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DPP #7 "Some Scooby Scraps of news! I've got Rush mods FOR FREE just ask lol. More STORY TIME!"

Don's Pinball Podcast (regular feed)·podcast_episode·23m 52s·analyzed·Jan 20, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.024

TL;DR

Scooby-Doo progress update, custom mod giveaway, and nostalgic arcade story from West Virginia.

Summary

Don Garrison discusses Spooky Pinball's Scooby-Doo progress (first 30 units in assembly, ~1,100 sold of 1,969 total), maintenance fixes on Rick and Morty and Rush, custom dice shooter rod mods for Rush, and shares a poignant personal story about discovering a rotating pinball arcade in economically depressed Roncevert, West Virginia during a difficult period 9-10 years ago.

Key Claims

  • Spooky Pinball has sold approximately 1,100 Scooby-Doo machines of 1,969 total units, leaving roughly 900 unsold

    medium confidence · Don cites community reports of build numbers and estimates remaining inventory based on highest reported build number of 1,100-something

  • First 30 Scooby-Doo machines are in final assembly/testing phase with cabinets, toppers, and backglass installed

    high confidence · Don directly references photos released by Spooky Pinball showing machines in assembly state

  • Spooky Pinball has hired a new classic cartoon voice actor for Scooby-Doo, likely explaining the delay in gameplay livestream

    medium confidence · Don reports rumor about new voice actor hire and speculates licensing/contract finalization as reason for livestream delay

  • Roncevert, West Virginia arcade operated for 9-10 years ago with rotating pinball machines at 25 cents per play

    high confidence · Don's personal first-hand account of living in Roncevert and regularly playing Godzilla, Gorgar, and Indiana Jones machines

  • Rick and Morty show actor faced domestic violence charges, potentially impacting future dialogue recording for sequels

    medium confidence · Don mentions hearing about 'a dude got busted' for domestic violence and speculates impact on future Rick and Morty content

Notable Quotes

  • “I was not expecting to see functioning pinball machines in the storefront. I wasn't expecting to see a functioning operation going. I thought this was like an abandoned store.”

    Don Garrison @ ~38:00 — Captures the surreal discovery of the Roncevert arcade—a moment of unexpected grace during financial hardship

  • “This was not a functioning business. This was something that existed strictly for the youth of the dang town, man and boy did they need it.”

    Don Garrison @ ~40:30 — Reflects Don's recognition that the arcade was a community service, not a profit motive, highlighting its cultural value

  • “It was a total wonka situation. I never saw anybody go in, never saw anybody go out. I never saw anybody loading these machines...it's like if you were in a twilight zone episode.”

    Don Garrison @ ~36:00 — Illustrates the surreal, inexplicable nature of the rotating machine operation in an economically depressed area

  • “Rush is just a great game...With Rush, I could do post passes. I could dead flip, pop off...really get those shots dialed in so it's it's a more fun game to play because it's not a drain fest.”

    Don Garrison @ ~21:00 — Comparative gameplay analysis emphasizing Rush's forgiving mechanics vs. Rick and Morty's harshness

  • “I got two of those now I fixed it it's working good...I'm going to show it off this Sunday.”

    Don Garrison @ ~16:30 — Demonstrates successful completion of custom dice shooter rod mod for Rush with working prototype

Entities

Spooky PinballcompanyDon GarrisonpersonScooby-DoogameRushgameRick and MortygameGodzillagameIndiana Jonesgame

Signals

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Don expresses strong preference for Rush's forgiving mechanics and post-pass capability over Rick and Morty's harsh drain conditions

    high · Direct gameplay comparison: 'With Rush, I could do post passes...really get those shots dialed in so it's a more fun game to play because it's not a drain fest'

  • ?

    community_signal: Spooky Pinball maintenance team provided rapid, helpful support for Rick and Morty drop target issue

    high · Don reports email to Spooky Maintenance received same-night response with specific mechanical fix recommendation that resolved the problem

  • $

    market_signal: Pinball as tool for community resilience and personal survival in economically depressed areas

    medium · Don's extended personal narrative about Roncevert arcade serving as affordable escape ($1.50/hour) during period of financial hardship and housing instability

