic it had a great like just a mood to it like it had a good surreal um presence to it where when you're playing it you felt you're actually like entering the castle i thought it was really cool man the little shaker vibration when you hit something and then just the the lighting effect i mean yeah charlie you did a fan fucking tastic job on that so was that two of mine yeah acnc is the new i mean that's just it's great that was great good job charlie uh let's see was that two all right uh let's oh no i said wonka reveal that was all three um disappointments what are the big disappointments three biggest disappointment i will agree with you on the black rose pro we don't need to beat them to black rose i'm sorry black knight pro black the black rose pro is pretty good it's good for the money it's 2800 bucks funny how that works isn't it no the black knight pro um yeah but we beat them to death already so yeah never mind about that disappointment would be oktoberfest was a big disappointment for me because i had it on a kind of a pedestal oh i forgot about oktoberfest i'm gonna go ahead i'm gonna piggyback on yours though i just thought the art was worse in person i thought i could forgive the art and i thought it looked not only did it look clustered i got that right but seeing it in person it almost looked muddy to me it didn't seem very clear like the resolution was off like it It wasn't – these weren't high-res resolution images. And this was truly on Ian's I might buy list. Right, right. And the shots and layouts were interesting. I'll say interesting because some shots were really, really fucking cool. Like you hit the – on the right there, there's that 180 up kick where it just shoots it right up the wire form. I thought that was fucking cool. I thought the bumpers were really, really well done. Again, I liked the auto. That mech is cool. but that beer barrel for fuck's sake i couldn't i couldn't shoot that thing to save my life and then there wasn't a lot of flow flow if you know what i mean it was a lot of bouncing shit off other i don't think that game was made for full i think you're right because they have those little um half moon like bank of targets they're all like stand-ups yeah yeah and there's like what three of them i think well there's two and then there's yeah i mean if you hit yeah and there's that one stand-up target on the very top you have to hit that ball straight as shit and then you gotta hit it again to knock that target down to get up i mean tons in that game like there's a shit ton to shoot at there's a ton of modes but i i was bored of it after a few games i'm not a dick so i'm not gonna shit on american pinball like ian is am i really shitting on it kind of oh whatever i'm disappointed in it man i know you are because you you wanted to like it so much and i understand And we can all understand that because when you want to like a game so much. But like I told Ian and he agreed, if you put that thing in your basement, any non-pinball person is going to gravitate towards that. It's a lot to do. It's colorful. You're shaking my head. Yeah, I know. He's so fucking positive. He wasn't that positive at the show. That's exactly what I told you at the show, you asshole. Are you kidding me? That's the exact thing I told you at the show.
    18:29
    He was like, eh, this is sucky. As a pinball person, yeah, okay, fine. I'm going to shit on American pinball. No, it's okay, but it's not great. But non-pinball people are going to like it. That's all I'm saying. You can tell that Drew and I have been hanging out for four days straight. Fuck. I want to get out of this fucking basement. Jesus Christ. Fuck away from you, Drew. I came over today and I asked his wife when I could move into his guest bedroom. I've been seeing this motherfucker so much. Some background. We did go to Star Wars Celebration in Chicago on Saturday, and then my daughter turned once away at a birthday party on Sunday. So Drew and I have been joined at the hip for four fucking days. Never seen this guy so much in my life. It sucks because our friendship is totally based on barely seeing each other. Yeah, once a month we come together, we say hi, we hug, we're out the door. Once a week podcast, fine. But other than that, get the fuck out my door, it's fine. Jesus.
    19:27
    So anyway, disappointment. and my friendship with Drew, American Pinball, and no, I'm joking. So another disappointment.
    19:36
    No, that was about it. No, those two. I guess Sword of Rage and October 1st was the two best. So we obviously agree on the Sword of Rage. I mean that. Oh, I got a disappointment. What? Fucking special when Lit Boys didn't show up at the show. Oh, yeah. We were supposed to. We had a drinking date with them, actually. Yeah, no, well, I tried to. It didn't work out, though, because they were doing their, They did some sort of round table. They did a party. They were doing something for the Wonka reveal. And we weren't invited. Well, it was like an after party Wonka reveal thing. I don't know. And we weren't invited. You know what, though? He had a picture of it. It seemed really lame.
    20:15
    Just kidding. Sorry, Ken and Bill. I didn't want to be there anyways. I'm that guy in the corner. I never wanted to go to your party anyway, guys. Ken and Bill are poopy heads. I don want to see them I don need to see this I don want to be a part of this I going to go ahead with my mom What are we five Jesus
    20:38
    We're going to hang out with Drew for the fourth fucking day. That's what I want to do. Anyways. Okay. Move past it. Move on. Moving on. Moving right along. We're doing great. Okay, so we got things we love, things we didn't love. Talk some about games that we saw there, played there. What about games that weren't new? What did you play? Baywatch was awesome. Baywatch, right? Baywatch, dude. We both, I was just getting off of it, and Ian's like, oh, my God, there's shots. I ran up to him. There's shots on there. And I said, I know. It was just fun. Just fun to shoot. That game is fantastic. I don't care if you like, what is it, Sega? Yeah.
    21:21
    Just cool. Oh, man. With the bigger DMD display. Yeah, just awesome. The lifeguard shack. The lifeguard shack shot, yeah. That thing was huge. Yeah. That was the biggest thing in any game I've seen from Stern in 10 years. That game had more in it than Wonka. Yes, it did. No, not Wonka. Black Knight.
    21:38
    This table that has nothing on it has more in it than Black Knight. Womp womp. What other ones?