  • $

    market_signal: Scooby-Doo selling moderately (~1,100 of 1,969 units, ~900 remaining); not sold out despite collector's edition pricing at $9,700

    medium · Don reports hearing community members are happy with sales pace, cites highest build number observed as 1,100-something, estimates ~900 remaining units

  • ?

    community_signal: Spooky Pinball hired a new classic cartoon voice actor, likely for Scooby-Doo dialogue recording

    medium · Don reports 'they just hired another voice actor, like a classic cartoon voice actor. So that is slamming news'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.072

0:00
Man, I'm sitting here on a Wednesday, it's the midweek, and I've got a couple of days off and I thought, you know what? I'm going to record a show for everybody that's listening to this. Let's get in on it. I got some thoughts.
0:30
swooping in and a boom because that's how we do it man i was just out there playing godzilla i kind of blew up a little bit got myself almost a 200 million but man i got the tank shots the 10 tank shots you gotta hit to get the tank multi-ball man it's a good time the lights start going off everything is shaking bruh so what are we going to talk about well it's spooky news while Scooby-Doo released some more images or spooky released images of Scooby-Doo today. I was playing through a couple of my machines, doing some repairs. I can kind of talk about that a bit. And then did you guys like story time? Because I got another story I can talk about.
1:14
All right. So yeah, just going down the list here. I did notice that there was some photos of play fields in cabinets over at Spooky Pinball. So Scooby-Doo, those first 30 games that they're throwing together and taking their time with checking to make sure everything's working and then getting them out to like their trusted local folks um that seems to be in process you know so um looks like the cabinets are built it looks like the toppers are on top back glass is attached and there's play fields in the cabinets so i figure there's probably like tons of wiring that needs to be done but could we start seeing these things playable by the end of the week i think so now we were also promised some gameplay footage which is what we haven't seen a whole lot of they did release like kind of that little sizzle reel of here's some shots but not with the actual music from the game call outs and those things so what we were waiting on was a live stream like somebody who goes on for like an hour or so just playing the game over and over and you know talking about it we can hear the sounds of the shots or whatnot kind of decide for those last 900 that they have to sell you know anybody that's on the fence waiting to see that like are they going to make the jump are they going to go ahead and buy these there's 1969 because 1969 was when scooby i guess original episodes first aired so that's the edition numbers now they haven't released uh you know build numbers or how many they sold so far um i've heard tell that they're happy with what they've hit um but they have not sold out um they're in fact they are dropping uh photos of the effects. Uh, Dr. Cutler. No, not Dr. Cutler, Captain Cutler, right? Cutler, not Culver. Culver is where you get the cheese curds in Wisconsin. Cutler. That's the glowing helmet, diving, deep sea diving monster guy from the first season. Anyway, so they posted a photo of that with a link to go ahead and buy the CE, the collector's edition, top tier, $9,700.
Roncevert Arcadeorganization
Roncevert, West Virginiaevent
Gorgargame
?

announcement: Spooky Pinball released new Scooby-Doo playfield images featuring Captain Cutler character; first 30 units in final assembly with cabinets, toppers, and backglass installed

high · Don directly cites Spooky Pinball's released photos showing machines in assembly state, Captain Cutler artwork posted with CE sales link

  • ?

    product_strategy: Promised Scooby-Doo gameplay livestream has not materialized; Don speculates licensing/contract delays as cause, possibly related to new voice actor hire

    medium · Don states 'we were also promised some gameplay footage which is what we haven't seen...may be a holdup because of licensing issues...they just hired another voice actor'

    • 3:08
    Um, so they're not sold out yet. Um, I've seen people posting numbers, the highest in the build number that I've seen. Somebody's number like 1100 and something. So that's probably kind of right around where they've sold. So maybe there's like 900 or so left in that build if they go through with building all of them, if they sell them all.
    3:27
    So I guess, you know, give these guys two more weeks and they should have playable games. We still haven't seen that live stream. It may be a holdup because of licensing issues again. I saw a rumor posted somewhere. I know they just hired another voice actor, like a classic cartoon voice actor. So that is slamming news. I'm super psyched on that because I love the call-outs, man. I like playing the game. I like scoops and shags and the characters talking to me as we're playing. I think that's fantastic, especially if they're going to be recording new lines of dialogue for cut scenes and things during the game. So I'm all down for that. That may take a little bit of time until contracts are finalized between the license holder, between the talent, and we may be kind of in that period, and that's why we haven't seen a live stream yet. but you know who knows um tomorrow it could drop you know we just have no way of knowing that i know bros are working on it i know it's not going to get me my game any sooner if i see the live stream so it's going to happen when it happens um and when it does you will hear about it here first or probably seventh depending on you know what kind of tier system you use to check out your podcasts and whatever what else was i doing today um had some maintenance issues crop up, Rick and Morty, the left-sided drop target from Little Horseshoe Turnaround. It was going down fine, but the resetting on it was tricky. I'd have to jiggle the machine or I'd have to go into a ball search in order for that pop target to jump back up. So flipped it upside down. It looks like there's this tiny little brass arm that's on a coil that fires and then hits this little plastic pin and lets the spring reset the drop target back to its upright and full locked position. and so it wasn't quite catching all the way, so I took some pictures, and I fired off an email to Spooky Maintenance, and I'm like, bruh, help me, what do I do, and dude was super kind, got back to me like right away, like that night, with a tip like, hey, yo, guy, why don't you just bend this piece of metal right here, it's a little bit, so it makes better contact, and I finally got to that today, and after mucking with it a couple of times, it's working, so that was an easy fix, little mechanical finger, just needed to touch its little plastic nubbin, you know, it's found its home. And so now my game is working good. I don't have to shake it or jostle it or wait for ball searches So yay Happy about that Do I still have that can do sound No I wrote over that one We give him an air horn All right Also had some maintenance to do on Rush and that is the maintenance that I created for myself. You see, I got into the hobby of creating modifications for my machines, and it all started with that Stranger Things plunger, right? You know, the thing you grab to start the game, pull the ball in the spring back, let it go, hits the ball. So there's custom ones, right? Shooter rods, as they're known in the industry. So for Stranger Things, because these kids were all down with D&D, there's a D20, like a 20-sided dice. D20 or D12?
    6:36
    D20. But it's, like, big. It's, like, two inches. You know, like a giant jumbo size, like, would fit in your palm. Smaller than a baseball, bigger than a golf ball, about tennis ball size. Giant, you know, dice. and it's purple. It's got all the numbers on it. Super nerdy. And then that's the shooter rod for Stranger Things they sell. It's like, I don't want to say it's like $195 or something, you know, if you can find one. Like 200 bucks for a shooter rod.
    7:03
    So I went to a nerd tabletop game store. It's tabletop gaming, you know, they're around. And in there, I was looking at dice and they had some of these jumbo dice, like the same size of the ones that are used on Stranger Things. So I copped two of them. I got a clear translucent one and then they had this other one that was just like kind of bony colored and so I got those two drilled holes in them and I bought some blank shooter rods from some dang site not coin taker um marco specialties I think it was I got a bag of them they're like five bucks each um so I jammed those in there epoxied them installed it and then it worked good. It just didn't have the strength of the original one. And so I come to find out that I drilled it about a quarter inch too deep. So the overall length of the rod was shorter. And actually the rods that I had bought and bought, bought and bought and bought in Germany, the ones that I purchased were actually slightly just ever so slightly shorter than the one that came with the stern shooter rod. So I don't know if I just got the wrong one, but that's why my calculations are wrong. I built a depth gauge in everything when I did this and true to form, it went exactly as far as I wanted it to, but then I come to find out that my rod was shorter than it should have been, which is, I believe is what you said. So, um, what