    21:46
    Sharky Shootout. You liked Sharky? I didn't get a chance. I don't know what it was, but I heard a lot about it, never played it. um there's been so many pool games over the years and that one it was just just cool it was just lion man swords of fury swords of fury and i had fun with that oh that was a good one too we played a shit ton of that one lion man i said i'm like it says avenger on the play field it sounded like he was saying iron man i'm like what the fuck's going on here iron man awesome it was That was very cool. I played a few games of Gorgar. That was fucking cool. I love those games, man. Those are just cool-looking games. I finally got behind a Flash Gordon, a game that I've always been interested in. It was okay. It wasn't awesome. Flash Gordon has the same layout as a lot of games in that era, right? Right. They used the same sound effects as my Space Invaders when I had that. Yeah, they changed the back glass. I almost felt like that. Like, literally, I think some of those games, like, they made 10 different games out of the same shell. Yeah, but the artwork was phenomenal. Oh, cool, cool. There's Flash Gordon on there. Fucking Flash Gordon. Oh, remember we were talking about all the Monster Bash and Attack from Mars there? They had... CGC had about 15... Man. No, 22. They had 22 games in their lineup. And they were never filled up. Well, I got an update on that story, buddy. So they had one medieval madness. They had, and then the rest were just Attack from Mars and Monster Bashes. By the end of Saturday night, I saw a post from, I think it was Troy Smith, and he said they are down to six games. They sold all of them almost. Oh, so that was their thing. They had them all there so they could just unload them. Yeah, fucking cool, though, man. They sold a shit ton there. That's awesome. I was on, I own the Monster Bash, but I was on Attack from Mars a few times. Sure, sure. Yeah, the upgraded display. If you ever get those remakes, you've got to get the upgraded display. Yeah, it's just, you know, I know there's purists out there, but it just makes it look like a modern game. That's the thing. It looks like a brand-new game, and it's, like, modern, and the display is just great. It's huge. Fucking gorgeous. It is. Any other games you play? Any of the older ones that you like? um well we played theater magic a couple times yeah really nice one oh creature yeah um creature was shooting good even though the cabinet looked dirty as shit it was that was a dirty game but yeah i just just ripping those ripping those ramps yeah they had a game of thrones premium there oh that was our first time playing that yeah with the upper play field usually we play the pro you can't see me right now but i'm sticking out my tongue and putting two thumbs down yeah yeah i can now i understand why people were bagging on that uh upper play field because it really distracts from the game from an aesthetic standpoint it looks beautiful it looks great i i'm like wow this is awesome and then i start shooting it because i played a lot of the pro yeah and yeah just oh man the problem with like game of thrones well not really a problem i actually like it is the fact that the the lanes are so close to you you know they're on the bottom third of the play field yeah so you if you brick a shot you better be on your freaking toes well you don't brick very often do you i'm the brickasaurus rex man of course i'd brick so you know you got to be on your toes you got to have lightning they they do fire back reflexes so um with that upper play field on top of those lanes it almost it was almost too much and yeah it was that i didn't care for it too much if you're one of these rich guys that doesn't play buy the premium it's great it looks it looks beautiful if you're gonna play your fucking games don't ever go near it because that message was brought to you by gary stern thanks gary all right all right should we move on yeah a lot of a lot of good games a lot of a lot of cool pimple oh road kings oh road kings yeah i was tearing up road kings like you and they had one it was it was a thousand bucks i know we should have brought that one home because i i I enjoy it, too. I like Rogue Kings. Oh, man. It's cool. Why didn't I? I don't know. That was fun, too. Normally, that's something we would have jumped on. That was a buck. Anytime you get a pinball for a thousand bucks, I'm on it. Yeah, it's working. Cabinet's beat up. Who cares? The game played nice. It didn't look that bad. Yeah, cabinet, the scuffs, whatever. I could have cleaned it up. Yeah.
    26:15
    Anyway, Rogue Kings. That was phenomenal. I loved it. Loved it. All right. So let's see. What else we got here? wonka time wonka time let's talk wonka we were at the reveal guys and it was phenomenal it was a stupid little line but in the line we met zach many right we ran into zach it was our first time meeting him in person it was very cool uh yep and then eric from uh jjp um and we ran into him he was passing out wonka bars which was great because i was getting hungry at that time i did not get the golden ticket we did not get any golden tickets they made sure that um and then but we got ushered into a very nice room where pat lawler was and um there's why joe joe cats was there and buffalo pinball boys were streaming was uh what's his i always forget those guys kevin and kevin yeah kevin from buffalo it was just it was just the one though right no there's another dude there yeah okay i'm sorry other guy i know because i i know what they look like i talked to him too because he said we were wearing our poor man pinball t-shirts he was like we're listening you guys on the way here and i said oh thank you and i don't think you heard me so we came across poorly let's just say that no pun intended wow oops but anyway uh no they did the reveal uh how do you feel about the actual reveal like the the the presentation you know after the fact i found out who that guy was who was doing the presentation you gotta reading from his phone yeah his name was what kevin no something anyways he's part of the family that's the investors for jersey jack right right that's all as well so like he's like the son or something i think canada yeah and i'm like are you kidding me like oh my daddy gave him a lot of money so now i get to you know do this cool thing yeah and then he's literally reading from his phone now we're new to this whole podcast thing okay we're especially new to uh reveals we public speaking is hard you know people don't like doing it i get it that's fine but if you're gonna do it especially something that's like the multi-million dollar company you need to do it a little better that's all i'm saying i'm not saying you did a terrible job right you know i'm not i'm not i'm not pissing on the guy i'm just saying that reading from your phone probably could have been done a little better well regardless of that um i thought it was fantastic um the they had a nice little video the video was cool they got you kind of going pat lawler isn't really a man for a lot of words or funny stories pat lawler also you he just shouldn't be the front man for that nope nope and you know what though it was pretty fucking sweet because they revealed the curtain they played the video yeah at the end of the day it's all about the game and yeah we were ready to play. Wait, wait, wait. Let's tell them. Back up. Ian and I, because we're social media kings, we're pretty awesome. Poor Man Pinball's I can't even say it. Poor Man Pinball podcast. No, no, no. Facebook page. Anyways, so while we're doing this, we're snapping some selfies. Ian and I are just being our normal goofy selves. Ian's posting shit live during the reveal. Yes. What did my wife respond to? Yeah, what she says, are you holding each other's dicks? My wife comments, oh, what are you guys doing? Yeah, holding each other's dicks. Holding each other's dicks. And Ian says, no, they're out, but there's no holding. We're not holding them. They're just out. We're not holding them. Sorry, I just had to say it. That's my wife. I love her to death. She's awesome. Oh, man. Dude, no. It was pretty sweet. um basically they're like all right come up play play motherfuckers yeah so and that that was the obviously the whole reason we're there so the whole presentation really doesn't matter yeah so if you guys tuned in at the buffalo streaming you saw drew and i fucking all wonka visioned out man we were like so zoned in but you see us with our two black shirts we had the podcast shirts on and i understood now why people were saying the stream was so shitty because you know there's There's all these haters all the time, right? Right. Oh, this game, this and that. Well, because Ian and I were some of the first people to actually play this, put our hands on it for the stream. We were like, what, third or fourth. I mean, we were right there. We were close. And we were like the third game. We suck at pinball. I drained in like three seconds. I'm not kidding. Because they're like, there's nothing in this game. Drain. I couldn't show them anything. I drained right away. But if you guys noticed, if you noticed. And this is true. This is all true. The second Joe Katz drained. they're like oh this this machine is all fucked up yeah they had to re-level it uh-huh yeah they did no no that's true they literally re-leveled it because it was like so far to the left i had a better second and third ball they weren't great but i thought a better second and third um when i will say i was afraid to fucking rock that machine i was too and you know what it was weird for us not really we don't stream pinball no it was weird because there was a microphone kind of in our face and you don't really see that you don't get that sense like i was kind of i'm a short guy so i'm looking around the microphone almost yeah it was like it was just distracting i was like god damn it get this microphone out of my fucking face i want to play is this how hookers feel that's how walkers feel yeah i felt like a hooker no no no no no no anyway so what we ended up doing though um so we ended up