I had to do then I got a Dremel out. I cut away a little bit more of that dice. So thereby allowing the spring to sit deeper and then that fixed the size. And now the thing is shooting just fine so i'm stoked to show it off um i did take a picture and i posted it on the rush owners forum and um i don't know people were heckling me like what are you doing putting dice on rush and i'm like dude rush has dice as a theme in the play field people are making these six sided dice flasher covers i've got those so i figured dude it's dice i like stranger things you know what shut up i made it myself and i like it so i got two of those now i fixed it it's working good. So pro tip, if you are to do one of these things, if the rod is too long and you need to shorten it, you could always throw some washers on it and that would effectively shorten that throw distance that it's going to have. And that's the fine tuning, but man, it's working great. I'm going to show it off this Sunday. Going to have a crew over, dude. We're going to fire up the arcade and have some good, good times. So Rick and Morty is cracking in top form. Oh dude. So I was playing Rush. I got a Rush Limited Edition with the lights. I love the expression lights. It kills me that they haven't made them available. It kills me that they haven't got the topper out yet. But as soon as I put the rod in, I still had the glass off. I had the lock bar off and I was just playing a test game and it was my best game of Rush ever. I swear I didn't touch the ball at all rolling around, but I had no glass on. I was just trying to just test the shooter rod. And then all of a sudden like i'm on ball one i've got like two extra balls and i've already hit the replay score i ended up gc'ing my rush le at just shy of 500 million points so i'm trying to work up to the billy club with rush it'll help once i actually know the rules of the game but man i was on fight yeah i had i played to like four balls or so and with my ball saves and with the extra balls i had you know i was up in the hundreds of millions of points already past the replay score and still only on ball one. So, God, you know, Rush is just a great game. I'm going to compare it to Rick and Morty because that's what I was playing again today. I like Rick and Morty. I love the call out of the theme. I love how fast and frantic and chaotic that game is. But boy, it does not mess around. You know, if I want to try to dead flip and have the ball bounce off a flipper just so I could set it up for another shot, about half the time that ball just drains and it's non-recoverable. With Rush, I could do post passes. I could dead flip, pop off, you know juggle the thing uh move it up and down the flipper where i want and really get those shots dialed in so it's it's a more fun game to play because it's not a drain fest rick and morty is fun because it swears at me and dang i love that theme and oh as an aside i don't know that we're gonna get any more seasons of rick and morty do you hear with a dude got busted um for some kind of domestic violence uh issues um you know we'll see what shakes out in the court but I think the chances of getting a new dialogue recorded just got a little more iffy, I guess. So, man, I hope everything works out. I hope there was a victim if they're able to recover, you know, because that's terrible.
    11:37
    But I think I have the game. I like the game. The game's fun. I don't know whether we're going to get a sequel. All right. Clapping. Back to Rush. I did finish up my mod design for the drumstick holder So if you look around there people selling modifications for Rush So the area on the left upper part of the play field just beneath the clock drum there just some plastic And people have been making these drumstick holders so you can go buy the Neil Peart drumsticks and put them in the game. And so I messed around with some 3D modeling, did several prototypes, and I finally came up with one that I like. And I printed off five sets of them. And there are these double sets of gears. They're kind of copper colored, so they kind of match the,
    12:25
    what's that theme? Steampunk-ish, you know, cogwheel design of the game. So I've got these. They go in really easily. You just need a tiny Phillips screwdriver, but they screw in right on top of the plastics, and then you put the drumsticks in there, and you may need to wrap them with a little bit of scotch tape just so they fit snugly and don't move, but otherwise they rest against the back glass. They're not going to rattle loose during the game, and I've got a set of five I've printed up here. And if you want one, head over to the discord, head over to Don Garris, no Don's pinball podcast at gmail.com or Don's pinball podcast on Facebook. Send me a message. Do you want some of these? I'll send them to you. You just have to comment on the Facebook page, comment on the discord, share, like, subscribe, whatever. But yeah, just hug me up with your address. I'll send these out to you and then just post a picture of you putting them in, you know, let me know what you think. If they need to be altered at all, I can do that. But yeah, I can, I got the files now I can print out more of these, uh, as needed. So if you're interested in some free mods for rush, you still have to go into Amazon, buy the drumsticks, but, uh, they work. I dig them, dude. I think they look dope. And, you know, I'm proud of, uh, you know, the work that I have done here.