playing that that which was which was great I have a theory about why people are bitching about the stream. You want to hear my theory? Yeah, I want to hear it because I actually have some thoughts on that. Believe it or not, I don't just drink and make jokes. I have thoughts coming out of my somewhere. His wife would disagree about the thought thing, but that's fine. She sure would. All right, what do you got? All right, so my thought was this. All right, so because I was looking at the stream, and, yeah, that game doesn't look great from the top down. That's the thing. It's 100% an angle thing, right? so you're streaming yeah from the top down they have so much shit there that's three-dimensional not everlasting godstoppers spinning you got the wonka um smokestack with the little leds that spell out wonka you have uh wonka vision with the screen you have all these things going on you had the wonka vader in the back and you guys are looking at it from like a top-down perspective which is by far the worst way to look at that game because when you stand over it you're not looking top down you see it on a three-dimensional plane man you see it head on you get to see all the dimension that's going on there to me it looked like a little wonka city yes chocolate factory oh man dude and then they had all the leds the light show you miss out on all this stuff the artwork was twice as vibrant as it was on the stream i found out something you said leds um i found out today that yeah they use they're using some little tiny leds that have never been used in pinball before yeah they're like how cool is that yeah what do you say eraser head eraser yeah i looked again i was like yeah those are really small yeah yeah they're tiny and and that might make a difference i didn't think about that but uh yeah it was it was a and usually when you see it i personally when i see a a play field that's got all this stuff on it i'm expecting it to be kind of a clunk fest pat lawler made sure that that thing shot so pretty and and here's why I'm super hard about Willy Wonka. Alright. Because as you guys... Oh, hard for it or just hard on it? Hard for it. Alright, folks, he's hard for it. Hard for it. Get ready for it. You've got to say it like that. Because... Love letters. As you guys know, and we've talked about many times, I'm not as big on theme as Ian is. I'm more about the gameplay. So for me, if that play field didn't have any art on it, I'm good. That play field, like you said, those toys, the 3D world, all the stuff the ball's doing on that field, that's what matters most to me. Right, right. So, okay, you Photoshop Gene Wilder on there. Okay, I get it. I see it. If it was hand-drawn Franchi art, would it be better? Probably. But it's not. And you know what? I don't really give a shit because that game, A, it still looks beautiful. And like I said, all the lights and the colors and the way they integrated that theme is really what matters to me. And those shots on that thing, fucking A, man. Those things are awesome.
    34:53
    So that's it. I'm not going to drone on like I usually do because I drone on all the time. It was good, Drew. It was good. I was behind you, man. I know. There was a lot of haters for the artwork, and I thought it was so dumb. I will say this, though. I will put the little asterisk on it. The standard edition? Yeah. They phone that in, and they should be ashamed. They can do better than that. Ah, fuck that. It's just the name. It's the side of a cab. Who cares? That's not the point. It is the point. It's a standard edition. The artwork's going to be standard. What's your problem? No picture. There's just no picture. Why couldn't they put one picture on there? Well, people were bitching that they used the same picture on the other two. Oh, see, that I don't care about. Gene Wilder. Yeah, I know. It's the same photo. Gene Wilder. I'm one step away. I don't care about that. I'm saying, why didn't they put Gene Wilder on the standard? That's all I'm saying. No, fuck the standard. You're putting it in between your fucking collection of 20 pins anyway. They can shut up and just have their coffee. But on the back glass, too, though. There's no Gene Wilder. Yeah, but it's colorful and vibrant. Yeah, it's fine. Why does there have to be Gene Wilder? He wasn't the star of the movie. True. Well, how come Charlie's not up there? I don't know, dude. I think there's balloons. That's all I'm saying. I don't even remember balloons being in the movie. No, I don't either. I know. No, no. And ultimately, like I said, I'm not even big on the art either in general in games. I'm just saying, why couldn't they do it? I just don't care. There's a huge TV screen. Oh, yeah. No, no. The back glass is like, I mean, we're talking about six inches here. I don't care. Ian, it's no secret. Wife, cover your ears. I'm fucking bringing one home, baby.
    36:24
    Kathleen, if you're listening, it's coming home, and it's going in our bedroom. Guess which one's getting played more. hey i got two hands bitches oh you know so no no i'm i'm i'm just playing hey you know what you always tell me i'm the optimist why can't i play devil's advocate once in a while let me do it all right man you can do it but i just think the artwork is fine i don't care it's okay i just don't understand why they wouldn't put a picture of charlie or gene wilder or veruca salt it doesn't matter any of them i don't you know it's just weird i wasn't there i they just said put the name on it they asked my opinion and then they said but you were too drunk and you missed that day so you did this fuck you drew that's that's what happened you're not in it for a standard anyway boy where are you going le baby and you know what that's me the poor man is proud to say le not collectors because that's still way way out of my price range yeah you'd have to sell your wife for that collector's edition don't do it pause don't do it i'm the first one to tell you No, but I am in on an LE. We were talking to Zach Menny. He's giving us $1,000 off because we mentioned his name. Crickets. Still crickets. I'm going to keep working that. Okay, whatever. Until Zach's on this show, we can't actually confirm nor deny that he's going to give us $1,000 off. But no, seriously, I'm in on an LE.
    37:55
    My beloved Metallica is going to be put up for sale. Ooh. Yeah. And anyone who knows me, that's a big fucking deal. Guess what, Drew? What? Monster Bash is already up for sale. I know. So Ian was a little between the standard and the LE. Where are you at now? Oh, if I sell Monster Bash, it's going to be an LE. If I didn't sell it, I was going to go standard. Okay. All right. I didn't know that you were 100% committed on that. The more I like the Wonkavator, the more I think about the Wonkavator and the way Pat described the Wonkavator. Now, I didn't play it enough. Can you describe it to me slowly? and so this isn't pat's words not mine okay the wonka vader um no uh say it again wonka vader uh he said he said that that is an old mech from uh inspired by uh em games and and that was like several like a bunch of them right well i think it's just the em games in general i think what he's talking about that's what i'm saying i guess but it's one of those things where you lock the balls they stay locked when the game is over they don't just eject the physical thing they don't yeah they don't eject back into the game like they you know all the games nowadays do it actually stays up there so you can start another game if you lock two balls up there all you need is a third ball to get that multi-ball which is fucking awesome was that a three yeah three right yeah it's a three ball lock up there i think that's fucking phenomenal i think that's so clever and it's it's so cool and you talk about real innovation but you know it's not innovation because it's been around and how cool is that he's taking it yeah that's awesome at first i was like standard is fine for me because you know the sure it's because if you actually look at the mech it's nothing special it's like literally some plastic that it has the wonka vader decal on it like it's nothing special when you look at it however when you find out what it actually does i was like oh fuck that's actually extremely cool yeah and when you explain it to your wife they go fuck you you're still not getting it oh you know what no laura laura's actually excited about it she's excited about it she saw it and she was like man that's a pretty game and that's coming from my wife so that's that means a lot she liked monster bash too though so i got a good i'm two for two with uh approvals for the wife you know yeah yeah that's awesome that's uh whenever the wife can back it that's a good thing keep you out of the doghouse so i wanted to talk about this a bit true um kind of the black knight versus wonka debate that's going on in pin side i don't have since i played both and i i got a good feel of sort of rage i didn't get a lot of games on wonka but just looking at the wonka matrix i i came to a conclusion which is well the best bang for your buck stern are you listening is gonna be wonka because here we go ready i'm just gonna read the matrix i'm not gonna read what's in the twelve thousand five hundred dollar model or the nine thousand five hundred model the base or the seven hundred apples to apples 7500 7500 this is literally what available in all three models So basically what in the standard right So all models include ready The most secret machine, which is that badass mech that has the everlasting gobstopper spinning. And if you know, if you hit that thing enough, or if you lock more balls in it, that thing spins faster. I just found that out. Oh, man. How cool is that? All right. So then obviously now it includes the spinning everlasting gobstopper. so you get that in all three models, right? The Oompa Loompa camera toy. All right, so you've got basically Wonka Vision in all three models with the LCD screen. Yeah. A seven-inch LCD screen. Yeah, I was going to say, that's not a Star Wars LCD screen. That's a big honking. No, that's like an iPad mini. Yeah.