    13:36
    All right. So what else is going on? It's, it's Thursday midweek. The weekend's coming up. We just got a ton of snow dumped on us in Wisconsin, but we're here talking pinball. because that's a fun thing to do and I enjoy it. So let's dig deep back into my storied history with pinball. I'll do another story for you guys. How about that?
    13:58
    So this story takes us back, let's see, minus three, minus four, minus two. What's that? Three, four, two, three, four, seven, nine years ago. Nine to 10 years ago to the small town of Ronsford, West Virginia. All right, so because of circumstance, And so I ended up in this small town in West Virginia, small railroad town. It's on the eastern, southeastern part of the state, tucked away along the Greenbrier River. The place is called Ronsvert.
    14:26
    Ronsvert. It's French for Greenbrier. It's in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. So myself, my young family, we were living in what is essentially a duplex. Two bedrooms, small kitchenette, small living room, and that is it. Had another unit beneath us. We're on a hillside. So we were at the top level. It took a road up the mountain to enter our level. And then from the bottom, you had to park at the bottom of the hill and take these janky concrete steps up from the main street to access that part. And that part was vacant. And so what would happen in the wintertime since the lower unit was unheated, that place was frigid. So we're in this frigid house, not very much money at all, very much a fixed income, very much in a remote part of the state. in a town that was bustling at one point, you know, 500 years ago or so. Now, probably, you know, 70, 80 years ago, with the coal industry, the railroad routes came through there. So it was kind of a stopping point where there was a train yard. And so the town kind of built up around the fact that it was at the bend in the river. It's where the railroads kind of could converge and have a yard. And because of all the coal and also the iron working in the area. now because of that they had a bursling downtown you know these beautiful buildings you know one was an obviously an apothecary a pharmacy it had like the tile inset um you know on the way in there was a garage there uh that would service vehicles and then you know a saloon and just stores and of course everything there is just closed there's county offices for um you know wick and food stamps uh there was like a small thrift shop that was open two afternoons a week There was a gas station that functioned as the grocery store as well. They had a little fry counter and a tiny little restaurant there. And like, that's it. Houses. And then there was a park down by the river, which had a skate park right by the train tracks. Little sketch, great half pipe.
    16:27
    So living in this place, you know, not much money, economically depressed area, way past its heyday.
    16:35
    And at the bottom of my broken concrete steps. and I mean, there's like 70 steps to get down to the main street. Um, there was a sold saloon storefront and it said in small letters on the glass Ron's vert arcade. And so when I moved there, you know, I was kind of exploring the town a bit. It's like a lot of towns in rural West Virginia. Um, half a ghost town, basically, uh, the other half is on fire or was on fire at one point. Uh, but in this arcade, you know, I pop in there and there's a pool table in the back. there's a counter it looks like it used to be like a legit saloon um but there's a kind of a handmade sign saying they're selling candy for 50 cents soda pop uh there's no liquor license to speak of a couple of kids hanging out there some guy behind the bar and then right by the front window there's uh the the old sega uh sega or data east godzilla 1990s pinball machine and then i think they had an indiana jones right next to it which completely blew my mind i was not expecting to see functioning pinball machines in the storefront. I wasn't expecting to see a functioning operation going. I thought this was like an abandoned store. And then to make things more interesting, 25 cents a game. It was only 25 cents a play. And this is 10 years ago. This is 2011 2012 25 cents to play a reasonably recent pinball machine So once I discovered that I mean it the last thing I was expecting to see And it's right at the bottom of my concrete steps. And, you know, I didn't have a ton of money, but I had a couple quarters every now and then. So, you know, I could walk down in the evenings and pop in and I could play pinball for an hour for like $1.50, right? Like five games. Blew my mind, you know, just incredible. What was even more incredible is as I started going in there, the next week, Godzilla was gone. There was another game in its place, Gorgar or something.
    18:27