    41:46
    And because the play field is obviously smaller under the glass and stuff, I mean, you see that thing in there, it's impressive. It is impressive. It's fantastic. It's a great size. You get the LED Wonka Factory sign. Sorry. The LED Wonka factory sign, which is great. Why don't you explain what that is for people that don't know? So that's that smoke sign that in the movie. Smoke stack, yeah. Yeah, in the movies. Yeah, sorry. Smoke stack. In the movie when Charlie goes up to the gate and that weird knife handler guy stops Charlie. I don't know if you guys remember this. It was, there's all those weird, weird, dark moments in that movie that are so out of place and don't really do anything, but just. But they're there. The director was just like, let's get fucking dark here. Oh, yeah. Let's take some acid. Bring a guy with a cart of knives over here and talk to Charlie, this little boy. But anyway, just before he talks to the guy with the knives, I believe there was a smokestack in the distance, and it had Wonka spelled out, and it would flash. So they recreated that for the pinball machine. Yeah, it's like blue LEDs. Super cool. And that's in all three models. All right, so they got the camera, which awesome in all three models. Yeah, and it does three or four different things. It's not just like one thing this time. It puts you on WonkaVision. Your face flies around the screen. I don't know, man. I didn't get into how and why. Because it dialed in. It was like they had the selfie mode, and it kind of did something. Yeah, and at the end of Pirates, you want to put your initials in. It took the picture. But this does that plus stuff, actually, while you're playing. Right.
    43:14
    RGB LED lighting, 27-inch back box HD LCD. Let's stop for a second. 27-inch LCD back box CD. what is stern's like eight by eight yeah no it's it's it's good but it's not it's not very you know impressive i mean it's just the lcd screen yep and four flippers and how many magnets seven let's back up there again seven yeah seven magnets so sturdier you're listening man your pro is just got the black knight some pop bumpers and some drop targets man That's it. Now, let me ask you this. And I love the Black Knight. Yeah. Oh, once again. Like we said, we wanted to love the damn thing. The premium Black Knight is fun. It should have been the pro. But if you get $7,500 and you're like, okay, do I get Willy Wonka standard or do I get Sword of Rage pro? It's Willy Wonka all day long. All day. It's not even close. What if they put a Wonka Vader in Sword of Rage?
    44:18
    I take it. I would take anything in fucking Sword of Rage, okay? I don't care. All right, you heard it here, folks. Here first, folks. If they put a Wonka Vader in Black Knight Sword of Rage, Ian's in. Stern, are you listening? Stern, don't listen to that. That's a terrible idea. Jesus Christ. All right, let's play designers for a second.
    44:44
    What would you add? I'm drunk Steve Ritchie. Well, just name a couple things that you would probably want to see in the Pro Edition that wasn't there. Of Sword of Rage. Well, I told you, the upper play field. That was it. I mean, just that upper play field. I know it's just that, but to me it just seemed like that was. And, like I said, maybe a sculpt or two of the Black Knight. Or not, but the skeleton army. You know, whatever. Or a castle sculpt of sorts. Yeah, don't rely on Yellowbird and all the mod companies to do that for you. Yes, yes. But unfortunately, that's kind of what they're doing, maybe. Right. I would have liked to have seen a physical castle, obviously, but if that's too much out of the picture. Yeah, I can see that. That's huge. I was disappointed with the size of the light board where the castle started on fire. It was small. We heard 60 LEDs. We got excited. We thought maybe the whole back panel would have been on fire. It's like the door of the castle goes on fire. And I will say this, that effect is very cool. It is very cool. There's a moment I told Ian about because I'm a better player than him. I got to this moment. Never got there. Didn't even sniff it. There was a moment. It was early on. So, yeah, I'm way better than Ian because it was only a couple shots in. But anyways. Now you're being a dick.
    46:05
    The play field goes dark. The Black Knight's eyes light up. Very cool. and then right behind him the castle lights up, and it was kind of a succession thing. So that was very cool. The lighting and the sounds in Black Knight, they're off the charts.
    46:23
    But just the play field, it leaves something to be desired. That's all. Do you like how the Black Knight interacted with the ball?
    46:31
    You know what? The flail was not as cool as I thought. It wasn't aggressive. Correct. It wasn't aggressive. The shield? The shield was cool. Shield was cool. Okay. When it locks the ball, it's pretty cool. Yeah, so we're on a... Yeah, so the shield lock... And the LEDs, obviously, were cool. All that stuff was cool. Yes. Once again, looking at the Black Knight, just looking at it, art, everything, you know, I give it a 9 or a 10. I mean, it's a great-looking machine, but once you start flipping it, which, once again, is most important to me, it just falls flat. It does. That was disappointing. Mm-hmm. It was. So... Mm-hmm. All right, so that's kind of Wonkaverse sort of rage. So tell us what you guys think at poormanspinball at gmail.com. Give us your feedback. We'd love to hear it. And we know we're going to start. We've talked about it, joked about it, and it's going to happen. All these pro Black Knights are going to start showing up in the barcades and stuff. Yep. And kind of like I said last episode, I just don't think people are going to want to play it. I mean, they'll play it, but if you've got to stick a dollar in that thing, that's a tough sell. What's the pro going for? Do you remember the price? $57.99. Okay. I think the MSRP is $59.99, but the distributor price is, yeah, they're at like $58.99 or $57.99. I mean, obviously you'd want Wonka just because it's a known license, a known theme. Correct. People would like to go to that. If you were putting on location. And going back to kind of the family thing, you know, Wonka ticks it for pinball people. it takes it for families kids you know wife you know there's gonna be wives out there we all know it we all know that wife who's gonna be like you're not bringing this black knight in my house you know what i mean yeah like it's it's just a black knight and they're not swearing and stuff but they're like you're not bringing that ugly thing in their house right you know so no you're right that's just the way it is right but but willie wonka now yeah the kids are gonna love it you know it's just it's a cool game so no i i agree eric last week wanted to bring that fucking playboy in his house can we talk about that yeah eric eric are you listening man what the fuck were you thinking dude like he he said it like oh well well triona his wife triona said it was okay i told my wife that my wife goes he's a fucking idiot too i mean like jesus christ every guy that listen to that was like no she's not okay with that yeah yeah there are guys out there like my wife's the coolest in the world nope that's not happening that's not happening i know my wife probably would be like what the hell are you bringing in yeah no your wife would say let me see them boobies no no no you better make sure your daughter doesn't see this yeah yeah no i gotta be out of the house with time and start walking i always forget ian has this little peanut yeah he he never remembers that i have a baby he was even at my house this is true story Sunday during her birthday party. She turned one, and he's asking me if I saw the show notes for this fucking show today. Shit, you're not. I was like, no, Drew. I'm trying to host the birthday party here. I thought this was a notes party. Isn't this a podcast notes party? You can't make this shit up, man. Oh, man. That's how ingrained Drew is in pinball. I am ingrained. Hey, do you want to say Vera, his daughter? I love her very much. You're an asshole. Yeah. I'm an asshole? Yeah. I love your daughter. She's great. She is the best. But Eric, if you're listening, and I know you are, let's move past the Playboy. Let's just drop it. I know it's cheap, but there's a lot of cheap ones out there. They don't have to be Playboy. I was just about to say, that's the reason Eric wants it. Eric doesn't want to spend a ton of money. He's new on pinball. I get it, because we've all been there. We did the same thing. But yeah, Playboy, there's so many other options you could do. that and eric's not one of those guys that's a real womanizing kind of guy he's never no and that's the funny part that was the funny thing where you mentioned that like if i said that people are like oh yeah drew loves boobies whatever fine i get it but yeah he's a boo man there's boobs on a pinball yeah can't blame the guy yeah right uh yeah eric rethink your life choices all right let's move on move on so that's our that's our wonk attack that's our uh that's our um sort of rage take and some of the games we played on there alice cooper big thumbs up right oh huge thumbs up wonka big thumbs up can we just say if wonka wasn't coming out we'd probably be both thinking about getting alice cooper alice cooper would have won game of the show for no but we would have thought about buying it yeah i think i think oh i agree yeah i agree uh wonka won game of the show for me uh i would say that uh alice cooper came in at uh And actually a lot closer to than I would think normally because I just dig the theme. It's so cool. Yeah. And then number three for me was Beatles just because it was just out of left field. The price isn't right on it, unfortunately, but that is a fun game. Number three for me was Skateball. You play Skateball? No. That one guy had that tricked out Skateball. It was beautiful. Everyone's seen that Skateball. That was at Expo last year. They've been bringing that one around with the skateboard and topper. Oh, man, it's so cool. I didn't get a chance to flip that because everyone was on that machine. It's just a beautiful machine. F-14 Tomcat, we played that a bit. Oh, man, the Steve Ritchie classic. Yeah, we played that. I sucked at that game. Anyone? You know, it's been talked about. Raven. We forgot about Raven. Oh, talk about Raven.
    52:11
    That is the best game. No, it's the worst piece of shit you've ever played. Raven is like, you hit those damn shots. You feel like you're going to break. Oh, the plastic ring. It's like a single plastic ramp. The whole thing moves. Drew almost shit himself when the helicopter started spinning. We're sitting next to it, and the helicopter starts spinning like, play me. So for those of you who don't know, Raven is like this most... Female Rambo. It's a female knock on Rambo. She's wearing a headband and camouflage. It's not a Rambo, it's Raven. And it's literally a picture of a girl in the jungle with a machine gun. and it says the cool red dawn lettering. It's Raven. And then you look at the field. It's from Gottlieb, I believe. And it is just, it looks like. It has like a Hot Wheels helicopter on there. And it actually spins. I wouldn't even think it was Hot Wheels. It almost looks like those bags you get at the dollar store of all the plastic army men. It's that helicopter. Yes, and it spins. And the art is terrible and the play field is terrible. but fuck we played the hell out of that game for a while there's four bumpers right in the center just because they're there i mean it's just it's awful hey man decisions design design i think pat lawler designed that one no i don't think he did i don't think whoever designed that one what was your budget bro 20 bucks what happened she'd go to the dollar store and go yeah hey man i gotta get like a bunch of pinball parts so i can build a machine i need like 100 helicopter sleeves Can I buy the 100-pack? Oh, the propeller doesn't twirl? All right, I'll have to make it work. Yeah, that game was too funny. I loved it. Yeah, because a couple episodes ago, we did that in the Pinside Bottom 365. Yeah, you didn't remember. You didn't know Raven, so I had to educate you. Yeah. And boom, here it is. We're playing it. No, never heard of it, never played it, and there it was. And here we are. And you know what? We would both take that game in a heartbeat just for a conversation piece if the price was right. Yeah, that's one of those games. once again if you had a bunch and you had room what would you pay for that for your pinball number two uh a couple hundred bucks i would do it 200 bucks yeah 300 yeah i'd go i'd go 300 i'd go as much as 500 yeah i was gonna say i mean seriously because we know like any half well that road kings actually was like a similar style i mean a much better game obviously much better higher quality yeah but you know same sort of plastic ramp kind of thing and and for a thousand bucks so yeah i think 500 bucks for raven would be all right you know so that's my mgc roundup let's call it let's do call it but yeah that mgc next year we're doing what two days definitely friday and saturday okay and possibly sunday depending but it might be vera's birthday again we don't know we got easter two that shows up i don't know how they're gonna they're gonna move it we'll see where they sure so but no definitely friday anyone who wants to go that's the day to go yeah if you're just Playing games? Yes. Friday is the one to do it. Yeah, because Saturday is when they have all the guests and this and that. Yeah, they have the vendor show. And all the families are there and stuff. All the families. The kids are just railing on those shoes. Oh, my God. Hanging on the shooter rods. Sticking their finger up their nose and then slamming something. Did you hear that guy, Kaneda? I know I'm going back to it, but did you hear that guy on Kaneda? Kaneda was reading that email and someone was bitching about the shooter rod having the everlasting gobsmacker. You know what? I wanted to find that guy's email and say, okay, you buy it, and then I'll pay you $10. Just send me that shooter rod, please. Send me that shooter rod. Yeah, because I'll put it in my alley. Fuck it. I'll put it somewhere in my car. I don't know. I'll do anything. I'll hang it on the wall. I'll just shove it up his ass. Fuck it. He'd like that. All right. Sorry if you're listening to this, but fucking Jesus Christ. No, because, yeah, thank you. For fuck's sake. Yeah, it's just like. Good Lord. No, it's kind of back to the art thing. It's a hobby. I know. It is. You know, and real quick, I'm just going to touch on some things that Kaneda said that I'm just like, he's right. I mean, you know, if the game brings you joy, it brings you joy. It's fine. If it doesn't, great. Whatever. You know, if you want to play it, fine. Yeah, if it brings someone else a lot of joy, don't shit on them. Don't shit on them. Yeah. The Internet's full of tough guys. We've talked about it. It's just the way it is. We've got tough guys. Yeah. I'd love to meet some of you. You all seemed really nice at the show. Yeah, they all were. Okay, what do we got next? let's talk about franchi on facebook franchi my boy chris chris franchi watch yeah we missed you at mgc by the way yeah you told us you're gonna be there no he didn't he didn't um so he doesn't return my calls no i'm joking all right i'm gonna go make another drink you tell him what uh chris franchi did on facebook today oh i love when those moments happen where we can just be together me and you the listener chris frenchy was on facebook and he said uh that he uh completed beetlejuice art and he showed it and it looked phenomenal it looked absolutely great apparently stern was toying around with the idea they had the license and he just wanted to uh you know he did a little mock-up or whatever for some artwork for the game and none of the designers chose that as his theme what i mean seriously i mean what what themes did they choose they chose deadpool over beetlejuice they chose iron maiden over beetlejuice they chose monsters over beetlejuice if if if ranchi wanted to do beetlejuice and it was an available theme i would have taken beetlejuice over any of those themes any of them i shared this information with my wife earlier today you know first thing she said to me and my wife's not a pinball person you know she likes playing in the bars, whatever, occasionally. But she said, why wouldn't they do that theme? She goes, that would be an awesome pinball theme. Yeah, I like, well, yeah, exactly. Well, Franchi shared it and said, yeah, nobody's picking up this game. Yeah, I'm not shitting on Stern is basically what he said. But he also said, JJP called me. Yeah. Which was like, ooh, hello, Chris Franchi. He must just be a contract guy then. I thought he was a Stern employee. So did I, but he must just be contracted at that point because there's no way he would do that if he was an employee. He is now. He's a contractor now. He is no longer an employee of Stern at this moment. We don't know that. We don't know that for sure.