    And that kept happening. Every couple days, I'd pop in there, and the two games would be gone, and two new games would be in. The rotation was like 10 or 15 different games. It just kept rotating in and out of here. And it was a total wonka situation. I never saw anybody go in, never saw anybody go out. I never saw anybody loading these machines. These machines are heavy. They're 350 pounds or so. and they're just wheeling in and they're just they're just changing because place is supernatural you know it's like if you were in a twilight zone episode and you were just you know wandering around uh some lonely stretch of highway uh you know you were in a car now all of a sudden you're just alone there's fog um you can't see really out in the distance but there's a diner that's open and you go in there and it's like right out of the 1940s or something and like food is a dime and you're like where am i and and then you know it turns out like you died in the car accident and you're like in purgatory. That's what this place was like. Only it was like, dude, we're going to bless you with something that's going to help you, um, kind of counterbalance your, your situation that you're in. So what a great place. So, um, well, whoever was supplying these games for 25 cents a play was obviously not doing it to make money. This was not a functioning business. This was something that existed strictly for the youth of the dang town, man and boy did they need it um i mentioned the skate park i did frequent there quite a bit um yeah it's just a great laid-back half pipes jump ramps and stuff um met this kid there he had to be like 10 or 11 years old had one of the you know just jankiest homemade tattoos on his forearm his name was like lucas or something really nice kid offered me a cigarette um turn down don't smoke um but that's kind of town it was you know uh where even the youngsters are grown geez so So bless whoever took their machines and dropped them off in this arcade. I don't even know. It was not like there was another town 10 minutes away that was bigger and had a thriving university and sports teams, and you could have a pin bar or something. The next town over did grow a bit over time and got a movie theater and a Taco Bell.
    20:33
    But it's just so anachronistic and Twilight Zone-ish that this small town that I happened to find myself living in for a period of two years right at the bottom of my broken concrete steps the roncevert arcade had just a rotating brand of of recent pinball games for a quarter right when i needed it so you know thank you divine intervention for for helping me out and survive those frigid days there man so this place we were renting is 595 a month which was right in what we could afford uh for heating though it was baseboard heats like those electric basically a toaster that would try to heat this place and it had been redone with stone floors because the guy that was renting it bought these you know dilapidated places and then he did stone and masonry work so he would do these nice stone tile floors which you know when it's 20 degrees out and there's just no insulation at all these things are frozen so i mean it would cost another 500 a month probably to run those electric heaters so it wasn't supposed to but i went and i got a kerosene heater because i'd had one of those growing up. And then even the price of kerosene was kind of expensive, like $4 a gallon or so. We'd get a blue five gallon tank, fill it up twice a week or something. At least that would heat the house. And then we could use the electric baseboards just to maintain that heat. It was sketchy though, because we were in a small confined place, new child, and I'm worried about carbon monoxide poisoning for sure. So we had to kind of open the patio door to the elements while this thing is burning, wait for it to heat up the house, shut the thing off, stick it outside, I'd shut the door and then try to baseboard ourselves till morning when it warmed up again.
    22:11
    But I wanted to be safe. So I went and bought a carbon monoxide detector. And I hadn't owned one before. You know, it looked like a smoke detector. I plugged it in and immediately the thing is alarming. And I'm like, well, shoot, what the heck? And as I unplug it, you know, mess around with it, take the battery out, put the battery back in, reset it, plug it in.
    22:29
    Like it won't stop. I'm like, man, this thing must be defective. Right. So I just unplugged it. um i looking back i do not believe that the carbon monoxide detector was defective i think the house was full of carbon monoxide and it was effectively working and warning us but like it's almost like i didn't want to believe that because i nearly needed this cheap heat because he was expensive um but as frigid as we were in that place um you know we were together we made it through it was perfect for us and dang it if in downstairs there wasn't an arcade for me in an affordable one. So I'm blessed and ever thankful for that. Now my situation's improved. I've got a decent house. I've got a basement and I've got my own games downstairs. I can still go downstairs and play. But yeah, shout out to that bro that hooked it up for me and everybody else in the town by having the 25% games. Ron Sovert Arcade, you're a rock star.
    23:29
    What else is a week gonna bring, man? we can get dropped with that Scooby live stream anytime and when you do or when we do I'll let you guys know y'all want some rush stuff let me know I got these mods ready to send out Don's Pinball Podcast at gmail.com or Don's Pinball Podcast on Facebook and check out the Discord man we're hanging there having a great time Woo!