    58:36
    Sorry, Chris Franchi. We love you, Chris. Yeah, we do. But seriously, yeah, he put it out there, and then he did that secondary part where he said, I don't know what he said exactly. It wasn't like, basically, I'm not shitting on Stern. I just want this to get made. Well, he changed it. Yeah, he edited his post. But he put all caps locks. Yeah. And once again, though, if you have non-pinball people saying, wow, that's a great pinball thing, theme, sorry, that's awesome. Yeah, no doubt. And there's some excitement and there's some backlash there. So Beetlejuice, so we don't know who has the license. I commented. Yeah, I know you did. Yeah, I was trolling a little bit. I was like, give it to JJP.
    59:24
    But it sounds like. Stern, are you listening? Just let him have it. If you don't want it, I am sure they would do a kick-ass. Oh, my God.
    59:31
    Spooky might actually be the place to do that. Seriously. That's right up your alley, Spooky, and after Nightmare Castle. Oh. Yeah. Put that on Scott Denise's next game. Sure. That could be his theme. Sure. Call it good. But it sounds like Stern has the license, though. Yeah. Right? Sadly. I have to say sadly. Did you hear Jersey Jack talk about the Wonka license? Mm-hmm. So he got the Wonka license right after The Hobbit.
    60:01
    So he's had it for three or four years then. They took it away from him, and they gave it to Stern. The Wonka? The Wonka license. Really? Yeah, and Stern had it for a while. Huh. And then Stern lost it, and Jack reacquired it. and now we're at where we're at. Really? Stern did have the Wonka license for a while. I don't know if Jersey Jack had it originally, but he definitely was in the running because he had worked with Warner Brothers on Wizard of Oz. Yes. He asked them, what do you got? They're like, here's Willy Wonka. Really? And he's like, I want it. And then just when he thought he was getting a deal on it, they pulled it from him and gave it to Stern. But Stern didn't jump on it enough for however long, and then, yeah, Jersey Jack was able to get it back. For anybody who's wondering, if Stern produced this game, there'd be an everlasting gobstopper right in the middle.
    61:00
    That's it. On a spring, on a fucking spring. You can bash that thing. You know, it would be a re-theme of Star Wars. It's on the TIE Fighter. It would be right where the TIE Fighter is. Gobstopper, yeah. Shoot the gobstopper. Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly it. That starts just the big gobstopper. Yes. Oh, man, that would have been awful. How bad is it? I'm sorry. Like, I don't want to shit on Stern, but it's hard not to when you think about stuff like that. Yeah, it bothers me. You know, Beetlejuice is such a great theme. Yeah, no, Beetlejuice. And it can go it can go it cult status has gone a few generations now so But how could you How do you do monsters over it It because you know I mean George Gomez went out and just said it He's like, hey, man, my designers are the ones that pick the themes. They have the teams. They have like four or five teams that say this is what we want to do. The main designer, though, picks the theme. Like he – you know, George Gomez goes, here's our themes. What do you want to do? What are you passionate about? And Dwight Sullivan said, I'm passionate about monsters. Yeah, and George Gomez is like, I don't want these guys working on something they're not passionate about. Which is fine. I totally respect that. George, you're 100% right, and I thumbsed up that one all day long. But who's not passionate about Beetlejuice? Well, why don't you get some younger blood in there, then, if that's the case? If your guys are only wanting to do stuff like Munsters...
    62:22
    Batman 66. Or your main Batman... Well, that's a kapow, but... I know, but they still needed a team to want to do that. Well, right. Yeah, how does that work? What if they're not passionate? What if they don't have any passion? Well, because Batman 66 wasn't like a contract game. It was a partnership. Yeah, I suppose. So that team still needed to be passionate about it. And they were, because when you hear them talk about it. Right. And like I said, Munsters, Dwight Sullivan admitted, he's like, oh, I was a huge fan of it. So you're telling me that nobody at Stern says, oh, Beetlejuice is awesome. Right. Right? Right. I know, we just need some younger blood because our generation, again, is getting completely missed. So now everyone at Stern probably signed a piece of paper saying if anyone asks you, you've got to say Beetlejuice sucks. Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. All right, so anyway. So that was it. I just think that's crazy and weird and interesting. It's very interesting, but I just want to know why he's posting this stuff on Facebook. I mean, he wants to get it done, but that's – it would be like anyone at their job being like, yeah, my place sucks. Can you help me over here? You know what I mean? All right, podcast roundup. Podcast roundup. Sponsored by?
    63:36
    Podcast roundup. Because we don't have any fucking sponsors. Except for Willy Wonka Candy. If anyone wants to sponsor us, go to poormanspinball at gmail.com.
    63:47
    Poormanspinball at gmail.com. And sponsorship may only mean a case of PBR. It doesn't take long. And we're not kidding. Send a case of PBR to us Anyway, podcast roundup Special win lit, here we go It's going to be It was a good roundtable Jersey Jack, Willy Wonka roundtable The team They had the whole team They had Viscous Dio who did the music They had Pat Lawler for the design John Yossi For artwork And Joe Katz from software And they actually had a conference call with Jack Later on in the episode I didn't hear that part I listened to the first half, so go ahead and... No, what were you going to ask? Well, so that John Yusey, I guess, as I understand it, we were talking about the artwork and stuff, and I was checking out a little earlier. Like I said, most of it I think is great.
    64:37
    Apparently, he's done a lot of machines. He's been doing this a while, and I think overall he did a great job with it. I think so, too. So just the whole package, great, great job. Yeah, Vic Estillo, which is, that's a name, right? Vic Estillo? Yeah. Vic is Dio, dude, you sound like you belong in a Matrix movie. That name?
    64:58
    Vic is Dio. That is a badass name. Anyway. Was he the rookie? He's the rookie. He was the guy that he came from the slot machine side of things, right? And, you know, you think about Willy Wonka, you think about all his great music, but he had to, like, start fresh. Nothing was of high enough quality for him. I will say this. I watched some more of the stream today. Yeah. And after I heard that he was from slot machines, right? And anyone who goes to the casino and knows these newer slot machines like Game of Thrones and Willy Wonka and Star Wars, and they got 8 million of them.
    65:36
    And yeah, we were talking about Kapow. Zynga does all these different things, slot machines. I was watching some gameplay, and it does. It's very slot machine-y feel, which isn't a bad thing because I dig it. But you hit something and you hear this little bell. and it's just kind of like, you want to hit it again. It's kind of like Pavlov's dog. Oh, snap. And I think, well, psychologically, I think it's brilliant. Why not? Right, right. It's just like slot machines, the same thing. I didn't even think about that. Correct. You push the button, you win some money, you see the stuff on the screen. You're not thinking about the money. You're just like, how do I get to do that again? You sound like my wife. No, Ian's wife, she enjoys the slot machines. Do you have to tell them? It's been told.
    66:23
    Winter is coming. We just want to do that again. Ding, ding, ding. No, but seriously. No, and I've been in the slots in and out over the years, and I enjoy gambling occasionally. And, no, I thought it was a fantastic thing. Well, Ken and Bill did a great job with this roundtable. It was fantastic.
    66:44
    It was just nice to hear from the entire team. I thought they all kind of brought in their own thing, like John was talking about again, taking artwork from old stock photos and stuff and having to redo those from scratch too because nothing has been – clearly nothing has been touched on this damn IP forever. Correct. And I will say this about the Photoshop Clippy haters out there. Yeah, yeah. Isn't Gene Wilder in Willy Wonka dress like super iconic? Well, yeah. Right? Yeah, you'd have to go. Correct. So you just put a big Gene Wilder on the play field, which they did.
    67:27
    Fuck, that's all you need. Go for it, man. Yeah. So, Jersey Jack. Seriously. Woo! Good job, guys. I love you! John Yusey. Well, we're both in for one, so that says something, right? Yeah, that. John Yusey, you're welcome on our show anytime. I'll tell you how great the art is. Yep, yep. Poor man's pinball. at gmail.com. Four Man's Pinball at gmail.com. Email me. Anyway, so yeah, we're But Drew and I both said that when we got into this hobby, we would never get the same game. Like, that would be asking. Oh, we were like, oh man, these things cost a shit ton of money. Why would we never do that? I see you a lot. You see me a lot. We both just looked at each other after we were done jerking each other off and we're just like, yep. It was out. He didn't touch me, folks. He didn't touch me. He's lying. He touched me a little bit. No, but seriously, yeah, we're getting the games, and we're going to play them. And then, like we joke, we're just going to shoot, take pictures. Send it over to my friend because none of these are Wi-Fi enabled.
    68:28
    Oh, that was kind of a funny point this week when I was telling Ian, oh, we were talking about, oh, Pat Lawler stated, he said, this is the, what, the best we can do. This is the most advanced pinball machine with the technology we have today, something like that. Yeah, it's just like the best we can do with today's technology. What about my little bot? Yeah, this is the pinnacle of, yeah. Perfect. And then Ian said, but there's no Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. And I was like, there has to be. Come on. And he goes, there's not. And I was like, fuck. No, you were like, well, did they say there wasn't? Yeah, that's actually true. Specifically? Yeah. Oh, fuck off, Drew. No, there is nothing. Don't you think if they were the first machine to have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth that they would They would say that right off the bat? I feel like we talked about my fucking toaster is Wi-Fi, Bluetooth enabled. Jersey Jack. Come on. No. Every pinball company in the country, are you listening? Seriously.
    69:28
    We'll just take pictures with our phones and just test each other. Fix through pictures. Guess what my Raspberry Pi does? My Raspberry Pi little computer costs $35. It is Wi-Fi. It is Bluetooth. you know so yeah i guess there really is no excuse for that right no no no i don't think so not not today's world but anyway back to the podcast roundup they did that so good good good on you guys i encourage everyone who is interested in a wonka to listen to special when lit i think you already are and anyone who's interested in podcasts and you're listening to us you probably are special when lit is a good podcast yeah they're not bad they're not bad they're not as good as us but you know nobody is they're trying yeah they're trying to catch up my my wife my wife finally got around to listening to us and i said uh what do you think and she goes you stroke a lot of egos on there yeah i'm like yeah you do and you know she's like oh i love you and this and that i'm like yeah you're right i love you charlie anyways well you know we try to be critical and positive at the same time well we like to tell people they're doing a good job that's all yeah no she told me she's like man i had to turn that shit off because it's like fucking she's been listening to us bitch about shit that's true 10 years that's true she she literally did she she turned it off and said i can't do it anymore these guys our number one fan everybody she is she hears us every day yeah all right so that's podcast roundup all right so uh let's get into some moves some love letters because everyone's been emailing us and saying keep that love letter segment in there we need to hear more love letters how many people have emailed us and said that nobody's emailed us to say take them down so we're going to keep doing it before we do that can we just give a quick shout out we didn't do our mail bag we'll do it on the closing sounds weird after all the sexy talk No, we'll edit that out.
    71:33
    Love letter. Drew, would you like to go first? I'll go first. You go first. I got a special treat for you.
    71:41
    I hope it's about me. It's not. But you're going to laugh so hard you might piss your pants. Last week, if you were wondering why Drew's love letter was so quiet in the background, I literally had to leave because I was crying and laughing so hard. And I felt like such a dumbass because I'm listening to it, and I'm like, did you edit out our laughs? Because we were seriously crying and laughing so hard. We had to restart it like three times. And Ian goes, no, don't you remember I laughed? And I said, no, I was pretty drunk. I had to go upstairs. I was like, I'm fucking done with this. I can't do this. We're never going to finish this podcast.
    72:19
    So anyway, all right. Love letters. Here we go. All right. Dear Midwest Gaming Classic. You are the most amazing show I have ever laid eyes on. You reveal things to me the same way I want to reveal things to you. Whenever I grew tired, you took my hand and led me to another game. One magical night with you will never be enough to quench my thirst. I love you and I cannot wait for our next adventure together. I will count the days before we become one again. Forever yours. That was pretty good, Ian. I love it. Dear MDC, I love it. That's good. I love you, Midwest Gaming Classic. That Midwest Gaming Classic, she was worth every penny. Yeah, she was sexy and that was the cheapest love I ever got for $45. Sure enough, $45, six hours of fun. Where are you going to find that anywhere? No way. All right, what do you got? So mine, I deleted it from my notes so Ian couldn't see it at the time. and it's only like it's like three sentences long you're so good at this yeah i know everyone his mom yesterday when we were at it whoa no no this isn't about your mom so when we were at the uh his daughter's first birthday party uh she goes drew drew you got such a great voice for like radio and i'm like oh awesome and then she follows that up with and then there's ian and i'm like what like you can compliment me and now you're just ripping on ian i was right there too she looked me right in the eyes she was like and then you just chimed in ian's mom okay so so shout out to sue thank you mama i love you okay so here we go
    74:13
    i can never i know they always start with me just giggling like a school girl Alright, ready? Is that bullshit you just heard? Mine is to the infamous JJP Willy Wonka machine You ready? No, no, that was just JJP machines last week This is just Willy Wonka That last one was Willy Wonka No, it was JJP machines Alright, alright, sorry, call it I'm ruining the mood Just let me read my short note here Ready?
    74:44
    And who cares, it's a fucking love letter I'm doing a fucking love letter to a pinball machine. Are you fucking kidding me? I'm sorry. Okay. I did one to a show. Yeah. That makes you feel better. Jesus. What are we doing here? Why are we wasting our lives? Okay.
    75:02
    Okay. All right. I'll focus here. Dear Willy Wonka, I saw you. I touched you. I'm going to have to start over. No, keep going. Okay.
    75:20
    Dear Willy Wonka. Damn it. I saw you. I touched you. I creamed in my pants. I'm bringing you home. So we can repeat the magic of our first night together.
    75:39
    Still trembling. Drew. I told you, folks. and that was love letters episode five love letters god damn oh man every time i cry i knew you're gonna love that oh that's why i had to delete it because i knew you're gonna love that one i think i got a hernia laughing so hard on that one thanks bud i appreciate that all right so let's uh let's let's wrap this up with mailbag huh that's mailbird mailbag mailbag mailbag we got We got a couple this week. Yeah, you know what? A couple things. We just want a few shout-outs. Let's do a few shout-outs. For those who are still listening to this bullshit, if you stayed with us this long. We appreciate it, number one. Number two, we met with Chris from Slap Say, formerly from Slap Say. He was at the show. He said we were doing a great job, gave us some good advice, which we didn't take at all into account this podcast new still doing the same shit he did he literally gave us some good advice and we're just like nope still drinking he's like we do like no he was like don't ramble on and he's like keep it around 30 to 45 minutes no check yeah we fucked up how do you uncheck these boxes uncheck uncheck yeah we're awful at that thanks chris though i really appreciated that nice meeting you sir um the buffalo pinball guys when they were doing their stream. They said they were listening. So I appreciate that. Kevin and... Yeah, Kevin and. We appreciate you guys. We do listen to you. We love you. You guys are great. You guys are probably one of the better streamers out there by far. You and Jack, you guys do a great job. So we appreciate you. We got an email from Sean. He's on Pinside as 6.5 degrees. Great, great... Sean found us because of the stream of Willy Wonka. We were wearing the shirts, our shirts, because we're sadists or narcissists, whatever. Sean, welcome to the jungle, brother. Yeah, welcome, man. Sean F. We don't know his last name. Sean F. What was the pin side name again? 6.5 degrees? Yep. No, 6.5 degrees. Yep. So, Sean, thanks for listening. We love you, Sean. Thank you so much for listening and looking at our shirts on a stream. You were the only one.
    78:11
    14,000 people are watching that stream. We saw two fat fuckers instantly just drain and they thought, well, these guys are idiots and we moved on. One fan. We just need another billion people to watch a stream and maybe we'll have 10 people listening next week. It's awesome. Our viewership keeps going up and up. We really appreciate it. We love all of you out there. Somehow we're making this work. I don't know how it is, but it's working. Because we don't have that many family members, so some of you guys are like legitimate listeners. There's legit podcasters. Because we have, what, maybe like 20, 30 people we know that are probably listening to this. Right. But then the rest, they're legit. So thanks, guys. Shout out to our new best friend, Ryan, over at TurboGrafx-7. Yes. He's a local boy like us here in Milwaukee. He's a local guy. He's a Twitch guy. What's his stream name? It's TurboGrafx7. No, but what's his stream channel? That's it. TurboGrafx7. That's it. TurboGrafx7. Okay. Underscore 7. Okay. There you go, Ryan. Thank you. We'll get him on the show hopefully soon. We met him at MGC. We're planning on streaming with him possibly next week, right? We're going to stream. I'm planning on streaming. Yep. I asked him, shirts optional? He said, no, shirts are required. And I thought, okay, since we're just starting our friendship forever, which was funny because I go, oh, okay, so you stream how many games you got? And then he lists just a badass lineup. Oh, man, like 10, 12 games. Before I even, yeah, before I even. Dialed in, Metallica. Lord of the Rings. Before I even responded, I sent to my friend, will you be my friend? Yeah. We can stream over here, but we got to do the same game every week. Yeah, I know.
    80:00
    Yeah, totally cool guy, Ryan. Thank you so much. And we got a few words of encouragement from Brad Hopkins from London, Ontario. So we went international, folks. We went international. We found one. Yes. So, Brad, thank you. Brad, you rock, man. Thank you so much for everything you guys said. And everyone that listens, we are super appreciative. For what it's worth, Brad, I'm French-Canadian, eh? Yeah, yeah. He likes his Labatt Blue. Ooh, I used to drink a lot of that stuff. He did. So they can find us at gmail. What is it? Poor Man's Podcast at gmail.com. Poor Man's Pinball at gmail.com. We always get that wrong. It's weird. I've got to write it down. We do. We just need to have it on the wall here. Poor Man's Pinball at gmail.com. Send us your email. Someone just tell us we suck. That's for great. We don't care. Poor Man's Pinball at gmail.com. And then we also are on Facebook. So I post all sorts of stupid shit all the time. It's mostly memes and pinball-related stuff. Sure, why not? Good stuff, though. You can find us on Poor Man's Pinball Podcast on Facebook. Yep. That's it, man. We're wrapping her up. How are you feeling? I'm feeling great, man. I think episode five, we hit our stride. It was good. It was lean and mean this week. I hope everyone enjoyed it. We're trying to shorten them just a little bit for you guys because we know what it's like listening to our podcast. Yep. It's just not what we want to do. No, not at all. That's not our shtick, so we're not doing it. So thank you, everybody. We love you so much. Thanks for listening to us, and we will talk to you next week. Thank you, guys.
    82:01
    Outro Music